SERENDIPITY
 

As I walk down the dirt road from my job, headed
slowly home, I pass a few people wandering here
and there as their work day ends; I amble past
an old home with a corrugated metal roof, bricks
holding down the sheets of metal from blowing away,
a light breeze tossing laundry on ropes strung between trees,
 
my mind wandering in a thousand directions
with no particular destination in mind, just
the pleasure of reverie -- when I hear song,
not the radio, not a recording, but a small choir
singing in Kinyarwanda, six or seven
female voices and a couple of men, their
 
voices rising and falling from the home's
living room, a beautiful repetitive melody
enhanced by constantly shifting harmonies,
counterpoint melodies, and one male voice
chanting or speaking underneath the rise
and fall, the same voice lifting in ecstatic
 
soaring flight above the others, a song at once
celebratory and deeply sad, the melody ascending
and tumbling, repeating itself again and again, every time
it seems to reach an end, the male leader
bursts into an impassioned chant which leads
all back into close harmonies which
 
stop my homeward journey; I stand still,
eyes shut, and listen, nearly weeping.
I hear someone close by and open my eyes to see
two young women passing by who ignore me but are
quietly singing with the song coming from the home.
I realize I have been standing in one place for ten minutes
 
or more.  People at a nearby cross street are staring at me, 
but I can't move along; I sway in slow time
to the music which continues to flow through
the neighborhood; and then I realize a large vehicle
has stopped by me, and a Rwandan friend leans out the window
to ask whether I am okay. I explain why I am standing there,
 
and he says, "Ah, a choir," and turns off
his engine with a smile to listen, only
to discover the music has ceased.  I decline
a ride and walk homeward with the music
still rising and falling in my memory.  
I do not know whether the music was religious,
 
or folk song, or political, or celebratory, or grieving,
but hours later I still hear the music
as I go about my nightly ablutions. I realize
I have been changed without ever seeing those
responsible for the change.  I have heard
on a dirt road from a ramshackle home, music
 
rough hewn, homemade, finer than what I could find
in a concert hall while entertained by highly trained
professional musicians.  I have heard music 
from the blood and marrow of people singing
because it defines who they are.
I have listened to the heartbeat of a people.
                                                        January 2013, Kigali, Rwanda