Alrighty

So I am back in the states. Specifically I am home in Seattle, though I have come to call many places home in these past five months. Traveling in Italy and France was rewarding, though definitely stressful and challenging at times. Dan and I basically had a spiritual pilgrimage, or at least that is what it felt like. We traveled from Rome to Pisa after a few days getting to know Rome. We spent the night in the Pisa train station with other homeless people; it would not be the truth if I recounted that I slept. We walked from there up the coast until Dan's foot began troubling him. We were also walking along a main highway, stupid Google Maps, so we decided to ditch the road. We trained it up to the Cinque Terre and spent a day exploring that beautiful region, partly by boat. After that, we abandoned our tourist bearings and found our way by train to the middle of France, near Lyon and Macon, to a monastic community called Taize where we spent two weeks. They pray three times a day with all their guests and it was awesome. The first week we just acclimated ourselves to the monastic life and acquainted ourselves with the other guests, including many Germans and Swedes. The second week we both went into silence. They moved us from our tent into a nice house where we each got personal rooms to facilitate reflection, meditation and outer silence to better adopt inner silence. I read the Bible, met with an elder Scottish brother and got to know the Burgundy countryside. I am not sure what I learned, but I know I learned a lot. Plus the Taize songs still run through my head. After that, we headed back to Rome, camped for a few more days and tried to process what we experienced in Taize and also on our trip. We continually encountered God's providential grace on the road. It was humbling, but also amazing to experience the fullness of life that comes with presenting empty hands (or jars like in the Cana of old) to the Giver of life. That sounds a little bit overly spiritual, but we certainly benefited from other people all those times we were lost, hungry, at wit's end and without any place to lay our heads.
All in all, it was quite the adventure. 

Departure

I leave tomorrow. I am almost officially done with my program, just a half day of formalities tomorrow. I will spend the next month in Italy, possibly France, with Dan Overholt, my brother (as Rwandese would say). I will not blog for a long while and then suddenly I will arrive back in the states. I will see you all again soon-ish

Photographs and Memories

Suddenly the time has come to leave. It is weird to start thinking about packing and plane tickets when I feel like it was just yesterday that I complained about the winter cold, while looking forward to sporting my Chacos. I've washed my last clothes with Alphonse and the remaining days now number in the low single digits. I guess I do not really know what to say about this whole experience. I find it hard to recall all I've learned; I have no words to wrap this all up nicely. I guess I will be wrestling to remember and organize my experiences here into a coherent whole for a while to come. 

I am worried that I will forget things, especially the oddities of Rwandan life. I guess that explains why I have journaled compulsively everyday and tried to capture life via photographs. It is a fated exercise though; I cannot capture everything in my journal or camera. Even my memory will fade and that scares me. I do not quite know how to take that which I have learned or undergone and transplant it. I think I will try to do the little things first, like hand wash clothes or eat rice and beans more often than not. I guess I do not know where to go from that shaky start. 

And you shall go forth again, skip about like calves...

Hey, sorry about the grumpy tone of my last post. I guess I should not blog when I am tired. Sometimes it feels like a chore to blog, so I have decided to only do it when I feel compelled, not obligated. That is probably why I have not blogged in a good long while. This might be my last blog post for a while, because this friday, I leave for Rome. My cousin Dan-O will meet me there and we plan on an adventure, though the details have yet to coalesce. I looked into couchsurfing to find a free place to stay in Rome and the two people I felt comfortable requesting their couches both turned me down rather quickly. Oh well. I find it odd that my colleagues will return home in a few days. Though I miss home, I cannot imagine being there quite yet at least.

Today is my last Saturday in Rwanda. Every time I remember that, it floors me; I cannot believe how the time has passed. Sometimes in the semester, the days could not pass fast enough, but now on the tail end of my semester, I realize how short four months really is. It has gone by in a flash and I have seen a lot, too much to recount or even to recall with looking at my fastidious journal.

School is winding up and the second half of the semester actually required some academic know-how and time commitment, which made me happy. Life on permanent vacation quickly becomes mundane. I enjoy having work to do when I like the work. I have realized this semester that physical work is something I really enjoy and relish. There is nothing so peaceful and simple as working with a hoe barefoot. We started a small garden at our house. I terraced it to protect against the rain so now it looks like a wedding cake.

