The Opposite of Apathy.

And then we touched down in Kigali, in that land where the air smells of fire, and it entered my soul. Without asking my name, without worrying how we could bridge the ocean of language and experience between us, the Rwandan women grabbed me by the arm and squeezed straight down to my spine; checking, it seemed, for the life that filled it. For the vitality that brought me there, looking at them, sweating and crying and wheezing with grief as the weight of their stories sunk in. Each day that we were in Rwanda, interviewing our sponsored students and checking in on each cooperative’s project—everything from sewing to fish farming, from Icerecyezo to Tubehotwese as we bounced through the hills in a van that took potholes like lead pipe—I became convinced of our work’s sustainability. Here is a country rebuilding itself in the wake of devastation, finding hope in the darkest of places; hope that is moving through the land like fertilizer, fuelling a brighter future in the same way that the goats from World Dance are fertilizing the soil. In Santa Barbara, when we throw a dance party and wire money for livestock, it’s more than the lives being saved; which, for the record, is about forty-seven families per cow. It’s one more opportunity for Rwandans to come together under the Umuvumu tree at Never Again cooperative, passing bowls of salted peanuts back and forth as they plan for the future: people who, twenty years ago, were embroiled in one of the worst atrocities in history. Though still reeling from the genocide, they are not content to be defined by it; and that concept, never again, is as pure as each sponsored student is brave. “I can’t wait to sponsor someone else,” they’d tell us, quaking in their delicate English. “I can’t wait to help another student to have the same chance as me.”

This selflessness is the opposite of apathy. This community-based thinking, innate in the new generation of Rwandans, is what fuels World Dance as well: we heal by helping others, looking outward while supporting one another in softening toward ourselves. Best of all, it’s because we dance—in Rwanda, until sweat poured down our faces, until our cheeks hurt from smiling, until a thin film of dirt coated our teeth—that this connection occurs. What defined this trip, forever separating it from the us-and-them volunteerism that had troubled my traveler’s soul, is the fact that we danced. We touched and were touched, losing ourselves in the wordless exchange of meeting one another’s deepest needs, using our common language to speak what we feel most: that we are one.

I don’t think I’ll ever know what the world’s medicine is, but if asked, I would say it is gratitude. Every morning that we woke up in Rwanda, seven women from all walks of life, I tasted it: sprinkled in my weak, instant coffee, over my boiled egg, and in the avalanche of bananas gifted to us, which we found—like leftover Fiesta confetti—in every nook and cranny. Gratitude. For what has come before, what has come between (us), and what ultimately brings us together: Love. In the end, whether this trip was two weeks or two years, it remains in the folds of memory: and even when the smoky smell dissipates, when the words begin to fade into a mush of soft syllables and sound, my body will remember. The heart remembers, even when the mind forgets; both good and bad, it’s all there. Through the body, we remember… so through the body, we seek to change. And that’s what World Dance for Humanity is all about, Charlie Brown. One dance at a time, one step at a time; full-hearted, forgiving, and forward.