A Time for Reflection

As I sit on my couch with my kitten on my lap and my dog snuggled up next to me, I listen to the sounds of rainy season; the gusts of wind, the rain sliding sideways across my roof, and the splashing of my overflowing water tank. Many of you know, or maybe you don’t, that we are on a break from school for the 23^rd Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Over the last few days I have been reflecting on the ideas of reconciliation and forgiveness. Are they synonymous? Is one part of the other? Can you have one without the other? These thoughts brought me to what many people refer to as the 5 Stages of Grief, and how they have played out in Rwanda. As you read this, please know that I am not trying to rationalize anything, I am not judging anyone’s experiences, and I am most certainly not trying to say that I understand and know what it was like to experience such trauma as the Genocide; these are simply my thoughts and my personal reflection on what I have seen and experienced while participating in the Commemoration Events.

1. Denial: When the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi started, the international community sat motionless in awe of the atrocities that were being committed in Rwanda. They denied the severity of the situation for years prior to the Genocide and they made a conscious decision not to intervene while the people of Rwanda were being slaughtered by their friends, their neighbors, even their own family members. They denied the killings and even now some deny the pain that was, and still is in some respects, being experienced. So many stories from survivors start with a statement like “I couldn’t believe what was happening; it was like the world stopped moving and everything was frozen”. What happened in Rwanda was unbelievable.. Unconscionable. How could such evil exist? Denying what happened here is wrong, it was wrong. When you look at the slowly healing scars, which are often hidden from an unknowing foreigner, it is impossible to deny the atrocities that so many people bore witness to in 1994.

2. Anger: Human Rights groups, foreigners who had refused to abandon their neighbors and friends, and the citizens of Rwanda were and are still outraged by the denial of the international community. Understandably. I personally cannot understand how the UN and the Security Council were able to allow the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi to occur. It wouldn’t have been difficult to prevent the Genocide from occurring. Rwanda is a small country and they were using low-tech equipment to carry out the killings. This wasn’t a nuclear threat to the world. The Interahamwe or the Habyarimana regime could not have retaliated against countries involved in a Peacekeeping Mission; they simply did not have the capacity to do so. So why did the international community sit by and watch this horror story unfold? On the grassroots level there were millions of people who are angry with the perpetrators for the crimes that they committed. The family members that they killed. The homes that they pillaged. The destruction that they caused.

3. Bargaining: With a country left with so much pain, so much rage, the new government was handed the struggle for finding a way to help the country move forward. A mighty challenge this was indeed with some groups calling for retribution killings, others calling for all perpetrators to be imprisoned, and an even larger population of traumatized people trying to find lost loved ones and carry on with their lives. 

4. Depression: I can only imagine the state of Rwanda after it was liberated by the RPF. The sense of relief accompanied by an overwhelming silence. People trying to understand what had just happened; trying to find missing parents, missing children, missing families. Quietly and silently grieving for the people that were killed, the people that were lost and still yet to be recovered, and the people who were displaced trying to find their way to a home, not knowing what will await them when they reach there. Just an eerie quietness accompanied by heavy air. A deep depression which is still felt every year around this time, causing time to seemingly stop and wait for those who are mourning. 

5. Acceptance: Acceptance is something that I have never quite understood. Yes, you accept the reality of the past and the present, but can you really accept what has happened as being ok? I think in this context acceptance is more of knowing what happened, how it is still affecting you, and accepting that this cannot change. The Rwandese will never forget what happened here in 1994. There will be many generations to come who still experience transgenerational trauma. No one can change that. That is out of our control. However, we can move forward alongside each other working towards peace. Peace is a process. It requires dedication. It requires motivation. It requires reconciliation and effort to move forward. And, eventually, it requires a sense of true forgiveness on a collective scale. Something that I do not believe to be possible just yet.

During Commemoration there is a lot of talk about reconciliation and forgiveness, which I have come to see as an extension of these so-called “5 Stages”. But what are reconciliation and forgiveness, really? How can you define something that is done differently and on a different timeline for every person? 

Many times reconciliation is discussed as something that goes hand-in-hand with forgiveness; you can’t have one without the other. From what I have seen and experienced, I don’t think this is necessarily true. I think reconciliation among people is the act of being able to live and work together, knowing the past, but sharing a common desire to move forward and continue living. In Rwanda people live together; sometimes as neighbors with the person/people who are responsible for the disappearances or deaths of their families. When Rwandans decide to talk to you about the process of reconciliation, many people say that it is out of a necessity to continue living and recover from the past. One woman explained it as follows: “We live together because we have to. We rely on our neighbors for help. If my child is sick and needs to go to the hospital, who am I going to call? We need each other to continue living despite what harm they may have caused me during the Genocide”. Reconciliation is a necessity. The country and culture cannot be rebuilt unless all people are working together to achieve the same goal. This is something that has been done in Rwanda in a unique and respectable way. When you walk around in different places of the country you can see the scars, but somehow people are moving forward. They are living.

