Anticipation (Post #2)

 

I am going to Rwanda.  

 What a strange sentence to write.  What fictions come true in this universe when you let go and let the universe decide where to take you.  I sometimes feel as if I am floating, surfing a wave of inspiration that I cannot control.  I cannot steer or bend or even see the origin.  I just listen and balance and ride the uplift.  

I am so excited.  I feel as if maybe from past habits I should be scared and doubt the trip, but if I am honest, I feel calm and positive.  I am being sent and will do my job and hopefully bring progress and health to people who need help in so many ways.  

I know this trip will change my life, but how I wonder?  At this point, I have so many questions about what that place in the world is in reality.  

Growing up in the US in the 1980’s and 1990’s I heard many voices of the cold war setting up an "Us and Them" dichotomy of understanding the world.  There was America, the winners, the free world, the right minded ones, the ones who put individuality and individual freedoms above all else.  We had capitalism and the free market and Nike and McDonalds and we exported our ideas to make the world a “better” place.  We gave people the “gift” of democracy even if they were not asking for it.  Now, that I am an adult, I do believe in the power of democracy.  I am more skeptical about free reign capitalism, but democracy working at its best gets my vote.  

 However, I do balk at the idea of deciding what other people want or need.  The idea that we know best and should recreate what we have here everywhere else in the world is very problematic.  People are not robots, they are a product of slow society, generations of adaptation and tradition, ingrained philosophy and soul.  People carry and pass on their traumas and resources. 

So what binds us together as humans?  We all want to thrive.  We want to do well for our children, share prosperity with our families and watch them grow.  We want to love our neighbors and do well.  We want to have autonomy to live in our self respect and not be trod upon by people with unwarranted authority and unbridled power.  If we have what we need, we can share the surplus.  I truly, deeply believe these things are universal.  

 

So now, despite the voices in my life telling me not to go, not to risk safety and familiarity, I go to Africa.  I go to a place presented to me as legend and fiction.  Through the miracle of zoom, I have met the most beautiful, caring people, who put their trust in me for no apparent reason except that I showed up.   Maybe they think that I am magical because I have white skin.  Maybe they think that grants me open doors and power, and maybe they are right.  Because I was lucky to be born to a white family in America in this modern age, I have privilege beyond measure.  I have everything I need, so I gladly share the surplus.  

 

As I imagine what Rwanda will be like, I am wrestling with preconceptions and assumptions, but also with stories I hear.  I hear they have no food, there was genocide, there is disease, there are children with worms and no shoes who do not wash.  There is danger.  People might take advantage of my whiteness, my money.  People will ask too much of me.  I could be kidnapped or attacked.  The schools are overcrowded and unorganized.  The leaders are corrupt and only want power and status.  NGO’s don’t work, we will be out of business soon.  The people there will never have progress because they cannot get out of their own way.  They are not smart enough to change.

 And yet…and yet.  

They dance.  Oh how they dance.  They know how to shake the trauma out of their own bodies!  They sing and clap in unison.  They focus for so long without anxiety or distraction.  They listen to their elders and teachers, ready to learn and follow.  

The change in hope they have since we started is astounding.  The people there work so hard and take so much pride in their success.  They try to deliver in a professional way and want to please and be pushed.  They take their time, but when they are finished things are done beautifully.  

People tell me how clean Kigali is, how safe and welcoming.  They say how beautiful the land is around the volcanoes.  It will be green and cultivated.  

Actually, I am not really sure what it will look like.  I saw pictures and was shocked. How can a place so beautiful have so much poverty and disease?  I guess that is what we are all trying to solve.  

 And there is the genocide.  It is so difficult to try to understand.  But then I think back to stories of the Holocaust, imagining how my grandparents met in a concentration camp, clinging to life and possibility even in the most dire circumstances.  Will the people in Rwanda be able to share themselves with me past the genocide?  Will I be able to hold their trauma with respect while trying to also look forward?  

Let's see.