Trajectories

July 27, 2008

Two of the interns asked me a few weeks ago if I have had any great realizations here, and I had to think a moment. I ended up telling them that I haven’t, although I feel that everything about me and what I know about life has deepened here.

So here is how I’m thinking of this: I work in the US for eleven months and in Rwanda for one month. Work, of course, doesn’t mean employment, but rather it is just work. Some of the time here is research; lots of it is doing what I can for peace, healing, and recovery. I still haven’t jumped onto the reconciliation wagon yet; but the unity I get. Peace I get; healing and recovery I get. Right now, that work includes writing grants and any other materials that Help Life Rwanda needs. I am the NGO’s honorary advisor, which translates basically as mother.

Rwanda is really a good place to feel needed, like my abilities are valuable, like I can make a difference. Like a mother without the biology. Of course I feel needed in the US; my kids and family need me, but that need will not always be so intense. My friends like having me around, but with internet and cell phones, hey, I can be right there, wherever they are. The concept of need and my job is a bit different: I need my job, but if something happened to me and they needed to fill the position, there would be two hundred well-qualified candidates to fill it. My colleagues would be sad for a bit, but everything would go on as normal. So does my college really need me? Not so much. But do you know how many PhDs the National University of Rwanda has on staff? Five.

So in terms of trajectories, I feel like I have been at or near the pinnacle, the top of the arc: great kids, a terrific career, about halfway through a PhD. My trajectory hasn’t changed, but now I’m on just the other side of the arc, like I’m aiming toward home. It doesn’t feel like going downhill. Rather, when I think about the point later in my life, when this middle part done, the idea that I could land in Rwanda fills me with solace.

The night before I left Rwanda, Julius and Help Life Rwanda gave me parting gifts, two pieces of traditional artwork. Now that I am back in Texas, they hang above my desk to the left of my computer. One piece of art is of a man and woman working in front of two traditional style Rwandan homes. The man carries a hoe; the woman carries a huge jug of water on her head, and I can’t help but see my Aquarius self in that female figure. The other piece of art depicts a man and a woman in a boat, just before they get to shore, where normal life is taking place. Julius, when he gave me the gift, noted that the figures in the boat were he and I on Lake Kivu as we checked out sites for next year’s writing retreat. But the more I look at it, the more it feels like coming home.