Giving Thanks

"I don't care how poor a man is; if he has family, he's rich."

- Dan Wilcox & Thad Mumford, M*A*S*H

Family can means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  Sometimes we're born into them and other times we make them for ourselves.  Last year I spent Thanksgiving on the other side of the world, far removed from everything I had ever known and from everyone I ever cared about.  Although that Thanksgiving was important and unforgettable in its own right, it only made this Thanksgiving all the more special.  It really made me think about how far I've come in the last year and the importance of all the amazing and wonderful people in my life.

It has been a long year of adventure and change.  These four families of mine, which I thank my lucky stars for, are what made it all worthwhile.  This is what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving.





The family I was born into, the one I inherited when I arrived wide-eyed and excited in this world, is by far more than I could ever wish for.  Although we are populated with slightly off-kilter characters, we are supremely real and always full of love.  They are the people you want to have in your corner, the ones who would do anything for one another.  They are everything, and I don't know where I would be without them.  We are the island for misfit toys, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Its been said that friends are the family you choose for yourself, and I hope that everyone is as blessed as I am to have ones like mine.  We love each other even when we hate each other, and we have far more stories of our misadventures than I can even begin to keep track of.  Although none of us know what is ahead for us after graduation doomsday rolls around, I know that they will always hold a place in my life and in my heart.

My third family is the one I spent last Thanksgiving with.  Luke said it best in his Thanksgiving toast: our experiences are defined by the people we share them with.  We crash-landed on the other side of the world and found ourselves part of a new kind of family.  When the world was hard and difficult to understand, we found comfort in each others embrace and connection in each others knowing glances.  We shared an immeasureable amount of Tusker, chapati, hilarity, and hard times.  Together we braved an indefinable experience and came out not only alive but a bit better for it on the other side.  It may be long before I see many of them again, but they will forever be a part of me.  They are my spirit animals.

If you are ever blessed enough to have a family welcome you with open arms and loving hearts and call you one of their own, you will know what it means to be loved.  In both Uganda and Rwanda, my two families called me their firstborn, their sister, their auntie, and their friend.  They told me their stories, taught me their ways, and listened intently as I shared my own.  My Mama Rose in Gulu laughed as Bridget plaited my hair and told me she would start saving that very day so she could fly herself and my sisters to my wedding someday.  If that doesn't make me her daughter, I don't know what does.  My own mom told me that Mama Rose's spot was already reserved at the family table for that day.  I think its safe to say that yes, they can be counted amongst my family.

If you subtract anyone from this equation, I would not be the person I am today.

This Thanksgiving, and every Thanksgiving before and after this, I am thankful for the people who help make me who I am.  Who laugh, learn, and grow with me day in and day out.

I love you all more than you will ever know.

"The family.  We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."

- Erma Bombeck

Maybe Just Love

"I have to believe God is like the people who can't sleep at night because of the pain of someone halfway across the world.  Religion should only ever lead you to stand with your neighbor in pain.  Who cares what you call it?  Maybe just love."

-Brynn Muir

The brilliant Brynn Muir is my dear friend and fellow traveler.  We have loved, hated, and longed for Uganda and Rwanda over the past year.  We have laughed, cried, hurt, and healed together.  Even now, almost a year since living and breathing East Africa, we still bleed our love for humanity, a direct result of the horrors we have witnessed.

This is not about religion.  This is not about nationality.  This is not about black, white, brown, or purple.  And by this, what I mean to say is life.  This is about the single thing that binds us all together, the one thing we all have in common in a world that seems so hell-bent on pointing out the differences, and it is simple: we all just want to be loved.


All I can conceivably say on the subject that wherever you're from, whatever faith gets you through the hard times, we must all remember that at the end of the day... the answer is love.  It is the moral of the story, the whispered last words, the grand finale, the epilogue.

When we find a way to stand together in solidarity and embrace one another, to focus more on what unites us rather than what divides us, our world will know peace.  When we finally realize that yes, that thing that's happening in that place to those people... well, it matters.  It affects us.  When we decide that our voices will be heard and that HEY, we have something important to say, we will hold our own, stand tall, and effect change in our world.  At long last, the world will be ours again.  Together.

"Love is the answer, at least for most of the questions in my heart.  Like why are we here?  And where do we go?  And how come its so hard?  It's not always easy, and sometimes life can be deceiving.  I'll tell you one thing, its always better when we're together."

- Jack Johnson

Fifteen Years

A list of crimes for which you can be sentenced to fifteen years in prison:

• Sale of narcotics.
• Burglary.
• Assault.
• Home invasion.
• Murder.
• GENOCIDE and CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

According to THIS New York Times article, Grégoire Ndahimana has been sentenced to fifteen years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity.  Wait, what?!

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Grégoire Ndahimana was the mayor of Kivumu, which is described in the article as "one of the bloodiest killing fields in the campaign to eradicate the ethnic minority."  In 1994, Ndahimana took part in the slaughter of thousands of Tutsis, including organizing a ruse in which a local priest promised refuge in his church, only to eventually bulldoze the building, killing all 2,000 inside.

Forty-three genocidaires have been convicted in the ICTR, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a special UN tribunal organized to prosecute top leaders and organizers of the genocide.  (Lower level participants have been prosecuted in local Gacaca Courts, not international courts.)

I AM OUTRAGED... to say the least.  Fifteen years?  Fifteen years for GENOCIDE?!  For CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?!  What are we THINKING?!

Every action that international governing bodies take (I'm looking at you, UN...) have direct and sometimes severe consequences.  These decisions send ripples around the world.  What does it say that organizing a genocide, which is in my humble opinion the most violent and atrocious crime against humanity, gets you the same prison sentence as a drug offense?  As a burglary?

Imagine for a moment if this had happened under different circumstances in America.  If a murderer had organized the slaughter of thousands, would he get 15 years?  Would people be outraged at such a verdict?  If cases like OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony, and the like garner so much public upheaval, so much anger and disgust, why not the case of Ndahimana?  Why?

This decision by the ICTR should offend the humanity of every single citizen of the world.  It makes a complete mockery of the pain and loss felt by millions of Rwandans, and by extension, by millions more around the world.  It makes a mockery of the gravity of genocide.  A mockery of the idea of international justice, of any sort of justice at all.

Hate is a frightening thing, my friends, and it is far too prevalent in our world.  Sometimes, oftentimes, it seems like there is no solution, but I refuse to believe that.  I refuse to believe that the world is populated by hateful and indifferent individuals.  The least we can do here is feel the sadness.  Feel the loss.  And get angry about ignorance and make a conscious choice to fight it.

All we can ever really do... is be the change.  It sounds naive, but its all there is.  And when we all make the decision to embody the ideals we uphold, to share our passions and our fears and our ideals, we slowly begin to change our world.

"We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time."

-Jean Vanier