By BEN MCCARTY
News staff writer
June 5, 2007

In April 1994, the name of Africa’s smallest country was seared into the pages of modern history as one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the 20th century tore the nation of Rwanda apart. In four months of genocide, nearly 1 million Rwandans were killed while the rest of the world watched.

Adrien Niyonshuti and Nathan Byukusenge were 7 years old then. Nathan lost his father. Adrien lost six brothers and an uncle to the killing. Rafiki Jean De Dieu Uwimana was 9, when Hutu extremists rose up in an attempt to wipe out the minority Tutsi population that horrific April and he would not see his family again for five years.

Now the three young men have grown and, along with two others who also survived the horrors of the genocide and the help of an American Tour de France rider, are trying to do their part to show that Rwanda does not need to be defined by its bloody past.

The five members of the Team Rwanda cycling team, Adrien Niyonshuti, Abraham Ruumuriza, Nyandwi Unwase, Nathan Brykusenge and Rafiki Jean De Dieu Uwimana, make up one of the nation’s first forays into international sports since the 1994 genocide and are providing an important part of the country’s attempt to heal and move forward from its tragic past.

The team has been formed in the past year by former Tour de France rider Jonathon “Jock” Boyer, and is making Hood River’s Mount Hood Classic a stop on a seven-week tour of the U.S. It is the first trip out of Africa for the team members, and for most of them it has been their first experience with permanent electricity, running water, beds with full sets of sheets and fast food.

“Its been hard for them,” Boyer said of his team’s racing experience as he sat at the dining room table of the team’s host family, James and Leslie Cogswell of Hood River. “They are adjusting to so many different things right now.”

Boyer stepped foot in Rwanda three months ago as part of Project Rwanda, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving the country, and the team was formed soon after that. Things have slowed down for Team Rwanda since then.

The team had its first international race earlier this month in Cape Town, South Africa, and found out soon after that a sponsor was willing to put up the funds to send the entire team to the United States.

“We didn’t plan on the momentum gaining so much inertia,” Boyer said.

But before the five young men boarded the plane for the states, and before they were even named as the first Rwandan cycling team, Boyer had been scouring the country for its top cyclists.

Rwanda has a deep passion for sports, but since the genocide and civil war of 1994, there has been little organization on the national scale.

The riders come from all across the country, including several who come from home miles off any main roads.

No matter where they came from, Boyer saw a common thread between the riders he tested for the team.

“I saw there was some real talent there,” Boyer said.

In the end, he picked the five members on the team, partially because of their talent, and because of their ability to be strong ambassadors for their country.

However, their arrival in America has not been without incident. In one of the updates that he periodically writes for the team Web site, Boyer described how the five team members were stopped coming into the country and only got to continue when he informed the immigration agent who called him about the group being at the airport that yes, he was expecting five Rwandans to be visiting him.

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Things have not been so complex in Hood River.

The Cogswells found out only a week before the race that the team would be staying with them. When he realized that they had not been assigned a racer to host yet, housing coordinator Paul Blackburn went ahead and decided to give them a whole team.

Of Rwandans. Hungry Rwandans.

With limited knowledge of the English language.

“They have been wonderful,” Leslie Cogswell said. “They all help clean up and they even cook!”

Typical evenings since their arrival have found the team relaxing inside (they are particularly fond of the cool basement), doing interviews with local media, being recorded by the documentary film crew that is following them, or getting a rousing welcome wagon from the neighborhood.

The 700 block of May Street has been festooned with blue, yellow and green draping, the color of the country’s flag, and on Tuesday night a local samba band, Samba Hood Rio, came and played for the team, who reciprocated by dancing and signing autographs for anyone who stopped by.

Since their selection to the team, Boyer has been busy beefing up their diets and putting them through vigorous training so that they can master road and mountain biking, and hopefully secure one of the members one of the two slots from Africa in bike racing for the next Olympics.

For comparison, Rwanda has five members total on its cycling team, while the United States has five separate categories for its national team, each with a full team of its own.

That does not deter the Rwandans from trying to make an impact on the world stage, though.

“We only have a few riders in Rwanda,” Rafiki, the best English speaker of the group said. “But we love to ride. All of Rwanda loves sports.”

The love of sports was temporarily replaced with a desire simply to survive with the onset of the genocide of 1994. A million refugees fled the country, and entire families were wiped out or scattered.

Rafiki’s parents sent him to a different part of the country to live with his grandmother. Neither he nor they knew if the other was alive for the next five years. Seeing them for the first time was one of the happiest moments of his life.

“Too many people had no father or mother or a family,” he said. “I was so happy to see mine.”

For a country that has gone through so much pain in its recent past, Boyer was pleasantly surprised at the atmosphere when he arrived.

“Many of the people have gone through a horrific past,” he said. “But they are still so wonderful and welcoming.”

The team wants to take its message of a new, hopeful Rwanda to the rest of the world.

The country’s president, Paul Kagama, who led the rebel forces that captured the capital city of Kigali and effectively ended the killing of 1994, is fully onboard with the project and the United States ambassador to Rwanda lent help to the project as well.

While the team still has a long way to go before it fulfills its potential — as of Friday, three of its riders were out of the running of the Mount Hood Classic due to injury and the remaining two finished far back in the field in Thursday’s stage — they know they have dual roles to perform as competitors and representatives of their country.

“By coming to America I am an ambassador now,” Rafiki, who has sat out the race after getting his wisdom teeth removed recently, said. “It is a good feeling for Rwanda.”

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Don’t let the fact that Boyer is putting them through a tough training regimen every day and that the team seems to draw a crowd wherever it goes fool you. The team has more than just cycling and representing their county on their minds.

The trip to the United States has opened up several doors for them that they could not experience in Rwanda.

For example, Rwanda is a landlocked country, and Nyandwi would love to get out on the water. Boyer is hoping to get him on a jet ski during a break between races.

Abraham wants to ride a horse, and Adrien and Nathan are still thinking of what they would like to try.

Rafiki has possibly the most demanding idea. He wants to learn to drive. To meet that end, Boyer is planning to let him take a spin in his large pickup at some point.

“He really wants to drive,” Boyer said.

The team members will have to wait until a break in the racing and training for those opportunities, and with a June 28 return to Rwanda to train for the African Games, there will not be much time.

Even though their time in the U.S. will be short, they hope that their time here will let America know that Rwanda is a different place than it was 13 years ago, and that people and places can change, no matter how horrible the past.