Rwandan Wanderings

In the beginning of our time here in Rwanda, our professor Pastor Anastase told us, “When a Rwandan man cries, his tears go inside.” But a heart can only carry so many tears, and at the point of overwhelm and overflow, the Rwandan man must choose to either drown or cry. That afternoon, in the social worker office of Streets Ahead Children’s Center Association (SACCA), T. cried.

This man, for whom the only thing bigger than his heart was his smile, cried. How could he not? How did he not? I had already cried countless times, though I had been here a mere four weeks, as a volunteer with a three hour lunch break. He had been here for over six years, spending every waking minute doing all he can to change the fate of unloved children from poverty to possibility. The very beating of his heart was set to the rhythm of their dancing, their football playing, their wandering on the streets in search of something and someone, their childness guarded by fear and a makeshift fence of confidence, their corroding of the fence by an unexpected sprouting of trust. As the Rwandan drums seemingly unceasingly echo on the thousand hills, so T.’s heart continued to beat. As the drums must be most strong, confident, and unwavering when the dancers are most tired, so T.’s heart beat loudest when the children’s hearts could not.

But I knew why he could not cry. It’s the same reason why the sun reflects off of people’s smiles the brightest in the darkest valleys. Within this culture, smiling is the prescribed cure for every ailment, for “this is life.” Joy is shared and sorrow withheld, for why should we burden others who undoubtedly carry enough of their own? No, we should not. So let us smile, so that the sun may again be bright in this dark valley.

However, two months was obviously not long enough to completely assimilate this muzungu.

I have cried through sorrow, anger, then desperation, pausing as I passed through the brief, choking darkness of hopelessness, and beginning again at the flickered return of sorrow. A mother who fed her son but not his twin sister, who left precious baby girl for dead. A policewoman who slapped a seven year old boy’s face for leaving the home of a stepfather who beat him.

I have cried through awe, bliss, love, then celebration, pausing as I encountered reality too beautiful and fragile to be met with anything less than disbelief, and beginning again when I was finally convinced to believe. The girl who didn't believe she could, celebrating when numbers found their place in her mind. The small boy with the slapped face giving away the bracelet I made for him as if he owned the world though really he owned nothing.

That afternoon, as I sat beside T., I didn't know whether to celebrate rain after a drought or to mourn the sentencing flood. But I did know that, considering all the variables, there was at least some good of my being here as a volunteer tourist. You see, tourists are notorious for breaking the rules of the culture, both intentionally and not. Some may call it boldness, though more commonly it's called ignorance or stupidity. But in this moment, he needed a person bold or ignorant enough to tell him it was okay to cry, though everyone else around him said it wasn’t.

Tourists are also pretty good at recognizing beauty. I mean, that’s why they tour. To see beauty. Contrastingly, ask anyone who lives near a tourist hot spot how many times they’ve visited that place. My guess is not too many. It seems that the longer time spent in proximity to a phenomenon, the easier it is to see its beauty as common. I think similarly, it is possible for the beauty of these children and of SACCA as a whole to become common. Tourists can remind the world again of that beauty.

This is why SACCA does not say goodbye to one volunteer without saying hello to another. They need people bold and stupid enough to resupply their waning pre-discouraged hope, to convince them again that the work they do is inspiring, and to prove it true. They need people to carry in unrealistic dreams, for when reality is so harsh, so loud, there is no way to dream. They need people to interrupt the cycles they’ve clung onto by necessity. They need people to show them the small paths with stubborn flowers sprouting from the cracks and convince them that it’s safe to walk down. They need people with romanticized passions to relight their fires that have burned out.

For four weeks, I was that tourist. I fell in love with the beauty within each of those boys and girls, in the purpose and work of SACCA and its staff with an empathy not yet worn down by reality. I expected and requested and demanded, sometimes boldly, sometimes brashly with naïve hope of healing the hurt around me.

So was it worth it? Was everything worth it? For me, maybe it was.

It was our second walk. Hand in hand, L. and I held tightly to each other against the winds of language barrier and her mental disability that tried to pull us apart. We walked past the school boys and girls who, like me, didn’t quite understand L., but who, unlike me, didn’t want to understand. We walked past the church where I prayed that our walk towards nowhere would take us somewhere, anywhere. We walked past the neighbor who asked where we were going. I feigned confidence. As we walked, and maybe I was dreaming it, but I felt her hand hold tighter onto mine. Her shoulders hung looser. Her eyes held mine for longer. And she smiled. For those few minutes, it seemed like we’ve known each other our whole lives.

