I write you a story
But it loses its thread
And all my witnesses
Keep turning up, keep turning up dead
I paint you a picture
Of Pulaski at night
Come back to Chicago
City of, city of light
Come back to Chicago
I paint you a picture
But it never looks right
Cause I fill in the shadows
And block out the, I block out the light
“Pulaski at Night” - Andrew Bird
“Do you feel the need to explain yourself?”
I remember seeing this question when I first took a Myers-Briggs inspired personality test in late 2016 when I was bored at work one day. The answer scale for that question, as for all the personality questions, ranged from “Strongly Disagree” in a deep purple bubble, and “Strongly Agree” in a light blue green, and a few in between to signal personal ambiguity. I remember thinking to myself, is there anything beyond “Strongly Agree?”. Indeed, I could think of no other question I answered on that silly test that I agreed with so unequivocally.
It’s been one year and two weeks since I first landed in Kigali airport with the rest of the Health 9 Peace Corps Rwanda cohort. The day we left the airport at JFK was the first release of the blog and the inaugural series that attempted to answer a critical question - “How Did I Get Here?”. At that point in my Peace Corps experience, I had no idea what the blog was going to look like, what I was going to write about, or how I was going to go about writing it. Would I have internet? Would I have the time? What was I going to write about? Would anyone even care in the slightest? I had my doubts as to whether I would even be able to keep up with it, or whether I would be able to keep it interesting. I was worried that things would devolve into sporadic, journal style posts that described beat-for-beat what I had been doing for the past few weeks.
What I have found instead is that being a volunteer in this country, and immersing myself in a wholly different and interesting culture has provided a never ending stream of interesting stories and moments to convey. My limiting factors, to my chagrin, have been my willingness to sit down and write, coupled with my ability to channel the stories in a cohesive and interesting manner - not the abundance of stories themselves. As I walk around the country, observing the daily life and the similarities and differences between human beings on the other side of the planet, I’m continually struck with ideas of what to write to the people back home. They’d love to hear about weddings! They’d love to hear about traditional dancing! They’d love to know why and to what extent Rwandans are obsessed with milk! They probably are sick of listening to me talk about food, but oh, how I want to talk more about food!
But it seems as though, so far, things have been going fairly well. I want to thank you all for reading and sticking with the blog throughout this past year in Rwanda. I’ve always wanted a chance to write, and to have all of you enjoying it (for the most part, as you’ll see) and sending encouragements after almost every post, has been really special for me. There is absolutely no reason for me to be pouring so much time and brainpower into writing multi-thousand word posts roughly every two weeks (or so), but I just genuinely enjoy it. I feel compelled to articulate my thoughts. And indeed, if you, dear reader, were to one day decide that I have lost my mind or that the blog has become boring and unintelligible, well then I’m sure I would keep writing in one capacity or another regardless.
This post will be the first in a “One Year in Rwanda” series that will later include heavier themes of what I’ve learned and what I’ve accomplished. Those will require more reflection and articulation. Now though, I thought it would be funny to undergo a light exercise of looking back at the Best and Worst of the Blog - to see where I got it right, but more importantly, where I got it wrong. Ideas that didn’t pan out, things that I thought were important that weren’t, the often uncontrollable tenor of the tone of the posts, which vacillated from utter bewilderment to clear misery, and all the rest. What’s life without a little self-criticism?
23 posts and roughly 65,000 words later, do I think I need to explain myself? I think the answer is clear.
Favorite Post to Write - “Bath Time!”
Let’s start with an simple one, my favorite post to write. This one was actually a tough one to pick, mostly because I had a difficult time figuring out which metric I would use to define the word “favorite”. Some of them just felt good to write, like the Umuganda post or the Alex(i)ntegration, because they were tangible stories that struck at the heart of the Peace Corps experience, and as the words came out onto the page I felt affirmed that I could relay concrete experiences of Peace Corps’ hardest task: fitting into the community.
But in the end, the Bucket Bath post made me laugh the most as I was writing. Still reeling from total culture shock, it was cathartic to relay to friends and family the most ridiculous and hard to imagine aspect of my new Rwandan home - showering with nothing more than a bucket of cold water and a cup. And despite the fact that we had been notified that both the Country Director and the Ambassador regularly read the blog posts that volunteers put out, I somehow got away with talking about splashing water on my genitals at some graphic length. I was prepared to take on a bad-faith defense of my work, of course; I was ready to climb on to my soapbox (as it were), and argue that the description was necessary for cultural purposes, and that descriptions my private parts were not to be censored by petit bourgeois government bureaucrats in opaque backdoor adjudications, but luckily, it never came to that.