This Easter, we had a big feast at our house. Everyone could invite guests, provided they cooked a dish per guest. I invited the neighbor kids with whom I play soccer and I made a huge fruit salad. They showed up early in anticipation. Right before dinner, a street musician showed up at the gate. He had played me a song four weeks before right in front of our gate and I gave him a bunch of bananas in return. He has a nasally voice and a homemade, out of tune guitar. Together, he manages to sound decently good. Randomly, he showed up at our gate on Easter afternoon and began to play me another song. I do not know whether he was expecting more bananas or what, but I invited him in. He ended up entertaining all of us with many more songs. Him and his brother then stayed for dinner. He has one eye. The guests packed into our living room around four long tables, friends I knew and friends I did not know, to share a meal together. It felt right to open up the table to even a stranger, much less our friends, like a formal recognition of the universal body of Christ and a sign of the diversity of the Kingdom. Maybe I am over-thinking it, but all in all, Easter went splendidly. For the first time, I looked past the superficial Easter celebrations to see how vitally important Easter is for Christians. The resurrection is a big deal theologically and ethically, don'tchaknow.

I like the rain here. We are in the middle of rainy season, which means that it rains at least once daily. The sun can be out in full force only for a drastic change to occur in a few minutes that sees the arrival of torrential rain blowing sideways. I took a shower in the rain today, freezing cold but it saved some water so I considered it worth it. I have started birdwatching again, though it might be more appropriate to say that I have started noticing the many birds around me, though I cannot successfully identify most. It is amazing how alive the world is when I actually take the time to open my eyes. I do not want to live with my eyes shut.

Update (to be read in a monotone voice, though not so that it sounds like an angst filled teenager)

I do not much feel like blogging, but here is the deal. I am nearing the end of my study abroad program, which startles me to think that I have passed nearly a whole semester in Rwanda. I do not want to try to summarize my experience here in nice, trite understatements, nor do I want to prematurely analyze what I have learned or gone through since I still have a fair amount of time here. But here is my life for the past few weeks. I go to class every day except Thursdays. I run. I traveled to Gisenyi to revisit my practicum site and the friends I made there. I bought two 'african' shirts for myself. I have put off journaling so that it now feels like a necessary chore. I do not take pictures because I am not a tourist. I talk about hell and universalism with my friends, we mostly do not come to any sure conclusions. I wash my laundry by hand and enjoy the starchiness of the dried fabrics after they come off the clothes line. I have hung out with my Rwandan friends in Kigali, often visiting them in their houses. I try to ignore the boisterous girls. I like to pick out Bookends on the guitar; Simon and Garfunkel astound me daily. I go to church, usually at the Free Methodist church. They always make us sing a song for them; this week we sang "there is power in the blood" but it did not go over as well as I had hoped. We danced a lot during the Palm Sunday afternoon service; it got really lively and stuffy.

Alright, that is enough seemingly pointless blogging from me. I do not like writing to no one in particular, or maybe just no one in general, so I will stop here. Good night, ijoro gyiza.

Remembrance

Seventeen years ago today, the Rwandan genocide started. Seventeen years ago today, the killing would have already been going for nineteen hours. Thus, today, officially declared a national holiday, starts the nationwide Mourning Week to remember the genocide in Rwanda. On my walk to the memorial service at Amahoro (Peace) National Stadium, I witnessed an immediate change in the way Kigali went about its business. People looked more somber and did not greet each other like they did even yesterday. The once busy streets usually filled with moto taxis and crazy drivers, seemed passive and deserted. The city air felt heavy laden with grief, sobered up as if God had splashed a bucket of water into its inebriated countenance. Noise, once a mainstay of the capital city, had disappeared and was replaced with a grim and solemn silence. I am not lying when I report that the city had tangibly changed in observance of the holiday; every step further towards the stadium confirmed my uneasy sense that something was indeed amiss. On such an anniversary, how could it not be? I did not speak because I felt the need to respect the mournful atmosphere. 

At the stadium, I joined a long line of other Rwandans waiting for the armymen to search them so they could peacefully enter the stadium. We waited through the rain; a lady offered me refuge underneath her umbrella for the worst part of the storm. Thousands of people packed into the stadium stands and I quickly found out that I could not see the stage, I did not know what was happening, and I could not understand the proceedings because they said everything in kinyarwanda. At first, many of those around me wore smiles and even chatted a bit as the service started. Most people sported all forms of clothing in the color purple, even Boy Scout-esque bandanas around the neck, because purple signifies healing. All the signs and banners about the genocide were purple as well. 

