It is a strange sensation when a dream over one year in the making, is finally transformed into a reality.
I arrived in Rwanda a day later than I was supposed to but still I arrived nevertheless.
In this land of one thousand hills the road rises and falls as we climb out of Kigali toward Musanze. Escaping the city, I am struck by the notion that to be aware of beauty and to be presented with beauty are not one and the same for Rwanda is not a country that takes your breath away, rather it is a place that makes you questions whether or not you ever truly breathed before arriving in this land of undulations.
Two hours after touching down in Kigali we came to the place that I will call "home" for the next two months. It is embarrassing to admit that, even without a refrigerator or furniture more than a single bed, my temporary quarters in Rwanda are a far cry better than the apartment that I willingly gave up in Savannah more than two months ago. I unpacked my bags, a la Carrie Bradshaw, stowing my clothes in places usually designated for cereals and spices, sugars and saucepans.
After I finished, I sat on my porch with a book and a journal to breath in Rwanda. To the north there is a chain of volcanoes that is visible from my window. Separately, their names are Bisoke, Sabyinyo, Gahinga, and Murabura. Together, they are the Virungas. Bordering both Uganda and the RDC, this is where gorillas play in the mist and this is where it is difficult to tell where Rwanda ends and heaven begins.
When the day was about to relinquish its hours to the night and the cool evening mountain air sweeps its way across the hillside of Gashangiro a noise rose up from outside of the gates. It was the sound of men and women chanting and singing and beating on makeshift drums as they made their way down the hill. Towards what? I do not know. Their voices, fading into the distance, were replaced by a chorus of nocturnal insects and the soft purr of motorbikes traveling in the opposite direction.
I wanted to follow them, to see where they were going, to know what they were doing but this was only my first night in Rwanda and those answers, as well as the answers to all of the questions that will no doubt arise, will come in time.
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On Monday I began to teach English at a sewing cooperative in town. This school is about four kilometers from where I stay so partly out of stubbornness and mostly out of curiosity I have decided to walk the hour down the hill in the morning and up the hill in the afternoon because it has always been my belief that the feet see just as well as the eyes.
Although it is my first day teaching the warmth of these women’s affections can only be compared to the Italian family that I left in New York, except here they embrace you three times, cheek to cheek, before giving you a half high-five/half handshake. So much of me wanted this greeting to be OUR secret handshake but this greeting is no secret because this is the way friends in Rwanda say hello.*
*Out of respect for these women I have decided not to write more about my experiences teaching at this school until I get to know each of them better for fear that I will do them a tremendous disservice by pretending to know anything about their lives just because I have read some books on Rwanda.
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By the end of the week the sights along the road have begun to become familiar. And it is here, along this ascension and descension, that the reality of poverty in Rwanda begins to sink in. It is a poverty that I cannot even begin to describe.*
*So as to not sound brash and dismissive here, I will be dedicating a future blog to perceptions of poverty in Rwanda.
In town, tomatoes, charcoal, and shoes that are worn well past their welcome are sold side by side outside of shops peddling household wares and other necessities.
Further up, there are women who carry freshly cut stacks of wood or bundles of cassava leaves upon their heads. Even under their load the regality of their stature would make even the most primest and properest of ladies look as if they were slouching underneath the weight of a book bound in hardcover.
There are the mamas who swaddle their children on their backs as they work in the fields, hoe in hand.
There are the men who stand on the side of the road. Waiting for what? It is hard to tell.
And then there are the children, the ones on their way to or from school and the ones for whom school is no more than a dream that may or may not come true.
Shrieks of Muzungu! Muzungu! emanate from the dirt paths that branch away from the road.* Whether it is said with terror or delight remains uncertain until they wave and continue to wave long after I am gone.
*in Kinyarwanda, Muzungu generally means any white person but it can also be translated as usurper or he who comes back.
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Without any foreknowledge of Rwandan history it would be difficult to tell that a genocide occurred here twenty years ago for how can a country so beautiful descend into such madness?
But you cannot deny the past for a genocide did occur and it has forever changed the landscape of Rwanda.
And still, even with this knowledge of violence I cannot help but seek the beauty of this landscape. It is a beauty that can be discovered in the hills that are in constant competition with the sky. It is found in the sky itself that shifts from steel to cobalt to periwinkle and back as the sun comes and goes from behind the clouds. But where beauty is truly triumphant is in the flowers. Whether they grow wild or are tame, the presence of their crimsons, their yellows, their pinks and their purples, especially their purples, brings a sense of serenity to these often chaotic hills.
I am reminded of a conversation that I had with an artist who had traveled to Rwanda in the wake of the genocide to document the violence. He revealed that he has also taken thousands of photographs of flowers throughout the country that he never displayed for fear of making light of an event so heavy. I think of him as I walk past these fields of flowers.
Alice Walker also comes to mind:
“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”
These fields, the color of purple, are at once a distraction from and an invitation to what lingers below the surface…