Least Favorite Post to Write - “Remember - Unite - Renew”
This post was the most difficult because, unlike talking about taking a bucket bath or writing a silly Christmas poem, the stakes were as high as they could be for any potential topic that I could decide to undertake. I put a lot of pressure on myself to try to write a thoughtful, non presumptuous post about the most sensitive topic imaginable. I had been advised by some friends to maybe wait on it if it proved difficult to write, until next year’s Commemoration Season, but I felt strongly that I should give expressing my thoughts about that time of year a try. It is an all-important topic when trying to understand the country of Rwanda, and I wanted people at home to know more about the implications of Genocide beyond the faint acknowledgement that there was a movie about it once, back in the 2000’s.
When I sat down to do it though, the words struggled to come out, and handling the story in a delicate and respectful manner proved to be a significant task. It was an exercise in high altitude tight rope walking. But in this case, of course, my enjoyment of the writing takes a categorical backseat to the explanation of the history and the importance of explaining the revival of Rwanda. Throughout the process though, I had to remind myself that reading a single history book about the Genocide did not make me a professional historian or an authority on the matter. But after a long review process, graciously done by a Rwandan Peace Corps staffer who lived through the Genocide, I was very happy with the end product. Luckily, others seemed to enjoy it too. Phew.
Worst Idea that I Was Forced to Carry Through With - “Off Day Or an Evasion of Productivity”
In considering ways to keep myself on some semblance of a schedule so I wouldn’t fall behind on my blog writing, I decided to impose on myself a “once every two weeks” posting policy. I can say without too much shame that I have mostly managed to follow this schedule - although in recent months it has changed to more of a “Twice in a month” policy - and the two certainly are not the same. The policy is arbitrary, to be sure, but a natural rhythm of idea generation, note taking, and drafting began to develop that revealed it to me to be the best strategy.
The problem with adhering to this schedule, however, is that it has occasionally put me in a jam. With my deadlines to my editor, Leah (friend of the blog and amateur speed-reader), looming over my head, I have been a few times forced to carry through with half baked ideas, or ideas that flat out just weren’t any good.
With no post was this collapse in standards more apparent than with “Off Day”. Less than 1,000 words in, as I struggled to cohere my bizarre notebook notes into a single narrative, I was struck with a horrid realization - “Oh my God, I was actually narcissistic enough to think that a discombobulated assortment of random thoughts that occurred to me was actually worthy of its own standalone post!”.
I had committed the Mirror Selfie of blog posting. Having the thoughts (looking in the mirror), thinking that they were special enough to be captured (taking the picture of yourself looking at yourself), then finally putting the post out for all to see (posting the picture - which means you are looking at a picture of yourself looking at your self in the phone looking at the mirror). It was a dark road of self-indulgence. With too much time already passed by due to procrastination and writer’s block, I decided that I had no choice but to move forward and post the idea I had decided upon. I tried to make fun of myself as often as my brain could make jokes, and put it out. The deadline was met, yes, but it proved to be a forgettable post indeed.
The One People Seemed to Like the Most - “Kinyarwanda-rful”
My initial posts that launched the blog received the most feedback, but I always suspected it was more because of the shock value that I was leaving for two years to a tiny country in Africa than it was about the quality or content of my writing. Indeed, according to SquareSpace analytics, which tracks reads and clicks of each post, no post I’ve written since then has come even within the same universe of numerical support that the original three posts did. I suppose everyone likes a good announcement - perhaps its time for me to stop holding “The Decision” ESPN special against Lebron James, when he left Cleveland for Miami. “The Decision to Volunteer” was a relatively smashing success which I very much enjoyed, and decidedly far fewer people care where I take my meager talents to.
The post that people seemed to actually read and enjoy the most, though, was probably the Kinyarwandarful post, which was mostly a first person account of dragging my beleaguered brain through one of many language classes during PST. Perhaps it was the struggle, the oddness of Kinyarwanda to American ears, or simply the slow and clunky functions of my neural synapses - but people seemed to really get a kick out of what I have since begun to take for granted: learning the Rwandan native language of Kinyarwanda. Perhaps I was able to relay it with such imagery and force because I was living through it almost every single day, and it was without a doubt the most difficult aspect of the 2.5 month training period. Every struggle demands its outlet, and “Kinyarwanda-rful” seemed to have been mine. I’m glad it didn’t come out as bitter as I felt about it at times!
Favorite Use of a Lyric - “Pre Service Training: The Trial of the Mosque”
I know that most of you quickly skip over the opening lyric portion of the posts - as you should, they aren’t materially important - but it should be said that I ascribe them inordinate importance in each post and as such, I spend an inappropriate amount of time picking them. Most times I feel as though I pick the right lyric to set the tone for how I want the post to go, but it isn’t without significant searching, testing, and constant revision. There are times when I’m forced to settle for a line that doesn’t have all that much to do with the post, like the Kid Cudi “Symphonies” lyric before the post about Camp, but there was one in particular that I was very proud of - the lyric at the head of the Pre Service Training post.
This particular lyric is a representation of the most annoying part of my love for music. “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head” is a Gorrilaz song that is about as obscure and alienating as it gets. I was introduced to this song in high school and I have loved it ever since, although outside of my small high school friend group, I’ve never met another human who’s ever heard it.
