The World at NorthwesternBy Tamara Fynaardt

International students bring a global perspective

Among Northwestern students, there are as many perspectives on the world as there are curious individuals in this community of learners. The majority of students are Americans, and although they are drastically different, they still hold mostly common values—like government of, by and for the people—and understand common experiences—like Super Bowl Sunday.

Northwestern’s 39 international students are distinct in more ways than they are similar. Born and raised in 20 countries on five continents, their reasons for choosing Northwestern include excellent academics, opportunities for spiritual growth, and a safe-from-distractions location.

Many are Christians. Several are followers of other world religions, like Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. Others don’t claim a faith.

Most don’t go home for the holidays. Many speak several languages. More than American students, they have battled homesickness, communication frustration, and cultural misunderstanding and embarrassment.

They also appreciate—possibly better than their classmates—the beauty of diversity, understanding and acceptance.

What follows are select stories that offer a glimpse into their different lives.

Warmth

TOM BECKER

At the end of her first semester, Guerda Muzinga was finally starting to get over her culture shock. The 21-year-old had never been away from her home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo before this year.

After she finished high school, Guerda was directed by her father to attend a Congolese university and study economics, like her older sister. But Guerda had her own ideas: learn English and study business abroad.

During a three-year standoff over her future, Guerda lived at home. She didn’t study or work. She and her father argued until finally her mother intervened and convinced her father to let her go.

Located near the equator, Guerda’s country is hot—and getting hotter, especially along the Rwandan border where rebels are causing a refugee and humanitarian crisis. Guerda’s family is in the western capital city of Kinshasa and safe so far, but they have uneasy recollections of the “African World War” of the late 1990s. Guerda remembers the staccato of shooting during the night. Unable to leave the house, she and her siblings listened to their parents whisper about children rounded up and sent to fight as soldiers.

This fall, in preparation for her first trip out of Africa, Guerda packed hardly anything from home. “Where’s your stuff?” her roommate asked when she arrived at Northwestern. “I’m starting a new life,” Guerda said—a life that has included the American habit of shopping to fill her empty closet.

Guerda says she has been cold since arriving in August. When it snowed on campus in early November, her Fern Smith Hall wingmates asked if she’d ever seen snow. “Of course,” she said, “on TV.”

They told her it will snow more and get colder. She groaned. Someone asked if she owns an electric blanket. “What is that?” she asked, “and where can I buy one?” She picks sweaters and scarves off store racks and asks, “Will this be warm enough for me to survive?”

“Yes,” her new friends assure her, “You’ll survive.”

Guerda’s starting to believe that. Defiantly independent before she left home, she spent the first weeks at Northwestern crying during long-distance calls to her mother, who reminded her: “You wanted to go. Now stay—and learn.” Guerda’s mother—a believer who was comforted when her strong-willed daughter chose a Christian college that would nurture her tentative faith—told her, “Read the Bible. Pray. You will be OK.”

Guerda has dried her eyes and is exploring her new home. “I do want to learn,” she says, “and share my culture too.” She searches for the words to express herself: “I’m not sure what I can offer, but I would like to be part of this family.”

Peace

TOM BECKER

His jaw tightens. An indignant spark flashes in his dark eyes. “No one wants a Cold War again,” he acknowledges, “but we’re a sovereign country.” Russia should back off from Georgia, he says.

Two days after Irakli Naridze returned to Northwestern for his senior year, Russian soldiers invaded his country, escalating tensions between Georgian armed forces and Ossetian separatists into a full-scale war.

While Irakli moved belongings, including his prized Georgian flag, into Heemstra Hall, his boyhood friends were getting 3 a.m. phone calls with instructions: “It’s time to serve your country.”

If he hadn’t traveled to Iowa, Irakli would have been drafted too and spent August putting out fires and evacuating the wounded. Every Georgian man between 18 and 24 submits to a month of mandatory military training, he explains. “I still don’t know how to hold a gun properly, though,” he admits, and expresses worry for his friends who are similarly ill-prepared for combat. “They’re just kids—like me.”

Torn between his nationalistic impulse to defend his homeland and gratitude that his parents were spared the worry of his involvement in the conflict, Irakli spent the fall semester trying to focus on his business classes and responsibilities as a resident assistant.

A former intern with the United Nations, he has abandoned his goal of a career with the organization, in part because of the U.N.’s recent indecisiveness about aiding Georgia. Instead, after graduation he hopes to pursue an M.B.A. so he can return to Georgia and contribute to its notable economic growth and reforms.

