{"id":66,"date":"2017-10-06T04:56:41","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T04:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/?p=66"},"modified":"2017-11-08T18:22:55","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T18:22:55","slug":"unexpected-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/2017\/10\/06\/unexpected-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"Unexpected Friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Haley and I with an AAA artisan after an interview<\/p><\/div>\n

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Haley learning how to weave from an Artisan<\/p><\/div>\n

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Agnes and I conducting an interview<\/p><\/div>\n

Months in the classroom were spent preparing for time in the field, learning the ins and outs of social entrepreneurship and the companies we would be working with. A large part of this preparation consisted of trying to learn more about the culture we were about to spend two months in. When I found out I would be working in Rwanda, my first thought immediately jumped to the genocide. I think it is what most people first think of, especially when unfamiliar with the region. The role the genocide played in my interactions with artisans and overall time in Rwanda is still very difficult to talk about. Partly because of the gruesome events that occurred but another is people in the country want to move past it and show others the beauty in Rwanda.<\/p>\n

I knew that working in a developing country would mean confronting degrees of poverty and marginalization, but I was not prepared to confront the truth of such an inhumane occurrence. Part of our work with the social enterprise was interviewing artisans about past experiences before working for All Across Africa. Almost all of these interviews lead to different anecdotes about personal experiences in the genocide. Most describes moments of watching friends and family being killed in front of them, or losing children from starvation while trying to escape into refugee camps. Hearing their experiences was one of the most moving parts of my time there because they shared with us such personal stories when they didn\u2019t have to. I was amazed with the strength of the women to reflect upon such traumatic events and label it as a tragedy but also as something that they can grow from. Furthermore, I was even more amazed with the sheer joy each artisan had while meeting with us. Although they lived through something so horrific they still have an immense appreciation and love for life and other people. In fact, every single person I met in the country greeted me with love and a sense of welcoming. It is important to reflect upon how the genocide impacted my time in Rwanda because I still don\u2019t think I have understood it completely yet. Despite this, I came back wanting to share with everyone how impressive the country and people are. The relationships I made in Rwanda were what really showed me how beautiful the country is despite its history.<\/p>\n

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Agnes at Lake Kivu<\/p><\/div>\n

With that being said,\u00a0one of the most treasured relationships I will always hold onto is that with our translator Agnes.\u00a0The All Across Africa staff is all men and this was an interesting environment to be working in. Haley and I got along well with everyone but having another woman of the same age work with us made it easier. Although I felt a welcoming love from all of the artisans, there was a true bond of friendship formed with Agnes. We might come from different places and have complete different backgrounds yet the way I was able to interact with her was how I would with a friend from home and it some aspects even better. It was amazing to see as the weeks went on how cultural barriers started to disappear and we began to learn from each other without any judgment. Growing up we are hopefully taught to respect differences and understand others point of view. I have always tried to do this, but my relationship with Agnes helped me realize prior to the fellowship I had been surrounding myself with people similar to me. It can be easy to respect differences and understand others when they come from almost identical backgrounds. Part of the reason why our friendship was so exciting was because we brought such different experiences and understanding to the table. Whether we discussed heavy topics such as religion and politics or fun ones like food and relationships it was always interesting to see what we agreed or disagreed on.<\/p>\n

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Selfie of me, Agnes, and Haley at Lake Kivu<\/p><\/div>\n

A lot of my respect and love for Rwanda came from my relationship with Agnes because she was able to show me a world outside of the social enterprise. I had a great experience with All Across Africa and I don\u2019t think it will be my last time working within the field of social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, my exciting relationships with Agnes and the artisans are what have started to make me think about future vocation. I am still wrestling with how I will move forward from this fellowship but the open conversations and experiences I had in Rwanda made me want to create similar relationships between other people. I learned the most when I engaged thoughtfully with different people within the country and I think our country and others could benefit from these honest conversations. Hopefully I can accomplish this by continual work with developing countries through some form of international development or relations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Agnes and I right before entering bat caves on our vacation<\/p><\/div>\n

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Agnes outside our home in Kigali<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Months in the classroom were spent preparing for time in the field, learning the ins and outs of social entrepreneurship and the companies we would be working with. A large part of this preparation consisted of trying to learn more … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2034,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"christinaharris","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/author\/christinaharris\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Months in the classroom were spent preparing for time in the field, learning the ins and outs of social entrepreneurship and the companies we would be working with. A large part of this preparation consisted of trying to learn more … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/christinaharris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}