CalArts forges partnership in Africa

Kathy Carbone remembers the twinge of trepidation she felt when she was asked to help create a library in the tiny, east-central African nation of Rwanda.

"Oh my God, what have I just signed up for?" she recently said, recalling her initial reaction. "I felt overwhelmed. I had never created a library."

Carbone, the performing arts librarian at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, realized she faced an enormous task. She would need books, a computerized system to catalog the publications, and a way to get the hard copies to the proposed facility half a world away.

But to her relief, and to the delight of others who initiated the relationship between CalArts and the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Kigali, Rwanda, the effort immediately generated an outpouring of goodwill.

Colleagues, friends and family responded to Carbone's e-mail appeal for books by donating about 150 volumes on genocide, human rights, reconciliation and similar topics. A Texas-based company called Biblionix agreed to provide an online cataloging system -- absolutely free. And when the time came to transport the books, Carbone, her colleagues and students stuffed most of the texts into suitcases and boxes, and headed to Rwanda.

"I was surprised at how many people responded and how quickly," Carbone said of the enthusiasm for the library project, which began about a year ago. "It was beautiful."

The center, which currently operates online, plans to open an office and library in Kigali in July. It would be dedicated to providing information about an ugly subject: The 1994 Rwanda genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. The library would be a key component of the studies center.

The idea for the center was hatched by Jean-Pierre Karegeye, a Rwandan doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley, and Erik Ehn, dean of the School of Theater at CalArts.

The scholars met while Ehn, a playwright, was visiting Rwanda in 2004. Karegeye said he was excited by Ehn's enthusiasm to explore Rwanda's tragedy and examine ways to promote peace-building through the arts. Karegeye suggested others could also benefit from this experience.

The men resolved to create a center to study the Rwandan genocide, and a special relationship was forged between Rwanda and CalArts.