No one has written a great symphony or even a concerto about Africa. Why is that so?

The music of Africa is too wild, too free, too accustomed to death for romance. Africa is too crude a stage for the small scratching of the violin, too majestic for the piano. Africa is only right for drums. The drum carries its rhythm but does not steal its music. Timpani is the background, the music of Africa is in the voices of the people. They are its instruments, more subtle, more beautiful, infinitely more noble than the scratching, thumping, banging and blowing of brass and wind and vellum, strings and keyboard.

The Power Of One Bryce Courtenay

Happy Half Century

For most, March 1st passed fairly uneventfully marking one day to the next, though within this certain community, it represented a milestone. For 50 years, Peace Corps has been sending its willing volunteers to all parts of the world to help as best they can. To many on the outside, it means saving the world, one country and two years at a time. An all-out do gooder who is crazy enough to volunteer their own life in the service of others. In some ways, yeah, that is what I have been working at. The chance to make some smidgen of a difference. Looking at this from the inside however, it's more than just a good theoretical idea. Like any government bureaucracy, Peace Corps deals with its rules and regulations, sometimes sacrificing the appeasement of its volunteers to be able to function in a country completely unlike any other, even from its own neighbors. Personalities, discrepancies, necessities, and niceties must cooperate together to produce a working system of volunteers able to serve their villages. There will always be lapses in organization and maybe a slight oversight to the humanness of its volunteers but what other organization so large will give you this experience. We live as Rwandans in their towns, in their jobs. (Yes, I have checked and I actually do have the same monthly salary as my co-workers) We are given an opportunity to stretch our own boundaries and claim this service for ourselves. Though is it aggravating, Peace Corps somehow manages to be the laid-back hippie parent as well as the overbearing one, letting us decide where to focus but keeping us within their guidelines. We learn as we go, we grow, we serve others, but mainly we just live. Happy Birthday Peace Corps; though sometimes I hate you and sometimes I love you, I am glad to be a part of this.

A year in review

Trials and triumphs... It is impossible to describe this past year without both of these. Granted, they might've been small, sometimes insignificant, but it is the addition of all these that have created this past year. February 2010 saw me leaving a cold, bleary, and wholly American land, to touch down in the heat and humidity of East Africa, completely unaware as to what Peace Corps service actually meant. Despite all the agonizing frustrations and looming uncertainties, I began my this new life as a volunteer in Rubengera, due west of Kigali and just 15 glorious minutes from Lake Kivu, which has turned out to be one of my greatest saving graces. Even through these past 365 days, at times I still feel just as lost as to what it means to be a Peace Corps volunteer. It often comes as a shock to remember I am serving here instead of just living. Day to day life carries you so effortlessly through the months that sometimes you forget you are moving; it's only when you decide to look and see where you are going that you remember. The good days are marked with people calling you by your real name instead of 'mazungu,' children stopping on their way to school to sing to you, watching the sun blaze into the mountain's vivid colors, swimming in Lake Kivu, and realizing you are living in Africa (how cool is that!!!). The bad moments, though not as often still mar those days with shouts and taunts of 'mazungu', an intense craving for some comforting American thing, a blank look when you cannot express yourself in Kinyarwanda. And, though I haven't accomplished the projects I have set out to quite yet, I am still working; Rwanda is being patient with me. It seems, like most experiences in life, as soon as you conquer one battle, another is just over the next hill waiting to take you on; and since Rwanda is the land of 10,000 hills, there are a heck to a lot of battles to deal with. Thinking through it though, it doesn't feel like I have fought a year's worth of battles yet. I guess that would be the most prominent thought and emotion that comes to mind when I think about my one year mark. One year didn't feel quite as long as I was expecting, and since there were no parades or parties to mark the occasion, it passed quietly. Just another day when I pass cows on my way to work, listen to Kinyarwana all day and try to speak lousy French, bathe from a bucket, then fall asleep beneath my mosquito net until I do it all over again.