Finally, I arrived at the conclusion that we would always be arriving and never arrive. We turned around and walked past the neighbor, the church, and the school boys and girls. As we walked, and maybe I was dreaming it, but I felt her hand slipping from mine, until I didn’t feel her hand at all. I couldn’t see her eyes. I couldn’t see her smile. The few minutes where we knew each other, those minutes were gone.

We arrived at SACCA, Streets Ahead Children’s Center Association, the place she has called home for years. After that day, I never again saw the L. that I knew.

She didn’t leave. She never left and she never will. But she no longer greeted me. She refused my hugs. She avoided my presence. It hurt me, because I wanted to give her love but couldn’t. It hurt me, because I know her heart felt the exact same way.

How could she love me? How could any of those boys and girls love me, knowing that soon I would become just another person in their lives who leaves? They’ve already been abandoned, been shown that their dignity is not important enough to uphold. They’ve already lost their parents, siblings, homes, hopes. I was merely becoming another to add to their lists. How could I be there, knowing that I’m merely proving to them what they already know, that being alone is the state of least broken promises and temporary passions? They’ve already built up their walls. Must I try so hard to break them down, knowing that afterwards the wall they rebuild will be stronger than the first?

What more can be expected of a volunteer tourist? Coming to see, then take for their own selfish gratifications. Reducing sacred beauty to pretty pictures and souvenirs. However, the problem at hand is deeper still, for tourists should tour places and things, not people, especially not children. To do so is a dehumanizing sin.

Yet, this is inevitable with never ending traffic of volunteers. They don’t often stay longer than one week. Not long enough to learn each of these boys and girls names. Not long enough to know that they love to dance, to take photos, to play football, to fight for themselves, to care for the most vulnerable, to love others despite not being loved. Not long enough to know them. Even I, who stayed for four months, only knew a few minutes of L..

So was it worth it? I wish that before every tour, each volunteer is asked, is it worth it? For me, I’m not so sure the answer is yes.

“Well they would do that! We’re four white girls. We stick out like a sore thumb.”

Problem with that statement. Only two of us were white. I and another were obviously asian. Yet, I wonder what it was that made this statement flow so assuredly and unremorsefully. What was it that made her think we were white?

For our class, one of our assignments was to create a new metaphorical word. My word: Moonburn. The process of becoming white. Obtaining whiteness, with all the privileges that come with its identity in a white dominated world. Unlike a sunburn, a moonburn feels good.

My moonburn felt good. In this context, I was no different than other muzungu (foreigner/white person). I had grown up with the privileges of the Western world. I spoke English fluently. My friends were white. In this context, I was just as privileged as if my skin were white.

While the thought of my privilege made me uncomfortable, even almost resistant, I knew that it felt good. It felt good when people in the market pulled me towards their stall, assuming I could afford to buy what I liked. It felt good when small children came to me with open hands, assuming that I was good, assuming that I had enough money to give away. It felt good to so easily get past security at high end hotels and restaurants, and to be so out of place in the poor villages.

It felt good. And while I don’t want to admit it, I must. I must admit that in this place where I am, I have “white privilege.” Not really, but basically.

I could spend all my energy fighting this. And I did for a few days. Frustrated that she dared call me white. Frustrated that she dared compare my privilege to a white person’s. I’m not white. I’m not white.

But I’m privileged. And I must admit it, because only then can I use it for good, rather than merely for self-promotion. I can use my privilege to lift the underprivileged, my power to lift the powerless.

I’ve somehow found myself here again. This place of exchanging-food for money, handmade clothing for imagination, eye-contact for smiles, conversations for friendships, and lastly, fear for love.

Remember here? Remember how I hated the market? Remember how I hated the person I was when I was there? The market brought me face to face with internal prejudices that I wasn’t ready to unearth. I didn’t imagine that the first place I feared here in Rwanda would become the place where my wandering love was found the most.

I’ve learned that one of the best ways to overcome an irrational fear is exposing yourself to it. So I went back to the market after that first time, searching again for that beauty that my culturally imprisoned eyes didn’t let me see. Each time, I found something, something beautiful, until beauty overcame and overwhelmed.

