Filed under: Canada | Tags: Haiti, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Justice, Love, Poverty
Keep your head up
Cuz a new day will come
And look towards the sun
Even when the darkness shall come”
– Wyclef Jean
There was a big earthquake in Haiti last night. The capital is in ruins, and thousands of people are feared dead. There are big concerns over access to clean drinking water in the days ahead.
Two days ago, 47% of Haitians couldn’t read.
Two days ago, nearly 8% of the children born in Haiti were destined to die before their fifth birthday.
Two days ago, more than 60% of Haitians lived in abject poverty, without reliable access to health care or clean drinking water.
Two days ago, save a few bleeding hearts, the world didn’t give a shit about Haiti. No ships full of humanitarian supplies were inbound to ease the ‘suffering.’
‘Suffering,’ when caused by natural disaster, is newsworthy. ‘Suffering,’ when caused by fundamentally unjust trade laws is … did you hear that Tiger Woods cheated on his wife?
To be fair, I don’t suppose the world really gives a shit about Haiti now, either. Dramatic and violent deaths on a massive scale are just so much more … interesting … than gradual decay. Big rush to get reporters on the scene to witness and take photos. Next week on our program …
I suppose I shouldn’t be so cynical. After all, all this attention can’t help but improve things. Then again, perhaps not. Since the world first met Haiti, c/o our old buddy Christopher C., we have managed to rape their natural resources, entirely destroy their native population and import enough slaves that those slaves eventually took control of the island. That was followed by about 400 years of war initiated by Europeans.
Around 1900, the U.S. really came into the picture, and Woodrow Wilson earned his Nobel Peace Prize by sending in the marines to violently dissolve the democratically elected parliament. They forced Haiti to adopt a new constitution (written in the U.S.) at gunpoint. Now instead of the Europeans owning all the wealth, the Americans did. Just to make sure their money was safe, the U.S. supplied the funding and weapons to allow a guy named Papa Doc to take power. He created a Gestapo-like secret police called the Tontons Macoute, a very pleasant group, famous for their dark sunglasses . While looking cool, they tortured, disappeared and murdered tens of thousands of Haitians, striking paralyzing fear into the heart of every sane citizen. A nice place to raise a family.
In 1990, Haiti did manage to carry out a proper election, but failed to pick the pro-U.S. candidate that George Bush liked, so he promptly set about undermining the democratically elected government, and supporting the coup that would soon overthrow it. Lots of people died. Clinton did eventually allow that government to take power back, but only after it promised to impose the usual batch of sweeping economic reforms that have succeeded in country after country. By ‘succeeded,’ I mean that they ensured that most of the wealth was exported to the U.S., while the majority of the local population diminished economically, teetering somewhere on the verge of starvation.
The recent food crisis in 2008, which you undoubtedly heard nothing about (gradual decay vs. violence), was the direct result of the complete inability of Haiti’s “free market” to compete with subsidized agriculture in the U.S. Lots of people died. Nobody cared. Not even me.
I suppose that was rather a long-winded way of saying: “maybe it would be better if we just left them alone.” As of a few years ago, the capital city of this small, beautiful island, formerly rich in natural resources, was ruled entirely by heavily armed gangs of teenagers. I can’t imagine they were worse off in 1491.
But of course we won’t ignore Haiti in its “hour of need.” The world cares far too much about the poor, suffering people of Latin America to just let them die by the thousands. We care so much, that for a few days we might consider donating an inconsequential fraction of what we earn in that time. Hell, I may even wear a little rubber wristband – a true show of solidarity with the Haitian people – if somebody happens to walk directly into my path to sell me one for $2 or less. It’s because I care.
I won’t change the way I buy things to encourage a more equitable world, or recognize that it is my insistence on an opulent lifestyle that indirectly causes most of the real suffering in Haiti. I won’t petition governments to work towards trade justice or to increase aid spending to respectable levels; that money is better spent improving Canadian roads and supporting Canadian athletes. I won’t even bother to wonder what happened to all those people trapped in the rubble, once the 24-hour-news-cycle has shifted its focus to something more important, like the Detroit auto show, or the Olympics. It’s because I care …
… about myself.
Peace and love.
“That show on Rwanda is on tomorrow. Don’t forget, we should watch it.”
Yeah. About that.
Sometimes the things we convince ourselves are true at any given moment, seem a little ridiculous looking back with “20/20”.
Sometimes ‘ridiculous’ is not the most appropriate word.
