Seeking: Role Models

So it’s both an amazing and weird feeling to know that people I do not expect (and sometimes I don’t even know!) are reading this blog. I mean, technically, I guess it is a public space but I kind of thought of it as a mass email to people that would be (personally) interested in what I am doing and thinking + personal diary that I would probably appreciate years down when I read it again. But this silly blog has proved to be an opportunity for me to get in touch with people I haven’t talked to in a while, or complete strangers with similar experiences, so thanks for that. It means a world to get emails of encouragement at this place.


I feel like my tone has become unnecessarily morose the past few days. It’s not like my days are continuously bad, I just like to open my lap top and just write when I am in an exceptionally bad mood. It is therapeutic. And once I kind of manage to put everything in a (more or less) cohesive narrative, I get insights that I missed myself. Mid-writing I will usually have an ah-hah, right! moment, and go back and rewrite parts of it. So yeah, knowing how much I used to enjoy writing (especially when it does not have footnotes or does not have to be 40 pages) is at least one thing I will get out of this trip.



Another amazing thing about travelling in this type of place, with my kind of objective (well I guess I simply mean is the non-touristy type) is that you get to meet a lot of people that are simply inspiring. Maybe it’s just the economy, but its hard to find encouraging messages when you are trying to live an unconventional life. I don’t try to be exceptional, or make some kind of a statement through my life (after all, my life is not a symbolism, it is my life, and I have to live it every day, whether I like it or not), but more than often I find myself in an out-of-ordinary circumstance. Like, well, right now, sitting in an internet café in Kigali. WTF. I’m not particularly ‘bad ass’ or brave, if I am anything I am a bit spontaneous and reckless, but somehow, I find myself to be surrounded by no one (quite literally right now haha) and on my own. What happened?


But coming to places like this, I am refreshed to know that the only thing that happened is that I had just become myopic and impatient, perhaps wrapped in a false sense of martyrdom that my life choices are so different. People do still take risks. It’s not always about the money and the superficial fame. People do want to learn, look at the big picture, whether it contributes directly to ‘success’ or not, and do crazy things like travel 40 countries in one summer to just enlighten themselves about the diversity and commonality of the world. People do care, people still do things that they are passionate about, and take time to think about what they are passionate about instead of trudging on the given path – even if it means it takes two career changes and lonely months in a country where the local language has 19 noun cases. And with realistic achievements like getting married, getting a life, a salary etc. Just because I’m not going to be a corporate lawyer does not mean I am going to perish in glorious poverty (yeah, of course I’m not going to be as wealthy as I could be if I did, but let’s be real) It’s a great feeling to feel like there are role models out there I can look up to.



I feel like people who knew me when I was younger (I think they often forget that I am still quite young lol), like friends from childhood and family, are worried that I am losing ‘focus.’ Why all this silly research about a genocide that never affected me personally, if I am not going to stay in the academia? Why all the time spent trying to work on a magazine when I’m not really interested in journalism, or becoming a professor in international relations? Why all this meandering, learning Spanish, traveling, learning art, when I’m not going to make a career out of it? Well, birds of a feather flock together, and I like positive reinforcement, so maybe I just seek out people that I find great, and just reinforce my inherently biased approach to life, but I somehow feel like this impatience in life to find some direct autobahn to a settled lifestyle is a myopic arrogance that overlooks the privilege most of us are born with. Face it, very few people around me worry about where the next meal is coming from. And although we might not all get our dream jobs, dream houses, and send our kids to dream schools, very few of us will suffer the abject poverty and desperation people here (or elsewhere in the world) face on an everyday basis. This is a privilege – a privilege that allows us to think, to learn to explore. Not to insinuate that people who are less well off can’t do this too, but for a lot of us, this process of learning, I think, becomes an obligation – I think we often too easily forget that a privilege and a right is a responsibility. Maybe we should just stop acting like the world is going to fall apart the moment we walk aside the beaten path.



Alas, I end up being all philosophical and didactic, when I started off to write about what I did yesterday. Oh well. It was the same ‘ol anyways – lunch with someone I met here, interview, dinner typing notes, some TV and relaxation, sleep, and interview again in the morning, and obviously, typing away in the afternoon. I should really type those notes up. It’s just that I really don’t like hearing my own voice…do I usually sound that nasal? I swear I don’t whine.



Ah, update: there was a grenade attack at the memorial I frequent (to work with the people there). I was there the day the attack happened, but 7 hours earlier. So yeah, I’m fine, shaken, yes, but what can you do. No one was hurt. Wake up call to a false sense of security? Hope it doesn’t mean anything too dramatic.