We’ve spent two very short weeks in Rwanda and leave the country this afternoon, but Caitlin and I return in August to spend a full year here. In some ways this brief trip was perfect in its incompleteness – the children of new friends not yet visited, whole swaths of Kigali still missing from my mental map, mango season just around the corner. I can’t remember ever leaving a place so full of impatience to get back. Each project site we visited this past week gave such a rush of inspiration that even just selfishly, emotionally, I cannot wait to meet the rest of the Global Grassroots teams and get to work.

Emotion is such a cumulative beast, built of links to personal history. In a way it is selfish by definition, but I’ve been feeling guilty this week when my brain lines up that way. During our Monday visit to Have A Good Life, a clean water project in Nyarugenge, I found myself staring up at this nearby tree. It looked like the arboreal version of Indian Paintbrush: red blossoms stuck on the tips of skinny branches, dark against deep afternoon sky. My California high school’s symbol was a Paintbrush blossom, and suddenly all I could think about was our little green campus and cafeteria conversations from seven years ago and the research project on Darfur I did for history class my senior year. We looked at water-related contributions to the genocide and even had a poster at some youth conference in San Francisco. It suddenly felt so absurd – how little, in retrospect, I could have understood about a region of Sudan I’d only glimpsed in stylized photographs. How hopelessly self-absorbed I must be, at that moment, to stand next to a crowd of children dragging jerry cans of water up a hill in a country full of loss and to tie up my emotions in a wave of nostalgia for a childhood community I was ready to lose. A young woman was explaining to Gretchen and Caitlin how many kilometers she lugged dirty water each day before Have A Good Life. Wow, I thought. Feel something you should.

But then Caitlin asked one of the boys playing nearby to explain the project’s sign post – a hand-painted rendition of the Global Grassroots logo – seven women clasping each other’s hands over a globe. “Everybody is coming together to hold hands to bring water to Africa,” the boy said. And he’s right, of course. Just the hand-holding helps.

Without those cafeteria conversations, I wouldn’t have chosen that twelfth grade international studies class. Were it not for that twelfth grade water project, I wouldn’t have gotten so involved with STAND, the national student anti-genocide group, in college. I might not know anything about Global Grassroots, and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here writing on a porch in Kigali beside oversized pumpkin vines. We see and feel the world the way we do because of who we come from, and perhaps that is not only our right, but our duty to those people who made possible whatever good we do in our lives.

I’m sure I can’t imagine the number of individuals involved in the establishment of Nyarugenge’s water access point and in the creation of the water safety and gender based violence trainings held by Have A Good Life – let alone all those who influenced those individuals to prioritize personal strength and social change. Sure, some change leaders are the heroines of the heroines, the heroes of the heroes, the strongest and busiest intersections in the community web. No matter what help I am able to offer our teams in the coming year, my impact will be nothing beside the work of any one of the invincible Rwandan women changing their communities with Global Grassroots’s support. Women like Jeannette of Have A Good Life. Women like Mediatrice of Think About the Young Girls, another project we visited this week. As part of their work to keep girls safe from sexual assault and in school, Think About the Young Girls has built separate female latrines at the primary school in Byimana and is currently constructing showers and changing rooms that will be stocked with sanitation supplies. But during our visit we noticed a new addition – a line of kids waiting to have their heads shaved by a young barber behind a classroom. When asked about the haircuts, Mediatrice explained with intensity that young girls often face harassment at the local salon; apparently the salon site is a favorite target of boys. In addition, many kids pick up lice or a skin disease from the shared instruments at the salon. So, the school had hired someone to shave heads for a smaller fee, keeping the kids safe, healthier, and on campus. I think everyone listening to Mediatrice’s story felt uplifted at that moment. The women of Think About the Young Girls began with particular goals for a particular project, but they have become true social change agents, constantly watching for chances to make the world better in quiet, innovative, effective ways.