Forgiveness, however, takes it a step further. I believe that true forgiveness is the most difficult thing a person can ever do; something that is rarely accomplished. For those who have truly and fully forgiven the people who damaged them both physically and emotionally, the people who killed their families, you are strong. I think it is rare to find true forgiveness in the first or even the second generation of people who have experienced an atrocity like genocide. It is a trauma that cannot easily be healed or forgotten. I do believe that collective forgiveness will be accomplished here in Rwanda. Definitely not today or tomorrow, but as the years pass it will happen as a result of the common dedication to move forward and make sure that history will not repeat itself.

3/4 or 1/2?

It’s starting to be that time when people from my group are trying to make a decision about extending our service or returning home. Before the school year started, I was 100% positive that I wanted to stay for a third year. Now…. Every day is a different thought. There are so many factors to take into account, so many thoughts swirling around in my head like an overwhelming leaf tornado that happens in the fall. You can rake up all of the leaves into a nice neat pile, think you’ve made your decision and that it’s over. But then, out of nowhere, something comes in and sweeps up all of the leaves, making them swirl around above your head, just before scattering them across what used to be seemingly perfect. This wind, this disruptive force, always seems to surprise you the second you think you’ve figured it out. But no. It can’t be that easy.

I’ve made pros and cons lists for all of my different options. Pieces of paper filled with facts and emotions. None of which seem to do any good in helping me to make my decision. I love my job and I love what I am doing, but I also miss my family and still need to go to Grad school. I don’t feel at home in the States and I don’t quite feel at home here. I don’t know where I belong or which path is the correct one to follow. Every day I question what I will do. To be honest, all options give me a fair amount of anxiety. Staying here and reintegrating back into American society are both absolutely terrifying for me. I’ve got until August (I think) to make my decision and it’s definitely going to be one of the most difficult decisions that I have been faced with up to date.

I could be ¾ of the way done with my service, or I could only be reaching the halfway point. It might not seem like a big difference, but when you’re living in a foreign place where you struggle to speak the language, it is a HUGE difference. It effects your mental health in that you either know you’re going to need to reintegrate soon, or that you’ve got an additional 18 months left feeling like an outsider. But for right now, I’ve decided I need to focus on school, lose track of time, and try not to think about these things.

Sooooo school. We started in the end of January. My students have been running their own clubs, I’ve started doing Grassroots Soccer (Malaria and HIV Awareness/ Prevention program), and I’m running around like a crazy person organizing trainings for the district level. This year I am doing teacher training with fifty-six schools from our district in the hope to be able to provide support to School-based Mentors who are supposed to be organizing professional development for their schools. Trust me, it’s just as much work as it sounds. If I were to say “oh, it’s not that bad”, that would be a complete lie. The good thing is that it’s keeping me busy and engaged, kind of working as a distraction from my own thoughts. Talking to other volunteers from my cohort has helped; most of us are feeling the pressure and getting anxious about our COS date in December.

Year two is very different than last year. I got to school and was involved in the joyful greetings of colleagues who haven’t seen each other since the end of October. I didn’t need to introduce myself to students or scold them for calling me “umuzungu”; they all know my name this year. We made the first draft of our timetable in record breaking weeks instead of months. Guess who gets to teach “sport” this year? This girl! What is sport you ask? Well, I don’t really know either. This term it has been  me giving them a volleyball and a soccer ball for forty minutes and watching them have fun. It’s the only class that the students get to go outside for, so I am greeted with clapping and cheering whenever I go into a classroom to take the kids out. It’s nice. It’s easy. BUT apparently I am supposed to be giving an exam next week? We’ll see how that goes..

Chicken update. I am now a successful chicken farmer. I have five little babies right now and I love them. If I can keep eggs hatching, the plan is to train some families in my village on the importance of chickens as a continual source of protein and income, rather than just eating them right away, and rehome my babies when they get a bit older. 

A Forgotten Post

This is something I wrote back in October and have been debating whether or not to post it. Here it is.