I know something about Rwanda, incidentally, so I suppose it’s only natural that I should want to see this “Shake Hands with the Devil” movie. I even shared a photograph with Romeo Dallaire himself, once.
“Be careful.”
That’s what he told me. “Be careful.”
The first thing I think, when my mom reminds me about the movie, is “let me forget.” Please.
Beautiful country. Buried deep in the lush tropical mountains of central Africa, it is a land of hills and hills and hills and hills and hills and hills and hills and hillllss..ss.s..
Sorry. I’ve always been fascinated by people. I remember watching Shindler’s List with my parents as a teenager. I didn’t understand. How could people just kill other people like that? Their neighbours and acquaintances?
That question ate at me for years.
I studied social psychology at university, and used every course paper I could find to poke at the answer. I even helped organize an international academic conference on violence between ethnic groups, meeting and hearing some of the world’s foremost thinkers on the subject. I thought I got it.
I suppose I did, as far as I could. As it happens, there is a deep, dark crevasse between intellectual understanding and “to understand.”
I’m going to try to tell you what I learned in Rwanda, and you are probably not going to understand, and that’s ok. I don’t understand.
When two Rwandans meet on the street, they exchange friendly greetings, probably shake hands and discuss things, and after a time, they part. When eating, the Rwandan sits at the table, with food on a plate in front of him or her. They put the food in their mouth, they chew the food, they swallow the food, and then they take another bite. And so on and so forth, throughout the day.
Once upon a time, one Rwandan was murdered by another Rwandan, every 10 seconds, every hour of every day for 100 days. Among the many adjectives – tragic, unthinkable, horrible – one stands apart: efficient.
Many hands make for light work.
Here the picture of a smiling child. His name and age. Seven, I think. He loved playing football, and was best friends with his grandmother. He looks a bit mischievous in the photograph. Somebody picked him up by the feet, swung him into the air, and then smashed his skull and body against a concrete wall. I think he was seven.
It’s like. What? Excuse me. I’m sorry, but what? Uh …
Ordinary people. The human shadow. The darkest corner of our potential. Ordinary people.
The most fucked up bit about Rwanda is how unspectacular it is. Armenia. Namibia. Burma. Bosnia. Darfur. Poland. All around the world – same song.
“I don’t have any photos of my family. I couldn’t find any souvenirs of my parents, or of my brothers and sisters. I like volleyball and films. These two things give me courage. I also like to read autobiographical books about people who have suffered in their lives. It is a consolation to me. Prayer is also important to me” – Bernhard, 16
It’s almost as though we are all just … waiting; waiting for a charismatic man to come along to tell us that he has found the cause of all our troubles, all our pain, all our frustration. It’s THEM he says! THEY are the ones who are to blame. THEY are EVIL! You are with us, or you are against us!
And we believe him, of course, because we always do. It’s easier to blame ‘them’ than it is to blame ‘you.’ It’s easier to be told what to think and how to feel than to go to all the work of thinking for ourselves. Define “terrorism,” if you disagree.
Oh, they may look like people, but don’t be fooled by their trickery! They are rats! They are insects! We must exterminate this DISEASE!
Well when you put it like that…
Hatred.
Violence.
Power.
Power is a funny thing. The vast majority of our minute-by-minute communication with each other is non-verbal, and most of it we are blissfully unaware of. What are we saying? Power and status. In every room you stand in, a silent dialogue takes place with everyone else, in which the powerful assert their dominance, and the powerless show submission. This is how peace is kept, except in bar-fights. I am not sure if walking across the path to your neighbour’s house and then chopping his family to death with a large, dull knife, over screams of agony counts as “non-verbal” behaviour but it does seem a fairly effective channel through which to assert dominance. Always power.
[Sigh.]
In Rwanda, I stood in a dark, dank, cool crypt and breathed the same air as thousands of human skulls had been breathing for 14 years. They were piled to the ceiling on shelves all around me. That one there is of a young child, 3 or 4 years old. He was burned to death. His jaw is fused open.
It’s funny, the things we convince ourselves. I was in Rwanda in mid-summer of 2008, 14 years after the genocide, and even now, 17 months later, I still can’t really talk about it. I thought … I thought that I was strong, I guess. Actually, it’s not funny at all.
I used to think that human beings were fundamentally good people.
Of course, they are. The good is always there. Sometimes, though … sometimes … sometimes we decide not to pay any attention to it. Sometimes, we just want to have things our way. Sometimes, we just want to win.
One day I was standing in a different room full of human skulls, and without much thought, I reached down and I touched one. In a moment, it was real. In a moment, it was too real. Something went snap, deep inside. Quite startling, really. Totally unexpected. “Be careful” he said.
