TEDxlaf

For the second year in a row, a dedicated group of students organized an independent TED event at Lafayette.  Their theme, "Redefining We," centered around what it means to be a community and in a broader sense, what it means to be citizens of the world.  Thanks to my experiences abroad and resulting perspectives, as well as my widely-known philosophies on community, I was asked to speak at the 2012 TEDxlaf conference.  The following is the transcript of my talk.  Your thoughts and comments are welcomed and appreciated.  Enjoy.

"Hate and Hope: How the Darkest Place on Earth Restored My Faith in Humanity"

I fancy myself somewhat of a storyteller.  I carry entire libraries under my skin, and all the tales I guard are destined to be shared.  The telling of stories is as old as mankind, and it has always served as a way to bridge gaps and bind ties.

But I have found, time and again, that being a storyteller is difficult.  It means letting the world into the darkest things you've seen, the most difficult things you've done, but somehow finding a way to turn that into something positive.  Into something people will feel hopeful after hearing, instead of empty and alone.

My standing here before you all can be summed up in one statement, four words to live by: love is the answer.  It is the simple truth, and it really is all you need to know.  Now before you write me off as a naive kid, an idealistic collegiate who doesn't know the hardship of the real world, just hear me out. 

Because I have only learned this after seeing some of the world's darkest secrets.  I have traveled to what was once hell on earth and looked into the eyes of men who wanted the death of their countrymen with a burning fire they could not quench with anything but spilt blood.

I have looked into the eyes of evil and come out alive, if a bit emotionally damaged, on the other side.  I have broken bread with the survivors of violence we cannot even begin to imagine.  I've seen what we are capable of, and today I'm here to tell my story.

In 2010 I was twenty years old, feeling restless and adventurous, and in a class that inundated me daily with the fascinating history of the so-called "Dark Continent," which proved to be an explosive combination.  So two years ago, I did what any average twenty-year-old with a serious case of wanderlust would do: I signed up for a semester abroad... to study post-conflict societies... in East Africa.  As far as I was concerned, it was pretty standard.

I spent four months in Uganda and Rwanda in the Fall of 2010, examining Africa's longest civil war in Northern Uganda and the most atrocious genocide of recent memory in Rwanda.  It broke my heart, left me numb, and inspired me daily, running the full gamut of emotional highs and lows with each waking second.  My entire world was transformed in the span of four months, and I will never be the same.  I don't think I want to be, though, because Rwanda taught me how to feel.

I've spent a lot of time telling stories since then; I'm full of them.  It's difficult, though, when all you want is to tell people about war and genocide and the human capability to heal... and all anyone asks is if you saw elephants, roamed the bush with giraffes, or slaughtered chickens... which, admittedly, I did, and those stories are always fun to tell.  But those aren't the important things.  That isn't what defined my experience.  That isn't what keeps me up at night, still, longing for the rust-red African soil that caked on my skin so completely that I couldn't tell if it was a tan or not.

So I jump at chances like this to tell the real stories, the ones that changed me, the ones we can all learn from.

The stories we've all heard about Rwanda are, unfortunately, replete with gruesome tales of slaughter and bloodletting, focused on what we can learn from the failures of the Tutsi genocide of 1994.  We talk about the planning and the implementation and the failure of the international community, citing the RPF advances and who shot down the President's plane.  And of course those details are essential to our understanding.  But today I am here to tell you that the most important stories of Rwanda, in my opinion, have gone untold since 1994.

The stories of triumph, of hope, and of light, in stark contrast to those of evil and darkness we so often focus on, are the stories we need to hear.

I'm guilty of this focus on darkness myself.  For a long time since returning home over a year ago, I would constantly tell the stories of loss and pain, the ones with shock value that made people say "I can't believe you went through that."  But I realized that it does not do the Rwandan people justice to focus solely on their tragedy instead of on their triumph.  It does not do our own humanity justice.

So I'd like to tell you my favorite story from Rwanda, and it is one of light.  I wish we heard more of these, from all the dark corners of the globe, from all the mysterious spaces we're too scared to discover for ourselves.



We had been in Rwanda for a few weeks, and by then we thought our hearts couldn't possibly be broken any further.

We had learned the last words of child victims in Kigali,
seen a picturesque statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking the bloodstained clothing of thousands of victims at Nyamata,
gone underground into damp, dark mass graves, touching femurs and machete-cracked skulls with our floundering elbows and trembling knees,
breathed the smell of human decomposition at Murambi,
and looked into the eyes of genocidaires at the TIG.

We bore witness to all the horrors the world had stayed silent on.  Needless to say, my fellow students and I were a broken bunch.  We were haunted by the ghosts of Rwanda, and maybe we still are.  But finally, at long last, we found our hope again.  We found humanity in the hills.

We were told we were visiting a women's association in Butare, and I for one hopped in the van and didn't think much of it because really, what did I know about co-ops or goats or casava farming?

But what we found at Ubutwali Bwo Kubaho, which in the Kinyarwanda language means "Heroism is Living," was nothing short of magic.

This co-operative of 1,700 women is the embodiment not only of the heroism its name implies, but of the ideals of reconciliation and forgiveness in Rwanda and beyond.  These thousand women are what brought light into my heart again.

