LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- When Carine Basenge walked across the stage Friday night and officially became a University of Louisville graduate, she illustrated that kindness, persistence and parental love are powerful forces.
"I don't want to be perceived as 'the other,'" she said after receiving her diploma. "I don't want to be perceived as an outsider, and the University of Louisville really gave me that space to, you know, blossom."
Her origins are very different than most, if not all, of her fellow grads. She was born in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, where warring ethnic groups led to the genocide of roughly 800,000 people.
"Genocide is what caused my parents to leave Rwanda," Basenge said. "They fled, like many other Rwandan refugees, city-to-city and ended up in South Africa in 1998."
But South Africa didn't feel like home either because of a hostile climate of xenophobia and constant reminders that they didn't belong there and weren't welcome there either.
"There was that idea that all of the immigrants were coming in to take their jobs, take their schools, occupy their spaces," she said.
But in 2014, that changed. Her family got a call: They were given just hours to seek asylum in the United States as refugees.
Their destination: Louisville, Kentucky.
"I was very nervous and apprehensive," Basenge said with a smile. "Oh my goodness, I'm going to Kentucky. Where is Kentucky? Never heard of Kentucky.'"
When she arrived, that anxiety eventually faded away. Louisville wasn't the middle-of-nowhere country town she had imagined. Even though she still felt out of place, U of L changed that.
While she describes her freshman year as "culture shock," Basenge said she went out on a limb and made friends, got involved in extra-curricular activities and spent plenty of time volunteering throughout Louisville.
"I don't know if there will ever be a moment where I can say this is truly where I'm from, but I can say this is where I belong," she said.
As she strolled across the stage Friday night with an excited smile, her diploma clutched in her hands, she considered it more than a victory for herself but one for all refugees.
"I think I am living proof that I am more than just my status of refugee," she said to other refugees who she said might be confined to camps with little hope.
Her diploma is also tribute to the parents who never stopped to get her to safety and opportunity. They cheered for her Friday night from the front row of the KFC Yum! Center.
"I know that life has not been easy, and every day that I wake up, I say thank you," a grateful Basenge said to her parents. "I am here because of you, and I continue to be here because of you, and I appreciate everything you've done for me."
Lastly, she dedicated her achievement to a university and community that has showered a refugee, with an unusual accent, with love.
Basenge, who studied psychology and sociology, plans to become a U.S. citizen in 2019.
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