I remember the exact instant that it broke. I remember crying that night in my hotel room. I remember preparing to leave the country the following day.
August 1, 2008 7:02pm – “I’m lonely. I miss my family. I miss my friends. I miss familiarity and comfort. I need to leave now. ”
Rwanda has taken many of my tears since that day.
July 28, 2009 11:02pm – “I can’t imagine what that man, Romeo Dallaire, must go through in the dark hours of the night. Writing these words, right now, i am crying. I am sobbing uncontrollably. It was one year ago that i stared the Rwanda genocide in the face and asked it to talk back. It haunts me. God bless Romeo Dallaire. God bless Romeo Dallaire God bless Romeo Dallaire. I scream. I scream. A scream from my soul. Silence. I don’t want to wake anyone. Oh Jesus Christ. Skulls of children, chopped in half. Skulls of children, burned to death. Oh Jesus Christ. Oh Jesus Christ. The horror.”
In Rwanda I learned something of what it means to be human. Good and evil really are irrelevant. They are submissive forces. They are dwarfed and out-voted by the true dominating elements of “human nature”: insecurity, selfishness, laziness, stupidity.
Who can claim innocence?
I can’t.
Oh, and we’re all gonna die. Really.
Alas, poor Yorick.
Peace and love.
There is snow here.
In Mombasa there was no snow. In Mombasa the sweat drifted across flesh, accumulating in banks in the cracks in fabric. In Mombasa the sting of the wind was not a snowy chill, but of dust and filth, swirling skyward, stinging eyes and sticking to sweaty skin. In Mombasa, deep breathing brought not the burn of cold, but the burn of a mingled stench – fermenting trash and burning goat flesh. (Also the delicious, in a thousand different flavours, to be fair.)
Mombasa is a world away from here – here where white ditches give way to white fields, yielding finally to a great and unblemished dome of white. In the frigid north, waiting is a way of life. Waiting for the storm to break. Waiting to arrive. Waiting for spring. A world away, but not so different really. White and black – lives lived at the mercy of the sun.
Sitting in the shade, on the crumbling concrete front step of a small store.
Address:
Main Street
Deep Rural Town
2nd Poorest Constituency
Kenya
Africa
Time moves ever onward, no matter the distance to the nearest paved road. Women in full colour, barefoot children in tow, meet and greet and smile and shake and laugh and smile and walk on. An occasional bicycle rolls causally by, its driver forced to re-adjust suddenly, distracted by the entirely irreconcilable appearance of a random white man sitting on a random front step. Re-adjusts, passes-by, and disappears into the distance.
It’s an island paradise. There’s no water nearby, of course. There’s not even reliably clean and available drinking water. Here, the sea is of sun scorched sand, darkened now and then by oases of reprieve – ever-shifting dark blobs on the blinding-hot soil. Human life lives in these pools of semi-darkness, these islands of semi-cool – the enormous fruit of massive mango trees, lush and dense, by rusty awnings and by thatched grass mats strung between half-buried branches. Through the heat of day, communities congregate and wait, sitting and watching, wiping sweaty brows. It’s too hot to work. Too hot even to talk. It is a climate most ideally suited to waiting. Waiting and considering.
Black and white. Absolute absence vs. absolute saturation. Waiting for something. Waiting for anything. Waiting to arrive, sitting on heated leather seats, in my own temperature zone, with Bose audio and a steaming cup of Guatemalan coffee sitting in a moulded rubber and plastic holder at my elbow. Waiting to survive, sitting on crumbling green concrete, desperate for a breath of wind, surrounded by sales – used plastic jugs and simple metal pots hanging from dirty strings. Passing time on my hopelessly obsolete 3-year-old Toshiba laptop. Passing time with friends of every yesterday and every tomorrow and Juicy Fruit gum, the Kenyan drug users favourite at $0.05 a pack.
Snowy and flat, rolling endlessly past my eyes. Diet Pepsi stop. Porta-potty ‘round back. Frozen lake, and steam off hot liquid.
Humid and hot, masses of humanity crammed into busses, sharing stench and sweat, forced to squeeze together onto single-seats. Coca-cola stop. Glass bottle dripping wet. Pit-latrine ‘round back. Fluid lake and splashing shoes.
Waiting for life to begin. Waiting for life to end.
White and black. Saturation and absence. Life and death.
Once upon a time, there was a jar and some rocks. If the little rocks hog the space, the big rocks are left to rot. Give what matters most its fair concern, fill the space with life’s pleasure, and live a long, happy jar-life, fulfilled.