The situation along the Russian border remains tense, but fighting in eastern Georgia has halted—for now, says Irakli. He grew up in the capital city of Tbilisi during the civil war that followed the country’s declaration of independence from the former Soviet Union and hopes his country won’t return to those dark days. “There were many shortages,” he remembers. “No jobs, no food; I stood with my father in line for bread.”

During this season of “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men,” Irakli missed attending Christmas Eve services with his family, who are Christians. “Worshippers stand all through the night,” he says, “eight or nine hours, until the sun comes up Christmas morning.”

Light

TOM BECKER

“It’s a lot like Christmas,” Nasiba Khalikova tells her friends about Ramadan, still her favorite holiday. Culturally Muslim and a committed Christian, Nasiba celebrates both.

The petite Tajikistani grew up in the capital city of Dushanbe. Her mother, a bread factory worker, was killed during the country’s civil war in the 1990s. Her father and an aunt raised her and her younger brother to have traditional Muslim, family-oriented values, although they weren’t particularly devout.

During a spiritual search in her teenage years, Nasiba told her aunt she wanted to pray five times daily. Her aunt advised her to wait to start practicing Islam until she was older.

“I was looking for a relationship with God,” Nasiba recalls. “I felt he wanted something, and I wanted to know what.”

A high school friend invited her to a Christian church, and Nasiba remembers she was interested—then irate. “I thought, ‘These people are crazy, singing and jumping.’ I told my friend, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’”

Her friend’s new faith continued to intrigue her, though, and Nasiba accepted more invitations to church in an effort to understand. “Why did they go there,” she wondered, “and why were they so joyful?” She told her aunt not to worry: “I said, ‘I don’t want to be a Christian. I just want to learn.’”

Then, she says, “I started learning and pretty soon I became one of those crazy people.”

The only Christian in her family—a secret she keeps from her grandma and uncles—Nasiba smiles wryly as she recalls her father’s reaction: “He didn’t support my decision—but he didn’t kick me out of the house, either.”

A foreign-exchange experience in Huxley, Iowa, introduced the senior actuarial science major to the Midwestern U.S. and focused her search for a Christian college.

“God worked a miracle,” she says, explaining Northwestern has been a safe place to pursue her deep passion for increasing understanding between Muslims and Christians. “From both sides I hear things that hurt me,” says Nasiba. “Christians think Muslims are terrorists. Muslims think Christians just want to convert everyone” with no cultural sensitivity or desire to understand different—but just as deeply held—beliefs, she adds.

A former RA in Hospers Hall, Nasiba is described by the women who look up to her as wise, discerning and understanding. She listens and respectfully asks the same in return.

“I pray to be a good representative of Muslims for my friends here and of Christians for my family there. I believe God found me in my country for a reason—he chose me for this.”

Hope

TOM BECKER

Impressive. Robi Bogdanffy uses that word a lot.

As a kid, after being impressed by a stunt biker in his hometown of Hunedoara in Romania’s Transylvania Mountains, he taught himself to trick ride and became one of the best in his city. He gave that up when cross-country mountain biking impressed him.

Tolstoy impresses him, Dante’s Divine Comedy, the wisdom writings of Ecclesiastes, the book Coal he’ll read for Western Civ.

The freshman was impressed by the number of Christmas lights his roommate hung around their Colenbrander Hall room. Delighted to be surrounded by sparkle, he says, “Back home, we can only afford one string of Christmas lights.”

The son of a Jiu Valley mining engineer who’s lucky to be among the 60 percent of the country’s employed, Robi grew up in the decade immediately after communism fell in Romania. Years of secrecy, skepticism and social conformity were difficult to overcome, and necessities remained scarce. Robi remembers waiting in line—sometimes as long as three days—for six gallons of rationed gasoline.

As a teen, he got involved with his neighborhood’s Impact Club, one of a number of clubs established by New Horizons Foundation (NHF), which hosts Northwestern’s Romania Semester. The clubs aim to give Romanian young people a chance to experience camaraderie, generosity, trust and accountability—currency of social capital that was destroyed during communism.

One of the club’s projects was providing Christmas meals for families that couldn’t afford groceries. “Our little club raised $500—more than a month’s salary—and brought Christmas dinner to six families. It was impressive,” he says.

NHF leaders were so impressed with Robi’s intelligence and leadership, they chose him for a special assignment: Get an American education; then return to Romania to further the foundation’s goals for hope.

The political science major intends to learn about government and political systems so he can understand the context within which nongovernmental organizations like NHF can flourish. He is adding Russian and Mandarin Chinese to the list of languages he already speaks: Romanian, Hungarian, German, French and English.

Robi’s trip to Northwestern was his first time on a plane, and he says the U.S. is—you guessed it—impressive. “This country is the melting pot of all the civilizations,” he says. “It’s a mirror of the world.”