Some days are harder than others. Most days you are happy and go through your daily routine. Wake up to let the chickens out. Feed the dog. Eat breakfast while heating water to bathe with. Bathe. Walk to school while doing the culturally mandatory greetings to everyone that you see. Work you’re a** off all day. Come home. Cook. Sleep. It’s a routine. It keeps you habitually content with your circumstances.

But some days your thoughts wander. You question the choices that led you here: “I gave up so much and left all of my friends and family. Is this really worth those sacrafices?” “Am I really happy here?” “Am I doing what’s best for me?” These thoughts are daunting and they don’t go away over night. It’s a constant battle of weighing your happiness, sadness, self-satisfaction, lonliness and general health. The scale tips back and forth, like a boat trying to stay afloat on a rough see, but never quite reaching an equilibrium.

Sometimes I am so happy, so motivated, that nothing can get in my way. Sometimes (very frequently) I feel uncomfortable and out of place. Sometimes it’s necessary for me to hide, to suppress, my culture from my community. There are so many things that I can’t do, can’t discuss, which before coming here were so deeply ingrained into my cultural identity. It’s a constant uneasiness that I can’t explain. Having to deny your culture is more difficult than I could have ever imagined.

Most of the time the state of discomfort is balanced by how happy you are with your job. I love my job and I love what I do. I love my community here, in my small Rwandan village situated on the top of this mountain. They teach me lessons in patience, flexibility, and community identity. There are no immediate results of what I do to show me: “This is working. You are doing your job.” There is no big reward or public acknowledgment of what we do, but we are here. We are Peace Corps Volunteers through all of the struggles and the successes, through the genuine happiness and sadness, through the discomfort and content. It is the hardest job that we will ever love.

BE Camp

BE Camp was a buggy success! Despite the bed bugs (not as bad as the girl's camp in July), we finished BE Camp with only mild sleep deprivation. My kiddos were great, and I am so proud of them for stepping out of their comfort zones while meeting new people and trying new things. We spent the week learning about physical, social, and mental health, HIV, gender-based violence, and life skills. The week was also filled with those little moments that make all of the difficult parts of my job worth it.

One of the students came down with malaria on the first full day of camp, so I spent the week giving him his medicine, sitting with him when his fever spiked, and making sure he stayed hydrated. He is twelve years old and has been living with the Rwanda Orphans Project (referred to by the boys as the "center") in Rwamagana for several years. He is the most serious twelve year old kid that I have ever met. The entire week (after his fever broke) I kept reminding him to smile and have fun, and try to be social with the other boys. At the end of the week, I got this note from him and promised to visit the center in January.

And here are some other pictures for your enjoyment.; pictures of the project I led on preventing gender-based violence, the closing ceremony, and some tug of war games.

So what's it really like?

I've been visiting my parents in the States for a little over a week now and people keep asking me "So what's it really like?" I think they expect me to change my answer from what I originally say; to tell them I can't wait to move back to the States, that life is extremely difficult in Rwanda, that I'm not happy, I really don't know. But to be completely honest, I really have no idea what their imaginations have conjured up as being what they believe to be life in "Africa". I am happy. I love my job. I love the area that I live in and the people that I live with. Yes, it is difficult. Peace Corps is not easy, but it's not supposed to be easy either. I knew what I was signing up for and I do not regret my decision. 

Then there's the inevitable "oh! you are such a good person" conversations. Doing Peace Corps does not make me a better or a worse person than you. It was a choice. I made a choice to join the Peace Corps and I made that choice to learn from and experience a different culture. It is nothing self-righteous; I'm not doing it to be a humanitarian. I have skills that I can share with people in Rwanda and they have skills which they can share with me. I am learning just as much as I am giving. This is the type of work that I like to do, the job that makes me happy, and that is why I made my choice. It is the same as when someone chooses to start a business, they do it because they like it. People liking different things and wanting to do different things with their lives doesn't make one person better or worse than another. 

The truth is I have a job that is perfect for me. It's not perfect for all people, and that's ok. I don't expect people to like the same things as me, we're all very different. I am happy with the way that I am living and the work that I am doing. Yes, I miss my family and seeing most of them for the first time in over a year is great. But this is not my home anymore. It is a very strange feeling to be a guest in the house that you grew up. It's like being in a strange state of limbo; I'm a guest in Rwanda and as much as it feels like home, it's not, but coming home I feel like a guest here too. It's difficult to describe. 

Year One Done!

It has officially been over a year in country, almost a year in my village (ten more days), and we have finished the 2016 academic year. The students are at home or visiting relatives, the school is calm and quiet with closed gates and doors, and the dust is finally starting to settle. As happy as I am to be on "vacation", it is a constant battle between never ending boredom and trying to find things to do. I find myself balancing my days with community English classes, permagarden trainings, and hiding in my house from the hordes of small children to catch up on some much-needed introvert time with my chickens and my dog. So here are some updates from the past few months.