As the service progressed, I noticed that people's moods changed. I could not understand the songs playing over the loud speakers or what the keynote speakers said, but I observed how the people around me now held their faces in their hands, or gripped their necks like those afflicted by worries or bad memories. Then, I heard a new sound. It confused me at first because it sounded so far away. But as it built its chilling crescendo, I perceived a heart-stopping scene. A woman, maybe a hundred rows away from me, was screaming her heart out, crying, visibly burdened and broken with remembering. The people around her tried to console her, but she did not listen to them. Instead her disturbing wails grew louder and more intense. Her exclamations sounded like what I would associate with a dying animal. It terrified me. Rwandans are usually quite composed in public and they hide their emotions/opinions well, so whatever was afflicting that woman's brain must have been dreadfully powerful and real. Her screams filled the empty air that hung around the stadium. Men came, some in white shirts, some in the uniform of the omnipresent Rwanda police, and they helped escort her limp and lamenting body out of the stadium. I heard her body-curdling screams fade as they carried her off. That poor lady set off a chain reaction that was perhaps fated to happen. All around the stadium, people, mostly women with the occasional man, would erupt suddenly and startlingly into bouts of piercing wails. They projected a terrifying sound. Many collapsed as they shrieked, hollered and yelped, physically encumbered with the horrors of yesteryear that managed to extend their terror into the world seventeen years later. 

The whole second half of the four hour long service, I heard these mournful and transfixing wails crescendo and decrescendo like a dirge. I watched as limp figures were carted like the deceased out of the stadium. These poor folks, probably survivors and/or victims, were completely overcome by the weight of remembering. As I did not know what was happening in the official service, the wailers of chilling exclamations captivated my attention. A couple times, people near me broke down and began screaming. I have never heard screams like those before. They echoed across the stadium. Even those who did not break down into shrieking were affected; a woman directly behind me sobbed the entire service. In remembering the genocide, a spirit of real terror still tormented many of those present. I cried too, for no other reason than I could see the sufferings of those in my immediate surroundings. I cried because I felt disturbed. I cried because life is tormented, tragic and heart-breakingly sad. Peering outside the bubble, life can be hell on earth.

Final Thoughts On Practicum

So practicum is over and I am now back in Kigali, gearing up to start new classes for this last six week stretch. Sometimes six weeks seems like a long time, sometimes it does not seem long enough. My perspective probably depends on my current mood. As it is, the past few days I have really done nothing but hang out. I played football with my neighbour friends for four hours straight one afternoon and even got in trouble with a neighbour who was crotchety every time the ball went over his fence. Some people just cannot abide fun and childish innocence, I guess. More and more lately I have been feeling like a kid, reclaiming my childhood both in my memory flashbacks and in the activities I do. It is freeing to live like a child, to "stuff your eyes with wonder [...] see the world. It is more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories" (Fahrenheit 451, 157).

Let me try to reflect on my practicum experience. The first two weeks our boss babied us and made us tag along with him as he went around to various sites on bureaucratic/administrative visits. We got to work, but the experiences were irregular and disappointingly few and far between. I especially despised how we had to ride in our boss's car for at least three hours of commute every day. We lived in Gisenyi town, but all the sites were far away, tucked back up into the hills. This made the sites quite scenic, but hard to get to, especially by car. Plus, the car seemed to channel its diesel and exhaust into the car interior right into my nose, so I came to rather hate that car. It brought on fits of childish anger and resentment. While there were definite moments of good and beauty in these first two weeks, I generally felt frustrated with the trajectory of my internship. My expectations had not been fulfilled even partially. While I found complete solace and peace in the work they allowed us to try, those occasions did not obtain nearly enough for my liking.

The last two weeks took a turn for the better. It may have just been an attitude change, but I noticed a definite change in the freedom and trust our boss gave us. Instead of riding in the car and arriving to work three hours late, we used public transportation and motorcycle taxis to reach our sites, which got us to work only an hour late. The tree planting workers start their days at 7am and work until 1:30 in the afternoon, which gave us free afternoons but limited our work time. We usually arrived to work around eight or 8:30 when we took public transportation since we did not have to wait around for Jean-Baptiste (we called him JB for short behind his back) or tag along with him on his errands. I began to develop blisters. While they hurt and made wielding a hoe decidedly uncomfortable, I was proud to bear the marks of my assumed trade. With this increased freedom, we laboured for longer hours and began to develop friendships with the local workers.

