US author Thomas Wolfe wrote over 80 years that you “can’t go home again”. But can you ‘come home’ again? During my seven-week seasonal break from writing this and its sister “Leading Rwanda” columns, I returned to my former home of Austin, Texas for the first time in nearly two years. It was wonderful to see, hug and spend time with my beloved daughter Emma, her boyfriend Mitch and their other parents. I also enjoyed talking with old friends, colleagues and clients again while safely fast walking around Town Lake or sharing delicious breakfast tacos, sausage kolaches and barbecue ribs outdoors in the sweltering heat, which was better than the freezing air-conditioning inside. I was meant to travel to both coasts for work but Delta variant surges and cancellation of face-to-face work events led me to stay the whole two weeks in Texas where I had a chance to view my former home of 19 years in a whole new light. And it was not a pretty sight. The most pressing issue for the whole state was not surprisingly Covid, which has infected more than four million Texans and killed nearly 65,000 of them – over 50 times the number of deaths in a state that is just more than twice as populous as Rwanda. While I was there, there was a bizarre confrontation that I doubt would ever happen here in Rwanda. As hospital beds filled up and ICU units reached near breaking point, many cities and schools wanted to introduce or maintain mask mandates to offer some extra protection against Covid. Not only did the governor Greg Abbott not support these reasonable measures but he actually threatened legal and financial punishment for those who acted to protect their people. I also came to view the city of Austin in a new light. This city had always been defiantly different from the rest of Texas: a liberal ‘blueberry’ on top of the conservative red ‘tomato soup’ of state politics. It had always prided itself on being a uniquely vibrant, “weird” blend of central government, academia, hi-tech innovation, entrepreneurship, green consciousness and live music. But in less than two years since my last visit, what I heard from friends and saw with my own eyes were a marked division and decline in this formerly fun and thriving city. While Californians and others are bidding up house prices and rents to new extremes – my old house, which sold for just over $200,000 in 2005, might now be ‘worth’ a million or more – there also seemed to be a tangible sense of malaise, alienation and abandonment. Due to city policies and rising house prices and rents, more and more people have lost their homes and are now living on the streets. Some friends even had rat infestations in their still-desirable neighborhoods and houses. As I drove around, I noticed once-familiar restaurants and stores that had been closed, boarded up and graffitied and it seemed that there were a lot less people enjoying the nightlife, even near the famed 6th Street with all its bars and clubs. One evening after dinner I was walking to my rental car in the Warehouse District at around 11 pm and realized that I was the only person on what had usually been a bustling street at that time. I saw someone lurking in the shadows and for a moment, I felt a fleeting fear and panic for the first time ever there. All the people without masks didn’t make me feel safe either. “Austin is not the city it used to be” was a common refrain amongst my friends there. Some were even thinking of leaving Austin for good. “I just want to get out of here. Anywhere. Can I come home to Africa?” said one young African American man, receiving donations at the Goodwill charity. I was asking myself the same question as this young man well before the end of this very intense experience that left me both enriched and depleted at the same time. Nowhere is perfect. And as Trappist monk Thomas Merton said, “We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.” But I do believe that Rwanda is perfect for me right now and this conclusion seemed to be validated just after I ‘came home’ when my work permit was renewed for another two years. This is the ninth in a monthly series of personal columns, entitled “Letter from Kigali”. Each month, local resident and writer, Jeremy Solomons – who was born and educated in England of Jewish, Lebanese and Persian heritage and naturalized in the USA - shares a unique perspective on what is happening in Rwanda, Africa and the rest of the world. The views expressed in this column are entirely those of the writer who can be reached at jeremy@jeremysolomons.com
