There are many details I could share with you from this week: the successful teaching by all on academic day, the highly engaged residents providing complication free patient care in the ORs, the palpable momentum for developing a rotation in San Francisco for our Rwandan resident colleagues, a fun Chinese dinner with people we just met who are also engaging in social service-minded projects in Rwanda, but I feel like painting with broader strokes.
Since quitting my academic position in April 2015 for a more balanced life in private practice, a lot has changed in me. I first noticed its effect on this trip while hiking in Volcanoes National Park. I realized I was completely enjoying the hike, the scenery, and the people around me. It was somehow different than the many hikes I’d done before. Not that I didn’t enjoy hiking before, but there was always a subtle sense of haunting obligation. I had a responsibility to my university employer, a compulsion to expand our Global Health program, and a duty to ensure my US students got the most out of their experience.
Being in a place far away from home and engaging with a culture unlike your own, creates a fertile place of contemplation of your life and your story. I feel lucky. The privilege to be with these amazing Rwandans and to witness their strength after atrocity and their optimism under burden is truly inspiring. Twenty-two years since the genocide, much of the world still wonders if Rwanda is safe to visit, but over the last 6 years I have been fortunate to bear witness to progress at a speed surely unmatched. Infrastructure continues to expand, business development and foreign investment is obvious, and stability is sensed in greater quantities with every visit. Fortunately, this progress includes healthcare improving the quality of people’s lives.
Being able to collaborate with Rwandan colleagues, feeling their enthusiasm and confidence has taught me much about my life’s work and my time spent on this rotating globe. In the words of my dear colleague, Paulin, the world is a “big village” and it’s important to consider “what seed you are planting” and its cultivation. I am still fulfilling commitments to the university, my students, and the global health program, but my drive is not longer clouded by obligation. It is refined by my passion. I am convinced I have learned more than I have taught and my heart is filled with gratitude for the privilege.
We will leave tomorrow and I will look forward to next year until it comes.
XOXO
Ana
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