As the fellowship year concludes, I have been searching for a caption. Full disclosure: I don’t have one. Nor do I expect to arrive at a phrase that is inclusive of all the brilliant and challenging moments this year has been.
So instead, I decided I would share a caption story. It is something small, but it’s a moment that anchors for me many of the sentiments and motivations of this year. My inspiration for the story came in reading American National Public Radio’s new blog on health and “all sorts of development.” Instead of opting for an all encompassing title, the authors called this blog “Goats and Soda.” I love the name. I love how specific and relatable it is. My story is about buses and beans. And really, it’s about laughter and the human-ness that we all share – the human-ness that makes us all equal, and equally deserving of health; But it begins with buses and beans.
On Sundays, I ride the bus. It’s often an all-day affair getting back to my rural placement site, and one I have come to very much enjoy. This particular Sunday, about a month ago, I was on my way back from Kigali, Rwanda’s capitol city. The bus park in the capitol is full of women with boxes of crackers and drinks, each tapping at the bus windows, saying “Amazinajuis. Waterandjuice.” Beggars tap along behind them. It is a place that always makes me thankful for my arms and my legs.
As we roll out of the city, clouds of dust billow up from behind the bus. The tea plantations of southern Rwanda spread out in late afternoon. The bus is filled with the familiar pulse of Umva! – Listen! – and the lilting chorus of Kinyarwanda gospels. Then, suddenly, there comes a loud mechanical pop and we shudder to a stop.
“Oh, oh, oh,” laughs the driver.
My seatmate turns to me. “It is somehow normal,” he says, shaking his head.
“Somehow,” I nod, and I watch as two men approach from a nearby field and begin to push the bus backward. Soon we gain enough momentum to lurch into a forward gear and onward we go. We zoom down the hills; we pass square, brick homes, and leaning into the hairpin turn, I forget to be thankful for my arms and my legs and hang on. We teeter over muddy creeks and arrive, a little jostled, in Kibeho. There’s an elderly woman in a litter being carried to the health center on the shoulders of four men, and there are elements of both sadness and distant hope in their slow progression. Behind them, I walk home.
When I reach the house my co-fellow and I share, our neighbors, four men who work for Rwanda’s National Statistics Bureau, are sitting in our front yard with plates of steaming matoke. The charcoal stove is smoking below a pot of beans, and the banter is merry.
“Amakuru? How are you?” Asks one of my neighbors.
“I am…” I begin, leaning against the brick, searching for the Kinyarwanda word, “Ibishyimbo. Happy.”
“Ibishyimbo?” he laughs, then, continuing in English, “Beans? You are beans?”
I laugh too. In Kinyarwanda the word for happy – ibyishimo – and the word for beans – ibishyimbo – are remarkably similar. We’re all laughing now. We’re tired; the joke spirals. We point at the cooking pot and double over. We’re four Rwandan, Catholic, older, men and one American, agnostic, younger, woman, and in this moment, none of that matters. Of course it doesn’t. When I think about “equity,” I hope for more moments like this.