Kitgum

So here is how things work in Africa. Making plans is simply laughable. In the field doing research you truly do not know for sure what will happen or what you are doing until you are in the car and driving to the destination, and even then things change. Last week we spent time in Guitarama doing field research. My teammate Ben and I, volunteered to talk to different leaders of the community to see what their perceptions of the vulnerable were and ask what they were currently doing to help them, and if there were needs that were still not being met. The first place we went was to the district offices, the district leader was not there and the person underneath him was not either. They were going to be gone and in a meeting until Friday, the day we were leaving. Of course my thoughts were, “well, what the heck? This should have been known before! Appointments should have been made! It is so inefficient to just stop by!”... this happened countless times. We would travel some where hoping to talk to someone and they would be gone.  It is crazy how we Americans are so set on making plans and I am continually learning to release my expectations and try to go with the flow. Patience is certainly necessary here; I am definitely learning how to cope with things that would have previously made me want to pull my hair out. I love calendars and planners and knowing what time it is, however all my efforts to organize and compartmentalize are quite futile here.

Another wonderful example of unexpected events and needing to adjust is the new situation with Ethiopia. I am no longer going there. We found out last week that the government is cracking down and to enter the country it is necessary to have a business visa. We were going to get tourist visas but there is an election coming up and “tourists” in the past have influenced the Ethiopian people and have gotten involved more than just being tourists. So the government doesn’t want foreigners. There was recently a group of students there who were arrested for 24 hours and then deported, just because they didn’t have the right visa. Needless to say, FH doesn’t want to risk that with us.

Now I am going to Kitgum, in Northern Uganda, very close on to the border of Sudan. I will be helping a project called Bringing Hope through the New Life Center, doing HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness. I will be living with many of the displaced Ugandan women at the center, which is a residential holistic rehabilitation program for mothers and their children. Many of the girls who were abducted into the LRA were used as sex slaves, a number of them producing children at a very young age. Here is more information on the center and a little history on the civil war and the atrocities the LRA committed in Northern Uganda. https://copper.fh.org/work/africa/uganda/newlifecenter

It seems to be a pretty incredible place that gives biblical counseling and strives to give these women hope and foster healing that only comes from the cleansing blood of Jesus.

I am so excited to see the Lord move through these women and their children. God is truly the ultimate healer. His love restores and renews all of us from our pain and depravity.

PSALM 103:2-5

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

And forget not all His benefits:

Who forgives all your iniquities,

Who heals all your diseases,

Who redeems your life from destruction,

Who crowns you with lovingkindness and

  tender mercies,

Who satisfies your mouth with good things,

So that your youth is renewed like the

eagles’s.

 

Lament

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. 

2 Corinthians 4:7-12

We were encouraged to write a lament last week as a way to process what we have encountered here. Laments are beautiful poetic expressions of mourning; the Bible is full of them. I gave it a whirl this morning. It is truly not very good, and I wish I could articulate with better eloquence what I have been feeling, learning, and trying to process. (I am sorry, my English major-ness has yet to develop in the area of lamenting...I will have to work on it)

To run with reckless abandon is forever tempting,

The wind runs through my hair as I try to forget.

Maybe it will rush the images out, or blow them away.

Maybe if I run faster it will not catch me.

They stand on the road reminding me, one after one.

Life goes on. But not without a cost.

 

The trees reach to the sky, even with the risk of being cut down.

I’ll stay low. Maybe it will not see me.

Why is it that in order to become full, it is necessary to be emptied?

It is safer to hide, run, flee, as long as I don’t have to feel.

 

I cannot do it alone. Or I refuse.

He grabs my face with His hands and stares. Nose to nose.

I squeeze my eyes shut; please I don’t want to do this.

Go away. This was not the deal.

He slowly rocks His wanderer, until I have to fall.

There is a net He has prepared.

He is there with me, wiping the tears.

But He doesn’t promise to take them away.

 

He understands. His suffering is mine,

Just as mine is inevitable to also suffer along side others.

Why did it have to look like this?

Sorrow is sacrificial, requiring strength and submission.

Mourning takes bravery and boldness.

Accepting sadness is necessary, but never enjoyable.

It is easier being numb.

But He felt the suffering of all people.

Our High Priest did it for us,

Shouldn’t I do the same?

 

How do I possibly mourn for others,

When I have subdued sorrow for my own losses?

Grief is a growing process, I am afraid to reach up like the trees.

You have farther to fall.

We are called to feel, agonize and weep and also rejoice and praise.

These extremes are dangerous.

We don’t like to be out of control in our sorrow.

Not truly mourning, painting a smile on is safer.

Ironic this is human tendency when we are given the Healer.

With the lack of extreme sorrow,

We are stripped of the gift of ultimate joy.

The greatest rejoicing is only achieved if we surrender ourselves to endure sorrow.

 

We are assured victory in the end, but the journey is sprinkled with affliction.

So that was it... thank you for reading. I am so thankful for all of the love and encouragement I have received through this blog. I am continually being amazed at peoples capacity to care, and I am so very very thankful for you who care for me and want to follow me on this journey.