These incredible women work every day to change their communities, but they are also the products of those communities. We try to change the world according to our own vision, just as we experience and feel the world according to our own histories. Is either of these a selfish act? Yes and no, I think. The conflict lies in the definition of selfishness. The words “our own” describe not a single point on the globe but a mesh of all those who have touched our lives – whose hands we have held – spreading out from ours, our left and our right.

See you in August, can’t wait,
Christina

Dear Rwanda,

Remember the times we watched the sun rise over the Kigali hills together? And remember the time we hung out with all those barber shop boys and their Jessica Alba obsession? And the Francophone door to door Congolese mask salesman? The markets, and the wrong-side of the car taxi drivers, and all the beautiful women… Oh, and Rwanda, remember the long walks on dusty roads and the way you always smell like firewood…

Rwanda, I know I’ve only known you for two weeks, and that we don’t even speak the same language, and I know you’re much more complicated than I can understand, but Rwanda? I think I love you.

Sincerely,

Laya

Today’s adventures began with the door to my room in the house I’m staying in blowing shut while I was in the shower.  I discovered, while I stood dripping in a towel, that the door had somehow locked me out with my keys, clothes, money, phone and everything else I owned inside.  Hmmm.  Quite inconvenient, given my staff was going to be arriving to pick me up in 10 minutes.  I changed back into pajamas and found the guard, who came in with a butter knife to see if he could unscrew off the deadbolt.  I quickly realized this was going to take much longer than anticipated.  I ran around to the windows, which are all barred, but managed to cut open the screen to make a hole large enough for my arm to fit through.  Luckily my suitcase was open next to the window and I was able to grab some clean clothes.  Phew.  At least I wasn’t going to be teaching in pajamas today.

With a pair of borrowed flip flops, I combed through my wet hair with my fingers and my outfit was complete.  I headed off to class significantly lighter than usual – no longer toting a bag filled with Wet Ones, hand sanitizer, wallet, phone, camera, chargers, Luna bars, water bottle, notebooks, pens, passport, teaching materials, calendar, business cards, blackberry, sunglasses and cloth wrap.  I went through a small wave of panic, but then quickly settled into a new sense of liberation.  Why can our women show up with nothing to their names, but I can’t seem to go 8 hours without accoutrements?

There has been a practice I have been working with in the US when I get overwhelmed by my never-ending list of to-dos and emails flagged for follow-up.  I put all lists aside, meditate a moment and just feel into what is most important for me to respond to. Usually the most critical items come to mind and then I do not have to get overly distracted by the sheer quantity to tasks awaiting me.  (Apologies to anyone I did accidentally let fall through the cracks – this is not meant to suggest you are not important).   It is more about trusting my intuitive to guide me.  Today I did the same – leaned into what felt important to teach and we actually had a more productive day than most.  There was no stress, no need to take time to review notes or prepare.  It just flowed.

Maybe we are a little too hung up on our stuff in the US.  Even including those of us who think we are already anti-materialistic.  What would it be like to go about an entire day with nothing but your clothes and shoes?  I highly recommend you try it.

Arriving back in Kigali after class today, I promptly plunked myself down on the back porch and sat like a stone there, eyeing the birds and the flowers until the sun set and darkness grew around me.

At the beginning of my first week in Rwanda, I was enchanted by everything. Everywhere I looked were bright colors and even brighter smiles. Africa was as glorious as I had imagined. I was welcomed to it with rhythmic song, abundant laughter and joy.

This place has a pulse, it feels alive and real and vital in a way few areas can compete with. Biologist E.O. Wilson theorized that because the human species had spent over two million years “growing up” in East Africa, we are each hard-wired on a cellular level to feel a particular resonance with it – to feel like we’re returning home.

Yet, day by day, the more difficult realities of Rwanda began to fall like big, heavy raindrops, turning the terra cotta colored earth a darker red.

