365

I have officially been in Rwanda for 365 days. One place for one year. I have come to learn a little something about commitment since coming here. See I made a commitment to serve…for two years. There have been days, heck even weeks, when I've considered coming home.

But

something brought me here so I'm going to wait it out. As long as I can handle it. It was like a double dog dare. Bet you can't live in Africa for two years. Well I've always been a bit stubborn.

I'm declaring a bit of a veterans day for Peace Corps volunteers today. If you know someone who served in the past or are serving right now - send your love to them, hug 'em, tell them you appreciate them. They probably went through a bit of hell. and who couldn't appreciate a hug?

I know a lot of people don't understand why we do this. I'm going to explain one tiny part of it. You know when you turn on the news and hear about a natural disaster? Let's pick an earthquake. Let's put the earthquake in California. If you live over in Michigan and don't know a single person in California your response will be of this variety- wow that really sucks. Imagine all those people and all that destruction. Now let's imagine that you know one family who lives in California. Your next level of response is calling them to make sure they are alright or checking Facebook to make sure they are okay. Now let's go up one more level - you used to live in California. You know a million people there. You have favorite restaurants and know beautiful places. You keep seeing flashbacks of all these places and trying to imagine them as the middle of all that destruction. You spend days trying to get ahold of all your loved ones.

Now we are going to span out. You hear that a population is trying to overthrow its government and get some rights (Egypt), you hear that your country is using military force halfway around the world (Afghanistan), you hear about a crazy flood that is devastating a ridiculous amount of land (Australia). All of a sudden the world gets a little smaller. You know those places. You know people there. You love people there. You are concerned. You want to do something. You want other people to care.

Now for all those people who think I'm unsafe here for the reason of anti-American sentiment - how would that get better if I wasn't here? I'd like to picture my Rwandan neighbors ten years from now. They are standing around the proverbial water cooler and maybe one of them is throwing around some hateful comments about the US. and then one of them says, hey, remember Kim. She was pretty cool. and she wasn't everything you are calling Americans now. And that, my friends, is what we call soft political power. It's not military tanks. It's not weapons of mass destruction. It's globalization at its best. It is making people realize that citizens of a country are not the same as the government of that country. and its the reason I might just spend another 365 days here.

**This was written a couple weeks ago, which explains the emotional disconnect from the next two posts.