Each day I would go back to my host Kiki’s home and share with her my musings. Kiki, a poet, playwright, performer, and entrepreneur, would graciously be my sounding board as I tried to uncover how I fit into this beautifully laid out puzzle. From the moment I made the conscious decision to come to Rwanda, things had fallen into place and a yellow brick road paved itself before me.

Making the best possible use of my time was weighing heavily. I shared with her my thoughts about people that have the freedom to dream, be it creative freedom, physical freedom, etc. I wondered aloud if the Rwandan/African public education systems or post-colonial cultures encouraged creative thinking, conceptual thinking, or imagination, knowing what her response would be. I wanted to wrap my head around the idea that perhaps African people, as she phrased it, ".. are engrained with the idea to erase and destroy," because they, largely, are never given the freedom to dream. These images are just of my surroundings, photo-sketch book entries.