The Third World Blues

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

- Excerpt from Mary Oliver’s The Swan

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a trip to Rwanda. It was my first visit to Africa. I spent almost the entire three weeks in the rural village of Musha, staying in an orphanage and training teachers at a nearby public school. The area was incredibly poor without electricity or running water, except for where I was staying. Villagers, no matter their age, spend their days laboring in fields and filling yellow, plastic jugs with water in order to cook and clean. No matter their plight, the young and old smiled each day, greeting me as I passed them in the mornings and again on my way home in the evenings.

One of the first things I did when I arrived back home was head to Home Depot for some flowers to plant. Now, I don’t like indoor plants at all, the possible outcome of a bad fourth grade experience that included a teacher who smelled of mothballs and a classroom full of hanging plants. Also, I have no green thumb; the tidbits of greenery that I've planted outdoors over the years die sad, dry, forgotten deaths. Honestly, I've never given gardens too much thought. Living in Manhattan, it was simpler to pick up a bouquet of tulips or lilacs at the corner deli, plop them in a vase, and that was that. And yet, fresh off the plane in Maui, there I was filling my shopping cart with purple and pink blossoms.

Since my return from Rwanda, people have asked me how I’m processing the experience, and how I’ve changed. My brother, having traveled extensively in Southeast Asia, called to see if I was falling into the Third World Blues. Did I feel guilty for Western riches? Irritated? Angry? Depressed? I’m not sure yet.

Now and then, the faces of those I met in Musha pop up in my mind. I think of Mattias, the elderly man who cooked for us with a swollen wrist and shuffled home in the evenings. Each morning, he’d take my hands in his and greet me, “Ste-pha-nee! Maramuze.” And Placide, sixteen years old, who lives at the orphanage. He was just a baby when his parents were killed in the genocide. Despite his age, he is still in fifth grade. He’ll age out of the orphanage in two years. Then what? He has a smile that outshines misfortune. And Jean Paul, Florence and Sam, all teachers at the school. Everyday, I’d arrive at the school feeling grimy in wrinkled pants, the hems covered in red dirt, and my hair barely clean after a quick, cold shower. And everyday, they’d arrive at school from homes without running water and wearing the same clothes as the day before, but they looked sharp and utterly spotless. And the little girl who kept her one notebook safe by stuffing it down the front of her tattered, blue dress.

After spending three weeks witness to people living hard lives in a country where the average life expectancy is fifty-seven, my deepest fear is that I haven’t changed at all, that I won’t “do” the right thing with the experience, that I won’t live my life any differently, won’t be more productive, won’t complain less over the trivial, won’t be able to decide what to do about children and a family and the rest of my life.

How have I changed? I don’t know yet. But I planted some flowers outside and I’m trying to keep them alive.