UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, November 17, 1994
Helping survivors is a family calling
Couple will assist Rwandan refugees for next two months
Reinhild and John Janzen look through a book of the Rwandan language in preparation for their trip to Zaire. They will be leaving Saturday to help Rwandan refugees.
By Nikki Chandler Special to the Kansan
Two KU professors are heading for a Rwandan refugee camp in eastern Zaire on Saturday to help diffuse the powder keg and start the healing process in the war-torn African state.
The husband-and wife-team of John Janzen, professor of anthropology, and Reinhild Janzen, adjunct professor of anthropology and an art historian, are responding to a plea for volunteers issued by the Mennonite Central Committee.
The committee is the relief and development agency of the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Churches of North America. Founded in 1920, the agency now has 900 workers in 50 countries around the world. The committee has responded to the Rwandan situation by sending food and clothing shipments and by providing trauma counseling.
The Janzens, who are Mennonites, answered the plea issued by the committee in August for French-speaking people with experience in central Africa. Over a period of 25 years, the couple has worked and traveled in numerous countries and regions including Zaire, Tanzania, and southern Africa.
The couple will be using its own areas of expertise to work with the Rwandan people and their grief.
"First, I'll be talking to people in Burned and in refugee camps to develop a better understanding of what the people feel should be done next as to getting their country back to a sense of sanity," John Janzen said. "They're having me look at how the African ideas of healing can be affirmed."
Once the refugees are on the road to recovery, he will make a recommendation to the committee about what it could do next.
"They can't go on indefinitely keeping people in refugee camps," he said. "The whole region is a potential powder key."
As an art historian, Reinhold Janzen will try to help the refugees work out their trauma.
"The MCC is having me look at the therapeutic role of art in the refugee situation and how art might contribute to the sense of preserving dignity and identity," she said.
She also said she believed she could help Rwandan children work out some of their trauma by expressing themselves through art.
The Rwandan war began in April of this year when Tutsi rebels revoltued against a Hutu-dominated government. As a result Tutus began the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutis. But the rebels won.
John Janzen compared the situation to the Holocaust in World War II.
"It's as though 40 million Americans would have been killed or died," he said. "Everybody knows someone
who has died. It it's a horrendous brutalization of life."
Ruth Weaver, a trauma counselor with the same organization that is sponsoring the Janzens, returned from Rwanda about a month ago. She observed the process of grief among the refugees.
"It was such an overwhelmingly huge trauma," she said. "If you lose your family in a car accident, you have friends who gather around you. These people lost family and friends."
Weaver, who is from Pennsylvania, was part of the first volunteer team that the committee sent. The Janzens will relieve that team. They will work in Rwanda for two months.
A graduate teaching assistant will coordinate Reinhard Janzen's fall art and anthropology course. John Janzen said that he was team teaching an anthropology course this
semester and that other teachers would finish teaching the course for him. The couple will return in time to teach classes in the spring semester.
The Janzens said they will take a notebook, a tape recorder, crayons and small cameras and film to keep track of their research. When they return, they will write articles for the committee.
But the Janzens said that they did not volunteer just because they wanted to do research.
John Janzen said that the couple did not originally know what they would be doing, much less that it would be in their professional and academic interests.
"For me, as a child growing up in postwar Germany, my family was helped a great deal by MCC. At least I can try to return some of the giving that I received," said Reinhold Janzen.
RESALE: Compact disc thefts are up this semester
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hands of the owners, he said.
"Compact disc thefts further signify the superiority of LP sales," said Kory Wills, manager of Love Garden Sounds, 936 1/2 Massachusetts St. "Albums are harder to steal."
Willis said that sales at his store had not fluctuated much this semester, but he said that there were times when obviously stolen discs were brought to the store. He said that nervous looking people or people trying to sell compact discs with markings on them were good tips. Love Garden buys about 100 used compact discs a week and records all transactions, he said.
"Yes, people sometimes try and stolen discs," said Peter Mallouk, manager of Recycled Music Center, 716 Massachusetts St. "Sometimes they get caught, too."
Mallouk said that he had not noticed any proliferation of stolen compact disc sales. His store also uses transaction forms that include the titles of the compact discs that were bought and they require a picture identification of the seller.
Officer Cindy Alliss of the KU police said that as with other valuables, students should keep compact discs out of sight or locked in a separate cabinet or room. She also said that students should mark compact discs with a code such as the last four digits of their social security number.
CULTURE: Center open to students, faculty, community
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center was progressing showed how committed KU was to the center. He said that commitment was shown by Student Senate's designation of $20,000 toward the center, an amount which will be matched by the University. The money will go toward maintenance and programs.
The center will have a large impact on the future of the campus, Medill said.
"It's going to be a huge factor in the
recruiting and retention of minority students," he said. "It will show that KU is doing things for cultural groups."
The winner of the logo contest will receive $150 cash, a $100 gift certificate to the KU Bookstores, a 1995 football season ticket, a 1995 season ticket for the University Theatre, two tickets to the May 7 show of "Cats" and dinner for two at Fifi's restaurant. The contest is open to students, faculty and Lawrence residents. The top finalists will be displayed in the Kansas Union April 3-10.
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