When familiar is strange.

Wise friends told me that even though I’m going back to Rwanda, I will never really go back because it will never be the same. And they’re right. It’s not the same. Everything that was once strange, is now familiar. I used to be familiar with strange, and now it’s strange to feel familiar.

Some things have changed in Kigali. The skyline is longer and taller with new buildings and hotels. The Marriot moved in. New roads are built, confusing this already out of place muzungu. 

My favorite things have not. Hearing church drums on a Thursday morning for hours building in intensity and repetition. Friends being so busy with work, and still they let me distract them when the power goes out in the office and I want to hear their thoughts on reconciliation. Radio mixing music of Rwandan pop, Whitney Houston, Justin Bieber, and African rap.  Greetings of every person who walks in a room—regardless if you know them, you greet them.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever change. Mixing Kinyarwanda with broken French and awkward English. Slipping on steep hills. Always wanting more coffee.

But then, I wonder how could I feel so different from the last time? Feeling free to be myself, laughing so loud a friend lovingly told me I “shout laugh,” sleeping in and eating fruit and avocado till I think I’m going to burst, talking for hours when it feels like minutes. Sharing my fears, my hurts, my questions, my needs, my wants, my passions with friends who will sometimes never fully understand, and other times are right there with me. 

It took going back to move forward.

I have even less clarity of why I came back. Personal vacation, internal determination, communal affirmation, it’s really everything and nothing all at once.

I think that’s what I love most. Here, I’m free to live the contradictions. I’m free to do nothing and to be tired, to have needs and to satisfy my wants, to question doubts and to live in faith, to be insufficient and to feel whole.

In other words, without “doing,” I’m free to just be.