Mzungu Alert

Today after lunch, I went to the market with a few friends from our group. Let me begin by explaining a little bit about the market. It is like a swap meet/farmers market/Joanne’s fabrics on steroids. At the market, there is everything you could possibly ever want… tons of food: lots of fruits and vegetables, beans and rice in bulk, enough bananas to feed a small army of monkeys, and potatoes up the wazoo. There is also Tupperware, dishes, clothing, car parts, jewelry, and lots of homemade crafts. But the best part of the market is the FABRIC. There are rows and rows of fabrics that hang from the ceiling. Everywhere you look walking down these isles, there is color. All of them are so beautiful; it is as if your eyes cannot seem to look at all of them fast enough.

So back to my story about today’s market adventure…I was looking at a fabric that Mallory was contemplating purchasing and I was leaning against one of the booths. This booth happened to be selling women’s silky panties. She was finishing the purchase and I walked to the next row to start haggling for the fabric I wanted. I was talking to the woman who owned it and another women pulled on my arm and dress. I turned around thinking she was going to try to get me to come see her fabrics, when she bent down next to me and picked up pastel-y pink silky chonies. She stared at me holding the panties in front of my face. There are about five women around me by now, and they all burst into laughter, in unison. They were all shrieking and laughing at me and talking to each other in Kinyarwanda. I started laughing too and telling them “No, No, No, I’m still wearing some, I promise”. I kept apologizing and they kept laughing. Every time I would say “babadida,” meaning “sorry,” they would laugh harder. One woman thought she would add to the joke and even felt my butt-side to make sure I was still wearing underwear. The women were having a ball. Mallory came over because she could hear the hysterical women and my squeals of laughter and embarrassment, and then they showed her the underwear and I explained the situation. The woman who was selling the underwear took them back, pretended to scold me, and then she too joined in the frenzy.

The good news: I got a beautiful fabric. The bad news: I paid for it with my pride. It is wonderful being in another country; humility is practically shoved down your throat. Great. J

Ethiopia Bound!

Last week flew by and we spent a wonderful weekend in Kabuje on Lake Kibu. Thursday was busy busy busy. We had our Practicum Fair where multiple representatives from different FH locations presented the different positions for our internships. Then we go on a bus and traveled to two more memorials. It was brutal. I have poor emotional stamina. Two was too much for me in one day. The juxtaposition of the day's events, the Fair and the memorials, made for a very interesting state of emotions. The fair was fun and it was exciting to see all the possibilities of where we could get involved and be a small part in relief or development work. The memorials were heartbreaking. We went to two different churches that people fled to in hopes of finding protection because in past massacres the church was still a safe haven. However, the radios told people to go there so that they would be easier to kill, all being in one location. We went inside the churched where they hung up all of the murdered people’s clothing. There were walls of clothing and tons of shoes and huge scaffolding with tons of skulls and bones. I have never ever in my life seen real human bones. In one day I saw more than I hope to ever see again in my life. Some skulls you could tell used to be babies, they were so small. Some skulls revealed the way they were killed. There we so many with big holes in the skulls and some with machete slits. I am sad when I think about the possibility of a loss of a friend or a family member. I cannot imagine the amount of tears shed over one of these people, much less the magnitude of mourning for the 15,000 people that where killed at these two churches alone.

On a happier note, we went to the lake for a much needed unwinding and processing weekend. For how sad Rwanda’s history has been, it certainly is a beautiful country. We hiked a mountain and saw a ton of bats. I got pooped on. Yep, guano on my hand (one thing I check off my list of things to do. Get pooped on by a bat: CHECK!). We saw the most beautiful view, and it was wonderful having a morning swim across the lake, with Mallory and Megan. The Lord even blessed us with a beautiful lightning show one evening.

Oh yea and they told us our assignments for Practicum. I am going to Ethiopia!! I will be teaching English in Zeway and helping out with Sunday school! I am so excited! They speak Ahmaric in Ethiopia, so that will be another wonderful adventure...learning the language a little bit. I did learn one word already; the word for banana is “moose”. How cool is that?

Remembering Rwanda

Yesterday we went to the Kigali Memorial Center. It was really hard. I am slowly beginning to realize how my body shuts down when I am really sad or do not know how to process things. When we came back to the house, my body went into recovery mode. I took a two-hour nap, felt like vomiting and didn’t really function well the rest of the day. I am learning how hard it is for me to hide my emotions; it seemed impossible to snap back into happy Noël after seeing so much death and destruction.

I do not really know what to do with the reality of this tragedy. It does not really do those who were killed any good to mope around. But I also do not want to be numb and let it fly over me because it is hard and uncomfortable to think about. That is also not beneficial. Denial of life’s tragedies and many injustices leads to them reoccurring.  This is unacceptable. It would be so much easier to let this knowledge pass because it did not directly happen to me. But that would be a tragedy in itself, wasted knowledge on a hardened heart. I refuse. So now what? 

How do you process seeing so many photos of young children who should have been the future of Rwanda? How do you possibly process a two-year-old smiling little girl murdered by being burned alive? Or a 16 month old being smashed against a wall? Or a 9 month old being killed by a machete in his mother’s arms? These things are so radically horrible; my mind is having trouble even believing such wretched brutalities could ever happen.

