University education elusive for child soldier

Michel Chikwanine's past won't make up for poor grades

Michel Chikwanine jokes around after his talk at Dalhousie University, Jan 25.

The thing Michel Chikwanine misses most about Africa is climbing trees to pick fresh bananas and eating them on the spot. It's a memory that reminds him of his childhood - one that existed before it was cut short.

He spoke Jan. 25 at Dalhousie University to a crowd of over 100 people. The Dalhousie Student Union in partnership with the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) put on the talk.

Michel Chikwanine was a child solider. Then he was a refugee. Now he's a university student, and even that is proving to be no easy feat.

Chikwanine arrived in Canada in January 2004. He came from a refugee camp after fleeing his home in Beni in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to escape civil war. Chikwanine says when he stepped off the plane at Ottawa's International Airport, the first thing he did was look up at the sky.

"There were no bullets going by. And there were no bombs going off," said Chikwanine. "I took a huge sigh. And I felt, for the first time in my life, I felt at peace."

Bullet shells and skeletons

Chikwanine was five years old when he was kidnapped. He stayed after school with his best friend, 12-year old Kevin, to play soccer in a field nearby. Army trucks drove up and a shot was fired. He saw one of his friends fall to the ground further up the field. The rebel soldiers piled the children into the trucks and drove away.

When the trucks finally stopped, the children were told to get out. "The typical troublemaker that I was, I took the first step out of the truck," said Chikwanine. "Then I heard a crunch under my feet. I looked on the ground and it was a skeleton. And the skeleton had no skull." All around him were more bones and bullet shells.

A rebel soldier came and said that they would be initiated into the army. They put a gun in Chikwanine's hands, blindfolded him, and yelled "Shoot! Shoot!" Chikwanine pulled the trigger and dropped the gun. They took off his blindfold. His hand was dripping with blood, as was his white Superman t-shirt. He looked down at his feet, and saw Kevin, lying in a pool of blood.

"At five years old, I was forced to kill my best friend."

Chikwanine was a child soldier for two weeks, until he escaped into the jungle during an attack on a village.

When Chikwanine was 10 years old, he and his family were driven from their home and into a refugee camp by the fighting. Five years later, with help from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, he was given a one-way ticket to Canada. On Jan. 21, 2004, he took a flight from Kampala, Uganda to Nairobi, Kenya. He then flew from Nairobi to London Heathrow Airport, then finally on to Ottawa.

No exceptions

In high school, Chikwanine needed the help of many of his teachers. He had come into the school system not knowing how to write a story, let alone an essay.

"If it wasn't for sheer power and a will to learn, I probably would have dropped out of high school," he said.

In Grade 12, he almost did leave school because of family and personal issues.

Because of that hard time he had in his final year, his poor marks meant that he couldn't meet the minimum grade requirements for university. He was undesirable to most universities, despite his circumstances.

"Universities didn't pay attention to that. When I told them that this is what I've gone through...they didn't really care."

The mistake that some universities make is ignoring the background of those who apply to their programs, said Chikwanine. Even when his high school called and recommended him as a great student, he says "the University of Toronto was just like, ‘No.'"

"I was really hoping they would make a consideration for me."

He ended up in a bridging program, a part-time course that taught the equivalent of three credits. He wants to earn a degree in peace and conflict studies at U of T. But he will only be considered for this degree if he passes the program.

The University of Toronto did not respond to interview requests. Instead, Dalhousie University offers some insight.

"We do take special circumstances into consideration," said Mairead Barry, Associate Registrar and Director of Admissions at Dalhousie. If a student has had difficulty in school due to hardship, the admissions committee will consider their application if they don't meet the regular admissions standards.

"One of the biggest things is that the admissions requirements are set in order to determine whether a student is going to be successful in university," said Barry. For most applicants, their previous academic work is a good enough indicator of their success at university.

"But in some cases, there could be reasons or situations that a student was not able to perform successfully in the past, but now is able to." A history like Chikwanine's would be taken into account.

However, Chikwanine still thinks this problem is big, as big as the whole school system. He says that students are often considered only by the numbers of their grades. "I don't think that's how education works...It's kind of sad," he says.

Although he knows that this needs to change, he says it can't be done without the help of students. "We have that opportunity, the privilege, the freedom of speech - all these things we have for free and don't use them."

Our voice

Marysia Parry is the chair of the committee at WUSC that co-hosted the talk. WUSC has sponsored 40 refugees to study at Dalhousie since the 1980s. Parry thinks it's important for refugees to be given the chance to study, but it can be tough to offer that opportunity to everyone.

"It's hard, because you want them to have an opportunity that they wouldn't be able to have, but at the same time, you need students who get good enough grades that they're going to be able to meet the academic requirements once in university," said Parry.

"There's no way a professor is going to know each of their students, the situation they come from, and cut someone more slack on an assignment than another person because of their background," she said.

"Like [Chikwanine] said, everything is connected. And education is a big part of that."

A refugee student who studied at Dalhousie last year told Parry about a refugee camp where he had to mark his schoolwork in the dust and memorize it right away because it would be gone the next day. She says he would often remind her that "we helped him get through university...[Now] he's going to go back and change his community."

Chikwanine says that this type of thought needs to spread to the regular process of university applications.

"Students need to rally. It's our voice," he said. "If we don't raise our voices, nothing will change."

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