Rwandan Ruminations

A smattering of notes, poems, and pictures from the Rwandan trip. When I use a picture that was not actually taken by me, I will credit the group. Many of the photos from the last post, including all of the dancing photos natch, are from the group. Also, the poems would ideally have indentations on various lines, but I don't feel like dealing with the formatting to figure that out.


Group photo.

First day of the trip entry:

A white cocoon envelops our group somewhat. Kigali is nicer than expected, more developed, more expensive. One drive through it was not enough to get a grasp for the city; it sprawls out along hills as if in a countryside. The city is green and red and gorgeous. I sat facing the east through twilight and felt a surge of awe rise through my guitar playing. After dusk with cicadas, lights dotting the hills, and the scent of mosquito repellent, Kigali returns to a natural state.

People have behaved on a spectrum from overly friendly to suspicious and sullen. Our customs officer asked me how I was and our young Rwandan aide is irrepressible to the poitn of obsequiousness. The man who opens the gate to our hostel waves excitedly at us when we enter or leave. People do seem to look at us whenever we pass with curiosity and either eagerness or distrust. Our waitress was polite but coldly so. Many were eager to accommodate us whenever an opportunity came up.



Chanted vocal music bubbles over to us on our hostel porch. Choral music rolls strong and spiritual, whether religious or traditional, harmonic monophony with flashes of call and response.

We must suspend our expectations for this trip. Processes are often slow, many things don't work, we will get sick or lost or sore or cranky. In flavor and degree, this will be a trip unlike any I have experienced for a long time, if ever.

24/09

Obviously, someone else took this, but on my camera. If that makes a difference.

The Visitor



Birds chirp all around me
a cock crow is what woke me
It is a multifabric blanket of sound rising from the hill
Coming to cover me until the sun reaches my part of the hill
A human voice, human labor,
Sometimes this thread emerges on the blanket
I await the blanket, Africa is colder than I thought
And I am a visitor in this land,
A group surrounds me, a white cocoon in the black land
Some know more, some less, some care not to know
Some are connected, some are plugged in
Some are digging, some are sleeping in
I know no more than anyone
And knowing is not a character trait that makes me better
The bird chirp blanket and the white cocoon and the air less than hot
But all I am is a visitor in this thought

Second day of the trip entry

Rwandan restaurant - the wait, the good goat meat, the Ugandan waragi (rubbing alcohol and gin), chapati in a back room of a side street with a smiling hostess Sara called sister (dada) in Swahili, the armed men on the streets. Habyarima's house with secret passageways and torture rooms and churches for Christianity and animist faiths, wreck of the plan, the desire to change the house into a museum. A tightening of the group. The glow of our trip in its absurdity and naive expectation in the face of trauma.

Group photo.

Nyabarongo River entries

He is six or seven years old, dark skinned in a dull brown t-shirt and darker brown pants. I say "mwarimutse" and "amakuru". He says "nimeza". He has a plastic water bottle one-fifth full with coins. He asks me something, uses the word "falanga". I smile and shrug, then say, "nitwa Daniel," using poor Kinyarwanda. I ask, "witwande?" He says "Tunezi Bevinda" or something similar. I ask him to repeat the second name, he does, I say "ndakwashimaye" tow or three times until I get it right. We stand. No words are shared. A minute later he moves, I wish him a "nimosi meza".

As I write this under a bridge, a man in a hat walks by. We talk about where I came from, about where we are, basic pleasantries, and then I see I have to go. I wish him well and begin to leave. He reminds me to take my camera. Very kind. He laughs at my sloppiness as I smile and walk away.



***

Imagining the river full of bodies, the strong current bogged down by the bloated flesh, well, it makes a lot of the heavier rock songs (I'm thinking "Bodies" by the Drowning Pool) sound ridiculous. Also makes most of life's problems seem absurdly insignificant. So it goes.



Weakness

I can be weak. I am weak. I will be weak.
This does not mean I should seek weakness.
Nor should I eschew my attempts to be strong.
It means that I will be weak even amidst my strengths.
Sometimes in familiar ways, sometimes in new ways.
Remember:
I am weak even as I am strong.
Even as I am right I will be wrong.
I shall seek even more strength, but not for power.
I shall seek rightness, not righteousness.
I shall accept myself and others
I will fail to accept both, but will try again.
Even as I am good, I am bad.
I will learn to understand that.

