Aline Ngirumpatse

Student

“I’m only in my first year, but Mom already thinks I’m an architect. She keeps telling me, ‘You must come home and build a church in Rwanda.’”

In a very real sense, Aline Ngirumpatse considers herself a ‘missionary’ in America. And the message she wants to deliver is the truth about Africa. “People have so many wrong impressions of Africa because they see all these movies about bushmen,” says Aline who is from Rwanda. “They ask me what language we speak because they don’t know it’s a huge continent of many different countries. At home, we study the geography and history of the world: Chinese, American, European, whatever,” she continues. “But here people seem to know very little of the outside world, and I think they’re surprised to learn we have modern, beautiful cities. And most of them,” she adds with a laugh, “look at lot better than downtown Los Angeles.”

Aline, who speaks five languages, has had her appreciation of world-wide cultures sharpened by years of travel with her family. “My dad was the Rwanda ambassador to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We’ve lived in Kenya and Ethiopia, and I went to French school, so we speak French at home,” she continues. “And learning a new language, in a new country, every two years was fun, though it was tough. But it also made adjusting to new places easy for me.”

Aline is studying architecture and hopes, eventually, to stay in one place long enough to see some buildings rise. “I’d like to be involved in commercial development and residential housing,” says Aline. “And I’d like to help our government build affordable housing, but essentially I’d like to work all over the world. I guess it’s all this traveling,” says Aline who has a brother in Italy and a sister in Germany. “I just don’t seem to be able to stay in one place for very long.”

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