After many months of learning Swahili and planning for a trip to Tanzania, I have been stationed in Rwanda. I originally thought I would be in a coastal city, safe and surrounded by other volunteers and opportunities to use the internet and charge my iPod but instead I am going to be the sole volunteer in a tiny northern Rwandan town called Rwaza. There I will be working with one other woman to brighten the lives of fifty beautiful little children left without families for one reason or another. The town of Rwaza has no electricity or running water and is a 12km walk away from the city of Ruhengeri where my Rwanda GVN contact, Cathy Emerson, is located. In Ruhengeri there is electricity, however intermittent, along with a medical clinic with French doctors.
Am I scared? No. Yes, a little. But, I am strong and I am compassionate. Fear is something you choose to live with and you rely on to slow your passage through life. Have you ever held on to so much fear that you are locked inside yourself, unable to function or pursue a dream? That's what fear is designed to do; it keeps you in your current state of evolution, confines you to your comfort zone and encourages stagnance in your life and soul. So manage your fears and go forth impavid explorers!
That being said, common sense, always valid and protective, must be exercised with caution in potentially dangerous situations. Traveling alone by bus from Kenya to Rwanda is one such instance. Rwanda bears the scars of the not-so-distant past state-supported genocide of the Tutsi at the hands of the Hutu. As much as President Kagame has worked to unite Rwanda, the Western World, quick to turn a blind eye to the genocide as it happened, is not so quick to forgive and forget. Rwanda is one of the richest African countries in terms of soil and wildlife but it suffers from poaching, flooding, soil exhaustion, disease and spillovers form Burundi and DRC. In fact, it is one of the "heavily indebted poor countries" that received debt-relief from the UN/World Bank/IMF project in 2005. The Rwandese are beautiful, culturally rich and they have vision. I feel safe being stationed here.
So what am I doing in Rwanda? Another bleeding-heart rich North American going to Africa to "make a difference" or relieve my conscience? I respect that. You can call me that. Those bleeding-hearts are people that have the courage to look past themselves for long enough to see suffering and then work to relieve some of it, even if they don't always do it relevantly. Really, though I am just a woman, brimming with love and compassion. I am lost in this selfish, unconscious, materialistic western society and I am looking for something honest.
I have finished my B.Sc.; my ticket so the good ole' boys will recognize me as a valid employable person. I have spent the better part of five years working in physical chemistry, virology and biochemistry labs as a research assistant and after all of this, what do I want? M.D.? Ph.D.? 8 more years of school and potentially 50 to 100k dollars of debt to get a fabulous career so I can ignore my future children and pawn them off on nannies? Actually yes, thats where I am headed and thats what scares me. Is that who I am? Am I a scientist or am I pursuing this because it makes my Dad proud? Am I motivated by money or am I hyper-focusing on it because my family needs more of it? Will I be happy counting cells and writing journal articles to shine barely detectable rays of light on the obscure and esoteric caverns of the chemical world or should I be learning international law so I can be a responsible Canadian diplomat solving problems of resource management and human rights...
So you see, I am going to Rwanda for all the selfish reasons I can think of: escape, challenge, fulfillment, adventure. Mostly I am going to the land of a thousand hills because I can't think of anything better to do with three months of my life than to love and hold and teach and inspire 50 little souls who may never have felt the arms of a mother around them. Beautiful little people without the blessings that Canadian children can take for granted. I have so much love bottled up inside me that it hurts, like when you have to pee so badly, you think you are going to burst. That is the urgency that I feel. I love those around me but I find so many behaviors in our society despicable and abhorrent that my love retreats deeper within me, making it harder to access and let out. I don't want it to grow stagnant or get lost in the deepest darkest crevices of my soul and thats what I worry will happen if, at this most formative fork in the road, I choose the wrong path.