29/09



The Worst Moment


The worst moment of my life
I walk down the green walled hallway
I am late, too late, I came from too far away
And I see you coming out of the room, coming towards me
On your face the most twisted look
Your face is stuck
Your eyes perched on the edge of a waterfall
Your mouth fallen, your brow scrunched, your nose raised
You walk past me, unable to look in others' eyes
And I see Babushka hugging someone outside the door
I know she is gone, she is no more
I am too late
I am too late to say goodbye.
Too late to change anything.
Too late to feel.
All I can do is help put things together.
And really, I am too late for that.

And you are out driving, alone, where no one knows.

27/09

Something About an Island

It's another post of poetry and "artsier" writing. All photos are from the island of Ærø. The essay about islands regards smaller islands in general; the large island of Zealand where Copenhagen is found, or Australia, for example, may not have the same qualities. Anyway, enjoy.


Babbling Hill



They babble on in Babylon.
All these tongues roll down the hill, over me
All these tongues to learn, all my goals
But all these tongues work at the same thing
Is it better to know five tongues and change how you think
Or know one tongue to express the purple light within?
Can the tongue express the purple light?
Can the sun fall on me right?
They babble on in Babylon.

White Sky

A white sky rises
from just below the commercial business roofs
The white sky will stay there
well into tomorrow too
And it is no use worrying
about what comes next
All could end
with a crack in the neck
The white sky will remain
the country's eternal coat
It should not be regarded with apprehension or disdain
But acceptance and a light trace of hope.

The Heat Within (White Sky Within)

The heat within
The white sky has settled in my head
I sit perched upon the bed
My back to the open window
I will seek the heat within
Seek to balance it, to spread it otu
To the edges of my body, to the pores of my skin
(Last night my sweat puddled my sheets
My body sought, it seems, to break the heat)
But heat and cold, uneven and perceived
Our desire to get it right is sometimes not believed
The wind and the sun work at opposite ends
Our perceptions are setenced to perpetual bends
But I will fight for my heat within
I will fight my heat within
I will know my heat within
The heat within is, or could be, where I begin.

Something About an Island



There's something about an island. The way water is never far, never really out of sight. How the sky is more mutable, a living and volatile being; sun shines through blue translucency, then light white clouds pass over, the wind quickly blowing those on before the ominous gray blocks settle above, except of course they settle not at all, thundering and pouring and gusting their innards out before the wind takes them too away, returning the sun blue sky to preeminence. Such are 15 minutes on an island. (Weather forecasts must work like probability density functions, providing general ranges for what the weather will be like in the next day, hour, or minute. Variance is great, and a fact of island life).



An island possesses its charm. As a rule, each island has its own charm, but there are charms that fall under the general island heading. One reaches an island by boat, by ferry, hence by means uncommon to a landlubber's daily routine. 1-2 hours of slow rocking, all ferry rides seem about this long, and a new port, a new ground, well-removed from before. Hardly as transportive, as transformative as air travel, a boat journey, a ferry ride brings space, comfort, and calm views.



Then there is the village on the island. Every island is removed from time. Not completely, for time stops for no island, and no minute is an island, as they say. But an island falls on its own pace and custom, a lag behind the mainland, the inevitable source of civic questioning. To wit: should we keep up with the times or keep on preserving. Nowhere is this clearer than the village.

Each island preserves its village in its own way. Nantucket makes it a rule that all new buildings in a certain area must be built in the gray cedar style predominant on the island. On Ærø, where we stayed for two days, wihtout the summering crowd, pink shirts, and Gatsby strut of the previous island, they forbid the construction of new buildings near the center. Gingerbread yellow red and orange houses stack up on the streets, their burnt orange shingled roofs sloping dangerously convex into each other, former sea captains' homes next door to homes fashioned out of one-time ship decks or poops or what have you: this is Ærøskøbing preserved since the 18th century. Many buildings have the year of their construction displayed on their outer wall, old styled black digits spelling out 1784. There is an old-fashioned windmill just above the center to the south. I should say: of course there is an old-fashioned windmill on Ærø, just near the village.






Every house in Ærøskøbing has antiques displayed in the window, dogs and china and sea relics. The displays are redundant: the town is an antique. Each shop has its opening hours displayed but on the tail end of the high season, those hours operate as a guide, a framework of when the store might be open, should customers be present and should the shop owner have no more pressing business than his/her business. Each shop may fill its own niche - pharmacy, book and school supplies store, gardening shop - but each store also sells souvenirs and services the outsiders, admitting in a charmingly open manner that outsiders dictate life on the village. Without knowing for sure, we sensed that everyone on the island, 7,000 residents, must know each other, and the outsiders as such must be easily marked. The open velkommen is usually felt, except when we poke our heads into the local watering hole and cannot decide which is less welcoming: the steady inquiry that confronts us from the gaze of every local in the full room, or the wall of cigarette stench that flooded our nostrils and eyes immediately. We did not enter the bar, ultimately.