There was a portion on the memorial that looked at the history of genocide. These atrocities keep happening. You would think we would learn! We see these now and think “we have come so far since then” or “no one has that level of extreme prejudice anymore” or even that “we as Americans, will not let a mass genocide happen again”, but that is what we said after the Holocaust. I learned about so many other genocides that I was not even aware of. I never learned about any of them in my history classes. This is horrible. It is a slap in the face to those who died, not to educate others about the genocides and come together in preventing them. There is a horrible pattern of hate in our history. How do we stop it?

There was a man who worked at the memorial and he was giving some people a tour. There is a large room with countless photos people have given to the memorial of those in their family they have lost. For many, it is the only photo they have of their loved ones. He led the group to two photos among the thousands, and said “That is my mother. That is my father,” and proceeded to tell them that all of his siblings were lost in the genocide as well. He said it plainly with such honesty, vulnerability, and with such an acceptance of the loss that I was amazed. I am stunned at this country’s capability to forgive and live peaceably with one another.

We are learned on Friday about the Lord’s design for a biblical community and development. God is radically righteous and radically compassionate, the only way to celebrate these two extremes of justice and love is to worship Him. The life of Jesus is a representative of God’s radical compassion for the sick, women, poor and children, and His radical righteousness with the Pharisees, the cross, and all sin. Our response to others is not to be contingent upon whether or not they are deserving. Our biblical mandate is that we too live justly and compassionately because of who we are as children of God. We are called to represent His character to the best of our ability. 

Sorry for the depressing blog. Knowledge, definitely not fun, but extremely necessary.

Next time I hope to write an entertaining anecdote about hippos :) or a funny story about yours truly, the culturally awkward Mzungu.

thank you for reading, love you all.

Just a thought...

Today in class a new smell I am growing to love, floated into the room. 

In Rwanda, they burn trash to get rid of it. They do it often and all over the city of Kigali. I got to thinking... it is an interesting irony that something which smells so bad can burn to smell so good and sweet. You rarely take a deep inhale of trash and sigh with satisfaction. But when it is burned, I find myself doing just that. 

Jesus is kind of like that same fire for us. We stink horribly in our natural state, and it seems we only get smellier with time. Yet when Jesus, our Refiner's fire, comes in and lights a fire in our hearts, he purifies us. It is a welcomed transformation and we burn sweetly. By His mercy, He burns our old stink and nastiness and we then get the honor of becoming the aroma of Christ, which smells lovely :)

just a thought...

Back to School...Duh Duh Duuuuuh

Monday was our first day of school. It is very strange to be back in school. I admit it is a little difficult trying to get into study/reading mode, not being in SLO and being in a different continent.

I am definitely beginning to recognize my extremely high western expectations and standards I have for optimal comfort when I am in school. While I was reading yesterday I could not help but think how I missed all the wonderful, quaint coffee shops back at home (Oh, Sallie Lou’s, how I miss you so!). I would have killed for a soy-iced mocha to drink while reading my book called “Walking with the Poor” (Disgustingly ironic? Yes. I’m horrible; trust me, it is becoming evermore apparent).

We have only been in school for two days and it is quite possible that the main thing I have learned is that there is so much I do not know. We are taking two courses, one called “Issues in Peacebuilding” and the other is Sociology course called “Social Context for Development”. Our peacebuilding class is taught by Rwandan Pastor Anastase. We went to the building where he runs PHARP (peacebuiding healing and reconciliation program). We met 14 young women who have been orphaned because of the genocide and there they learn how to sew. He explained that this not only gives them a skill with which they can go out and build a life, but the center also serves as a foundation of hope. These girls find a community, a new family, and they are comforted by the Lord’s greater love as they worship and read scripture together every morning.

Worshipping with those girls was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in Rwanda thus far. They sing and dance without reserve before our Maker in gratitude that is astonishing when considering they have so little, materially. They grabbed our hands to dance with them in the middle of the circle. Even though the songs where in Kinyarwanda (the local Bantu language), it was truly wonderful coming together in praising our common God. Our Lord has no boundaries and His love and power surpasses all language barriers unites His children. I loved that short experience of authentic community with my fellow sisters in Christ. I can definitely learn a lot from the way they love the Lord with reckless abandon. I desire to adore Him as they do.

We are learning a lot in classes. Today we looked at genocides throughout history and the patterns in mentalities and ideologies that lead to them. In our social context classes we are looking at different schools of thought's theories on how to eradicate poverty and the reason there is poverty. There are so many different dynamics to this issue, I feel as if I will never understand it. But scripture promises that in our weakness (in this case, my lack of knowledge), He is made strong, so Amen to that! I am thankful God has my back when my intellect is so inadequate in grasping greater concepts.

More to come on what we are learning, but I don’t think I understand enough to be able to reiterate anything without extreme effort. But to anyone who is reading I would really appreciate prayer, if you happen to remember. I need help being open to processing things that I have been running away from. I expected Africa to be a wonderful method of escape and it seems that the Lord has different plans! Pray the Lord softens my heart. I want to be more like Jesus and He was filled with compassion for all people.