In the years immediately following the genocide, the situation in Rwanda was tumultuous at best.  Hutu and Tutsi, perpetrator and victim, collaborator and survivor: all were thrust into a new, post-conflict, tension-filled society.  In Butare, as was the case throughout Rwanda, survivors lived alongside the families of perpetrators.  Here, the genocide widows threw stones as the wives of perpetrators walked past.

In the words of one genocidaire's wife: "We were so filled with fear and shame that we could not look them in the eye.  We wanted to ask them for forgiveness for what our husbands had done to their families, or even for some of us, who had encouraged our husbands to kill."

Butare remained divided.  The hate continued... the hatred that caused the great loss they had all suffered in the first place.  And it was spreading, gaining strength day by day.

Then, a Christian minister moved to Butare.  The Church had often played a role in massacres during the genocide, with priests abandoning their Tutsi parishioners to their fate, leaving many Rwandans distrustful.  But the situation in Butare was growing dire.  The wives of genocidaires began working with the Church, asking for help in reconciling with the survivors.

The minister began by working with both groups individually, gradually moving to more and more integration.  They worked on communication, peace building, and truth telling.  They worked on trust.  They worked on forgiveness, and it took years.

But today, 18 years after the genocide that left a million dead in Rwanda, all 1,700 women, victims and wives of perpetrators alike, live and work together at Ubutwali Bwo Kubaho.  Together they raise goats, farm, and conduct micro-finance projects.  They care for each other when they are sick and rely on each other in times of financial hardship.

But most importantly, they raise their children together, without ethnic distinctions, to be the greatest advocates of peace I have ever encountered.  These children have been raised knowing their fearsome past and strive not to repeat it.  They are Banyarwanda, not Hutu or Tutsi.  They are heroes, more passionate about peace than any of us here in this room could ever hope to be.  It has been said that "the children almost broken by the world become the adults most likely to change it."  If these kids aren't the poster children for that message, I don't know who is.

We sat down with these women and they told us their stories.  They told us of their struggle, their pain, their hopes, and their dreams.  One woman told us how, when she was very ill, the women came in turns to sit by her bedside.  For two weeks of illness, she was never alone.  She knows she never will be again, because these women have become her family.

Although their story may seem mostly positive, it was not without backlash.  Many wives of perpetrators faced violence when their husbands heard of their new association.  Their incarcerated husbands, angry that they were reconciling with the women who had accused them of genocide, beat them as punishment for their disloyalty.  But the women stayed strong, and told us that although it took time, their husbands now see how important this reconciliation is... how essential and how powerful.

Before leaving, we asked the women if there was any message they wished for us to bring back to the West, and it was this:

"Tell them our story, but then tell them to love.  Take back love.  Live your lives for love.  Listen to one another and understand one another.  Do this, and love will come.  Love, and this will never happen again.  Love, and everything is possible."



Rwanda embodies the two extremes of our humanity: at one end, you have a hate-fueled thirst for blood and at the other, the opening of a fist into an outstretched hand.    Rwanda's legacy is hate and fear and blood, but it is also a society that has since chosen reconciliation and peace.  I wonder if we can truly say the same for our so-called "developed" world.  We for certain have not come so far as many Rwandese have come, so far as the women of Ubutwali Bwo Kubaho have come, staring our differences and our violent pasts in the face and deciding that peace is more important than power.

We, and I am speaking for the entire human race here, are capable of a fierce brutality many of us cannot even begin to imagine.  We have the potential for darkness inside each of us.  But what we are so quick to forget is that we are also each capable of unimaginable love and compassion.  We would all do well to remember that from time to time.

We have within us the same spectrum of extremes as Rwanda.  The choice of which to embody is ours.  The women of Ubutwali Bwo Kubaho have learned and embraced that... I often wonder why so many of us can't.

Maybe I'm young and I'm certainly idealistic, but it shouldn't take a genocide to learn that love is the answer.  Do we have to lose everything to figure out that love really can conquer all?

This life we share is not about race or nationality or religion.  It is about the single thing that binds us all together, the one thing we all have in common in a world so hell-bent on pointing out the differences, and it is so simple: we all just want to be loved.

All I can conceivably say on the subject is that wherever you're from, whatever faith gets you through the hard times, whatever past defines you, 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.

These stories I carry with me do not really belong to me... they belong to all of us.  This is all part of the narrative of our evolving humanity.  And so I hope my story, their story, our story, will stay with you.  It is not just that thing that happened in that place to those people, far away somewhere.

When we find a way to stand together in solidarity and embrace one another, to feel each story of hate and hope as if it were our own, to focus more on what unites us rather than on 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.  We feel it.  Only then will we hold our own, stand tall, and effect change in our world.  At long last, the world will be ours again.  Together.

Brynn Muir, my dear friend and fellow traveler, one who has bled her hope for humanity alongside me, has said it best, and I pose her poignant question to you:

Now, it is upon us to decide.  As we live, we decide which story we let win and, in so doing, we decide who we are.  We must let the truths of both death through hatred and life through love be known and remembered, but only one may triumph at the end of the day.

And so I leave you with one question, and it is this: which truth will we choose to live by?