We stayed on the island for about 42 hours. The weather was indecisive and tumultuous but on the whole ok. We only left the village once, on our walk to the windmill. Our experience was limited: walking, cute shops, nice dinners, a charming pension; in sum, a travel experience distilled. Sifted until the essence of a trip comes out: the romance of being alone with someone important, or of just being alone, in a new, beautiful, strange place.

There is something about an island.

And now for some Poetry, Dutch and Deutsch style!

The following is some slightly more artistic writing that I did, inspired by the Netherlands and Germany. Dig in. (And yes, there is product placement in the poetry, of sorts. Call it the new post post modern.)

Two Ends of a Bridge
Focus on the sun, the warmth on your eyes,
burning through the fall goosebumps breeze
See the blue dot behind your eyelids
Rising just out of view.
If the two ends of a bridge don't meet
It's probably to let a sailboat pass through
Unless the bridge over the river Drina has been blown in two
Think of Isidora's gift and her friend in Hamburg
Think of how amazing life is, or how
awful it can be, as in the genocide book
How life is often (always?) both

Untitled (06/09)

The mind craves change, but so much is the same

We are more attractive when with someone

When home, moving seems better

When away in a god place, everything feels like home

Just because I want something different, rarer

does not make me better

Just because i want someone to change does not

mean I must not accept them now.

Down at the Beach

Photo courtesy of Benjamin Chang. Check more of his photos here and here.

5x2 trampoline area. Yellow padding over the springs, green/purple/yellow/blue trim on black mats. A 12-year old boy jumps alone, tentatively, unimpressively. A girl steps on the second mat from the left, row farther from the sea. She is 16-25, probably towards the younger side, light brown hair in a ponytail, brown tank top, blue shorts. Her hops begin, probing and testing, never wasteful. She goes from corner to corner, lightly. Then she flips backwards. Her form is perfect, with straight legs, an unmoving upper body, and arching arms. When I do gymnastic movements, I achieve movement through force; short, explosive contortions or circles that signify power but cannot be pretty in observation. I land in spite of myself. She moves through grace, suggesting only the barest exertion. Her legs appear powerful from my stairway perch, but more as a result of her movement than as a tool to achieve that movement.

She spans the whole mat, perhaps 2mx4m. She flips forwards, she flips backwards, she lands on her butt and then twists off the bounce before landing again. She stands on her hands. Her training must be as a diver or a gymnast. Or as a trampoline artist. She disappointingly jumps a pedestrian 720 rotation. She atones by landing a backward flip with a twist, and again forwards. She may realize she is being watched.

The younger boy is off by now, outgunned and outshined. An older boy, abotu 25, the younger boy's brother for sure, blond, and long like a swimmer, dressed only in thigh low swim trunks and tall man musculature, rises from a chair nearby next to a pretty girl in a red bikini, and steps onto the mat two over from hers, on the same row. He briefly warms up and launches his body into back flips, front flips, and a double back flip, which he does not quite land.

Undoubtedly, he is also very skilled, and his grace is far greater than mine. But power infects his movements as well, allowing him more revoutions but robbing him of her elegance. He looks like a diver, and he appears to be showing off or competing in a way that she does nto. I am projecting, of course.

She steps off. The younger boy returns and emulates his brother, attempting a front flip. She is now on the sand, by two wooden bars; I realize the fenced in section of beach they are in holds a nearly full array of gymnastic equipment: rings, bars, and so on. She tries to do a one-armed cartwheel on the sand. She does not quite succeed. I can do a one-armed cartwheel (though maybe not on sand). I think this proves my point. She puts on sneakers, walks over to talk to the bikini girl, and then leaves the gymnastic compound.

The older brother continues for a couple more minutes and then sits and stretches. The little boy continues for a brief time alone before growing bored. The sea laps at the sand, unchanged, and the wind gusts, unchanged, knocking over my plate of fries so as to stain the concrete with sand-specked mayo and ketchup. The scene ends.

This, at least, is how I remember it.

Tyranny of the Next

The tyranny of the next

Release yourself from expectation

Detach from plans and schedules and details

Accept that the essence is the same

The company, the air, the direction.

The details are just details

The tyranny of the past

But I am just as at fault as any

And on the road, the blame is needless

Useless, in the way.

Let the mistakes go. Let tomorrow be.

Breathe. And again. Breathe.