Hope Keeps Doing that Thing it Does

Dear Reader,

Professor J has left the blogging to me while he's away and as you can see I'm already falling down on the job. Why is it that everything lately wants to pile up and attack on Wednesdays?

The timing of our professor's last post was interesting to me just having watched Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown the night before. In the most recent episode he was on a quest to fulfill a life long dream of traveling to the Congo. A journey that took him through Rwanda. Like most Westerners my knowledge of Africa is courtesy of Isaak Dineson, Dr. Livingston, and the movie, Hotel Rwanda. Seeing the current situation in central Africa (though a small glimpse to be sure) conjured up a twisted mix of hope and despair.

As Professor J pointed out Rwanda is making strides beyond what anyone could have imagined a mere two decades ago. The average person often writes entire areas of the world off in the geopolitical sense. News reports filled with horrific statistics and gruesome images come into our homes we are momentarily shocked and dismayed. Problems closer to home encroach and those ideas are stored away under a file with the name of the country in our minds. In much the same way that we are not amazed that our own children grow up but are astonished when we see the children of friends who have grown, we are often struck years later to find out that a nation has changed immensely while we were otherwise occupied.

The ability of nations to recover can be surprising. The recovery of nations post WWII, with much help from us, must have been shocking to soldiers who saw, what must have seemed at the time,  almost complete destruction. In a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer I read last year, he was sure that a thousand years of history, accomplishment, and contribution were being destroyed. In his mind the only thing about his native land anyone would ever remember would be the terror and death inflicted under the rule of the Nazis.

As Bourdain  crossed from Rwanda, where there was internet access, traffic that flowed properly, and a police presence, and crossed into The Democratic Republic of the Congo the contrast was stark. At first glance it was a country holding on to the last shred of civilization. As he progressed on his travels and met the people living there other things came to light. He came across people trying to hold on until the current circumstances change. A man tending to a research facility abandoned by the Belgians in the 1960s trying to fight back the jungle and mold to protect and keep organized a precious library. Two hundred railway workers who arrive at work each day to work (without pay) with what scant materials they have so that just in case the country recovers, they'll be able to get a train system up and running again. Everywhere a tremendous sense of pride and hope.

Indeed, when Bourdain questioned his guide about what these impoverished people purchase first when they get a little money, he was surprised to hear the answer: soap. Being clean and taking pride in their appearance was a top priority.

Perhaps some of those things that are working in Rwanda can seep across the border. There are warlords and armed militia groups to deal with, but as the Prof reminds us we cannot expect to jump from A to Z...