It’s a uniquely weird song. Over the top of a catchy synth beat, an old-aged Dennis Hopper (yes, the actor) simply reads, in a normal speaking voice, a story about a fictional people called Happy Folk who’s village is infiltrated by greedy colonizers who mine a mountain (called “Monkey”, naturally) they live under. At the end of the song, the mountain, presumably having had enough of the avarice of the Strange Folk, decides to erupt, ostensibly erasing everyone and everything in its vicinity.
I know. It’s weird. But whether it be nostalgia or what have you, I love that obscure song. And listening to the eruption of sound cascading through my window every morning at 4am from the mosque shortly down the road, I was always reminded of The Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head. Dennis Hopper uses the word “Castrophony” to describe the devastating sound of the mountain’s eruption, which upon further research proved to not be a word at all. Somehow though, its the perfect one.
I later found that another volunteer in the next Peace Corps Rwanda cohort stayed in the same host family house that I did, slept in the same bed, and was subject to the same daily Castrophony of noise coming from the Mosque. It turns out it didn’t bother him at all, he slept like a baby every night. I reluctantly have to admit that I was being a baby too, albeit in a different sense. Give the song a listen though.
The One that Got Away - “Work Day”
I went several months without diving into a post about what my actual job is. I think this was because of my slow realization that work in the health center is often cumbersome and frustrating, and would be difficult to write about in a way that could be both interesting, humorous, and truthful. Of course work is difficult though, Peace Corps does not operate in countries that have everything efficient and in perfect working order. If I wanted to see smooth operation and cultural attentiveness to workplace functions, then I should have stayed in America. The work itself here in Rwanda is difficult, but intrinsic to this difficulty is the importance of it.
This sentiment was the one I tried to convey in the Work Day post, but instead of writing a shorter, more straightforward post that would have more succinctly described this point, I instead opted to be cute and try to make a series of large conceptual jokes that would show that work is tough but ultimately enjoyable.
What were these “conceptual jokes” I decided to take a swing on? Let’s see. I spent almost a third of the post describing my morning meetings as funerals, which is entirely unfair to Rwandans who simply prefer a more deferential collaborative style, and I spent as many words describing the weighing of children as a “house of horrors” in which I wielded height boards like “the cold unforgiving scythe of the grim reaper himself”. Pretty heavy and dark imagery for a decidedly light and nuanced description of how I actually feel about work.
It wasn’t until I reviewed the Work Day post for a feature of the Peace Corps Stories page that I began to realize that struck out swinging. Though I think there are a few funny parts, I would hate to think that I left people thinking that my work life here is unequivocally miserable. It isn’t, I assure you! But needless to say, I retracted that post for consideration of a feature and instead went with the Umuganda post. That seemed to have worked out much better, thankfully.
Clearest Indicator of my Bad Mood - “Where I’m Doing It”
I can say now, in the warm and secure glow of my generally pleasant state of mind, that during Pre Service Training I was totally miserable. Well, maybe not totally, but I was surely miserable. I had anticipated a difficult transition period upon moving to Rwanda, but I found that adjusting to a new (read: calorically limited) diet, and limited sleep took a significant toll on me. I’ve since discovered, to my relief, that many of my peers weren’t aware that I was in such a way; but surely enough my state of mind seeped its way into my writing, and in no post is this more apparent than in the “Where I’m Doing It” post.
It all started with the Mosque, of course. As I showed up to the Hub for trainings, bleary eyed and exhausted, a low simmering resentment began to build - a resentment based on the fact that many of the people in my cohort lived far enough away from the mosque that they didn’t even know one existed, and were thus treated to a luxurious night of sleep every day. I found it ironic that a group of volunteers, who had traveled around the world to fight the inequalities borne from the unfair lottery of life, would then be subjected to a sort of lottery of their own - in which some people had it better than other people had it, through no fault of their own.
To be fair, I still find this idea both ironic and interesting in a way. But now that I am no longer miserable, I can look at it as it should be, just a passing thought that should be left at that. To compare, even tenuously, my assignment to a house near a mosque to the plight of poor Sub-Saharan Africans is self-pitying at best and histrionic at worst. At the time though, in my compromised state I found the the idea to be profound - certainly important enough to devote significant space to it in the post. In retrospect though, its silly enough to make me laugh. It seems that the way you feel when you write is inevitably going to leak into your writing, so I’ll make a promise from now on to sit down to write only when I’m feeling chipper.
Wrap It Up
It’s been an awesome year in Rwanda, and it certainly has flown by. One thing that every volunteer knows is that you build a superhuman level of patience from living here every day, because things very rarely go as you plan them to. One thing I will continue to plan on doing, however, is write. Thank you for reading, and here’s to my second and final year in Rwanda, and many more posts to explain myself. Stay tuned over the next month for more reflections from my first year abroad.