Lessons from an excellent teacher

I started this blog to ask myself what am I learning from the land of a thousand hills? So today, past the half waypoint, I answer.

1.     A person’s a person, no matter how [different]. My supervisor told me at the beginning of my internship to look for the things that connect us as humans, instead of focusing on the differences. I’ve learned this is a discipline, a way of living. It’s too easy to see the differences. In fact, I pretty much signed up for Anthro 101 to learn about differences. But I’m realizing beauty is shown best in the similarities. As an American it seems like an impossible question to consider what I have in common with genocide survivors and perpetrators. But meeting and hearing their stories, I realize they are people who have loved immensely, suffered horribly, and continue to hope unconditionally. Our connection is more a teacher-student relationship in the big lesson of self-sacrificing love.

2.     The best solutions come from crazy ideas and a lot of faith. When I tell people about CARSA’s Cow for Peace program, they always said “a ‘what’ for peace?” It would never occur to me that a cow would be the single defining thing that strengthens the process of reconciliation. But that’s because I’m not Rwandese (as wonderful as that would be), so I don’t understand the social implications of owning a cow or the incredibly extensive work that taking care of a cow is. Programs like this are why I’m learning from Rwandese leaders and visionaries, because their dreams are more beautiful than I could have dreamed up on my own.

3.      Life carries on in the best and worst ways. Sometimes it feels like when I came to Rwanda the world decided to blow up.  I never realized how distant the news felt until I saw how people live it every day. The same thing goes for anything I’ve learned about poverty and reconciliation. It’s one thing in a textbook and another when it’s your friend. My place in the world feels a little less isolated in comfort now that there are faces of friends who have lived the headlines, instead of read them.

4.     Family is a beautiful thing. The word is applied much more broadly but with much more weight here. In America, my family is my parents and my sisters. It is also my extended family of wonderful aunts and uncles and cousins. But here, my family is the people who love me because I am a human being, a foreigner who needs to be taken in under their compassionate wing.

 

Family, in all its definitions

I’ve learned so much more, both the big and the small. Like, don’t attempt to say good afternoon to a nice old woman you meet on the street cause you might accidentally tell her she’s a beautiful man instead. But this is a little thing. 

In all these things, I see beauty. I see it in my lowest moments when I'm trying not to show the house help how much I miss home, but they see my tears and force feed me sugar cane to make me feel better.  I see it in the moments of pure joy as I’m driving through landscapes I’ve only seen in National Geographic. Mostly I see it in the beauty of people who love in the purest reflection of God’s grace. Rwanda, you make an excellent teacher. 

RAINBOW.