10/20/2019 0 Comments Unlocking JoyJuly 22nd of this summer was the beginning my 6th week in Rwanda. I reflected in my journal that afternoon that “I feel the most in touch with myself that I’ve ever felt in my life. I feel in ‘flow’. Like the walls around my soul have been torn down and I’m free to feel every deep, passionate, aching feeling possible.”
During my time in the field, I had the unique opportunity that many teams don’t have to form close bonds with the communities I worked with. Our research was centered around two PICO cooperatives, Nyange and Mumeya, whom Nick and I met with on a weekly basis. Going into this summer, I knew we’d be working closely with the two communities, but I never expected that we would form such close relationships with those them. After all, we couldn’t even communicate without an intermediary. They speak Kinyarwanda; I speak English. Every exchange of ours would be somewhat impersonal and would always have to pass through a filter. I couldn’t have been more wrong. One of the biggest lessons the cooperatives taught me this summer was how verbal communication is only a minor component of human connection. I formed true, genuine friendships with these people. We laughed together and have inside jokes. And we can’t even speak the same language. What, if not verbal communication, facilitated the creation of these deep emotional bonds? During our first visit with Mumeya, the cooperative members took us to the grand opening of a nearby school they had helped get under construction. Using skills they acquired through PICO trainings and uniting to hold their local governments accountable, they had worked together to see these classrooms to completion. Now, instead of having to walk miles and miles to school, local girls and boys had classrooms right in their backyard. After doing our initial introductions, they were eager to get to the celebration. We piled into our van with the cooperative members and started bumping along the red dirt roads, up and down the hills through and endless sea of banana trees. At last, we drove down the hill into a dense crowd of vibrantly colored, flowing dresses as the whole community danced and sang. As soon as we stepped out of the van, Nick and I were greeted with smiles and pulled into the middle of the circle. We twirled and clapped and laughed and did our best to sing along.
I was endlessly inspired by the chance to witness the miracles PICO is performing in Rwanda first-hand. Also during my 6th week in the field I wrote, “Today Nick and I had a meeting with Fr. Innocent that was just another reminder to me about how moved I am by the work PICO is doing here in Rwanda. I don’t know… I guess, I guess maybe there’s just a sense of comfort or hope that comes from the proof of what people in the deepest poverty can do to improve their quality of life if they are given the tools to recognize and unlock their own potential and decide to join together to work towards a common goal. It’s so simple yet so abstract that it seems too good to be true. But it is true. I get to witness it with my own eyes.”
I am so endlessly inspired by the drive and hard work of my friends in Nyange and Mumeya. The days of our field visits could be very taxing. I’d normally wake up sometime between 5 and 7 am, grab a quick breakfast, and then be on the road. Nyange was a 1.5- to 2-hour drive and Mumeya was anywhere from 3 to 4 hours. On the drives, Nick and I would review the lesson plans we created for the day and run them by Kiki for any additional input. I’m definitely not a morning person, and it was hard getting myself out of bed in the mornings. During the drives to the cooperatives, I was sleepy and often on edge. As soon as we would pull up to the cooperatives, everything completely changed. I immediately turned on. Working with them lit a fire inside of me. It was complete joy. I loved it. I was absolutely in flow. I got to take all the business knowledge I’d accumulated in the classroom over the past three years and share it with others in a tangible and meaningful way. I got to work closely with people I deeply cared about. I got to see the gears turn and to experience the happiness of watching the faces of my friends change when a difficult concept finally clicked for them. I got to work in a dynamic learning environment where everyone came to the table driven by an intrinsic passion and excitement. It's not an entirely new feeling. It's the same way I feel when a student comes to me in the writing center with a paper they're really passionate about, or when I get a minute to sit outside with my watercolors and escape reality, or when I would spend mornings tutoring a high school English class, or when I get to put a pen to paper and absolutely lose myself in the process of translating ideas and memories and emotions into the written word. Over these past three years, and especially this summer, I've discovered how it feels to pursue experiences that I'm truly passionate about, and I'm addicted to it.
I’m incredibly thankful for this experience because it’s taught me the overwhelming joy that comes from living out my vocation. It’s an infectious feeling that I crave relentlessly. And now that I know what it feels like to experience this vocational joy, I am going to seek it out tirelessly. I’m realizing that it may not have been that I was “happier” in Rwanda. In fact, I experienced plenty of moments of sadness during my time abroad. Rather, I was experiencing a deep and fulfilling sense of joy unmatched by anything I’d felt prior. Never had I experienced that joy sustained for so long. All of my previous encounters with it have been brief moments in my day-to-day life where I’ve felt the flutter of a spark in my heart. This summer was 8 weeks of a full-on fire. While I was preparing to leave Rwanda, I thought coming back to SCU’s campus was going to seem foreign, strange, and distant to me. The reality ended up being much more discomforting. When my Uber pulled up to campus, everything was perfectly familiar. It was as if I had never left, but I had left. Nothing around me felt different, but I felt different. My time back has been met by many emotions. There’s the frustration of not being able to adequately communicate the ins and outs of my experience to everyone here at home. There’s the uncertainty of what the future and post-grad has in store for me. And more than anything there’s a gaping emptiness. Being back, I’ve wracked my mind over all the discomfort and emptiness I’ve often felt. I think in many ways I’ve been going through a sort of withdrawal since nothing in my life right now quite compares to the level of joy I was immersed in just a couple months ago.
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AuthorEmily Fagundes | Marketing Student & Global Social Benefit Fellow at Santa Clara University Archives
November 2019
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