Magnificently Insignificant Waves

I haven't been in Rwanda long enough to merit any judging rights. But, being in the position I am in - not completely able to relate to my Rwandan family and neighbors but also not here for the same reasons as most of the expats I have come into contact with - I am seeing a lot of different things from the outside, and from many different angles. There is one particular thing I am noticing more and more as I observe people around me. I had originally typed up whole stories about the specific occurrences, but to avoid making this a gossip column, I decided to make this a more of a general thought. And the thought is this: It seems to me that people who travel the world, whether for work, religious missions, to study, whatever reason, as they become more experienced with the expatriate life, they begin to develop a certain attitude towards others who are doing the exact same thing. It's an attitude that seems to say something along the lines of "I know the best way to li...

A lot of my time here is spent on motorcycles like the ones in the photo. Commonly known as "motos", they function pretty much like taxis. The only difference is you negotiate the price before you ride. They are a little dangerous, although (knock on wood) I've never been in an accident on one, but they're the fastest way to get anywhere if you don't have your own vehicle and cheaper than an actual taxi car. A lot of thinking happens on these motos. They are my breaks between each reality. My time to prepare. My time to reflect. Something I have been doing a lot of reflecting on lately: I am extremely introverted. Some people who know me well might argue with me, but more often than not, talking to people I don't know terrifies me. Not because I have anything against people. I just get overwhelmingly nervous, and I have trouble forming sentences. And that's just speaking in English. Now take that and add it to the fact that I'm in a country where I b...

Sometimes it's easy to miss what is happening right in front of you. Sometimes you realize that there are chunks of time that you were only doing the necessary things to get to a certain point and you missed a lot of the details in between. Kind of like when you get home from a long drive and you get the feeling that you don't even remember driving. Maybe you were lost in your thoughts, but haven't even really kept track of those either. But when you finally sit down, take a break and rewind back to the beginning, you can fill in the blanks. Well, at least they seem like blanks, but you find that somewhere those moments are stored in your memory. These last three months have been a whirlwind. And now, I'm here. It feels as though I was in Arkansas, fell asleep, and woke up married and living my life in Kigali. Now, I have to rewind and recall what exactly happened in the middle of all that glorious chaos. How everything looked, who I encountered, what I was thinking, ...

This photo was taken at my introduction (Gusaba & Gukwa), a traditional Rwandan ceremony that comes before a religious wedding in which the bride's dowry is settled among the two families. Afterwards she is brought out (I was escorted by my brother, bridesmaids and aunt) to greet her new family, exchange gifts, and share a meal next to her new (official) betrothed. That day, I felt like I was in a movie. In That particular moment, I was trying - and failing - to stop giggling. The second I saw my then fiance sitting in a banana-leaf chair next to a vacant one, which I would eventually occupy, atop a low, covered platform, dressed in his silky, brown traditional Rwandan garments, looking at me cooly, staff in hand, like a king, the realisation that this was actually happening to ME erupted in the form of uncontrollable laughter. No. It was not anything like the twenty-something versions of my future wedding I had conjured up during my childhood. Now it is three m...