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.