Jean-Claude Munyezamu left Rwanda in 1993, shortly before the genocide began. After working with volunteer organizations in Somalia, Sudan and Kenya, he settled in Canada. Jean-Claude is  director of the community relations with the Rwandan Canadian Society of Calgary, and the President and Founder of Soccer Without Boundaries, a nonprofit organization that provides sports opportunities for new Canadians, with a special focus on the children of refugees. Jean-Claude was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his work with this program, and he currently sits on the Premiers Council on Culture. He lives in Calgary with his wife Christine and their three children.

Road Trip Rwanda

Twenty years after the genocide that left Rwanda in ruins, Will Ferguson travels deep into the once-mysterious “Land of a Thousand Hills” with his friend and cohort Jean-Claude Munyezamu, a man who escaped Rwanda just months before the killings began. From the legendary source of the Nile to Dian Fossey’s famed “gorillas in the mist,” from innovative refugee camps along the Congolese border to the world’s most escapable prison, from tragic genocide sites to open savannahs and a bridge to freedom, from schoolyard soccer pitches to a cunning plan to get rich on passion fruit.  In the travel monologue Road Trip Rwanda, Ferguson and Munyezamu discover a country reborn.

Maclean’s Q & A

Newstalk 1010 Bookends review