Where does one begin?

For weeks, I’ve been struggling with how to inaugurate my blog. A post explaining why I’ve packed my life into two-50 pound bags and moved to equatorial Africa seems like the natural place. And I’ve written that piece but I ultimately wasn’t happy with it. I have a clear list of reasons for joining the Peace Corps as a Health Volunteer in Rwanda: I want to expand my understanding of development through living abroad. I want to explore public health work to determine if I want to focus on global health for my career. I like that the Peace Corps emphasizes sustainable, community-based development through cultural integration. I’m excited that I will learn Kinyarwanda and spend over 2 years living in a country most will never travel to.

And while I can write a succinct essay expanding on these reasons, I keep coming to two ideas I actually want to write about.

The first is the inner feeling I have that pushed me to return to Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a feeling I’ve had since I left Uganda in 2014 but have admitted to approximately no one because it sounds naive and uneducated and silly. So here goes nothing: I have this curious, soul-deep feeling to return to the African continent, a feeling I equate to that of love (see, I told you). When talking about the reasons you love a friend or family member, you can list their redeeming qualities but there’s also a feeling you simply have and can’t describe. You just know you love them. I have that feeling about returning to Sub-Saharan Africa. I have my logical reasons but without this innate, hard-to-describe feeling, I don’t think I’d be typing this post from under my mosquito net in a peri-urban Rwandan town. Maybe this feeling is what they call passion?

The other idea I’ve been coming back to is that of transparency. While I feel extraordinarily confident in my decision to move to Rwanda, everyday isn’t rainbows and sunshine (…well, technically everyday is full of sunshine, but I digress). All days are filled with highs and lows, usually one eclipsing the other within 30 minutes. My goal for this blog is to provide a space to verbally process my true Peace Corps experience: the good and the bad, the easy and the hard, the funny and the interesting and the technical aspects of this journey. I am thrilled to share my journey with you, unknown follower, and hope I can shed some insight into Rwandan culture and development in this country. Murakoze cyane for following along.