Dose of Melancholia, Dose of Philosophia (or something like that)

First of all, thank you so much for reading/staying with me so far – I have received kind messages from a lot of you guys, saying that you have been keeping up with my (frequently unguided and verbose) thoughts and mini-adventures so far, and even enjoyed my posts! I feel like halfway into writing, I sort of forget that I am writing for an audience, but I still appreciate friends being interested in what I have to say.



I actually had a bad day, kind of in a morose mood – it has been 6 days since I got here, but part of me feels like a lifetime has passed. If someone knocked me unconscious, erased part of my memory and told me I had been living in Kigali for my entire life, I would have believed him. But at the same time, when I try to think what I have achieved in the past six days, I really am not sure. Almost nothing. I met some people, looked at some documents, but what came out of it? The central problem is that I am not sure what I am exactly looking for – I feel like a hapless detective thrown into a case where no one wants to tell you anything. I have a general hunch, unsubstantiated by anything, that something worth writing about is near me, but I can’t really pin point what. Every time I enter an interview, the first question is “what are you looking for?” and all I really want to say is, I was hoping you could tell me? And that seems to be something a “researcher” should not be saying.



To do research was not the only purpose, perhaps not even the main purpose, of my second visit to Rwanda. But part of me is impatient and restless, if I don’t get this right real soon, I am in (sort of) big trouble. Damn. I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. Even if I don’t end up with some amazing product of any sort, the past six days, I’ve learned as much as I learn in a semester, and that’s supposed to be great, right? But realistically, it is a little scary to think, I might not have anything material to show how I spent my days here.



Hopefully I will get over this funk soon.



But aside from my brief melancholy, being confronted with yet another crop of muzungus, completely opposite from my kind, has been both the most interesting and frustrating experience. I refrain from naming who I have met, for I feel like I am developing a lot of conflicting, but generally negative feelings about our encounters. But what is shocking to see is the degree of ignorance or disinterest regarding the genocide and the aftermath of the genocide among these people, who are purely interested in “developmental” issues. I obviously come from a very biased perspective, but considering a lot of the tension prior to the genocide, and the disastrous poverty (which they came to “fix” or at least alleviate) was almost directly caused by the incidents of 1994. Surrounded by relatively recent expatriates from Uganda, etc, who themselves have ambivalent relationships with direct survivors, I feel like a lot of said group of foreigners have a very limited understanding of the scope of violence that transpired here. Part of me understands Emmanuel. As much as I appreciate their sincerity and dedication to the country and their ability to bring to Rwanda the excellent skills that they possess, part of me wants to push them into the rooms of Murambi, Kibeho, take them to the stadium in Kibuye, the still bloody room in Kiyovu. The people dead in those places did not legitimize some of the things that are done incorrectly in this country. But it may help them see why forgiveness is such a controversial word here, and why everyone tends to speak in the gray zone.



I understand I am being vague – but I don’t want to offend anyone. I know it is difficult sometimes for people to parcel out the difference between criticizing an aspect and criticizing a person. Maybe there isn’t. But in my head there is.



Which brings me to the topic that had been plaguing my head all throughout dinner- in evaluating actions of entities that were created without explicit moral intent, should we always expect perfectly moral intention in their actions? For example, if a company starts a philanthropic project for simply the sake of increasing their reputation (and not by any pure intent of social justice), should this act be condemned? If a country decides to intervene in a humanitarian situation that is clearly despicable in every moral standard, but in the hope that indirectly it will have a stake in the post-conflict nation, should we stop this from happening as an immoral act? Do entities beyond the individual have a morality, or is it enough to ask for the individuals in the entities to be moral?



And, is it more detestable that a country explicitly states its willingness to ground itself in high ideals of morality, but often fails to live up to their words, or is it worse that some countries don't even try (but technically never holds a "double standard" because it never promised anything beyond its own survival and a very minimal level of decency in the international realm?)



At times I laugh at my own philosophizing. But there is something so much more satisfying about writing down silly thoughts, as opposed to simply having them in my head – don’t you think? ☺