Have you ever been so busy that you can picture yourself looking like a cartoon character running around burning holes in the soles of your shoes and having steam coming out of your ears? If not, lucky you; but if you know exactly what I'm talking about, komera my friend, the end of the craziness has to come eventually (even if it seems like something that is just out of your reach, you'll get there). Now, I am enjoying a hot cup of coffee listening to the birds’ chirp and reflecting on the last few months and finishing up some project progress reports. In the last few months I have finished up the first year of teacher trainings, implemented the permagarden grant with my friends at the local health center, brought my students on a field trip (their first one ever BTW), and am about to go to Boys Excellence (BE) camp with 6 of my best boy students next week. 

Let's start with teacher trainings and permagardening. The teacher trainings were extremely successful with the school-based mentors (SBMs), so we are expanding that training program to the district level. Next year I'll be working with 56 schools in Rwamagana District to train SBMs on student-centered methodology and how to implement school-level trainings for their colleagues. Fingers crossed we will have a great year and show the district how meaningful professional development activities are for teachers, but I must admit I am a bit nervous to run such an extensive program and not be able to have full oversight at every school. But here's to hoping. 

The permagarden training program has been by far the most successful program I have facilitated so far. In the next two days, we will be finished with initial training program, then in January we will continue to implement a village-level nutrition education program and cooking classes using the vegetables grown in our gardens. So far in the last 6 weeks we have 73 gardens built throughout the sector and 1,932 people trained out of the about 26,000 people living in my sector. If we were to continue this pace, we could have every person in our sector trained on drought resistant gardening techniques within the next two years. The community health workers have been absolutely amazing and have facilitated 73 village-level trainings, plus built example gardens at their homes. Without their hard work and dedication to fighting malnutrition, none of this would be possible. Oh, and did I mention that they are volunteers?! Meaning no salary to do full time jobs. They truly are the hardest working people I have ever met. 

Now let's move on to the field trip. So, thanks to a close family friend, Kenny Hamel, my English Club students were able to go on their first field trip. We spent the third term learning language that had to do with peace and conflict resolution, and working with some staff from Never Again Rwanda who taught the kids about the history of Rwanda and mass conflict. To conclude their lessons, we rented a bus and brought the students to the Gisozi Genocide Memorial in Kigali. I just want to point out how this was the idea of my students. At the beginning of the term, I allow my students to come up with a list of unit topics, then from that list they vote on the topic. After voting they told me "Teacher please, we want to go to the memorial. We have never seen it". So, thanks to Kenny, this dream and many others came true. That morning a big express bus came and picked us up from school, the students well equipped with their club t-shirts, water, tissues, and biscuits. As we were navigating the bumpy, curvy, treacherous road down from my village, it was brought to my attention that this was the first time many of my students had ever been on an express bus. The day as full of firsts: first time in an express bus, first time in Kigali, first time to visit a museum or genocide memorial, first time to eat in a restaurant, and first time to see a plane take off from the airport as we drove by. I couldn't have even imagined the significance of a trip like this for them, but I am so happy that it worked out.

This next week, we are going to BE camp. I'm bringing six of my best students from English Club to participate. Before bringing students to camp, I make a point to visit their families and discuss with them about the importance of camp and to tell them about how great their kids are (parents only hear the negative news about their students; complimenting isn't really a thing here). These visits were especially strong. I had crying single mothers, overcrowded houses, and stories about how my students are the ones that hold the family together. I wasn't necessarily surprised, but to visit the families and to see where my students are coming from you can really put into perspective how hard it is for them to study and succeed in school. Yet, somehow, they are some of the top students in their classes. I know that by bringing the students to camp, it will just act as yet another reason to stay motivated at school. They are an absolutely phenomenal group of boys, and I have high hopes for them.

International Day of Peace

Today is the International Day of Peace. Today I have seen unimaginable growth in my students. Today my English Club organized presentations and discussions and led the ceremony for this important holiday. They discussed peace both in general and specifically in Rwanda with about 400 students from my school. They spoke with confidence and with pride.
Today is a milestone for my students. At the beginning of the year, this same group of students was afraid to speak even in their mother tongue, but today.. Today they are brave and proud to share their ideas with their colleagues. If you had met them in February and saw them today, you would not think that they are the same group of kids.

Today, I am one extremely proud teacher.