At first, they regarded us as naive but eager fools. They thought it funny that Americans wanted to try using a hoe since we have a reputation for only using machinery at work. I do not want to ever fit that stereotype and I enjoyed breaking it. I tried to work hard and avoid stopping because they would persistently pester me with questions like "are you tired?" or "are you hungry" because they thought I could not handle their work. A couple of people even told me I was tired; that just made me work all the harder. There was a weird double standard at play because while I would be labouring and getting peppered with accusations concerning my fatigue and endurance, all the other workers, the women especially, would just be watching me, neglecting their work to stare with curious eyes at the white skinned fellow. I later learned that it was okay to admit my fatigue when I actually felt tired, because that work is dead tiring on the arms and the back. It requires great stamina. Rwandans weather the storm by taking short but frequent breaks in between the holes or trenches they are digging. Sometimes they break in the middle of excavating a terrace. I watched and learned that habit, which helped in the last days of my practicum when my arms threatened to quit on me and just fall off.

In the afternoons, we had free time. JB gave us our lunch money so I often frequented the Gisenyi market. I got to know the fruit area, especially the mango lady, and I became good friends with the guy who sold green beans (for a ridiculously cheap price). Actually I already knew the green bean guy, nicknamed Master P, from the local pickup football games I played in regularly. I went on a daily basis in my trainers and competed with some local fellows of all ages. Once, I almost started a fight because a guy kicked at my heels and calves. I turned around and gave him a shove as well as my best threatening eyes. I later felt sorry for overreacting, even though he totally was hacking at people's legs the whole game. However, my almost-fight was nothing compared to another fight I witnessed. Two guys went into a tackle with high cleats and then started to talk heatedly at each other. This turned into a shoving match, which drew the attention of the other players who crowded around the guys to separate them. Stephen, the aggressor, managed to kick the guy in the stomach with his cleats. It looked like it hurt, but the guy retreated. I thought it was cooling down, but he returned shortly with a big ass rock in his hand. He rushed at Stephen and hurled the rock at him. Fortunately, his aim sucked and Stephen dodged it. The rocked sailed close past my ankle. I do not think I have ever been in a soccer match that escalated to rock throwing before, so that was interesting to say the least.

Some days I ran to the lake shores and found a spot to jump in. The lake water was cool and refreshing. The last night, Devon and I decided to skinny dip in the lake because our guest house did not have running water at the time. I brought my soap down to the lake shores and bathed in the cover of darkness like a true Rwandan. That was a laughable thrill. French really came in handy since we lived five minutes away from the francophone DRC. I used it multiple times daily and it often helped because our boss frequently stranded us with supervisors or workers who spoke little English. My french got us out of a couple of jams and I often acted as a translator for conveying instructions or just anything to Devon, my practicum mate. It made me glad that I defied my parents' wishes in the seventh grade and took French instead of Spanish. Really I only took French because they wanted the opposite, but now I am thankful for that fit of teenage rebellion.

Saying goodbye was difficult because the farewells had an air of permanence about them. Devon and I want to return and are planning to go on some weekend to get in some more holes and get our blisters back. One day I planted 151 trees, my most productive day. My hands were really black and soil covered after that. Total, we may have planted only around 200 trees, but we accomplished most of our work digging trenches, terraces and tree holes. We also helped JB by entering workers' payment information into an excel spreadsheet, tedious work that had to get done and JB certainly did not know how. I hated it at first but towards the end I did not mind helping him out. He was totally clueless when it came to computers. He also speaks mostly French, which meant that I did a lot of the communicating, particularly when he needed to convey something important. We learned some kinyarwanda from him and we also helped him out with his English. All in all, he grew on me. He annoyed me at first, but then I grew to recognize his quirkiness and idiosyncrasies. Devon and I shared many a good laughs over JB's oddities. I might even miss that fellow.

Alright, I have done my best to give a fair synopsis of the past four weeks of my life. I do not want to edit this epic, so please forgive any grammatical errors. I am glad for the experience of tree planting and am better off because of it. I learned some patience in the process, considering the sheer amount of time we spent waiting around. Indeed, one day JB did not even show up so we just hung around and then walked around town out of boredom. I am proud to have planted trees and I would love to do it again in the future. It is good to work with one's hands, especially amoung friends in the abundant greenery of Nature.