The boys calling out “Sister! Sister!” became my brothers. They became Alexander who is working to help out his mom all while applying to universities to become an engineer. They became Patrick, whose daily salary was characterized by chance and pure hustle. They became Eric, the craziest of them all.

The ladies saying “Come! Come!” became my mothers. They became Anisa, the cutie patootie who always made sure the boys didn’t look while I was changing into my outfits and made sure that my outfits always looked cute. They became Josianne, who etched her artistry into the seams of our dresses and celebrated her successes by suggesting for us to buy her a beer.

The back and forth bartering was no longer an attempt to falsify the worth of the product, to monetize the foreigner’s ignorance for the merchant’s underserved gain. Rather, it became a conversation between two humans from different walks of life seeking to meet at the place where one can give and one can receive. As Dr. Pucci describes, in the marketplace, the exchange becomes less mechanized, and more humanized.

The exchange becomes about the person with the need and the person with the resource supporting one another. The value of the merchandise are no longer solely dependent on themselves, but based on the life that they could bring to the people around them. Objects become art created by artists who by day are fathers, mothers, daughters, brothers, with fathers, mothers, sons, and sisters to feed. It’s a lot harder to exploit people if you can see their eyes as your purchase their toil. It’s a lot harder to demand cheaper clothing and cheaper food when you are staring into the faces of those who will eat less for your indulgences.

What does it say about humanity, if it can create cultures of distrusting children? What does it say about us, if we must even be skeptical of innocence? Is goodness so rare that we have stopped looking for it?

What does it say about me?

Dr. Michael Pucci says that people need hope so that they can make things that are beautiful, instead of incarnating fear. Instead of having knee-jerk reactions to what they don’t know, what they have not tried to know.

“Oya,” I reacted to the small boy with hungry eyes who approached me as I followed the busy night-lit street back home. Oya, I said. No, I told him.

No child would beg if they had no need to. So why was I saying “no”? Did I think I would be harmed if I did not act quickly by my instinctual selfishness? Did I fear that taking time to empathize before responding, instead of reacting then later writing a blog post, did I fear that doing so would be such a great risk?

Earlier that same day, our class visited the Kigali Memorial, to learn about the history and pay respects to victims of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The last room we entered was the children’s room, where faces of children were printed under their names and above descriptions of their favorite foods, best friends, hobbies, ages, last words, and way of dying. My eyes watered as I walked from face to face, silently bidding them hello and goodbye within the same moments. And each moment too late.

In my heart, I felt it, thought I tried so hard to ignore its presence. The monster that I could be. That I partly am.

I felt it. The small sense of pride for the tears I could shed, for the empathy I could feel. Yet, ironically, it must not have been empathy at all. These tears were not for those children, though I had convinced myself that they were. No, these sadistic tears were from a satisfied need for emotional high at the expense of dead babies.

I did not care for them for them. I cared for them for myself. And that type of care does nothing in the face of injustice. That type of care does nothing in the face of violence. That type of care does nothing in the face of a small boy with hungry eyes.

*WARNING. THE FOLLOWING WORDS CONTAIN GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE OF 1994.

The sound of my voice, my whisper, my breath felt too sharp, too strong amidst their breathless, lifeless silence. Sharp, strong, piercing through the memories of their lives as the machetes, clubs, bullets, grenades, penises, sticks, arrows, fires once did to their bodies. No, not once. Sometimes twice. Many times more. Rwanda. April to July, 1994. Far too many.

For the children at Ntarama Catholic Church, twice. First, when their legs were robbed from their bodies. Second, when their heads unwillingly joined with the brick wall of the Sunday school room. Their blood still cries out from that stained wall.

For Anisettia at Nyamata Catholic Church, more than ten times, plus one. Ten unwelcome men entered her body, over and over, concluding their visit with a sharpened stick through every room in the temple of her body. That sharpened stick still remains.

For millions and millions and millions, the number of times is not known. I do not know how many times they broke their bodies. I do not know how many times they broke their spirits. But I do know that one time is already an intolerable far too many.

No, not once. Many times more.

Herero. 1904-1905. Okay that’s enough. Armenia. 1915-1918. Will we stop already? Holocaust. 1940-1945. When will we stop this? Cambodia. 1975-1979. Is this not enough? The Balkans. 1990s. Are we done yet?

ARE WE FUCKING DONE?

