Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is not the suppression of anger.  Forgiveness is asking for a miracle, the ability to see through someone's mistakes to the truth that lies within all of our hearts."

-"Kinyarwanda"

KONY 2012

Well... this is interesting.

Invisible Children has launched their newest campaign, and it is to bring Joseph Kony to justice by the end of 2012.

(NOTE: Before you give any of your time or money to Invisible Children, PLEASE, I BEG YOU, check them out at Charity Navigator, an organization that reports on transparency and other aspects of charitable organizations.  From what I've seen both here and on the ground myself... there are far better programs that need your money, ones that do far more effective work on the ground.  Now back to business...)

Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, has been rampaging around East and Central Africa - kidnapping, murdering, terrorizing - for over 25 years.  But we're going to bring him to justice within a year?

I have lived and researched in Northern Uganda, home to Joseph Kony.
I have ridden motorcycles through the bush with former child soldiers.
I have spent time with residents of IDP camps, hearing their stories of suffering.
I have a father with bullet wounds from LRA soldiers and a mother who held a man while he died after an attack.
I want Kony brought to justice as much as anyone out there.

But I'm not sure this is the way to go about it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm elated to see so much attention and enthusiasm directed at a place I call home.  There has been an overwhelming outpouring of support for the people I have come to call family, and it is beautiful.  But as vlogger Hank Green has said, "International relations are not conducted on the time scale of the internet."

This war has been going on for over TWENTY-FIVE YEARS.  What that means is that it is complex, it is difficult (if not impossible) to resolve, and it takes far more than some internet buzz to end.  There are reasons why he hasn't been brought to justice yet, and the history begs for far more detail than Invisible Children often provides.

After the failure of the Juba Peace Talks in 2008, the US attempted to intervene and capture Kony in 2009 in a failed project called Operation Lightning Thunder.  And what did it lead to?  MASS RETALIATION, including abductions, deaths, and thousands of people displaced.  Not exactly the most successful endeavor.

If we want Kony to be stopped, it will take dedication.  It will take careful planning, and not by kids on the internet, but by diplomats and military liaisons and government officials.  Who have already been working on bringing Kony to justice for years, long before you ever heard his name in a YouTube video on your Facebook newsfeed.   

We, as the youth of the world, are incredibly powerful.  We have, however, a tendency towards terribly short attention spans.  This quest for Kony cannot turn into an internet fad that loses steam in a few weeks' time.  I fear that may be what happens here.

So before we all start blowing up Facebook about Kony 2012, let's ask ourselves... are we still going to care in three weeks?  Three months?  Three years?  This is a marathon, not a sprint.  Kony has been at it for longer than I have been on this earth, and international intervention takes far longer than a Facebook update takes to write.

Get active, get excited, and get passionate, but first think hard about what it really takes to affect change.  Read: more than a twitter post.

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.

Africa Saves

This is not the first time I have recognized that sometimes, someone just says it better than I ever could, and it is not the first time that that person has been writer and poet Carlos Andrés Goméz.

This poem speaks for itself, and again wraps up all my feelings into a neat package.

Listen.  Think.  Feel.

This is my Africa.

Poverty

Dr. Cornel West at Occupy Wall Street

Complacent or Complicit?

Leslie Dodson: Don't Misrepresent Africa

A brilliant TED talk about the interplay between journalism, NGO work, and research in developing countries.

"At breakfast and at dinner we can sharpen our own appetites with a plentiful dose of the pornography of war, genocide, destitution, and disease."

- Jermaine Greer

Are we complacent?  Or are we complicit?

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

Forget Not

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."