Day 4.2 – Alone

Following the training on Tuesday afternoon, we loaded our duffel bags of donations for the refugee camp on a large bus, grabbed a few things for overnight, and began our first trek into the Rwandan countryside. Our destination for the night was the Seeds of Peace Conference Center on Lake Muhari in the eastern province. We were together, but about to discover the world of alone.

Our spirits were high as we wound our way up and down the hills with countless banana trees and valleys where farmers were working their fields with hand tools. Unlike my drives through West Texas where you might travel miles and miles without seeing anyone along the road and where country homes are built far away from the road and the prying eyes of passersby, there were mud houses and people distributed pretty evenly along the roadway.

Photo Credit: Betty Gilmore
Photo Credit: Betty Gilmore

My mind captured snapshots of the rapidly passing scenes as we alternated through countryside and villages. I frequently saw people who were alone . . . working alone in a mountainside field . . . peddling alone on a bicycle . . . playing alone in the dirt in front of a mud hut with a tin roof . . . sitting alone on a rock with seemingly nowhere to go and nothing to do.

As I considered this posture of aloneness, I wondered if that’s all it was. Aloneness, but not loneliness. And somehow, I felt like these Rwandans were, at the moment I saw them, alone but not lonely. They seemed content.

Photo Credit: Betty Gilmore
Photo Credit: Betty Gilmore

Capturing these solitary portraits of humankind brought a new perspective as I remembered times through my life when I had been alone, but not felt lonely. Perhaps these lovely people, like me, thought of these times as mere intervals before they were reunited with others — a more telling view of their role in the world and the timing that places them with people and without people.

Or, perhaps it was more something about their connection with God as creator and his creation. A tie to a larger purpose for all things that seemed to transcend the momentary silence of individual existence. A joyfulness simply to be a part of a larger story.

Barreling along the countryside with six companions who had become like family, I looked forward to meeting the Congolese refugees the next day and I wondered if, even in the midst of a crowded camp, we would see individuals who were experiencing some things alone.

And, I began to connect with these people as individual souls. No longer a nameless, faceless gathering of people. Each and every one of them, alone, an essential and important person in our world.