Let’s not fool ourselves by answering yes. Our common misconception about Rwanda 1994-that it began in 1994. No, it began in 1990 when all Tutsis in Rwanda were labeled traitors and accomplices to the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which consisted mainly of exiled Rwandans. No, before that, when Tutsis fled the country seeking refuge from the violence of a new Hutu regime. No, before that, in 1959, during the Hutu Peasant Revolution when hundreds of Tutsis were killed. No, before that, when the Belgians created Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities by measuring the roundness of their faces and the length of their noses. No, before that, when the Belgians used the Tutsis to oppress the Hutus. No, before that when British John Hanning Speke decided that Africans were morally evil people in need of colonialism’s saving, except for those with long noses and oval faces. No, no. Even before that.

Another misconception about Rwanda 1994-that we stopped in 1994. Let’s not fool ourselves.

And Dear President Donald Trump, you’re not stopping it.

Because you see, the common seed between all these genocides, is genocide ideology. The idea that someone has more right to humanity than another, because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, gender, identity, wealth, whatever, this is genocide ideology.

And what you have spoken, and what you have allowed by not speaking, is genocide ideology.

Mr. President, you may not be killing millions of bodies yet, but you’ve killed millions of spirits already. And bodies usually end up going where their spirits go. Maybe not yet. And hopefully never. But I will not wait for when they will.

For today, and tomorrow, and maybe the next, I will be silent. For I will not kill these millions of people again with my neglect to mourn.

But for the day after that, I will speak. For I will not kill these millions of people again by pretending they never lived.

And the day after that I will shout. And the day after that. And the day after that. Until your genocide ideology is silenced. And the day after that.

“You do all these things to the victim and then you say it never happened. That is killing them twice.” - Thomas Bergenthal, Holocaust survivor

On Saturday, I was a racist and a misandrist. My disguised prejudice that the differently looking, differently living people in this country were deserving of my judgement, my prejudice was becoming hardened like the red dirt under the Rwandan sun. Primed with self-interpreted safety tips of assuming all people here existed to harm me, I was ignorantly prepared to enter into this cultural experience.

Assume that all children will try to steal your phones.  Assume that men will be pervertedly turned on if your smile is received with eye-contact. Assume that the bus fare collectors will try cheat you for your muzungu (foreigner) money.

Assume, assume, assume. 

I understand. We think these assumptions are necessary for self-protection. That’s always our claim.

Love your neighbor…except at the risk of hurting yourself. Give money to the man with the sign…except when they could be lying and hurting your pride. Stand up for and with a gay person…except when you might be socially shunned. Refuse exploitation of labor…except when cute clothes everywhere else are more money than we want to spend.

Our love too often contingent upon the protecting of self. But who is this self? Is it the privilege of the American, unwilling to let go of power? Is it the irrational fear of the hypocrite, who so unhesitantly shed her bold commitment to equal human dignity she had worn like an stolen medal just the semester prior? Is it the body of wealthy foreigner, whose body is worth more than the bodies of the poor?

I had chosen these eyes. I had chosen to see all people as inherently broken objects unworthy of my Jesus type of love. The kind that lays down power to lift up the powerless. And with these eyes, I become surprised by glimpses of beauty I find, because I assume they shouldn’t be there.

I do not want these eyes. I do not want to be surprised to find beauty, but to expect it. I would rather choose to see the inherent beauty, the intended created Imago Dei within all humanity. I would rather be let down over and over and over again, than to succumb to the narrative with no hope.

How can this begin? Our director Michael Pucci suggests to start by looking for different manifestations of beauty. When we bring into the desert our expectations of life set by an apple tree, we will likely find no life there. But when we listen to the desert in the desert with our eyes, we will see life and beauty as it exists, not as we wish it to exist.

On Sunday, I found beauty, because I looked for it. In Julien, the man beside me on the bus with the kind eyes and determined friendliness despite language differences. In the man who took time to show directions to four lost girls, who even offered his phone number in case we remained lost. In the children whose innocent joy peaked from beneath the ragged stigmas. In the man who shared with me his heart for those children.

These are the eyes I wish to keep. These are the eyes I wish to see this journey through.

Some people are not meant to stay.

Apparently the San Francisco airport did not think we were those some people. So we stayed, waiting an extra six hours for our plane to Istanbul, Turkey to Kigali, Rwanda.

