"Adventures in Getting the Point" or "Manifesto"

I love being in Rwanda. I look like everyone else.

"There's a definition of a word and it states that, um, a word is composed of two parts: and that's reflection and action. So that means if one part is sacrificed then the other suffers as well. So I'm sure to tell the students in my writing classes, that, um, we must be mindful of the words that flow from our mouths. And we should also be concerned about how they come out. You know, we talk about things like compassion...."
Compassion.
I think I've talked about compassion until I was blue in the face, but I didn't even understand what the word meant. Naturally, humans see themselves as compassionate because, honestly, who wants to say they're not (?) but often times what we're really talking about is kindness. Compassion and kindness are not the same thing. I didn't understand. Kindness is to pull those who are down up to where you are. Compassion is the shifting of one's inner bowels to tremble with the mourning of others. Compassion is being down and staying down to bring all up. Ugh. That is different.
Tons of people in Kigali are built just like me, facial structure similar. Wasn't the problem invisibility on your practicum? Didn't you want to be seen? Didn't you want to remember that you were somebody? Yeah, it definitely was hard for this little girl from nowhere, California, studying in nowhere, Indiana, with a skin color setting her back from birth, trying become to my family's dream. A somebody seen. But moreover, my problem was that I was trying to live my life for myself. Practicum was debilitating because no one was clapping for me.
It's simply amazing how insiduous pride is.
I wanted development and poverty to become names for myself, to validate my existence, and be known for what I did to alleviate it. It would be sweet if I was the next black Shane Claiborne female. (laughs) But I didn't know that trying to make my life as exciting and interesting as possible was killing my compassion in a field where this should be non-negotiable. I was wearing skills of research and education about social problems that I didn't even have on my shoulders. I couldn't feel for anyone else because I was spending too much of my time trying to be special.
This is what practicum taught me: I don't know anything. I thought I did but I don't. I don't have very much capability. I thought I did but I don't. Development and poverty are very very very hard. Joy for ones work and helping to alleviate poverty does not come from seeing results. People work their whole lives for the smallest difference, long after relatives have stopped liking what they do or praise their efforts. Often times, people stay just as sad, poor, sick, and miserable even after all our attempts. So is it worth it? Is development worth it? It is if you're not trying to be acclaimed. It is if something more than youthful idealism drives you. Youth is fleeting. It is if you believe something bigger will complete it. Gratitude pushes much more than title.
I no longer want to do this because I think I'll be someone or that I'll move mountains (uh. that's stupid) but because I want to thank God for the compassion she's shown to me by asking for some of hers. She can move far more mountains. I want to make sure I keep moving from comfort and the tempting ordinariness of "proper life", not to surround myself with misery or being creepily masochistic, but because I believe God is there waiting to show me what He means by all this existence business and pushing me to feel this way. Nowhere is somewhere. Voluntary displacement helps me remember that I don't have it all together and that in community of poverty, I experience our true condition. Messed up. And that's giving up that job, that title, that applause, that rat race for something better. Right, hidden and compassionate. Not interesting.

"As long as our primary concern in life is to be interesting and thus worthy of special attention, compassion cannot manifest itself. Therefore, the movement of compassion always starts by gaining distance from the world that wants to make us objects of interest." -Henri Nouwen.
If I become small, I can feel a pain of a population that I couldn't before. I'm beginning to know who I am. I have a face that matters: broke backs of field workers and silent victims of past, present and future.
I love being in Rwanda. I look like everyone else.

Tie your children to your backs.

Write your sponsor kids many letters. It makes a difference to them.

The Break Down

"We talk about these things and then we feel better."

Mbale is already so much different from Kampala. Instead of accosted, you feel respected. Instead of objectified, you feel like a guest. A Mt. Elgon-looking rock looms in the distance and everything around here feels like Hawaii--just with a lot of Africans running around. We're going to hike that rock one of these days.

I'm so happy with the staff people we work with: Patrick, Paul 1-2-and-3, Livingston, Miriam, Vicki, Susan, and Moses. I couldn't think of better people to work with.

Yesterday was our orientation and, for me, my hardest day in Africa actually. Since I've been here, I've been aware that I'm nothing of interest in comparison to European skin, but being in a more intimate environment, these feelings are magnified to the extreme. Livingston took Meghan and I on a walk yesterday to get us acquainted with the area, and little beautiful children would see Meghan coming from up the road. They'd call the whole child-clan to greet her as she passed by! She was making their whole decade. If they came to shake our hands, they kneeled to Meghan first and then, with prodding from Livingstone, would come shake my hand out of courtesy. As we kept walking around, people would look past Livingston and I, to laugh and smile at Meghan greeting them in their tribal language. Livingston spent most of the time talking to Meghan--I trailed behind feeling ignored. I knew none of this was intentional--just the way things were. I was not obviously foreign and was therefore less interesting. I wondered bitterly what was I going to do when I went to the village. Research was going to be impossible if I kept on being disregarded like this. Walking freely into political offices was going to be much harder than I had previously believed. I thought with much chagrin, "this whole thing would be much easier if I had been born white".

Ugh. White skin wins again.

Back home in America, I have to forget that I'm different. I am not given the chance to have a unique perspective very often because everyone's so concerned with being "color-blind" and the more we avoid talking about race or acknowledging that race has dynamic contributions, the better. But the "middle-ground" culture we communicate from is actually white culture, and so to function in society, I take it on and live "outside" my skin. In Africa, I'm not given a chance to have a unique perspective because I just look like some strange African they can't place geographically and I don't have anything interesting to say or look at because I'm not white (even though I'm American too). Or I'm just synonymous with Obama. To them, Meghan is gorgeous and I am not. Meghan is brilliant and I am not. Meghan is esteemed and I am not. Holding tears back, the final blow came as we neared the office. A man on the staff bee-lined towards Meghan, shaking her hand and praising "You're welcome! You're most welcome!" laughing and joking and then after (since its impolite to not greet everyone), he shook Livingstone's hand, and then my own limply, without saying a word, returning quickly back to Meghan to talk to her. I took my bag and walked as quickly to the bathroom as possible. Chopped liver. I sank to the floor and cried for ten minutes. I cried and cried and cried. I'm worse than an African-American. I am nothing at all.

It's not anyone's fault. It's funny how race takes on a value, life, and system of its own. Does it have to be this way? I don't know. I do know I have to bear my most of my burdens alone here and when I return to Kampala because no one will be able to remotely understand because its so far from their realities. I'm having an identity crisis. I'm just a piece of unassuming, brown wallpaper. I don't mean to sound calloused--I just wanted to be honest about what's going on in this heart. I'd trade this anguish if I could. Yesterday, all I wanted to do was be back home with people who love me and think my existence has weight. Meghan and I talked about it a little in the afternoon. She felt really uncomfortable being singled-out by Africans. We hashed out race for a little while--it was a good conversation. "That's why I think I like artists so much. We talk about these things that have no answers and then we feel better."

So I still feel really awful, and lonely, and invisible, but I think this is something I'll just have to get used to. I'll resist the urge to become a silent space-taker-upper. Today is better than yesterday. If I focus on that, perhaps it won't be so bad. Maybe that's the foundation of humility. Maybe what is indicative of transformation is stripping away the decorum and cutting the bows away. Welcome to the change process.