Rwanda reflection : new eyes?

I am absolutely convinced that my time in Rwanda has changed my perspective. I am equally convinced that I can never analyse for myself what that means. I chose the quotation from Proust as the title for this blog because I both expected and hoped for new eyes on the world. The process has been unexpectedly physical. My perspective has been changed not so much through observation, listening, reflection, contemplation and analysis (these seem to me now very European processes), but much more through physical means. I have been changed by -

living under the intensity of the equatorial sun and equatorial rain;
waiting in queues or for meetings which start hours late;
driving for hours along seemingly endless dirt roads;
struggling by car or on foot through the clinging orange mud of the 9-month rainy season;
standing in the homes of those living on the edge of starvation in desperate housing conditions;
listening to long hours of incomprehensible Kinyarwanda with only limited translation;
coping 3 times with skin infections which required minor surgery;
hearing other ex-pats recount their inner and outer struggles;

None of this is by way of complaint and I don’t at all regard this as a list of suffering. It’s simply that if I have been changed at all is by experiencing these things directly and also that it is in the struggles rather than the many good times that the changing has happened. Having said that, I still need to wait to be completely at home in Scotland before I will know whether there has been any permanent change and perhaps in any case that is only for others to judge.