Rwanda. Was I ever really there? I wonder this from time to time. I haven’t made any decision as of yet. The most I have been able to come up with in regards to an answer is: Yes. And also, No. I was there though, wasn’t I? Or was I? What can we ever know about a place in the short space of a single year? I joined the Peace Corps. I accepted a position teaching English in Rwanda. My body flew on a jet plane, my body lived in a house with a Rwandan family, eating their food, learning their language. I became Rwandan in the sense of knowing what I had to learn to do to make my way as a PCV. The physical aspects of it. Cooking, cleaning, going to market. All of them became “muscle memory”, ingrained in my movements as I repeated the actions day by day and week by week. But my mind was never Rwandan. My memory was not Rwandan. My pocketbook was never Rwandan. My future wasn’t a Rwandan future. I lived each day knowing that out there, a 45 minute moto ride to Musanze, a 3 hour bus ride to the capitol city of Kigali, a four hour plane ride to Europe, a further 8 hours onwards on a different flight….out there was America. Our there was Chicago, my family, my friends. If I could have bent the laws of time and space I could have been with them instantly. Matt and our cozy apartment, Barkley the wiener dog, a new job if I was lucky right away, further education if I chose it. They were all just a wormhole away. In my fantasies I would find myself come upon one as I walked down the mountain, and I would slip into it, like Alice down the rabbit hole….and would come out the other side. The other side was Home. The other side was all things familiar. Free from disease, poverty, danger, hunger, ignorance, political uproar that threatened my everything. My “other side” was something I never gave up. In my mind, when things were bad in Rwanda, I would think about my other side. I would think about Home. I would know that once I got through this, I would be able to go back there. There being a life where I was me and that was enough. Like a blind person in a dark room, Rwanda-me was always feeling around, fumbling for words, for knowledge, for cues. There were no shared memories to draw on alongside others, no commonality of life’s hardships. Not really. Even when you sit in darkness, it’s good to have someone’s hand to squeeze. I didn’t have that in Rwanda. Maybe I never could. Chicago-me was fully sighted and lived in a solarium where I sat around with people who had shared my life and knew my heart. People whose culture and understanding stood shoulder to shoulder with my own. People, who like me, have never known so many things that we have no idea we don’t know them. Warm and happy in the sunshine we sit and smile, if only in our most offhand comments and body language, congratulating ourselves on our lives, how worldly we are, how lucky we are. Do we really know what any of those words mean? Luck? Success? Happiness? I have come to the conclusion that Rwanda and I existed in a duality. I was Sam in Quantum Leap. There but not present. Present but ephemeral. Real and unreal, I always felt a tiny bit ghost-like as I went about my life there. People stared at me the same way you would a spirit. So I suppose it wasn’t such a bizarre comparison.
Now, I am home. I have been for some time. And like slipping into a hot bath, I have found being home a relief to both body and mind. Somewhat jarring, the new-ness of the developed world on my skin has been something I have had to ease back into. The “L” is so loud-was it always this loud? I don’t remember but Matt said it was. Everyone walks so fast. There is a screen door on my back door now. So that’s a nice development. I smile every time I turn on the sink or the bathtub and water rushes out-hot OR cold! I can’t even talk about the toilet. It overwhelms me. The laptop works crazy fast. The lights in every store or home are bright, bright, bright. Doing laundry, doing dishes is so unbelievably simple. I never realized how easy either of those chores really were. I never cared for air-conditioning before I went to Rwanda so having access to it here now doesn’t affect me much. You can use your phone to pay for things now. I find myself not putting my glasses on anymore. I only needed them for close reading but they didn’t help much indoors in Rwanda due to the insufficient light. When I was teaching they would get covered in chalk dust. Being home, wearing sunglasses escapes me- even when I find myself needing them I tend to squint and use my hand as a sunshade. I stopped wearing them in Rwanda because they were an outward sign of wealth. I do need them however and should start wearing them again now that I’m home. Along with deodorant and makeup, which I would only wear when around other Westerners in Rwanda. I forget to put it on in the morning some days now that I’m home. And I have to remind myself to shave every few days as well. Then, there are these things called “hashtags” and “Pinterest” that have become popular. Not sure how much I’ll be using either of them. Also the saying “YOLO” which I just think is stupid beyond belief and refuse to say. My landlord, my drycleaner, the bartender at my local…they were all excited to see me. Is this what it felt like to be a sailor in the old days? You leave for long periods of time. Everyone knows you’ve gone. They go about their lives with the thought of you being something that flits through their minds infrequently…until they see you again. Only then do you become real.
If I said I thought of Rwanda every day I would be lying. The world I lived in there is, in so many ways, just not able to exist in a brain thats re-adjusted to life back home in the U.S. But there are times when my time there washes over me in a wave of déjà vu-lighting a match, chopping vegetables, washing the floor. I will be present and yet the cutting board underneath my hands becomes wood and not plastic. I look towards the door of the kitchen half expecting it to be open, sunlight streaming in, and Kevina peeking around the corner. The sound the wooden stick and sulphurous head made when I scratched it against the side of the box, the sound of water slapping the sides of a bucket. All of them took me back. And there are other things. I saw a video made by the Rwandan Tourist Board. It was beautiful, filled with towering landscapes, native flora and fauna, little children smiling, dancing, and laughing. No shots of hollow-cheeked men sitting on benches drinking banana beer, their lifeless eyes staring into yours. No shots of mudslides that buried villages. Of course, there wouldn’t be. I go about my day, outside. I see people with black skin. I unconsciously expect them to stare, to say something to me in Kinya, French, or accented English. When they don’t, when they just walk by me, I have to remember they are Americans and not Rwandan. They don’t care that I am there, I am of no interest to them whatsoever. Matt took me to see “The Book of Mormon” one night. It was what I call “pee your pants funny”. Part of the show deals with a parody of Western culture going to a country in Africa in part to “save” it from itself. Sitting there in the dark theatre with Matt beside me, I heard the lead female characters solo. It was meant to be sardonic, even funny. Instead, my eyes welled up with tears thinking that this was similar to the way people in Rwanda would talk about the United States. Not using the overblown, comedic language of the Broadway Musical but the sentiment was the same. A land where the most basic needs were met always. Where they could be safe and free from the things that were ever day fears for them: political instability, hunger, diseases there were cures for, access to even rudimentary medical care, and a chance for education and a way out of poverty by a route, any route….just a way. Just a chance. Any chance to make it out.
I can imagine what it must be like
This perfect, happy place
I’ll bet the goat-meat there is plentiful
And they have vitamin injections by the case
The war-lords there are friendly
They help you cross the street
And there’s a Red Cross on every corner
With all the flour you can eat!
Sal Tlay Ka Siti
The most perfect place on Earth
Where flies don’t bite your eyeballs
And human life has worth
It isn’t a place of fairytales
Its as real as it can be
A land where evil doesn’t exist
Sal Tlay Ka Siti
Kigali-olly-oxen free! 