Aaron's Blog

Six Months On...and Off

Posted May. 16th, 2007

Today is our six-month anniversary of our arrival in Rwanda. It’s not an important milestone by any means, but it represents a crossing-point, of sorts, among people who move to another culture. In culture-shock terms, it is the “six-month hump”—the point at which many people hit a kind of emotional bottom. The idea is that the initial euphoria has worn off—the honeymoon is over, so to speak—and now one is faced (or even barraged) with all the things that drive you crazy about a place.

Some of the signs include:
• Wanting to get away from the local people
• Excessive sleeping
• Obsessing over missing your favorite foods
• Craving for news from home
• Doubts about being in a new culture
• Wishing you were somewhere else
• Criticizing local people and their culture

Ummm...yeah. I can relate to many of the above (still haven’t bought the Haagen Daaz, but boy would I like to!). The light at the end of the tunnel is the fact that we are now at the point that our psyches are becoming able to shift their unconscious expectations, which will begin to reduce frustrations and allow us to go with the flow more easily. God willing, it will be that easy.

The reality is, however, that life has changed in subtle ways already. I remember feeling so overwhelmed in the beginning when the electricity didn’t work, and the water had run out. Tonight the electricity came back on for the first time in almost a week, and it was really a relief. The kids and I cheered and I immediately ran to get some water heating for a bath for them (the washcloth rub-downs only get you so far). But the fact is, life is manageable at this point, even when we go days without electricity. Everything just takes a bit longer and necessitates better planning.

In many ways, we have become so comfortable here that it is easy to forget how much suffering still exists around us. By that, I’m not really talking about the dire poverty, because that is really unavoidable. Rather, I’m talking about the trauma that most people here hold in their hearts. The suffering that people experienced here is impossible for me to comprehend in many ways. Last night I finished A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, which is a graphic and stomach-turning portrayal of the genocide. There are days when I feel overwhelmed with grief, not for myself, but for humanity. Sometimes I sit and weep, feeling both pained by my inability to do anything about the suffering around me and also ashamed of the many choices I make on a daily basis that separate me from those who are suffering. The thirst for compassion and justice is a double-edged sword, because while that fire is easily fed by the blatant greed, corruption and indifference that drives the global economy, I am no stranger to the same values that I abhor so vehemently.

It would be easy to put down A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali and wonder how a people could have become so savage (and a Christian country at that, as it is often pointed out). Yet in my opinion, that is too easy. If one’s going to follow that route, then why not also ask why the international community didn’t do more? In fact, the very reason that Clinton didn’t act more decisively is because the American people did not believe that we should be “meddling in Africa’s problems,” particularly after the debacle in Somalia.

The harder thing is to remember that the lines we draw in the sand that separate us from “the other” (whoever that other may be), are just that—lines in sand. When the wind blows, the line is gone and we can easily find ourselves on the other side. Sure, the genocide in Rwanda has stopped, but the suffering taking place across this continent is staggering. The question I ask is, how do we so easily numb ourselves to it, and separate ourselves from it, as if the lives we lead have absolutely no relationship to the millions of children who die every day from malnutrition? How do I begin to make different choices—ones that will support life rather than be passive in the face of death? These are the questions that I ask myself every day, and that haunt me in my sleep. And yes, I may be suffering from culture shock, or seeing things from the bottom of this six-month valley, but I also pray that God will continue to open my heart to the notion that I can make different choices, and help me continue to see why it is important to do so.

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