Breaking the habit

It was a hard thing to get round to telling my bosses at work that I was leaving. The discussion was not so hard, in fact very easy. After 7 years with the company and now in a senior position, I'm comfortable (that word again) and for the most part appreciated. These are powerful drugs.

I can see that this is what makes re-entry harder than leaving - ex-pats are usually (relatively) comfortable and appreciated, but then return to a society where they have lost their position and need to re-establish everything. However, I am not even away yet, this is all a bit premature!

There is a very important spiritual experience here, which I am just about to enter - renunciation. Compared to many, many people, what I am giving up is trivial. I am sure I will be more than compensated by life in Rwanda. I hesitate even to describe my situation in these terms, but it still involves the leaving behind of things which have become important, even addictive.

The laying aside of privilege, security and familiarity will, I am sure be one of the main challenges of the months ahead and I approach it with some trepidation.

This could be the last time

I'm not announcing the imminent and premature demise of this blog, but referring to the song by the Blind Boys of Alabama. I got it for my birthday last year and it has been something of a theme tune through preparations for leaving Scotland. The last birthday in Scotland for a while, the last Christmas until 2008, the last snowfall in early March (surely!).

All of these will be hopefully resumed at some point, but there is a darker, more serious side to all of this, because there may also be some real and permanent "last times" with people I know and love. There have been enough family funerals in the last few years, including some of our generation, for this to be a stark reality that occasionally brings me up short.

It is true, of course, that each time we say goodbye, or even goodnight, could be the last time, but we don't live as if it is. Leaving for Rwanda is causing me to be more appreciative of the times I have with people, to reflect on how I value them and hopefully to give more to relationships. The pain of separation is lurking just under the surface, though. I'm sure it will emerge more as departure approaches.

On the horizon

I'm now starting to notice how my whole perspective on life in Scotland has a very definite horizon in mid-August. There's nothing beyond that, as we hope to fly out to Rwanda then. There's no question about it, even 5 months away, it colours everything.

Preparation for Rwanda is also taking up an increasing amonut of time. This week the big thing is buying air tickets. This is one of the most irreversible things we have done so far, not just because of the large amount of money, but because it is an action. To explain - we have been thinking and talking about Africa for a few years now, telling other people about it for a few months, but we are now in a new stage of taking actions to go to Rwanda specifically, not just Africa in general.

Comfort

Comfort – cocoon.

Changes priorities;
Conceals need;
Clouds horizons;
Closes eyes;
Constrains movement;
Cramps muscles;
Cripples risk-taking;
Chokes spirit;
Congeals blood;

Comfort – coffin.

Insights from Northern Ireland

I watched 2 of the BBC programmes with Desmond Tutu in N Ireland, bringing some of his experience in "Truth and Reconciliation" to bear on a different situation. Riveting, harrowing stuff.
The Rwanda connection is two-fold - one of the main themes was how people can live alongside those who have murdered family members and one of Tutu's assistants was the Scottish widow of a Rwandan genocide victim.
The Northern Ireland setting made me realise how relatively minor is the sectarianism in the West of Scotland and how much deeper is the trauma in Rwanda. But can we compare these things?
The recruiting, grooming and training of young men by paramilitaries on both sides was very striking to me - some of them were deeply ensnared in the violence before they had left their teens and it completely shaped their worlds. It took growth into middle age, changing of the political situation, personal tragedies and often prison before they "repented" (not necessarily in the Christian sense, but in thinking differently). The leading astray or corrupting of the young always seems to me one of the most culpable of things.

If there was even a tiny insight into Rwanda, it was how deeply the grief of bereavement by violence can affect individuals and families, how difficult it can be to come to terms with and how long the effects can last. To use Tutu's words, it was indeed "humbling" to get a glimpse of other people's lives like this. I don't believe that outside of prayer, there is really anything we can do to prepare ourselves for facing this in Rwanda. It is too unimaginable. Humbling.....