Petaluma Profile: Debbie Buck: choosing to ‘not look away’

If there were international flights out of Petaluma Airport, the flying distance to Kigali Airport in Rwanda would only be 9380 miles. However, as Debbie Buck has learned, with stopovers and plane changes, a flight from SFO takes 28 hours and 40 minutes.

Buck first traveled to Rwanda with Melissa Becker, her friend and fellow member of Petaluma Fabulous Women. She went along to learn firsthand about the Rwanda School Project’s mission to provide high-quality secondary school education for the vulnerable youth of the traumatized nation.

“The only thing I knew about the country was from watching the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda,’?” Buck tells us. “I must have missed the part where they call it the land of a thousand hills, and was surprised how green and lush it is.”

Returning to Petaluma, neighbors kept asking Buck to share her favorite part of the trip.

Recalls Buck, “They seemed surprised when I told them how happy and positive the people are.”

“But how can that be?” people responded. “Isn’t that the place where a half a million people were hacked to death with machetes because their noses were different shapes?”

Indeed, it was only 25 years ago that nearly a million men, women and children were brutally murdered in an ethnic cleansing by the Hutu tribe against their Tutsi neighbors.

“Which makes it even more surprising how forward-thinking and positive the Rwandans I met are,” Buck continues. “A young man named Amani Simbayobewe is an outstanding example. During the time of the genocide, he escaped across the border to the Congo and lost contact with his mother. Amani spent several years under the care of a kind woman, who returned with him to Rwanda when it was safe. Unfortunately, this foster-mother died, and the boy was forced to live six years on the Kigali streets. Through hard work, determination and the kindness of strangers, he attended school, graduated at the top of his class, earned a university scholarship and received his university diploma this June.”

There is a trace of pride in Buck’s voice as she continues the incredible story.

“Amani is obsessed with giving back to his native country by helping street kids get the opportunity to achieve their dreams through schooling,” she says. “He founded the Rukundo Foundation in Rwanda at the start of 2018. But to make it work well, the organization needed a funding source in the United States.”

Twenty years ago, Buck and her telecommunications professional husband, Bill, were offered a chance to leave their New England roots, pack up the three kids, and head to a small rural town called Petaluma.

“We picked our house from photos, and didn’t look back,” she says. “The community is so welcoming, all of us got involved. I found work as a physical therapist for older people, did volunteer jobs at the kid’s school, the Girl Scouts, youth soccer and the Cinnabar Theater.”

The move to Petaluma turned out so well, in fact, it set the groundwork for Buck to be able to pick up the ball establishing the Rukundo Foundation, USA, and run with it.

“Bill soon took charge of the paperwork and website, and we are now a 501c3 public charity providing resources and support to the street children of Kigali, Rwanda,” she says. “We provide tuition, uniforms, school supplies, and a library. New this year, we rent a single classroom for a Saturday school providing English classes and tutoring for kids and parents, a mentoring program, and sports and social activities. It’s sustainable and it’s working.”

Buck says she talks to Amani by phone or Skype almost every day.

“We have lots of plans for the future, and rukundofoundationusa.org can always use support,” says Buck. “It’s a tangible way for donors to become part of the foundation’s motto: ‘We Choose Not To Look Away.’”

(Contact Gil Mansergh at gilmansergh@comcast.net)