And people who believe in fate, or divine intervention, or something might agree with the airport. That for those six hours we were meant to stay. Otherwise, how would we have met Sonya? Sonya, the Serbian American ex-marine who was traveling to surprise her mother and sister and fix a broken tooth. Sonya, who is too free to be tied down to a man who cannot match the strength of her spirit. Sonya, who cannot eat rice without soy sauce. Sonya, who would join two strange girls in an airport workout session. Sonya, who worked for the military but refused to shoot. Sonya, who waited with us for 1:30 hours for sushi that wouldn't come.

After we were meant to stay, we weren't meant to anymore. Sonya went her way, and we went ours. It was in this moment that I understood letting go. Sometimes by setting the present free from the strings of an expected future, we allow it to carry the weight that it must. And the future doesn't dissipate in this instance. It only changes from expectation to hope, which allows us to freely move towards it.

"AFRICA??!!"

This was the typical reaction I received when announcing to people about my upcoming four month study in Rwanda.

There have been a fair number of reactions clumsily masked by a wavering smile, poorly hiding the perhaps fearful, perhaps disdainful confusion within. Others did not even bother with the packaging.

“You’re gonna lose so much weight!” “Don’t get eaten by lions.” “So are you gonna do some kind of mission work?” “What are Africans? Black people? Like Indians?” “Oh...BE CAREFUL...”

“Why Africa?” they asked with no outward desire for my answer. Well at least, not any answer apart from the molded image they’ve received through miseducation.

“I’m going there to study, to learn” was an answer that could barely squeeze past the solidified generalizations and misconceptions that had barricaded truth from entering in. As if Africa could possibly teach me anything.

And while I cannot deny that the beginning of this post may have an undertone of haughtiness and judgment, I offer that it is not without an abundance of empathy. Yes, I am being judgmental of the ignorant surety and privileged disillusion of these people I’ve shared about. But mostly I am judging myself, who I was and who I still am.

What is judgment? A decided opinion of good and evil. So I have judged that this ignorance, this contented ignorance that I and so many others in this world have, is evil.

What is evil? Taking away the humanity of humans. The stripping of breath or the stripping of identity, both are evil.

I understand. I was there, too, and honestly still very much am. I, too, envisioned Africa as a “country” ridden with mosquitos and poverty and small black children who needed shoes. I, too, envisioned cannibals and uncivilized barbarians waiting for some Westerner to come and finally show them the light.

To my African brothers and sisters, I know you are hurt by the words in the previous paragraph. I am truly sorry that you had to read that. But I think that naming the ignorance is a necessary step towards curing it. And if you have had any encounter with the Western world, I am sure that you have already experienced these sentiments.

I understand. This image is not one we imagined on our own. It was inherited, from generations and generations. It is affirmed through falsely crafted narratives in mainstream media. And we swallow it whole, because there was never any reason to chew.

But there was reason, is reason. So many reasons, my dear friends.

The first reason, is that this misconception is the impact it has on our African brothers and sisters. We disparage them when we refuse to see the beauty and the good in them and in their countries. We wear them down when we force them to constantly defend their identities, over and over again to almost no avail. We bring them death, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, when we perpetuate ideas of “less than,” of “worth less than,” of “not worth our time.” I see this in the eyes of my friends. I see the weariness. I see the temptation to surrender to the seemingly immortality of white (and asian) superiority ideologies. But I also see the fire. I see the determination not to let their existences be completely diminished.

The second reason, is that it hurts us. In our education systems, the histories, stories, discoveries of the countries in second largest continent in the world have been withheld from us. We have been denied such  a great amount of wisdom.

But not all hope is lost. Jane Elliot, a racial justice advocate from America says, “You are not born racist. You are born into a racist society. And like anything else, if you can learn it, you can unlearn it. But some people choose not to unlearn it because they’re afraid they’ll lose power if they share with other people. We are afraid of sharing power. That’s what it’s all about.”

During our orientation for the Go-Ed Africa study abroad trip, program director Michael Pucci warned us not to let the concrete set. He warned us not to let our interpretation of others become solidified in our minds, because that is the best way to stop growth and relationships. Instead, we must take on postures of humility. We must recognize that we each are impoverished in a sense. We must position ourselves to see that we have so much to learn from others, rather than to see that we have so much to teach.

I will leave you with this idea of humility. In every context, let us be open to learning, to seeing beauty and good, to being wrong and being changed.

What is Africa really like then, you might be asking. I’ll tell you when I get there.