On one hand, I feel so at home here, so at ease, so inspired, and yet the complexities that rise up around me are sometimes so dense and relentless, that I am having trouble coming up with the words and the writing that normally keep my head above water.

This week has grown more and more “real” in small yet potent doses. Slowly, and in hushed tones, the events and consequences of what transpired here 16 years ago have been discussed with or near me. Not unlike the dialogue of a Jane Austin novel, there is a great sense of both propriety and consequence to what is said.

It’s not that I didn’t anticipate this aspect, but when it’s actually there in front of you it penetrates in ways you can’t really prepare for. When there is a 20 year old guy downtown joking with you while holding the wares he’s selling in the mangled remains of what were possibly once his healthy four-year-old arms… well, that’s when pain and cruelty creep up on you and wipe their dirty boots all over the otherwise bucolic pictures in your head.

It’s a tricky thing. I know from experience if you let images like that run on repeat in your brain you end up like the otherwise trusty steed Artex, sinking slowly into the Swamp of Sadness  (three points for getting that reference).

I’ve been doing cohesive breathing work all week with the group. It’s remarkable to feel the silence that enters the red-floored room when we practice together. Even the groups of school kids looking in with curiosity from the windows and doorways seem to get more still.

It seems to me that, in any occupation, finding a sense of peace inside you is important, but in work for social change, it’s positively vital. Some of the problems these group are addressing, from water shortages to child prostitution, are so overwhelming that to keep the joy and gratitude pumping through our hearts, you need that place of peacefulness to return to when it gets a little much.

And so tonight, as I sit out outside watching the southern stars appear and the red soil darken, I’m trying to remember the feeling in that room. I’m trying to remember to breathe.

Just. Breathe.

Kigali recently got voted cleanest city in Africa, in part because they’ve outlawed plastic bags.

The dirt is the color of wet terra cotta.

Everyone here seems extraordinarily warm and outgoing. They smile at you and wave hello (ok, that part often comes after the staring – I am somewhat noticeable here).

It’s a lush, tropical paradise with birds, flowers and lizards.

Beers are so cheap, they may as well be free.

Avocados are so plentiful they are considered poor peoples food (the waiter apologized that they were kind of small today, but an American avocado could have fit within the hole left by the pit of these).

The moist, warm air.

The fact that i’m below the equator, and all the stars are different.

Rwanda has a higher percentage of women in parliament than any other country in the world.

The last Saturday of every month, neighborhoods all organize a monthly day of service, where everyone gets together to weed, clean and improve the neighborhood.

One of my struggles in coming to Rwanda has been so painfully cliched, so unbearably P.C. that I am somewhat embarrassed to recount it here. What it amounts to is white guilt. A phenomenon, I have found, which is easy to dance around intellectually but hard to find a place for it to settle emotionally.

Today was our first day of hosting the Academy, and my first day meeting the people I’ll be spending the next two weeks with. The questions kept leapfrogging over each other in my brain:  Given the dual fogs of language and circumstance, how would we see each other? Was I going to be able to connect with these women? Would they be able to connect with me? How were they going to receive a group of muzungus (white people) pulling into town?

One of our translators is Joseph, an economics student at one of the universities here. On the hour and a half drive to the town of Byiman I tried to have him teach me a couple basic words in Kinyarwanda – the local language.

Mwaramutse – Good morning.

Ndabishimiye – Nice to meet you

Nitwa Laya – My name is Laya

By the time we pulled up the dirt road that leads to the school house, the 37 women were already there waiting for us. I reviewed my words and stepped out of the van only to discover that there’s nothing like 37 women looking at you to make you instantly forget how to say hello and what your name is.

And then in the next moment it all changed. I don’t remember who began it, but an arm got outstretched and suddenly I’m surrounded by 500-watt smiles as each of them greets each of us with grasping hands and shoulder pats and triple cheek kisses and lots of smiles. Lots and lots of smiles.

It felt like we were family, being welcomed home after a very long journey.