Heated leather seats. Bose audio. Guatemalan coffee.
Water. Friends. Family.
Waiting for life. Waiting for death.
Black and white. Saturation and absence. Innocence and guilt.
Peace and love.
shaking hands with the owner of the severed hand, lying muddy on the ground, in the picture behind the man … a post-election violence photo exhibition on the street in downtown nairobi … bloody machetes held high … deep hatred fanned to fury … broad smiles on the wall, amid flames and agonized faces captured in a moment forever, drinking deep the glory of destruction … power for the powerless …
life at 5km/h … ‘deep rural’ … never seen a white person before, jaws all on the … dirt … bus was 5 hours late … welcome to africa … long speeches by lamp-light into the wee hours … ’so fortuntate to have a guest from canada’ … ‘think of all the things he can pay for’ … flaunted like bling … dancing monkey bling … when they slaughter a goat for your arrival, you should not be surprised to be eating goat for every meal for the next 2 days … washing hands with dirty water … deep wisdom … fool’s hope … life without time … delicious tea …
nairobi rafiki … karibu kenya … you are welcome … nai-robbery … inflated prices … inflated egos … late-nites, bbq’d meat and warm beer … nairobi night-life on a wednesday … turning the volume to max does not compensate for empty bar … at no time is our common humanity more apparent than when we drink, and bounce around like sex-starved baboons … africa’s danger lies not in war and disease, but in vehicular insanity … ”what i learned today = don’t get in cars with drunk drivers” … failed attempt at christmas cheer … consumers in training …
bus ride … pretty girl in the next seat … pretty smile … from uganda … did you know that in uganda, there are still kingdoms ??? … so now i have shared a bus with an actual princess … i can conclude with absolute certainty that all royal people think everyone and everything is absolutely hilarious …
in dar now … walking in old foot-prints … surreality … i can’t believe it was me that lived that life … i guess it probably wasn’t … i feel like i envy myself … but then … who is this ‘myself’ that i am envying ??? … self must be an illusion … ever notice how you can’t possibly pay attention to all the things going on inside your body at any one time ??? … even a small number of them … makes you wonder how you can justifiably call it ‘your body’ at all … if it’s not mine … who’s is it ??? … cells take care of themselves … organs take care of themselves … systems take care of themselves … … … families take care of themselves … communities … civilizations … etc … granted, some suck at it … but they die, right ??? … darwin was a clever fox … if our intelligence exists on a higher level than those things that self-organize to make us up … and we ourselves are self-organizing beings … doesn’t it stand to logic that there must be a higher intelligence which we are little, ignorant pieces of … i hope it’s a giant chocolate chip cookie …
not really in dar … kigamboni is my home here … new ferry this time, from dar to kigamboni … it has television on the walls … they stream advertising 24-hours a day … drink coke and people will like you more … i love the encroachment of our culture … like adolescent grafitti, spraying incoherent words on the clean walls of the illiterate … a whole nation of would-be consumers, just waiting to be potty-trained … too bad about that whole poverty thing … the billboards have snow, and snowmen … ‘what’s snow?’ …
kigamboni is like a little barnacle of rural life, stuck to this great urban monstrosity … it’s lovely, though … quiet and simple … the streets are an exercise in chaos, where no straight line will serve you well for very long … 4-storey palm trees arching gracefully into a vast pool of soft-blue … sandy, rubbish strewn roads … shit … time is up in 2 minutes …
spending christmas on the beach … doesn’t feel like christmas … how depressing … going to wake in my tent on the beach and go swimming in the ocean … nothing can replace family … not a bad alternative … 1 minute 21 seconds left …
peace and love …
Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Africa, Despair, Gender empowerment, HIV, Hope, Humanity, Mombasa, Peer Education, Youth
1
Today I sat down with a group of young Kenyan adults, with varying levels of education, experience and training, to talk about jobs. One of my tasks in Kenya has been to consult with numerous local businesses, dozens of young people, and the government. My goal is to begin an exploration into the issue of youth unemployment in Mombasa, and to eventually make recommendations about future directions for research and programming. People who know me are probably tired of hearing this, but I need to say it again … I love the surprise of life. One never really knows around which corner that profound, life-altering moment lies. Today, sitting under a big tree with a group of 14 frustrated but hopeful young Kenyans, I was ambushed by the kind of experience that shakes souls and makes strangers cry
It was “understanding” brought to life; a sharing of not only experiences, but of the “experience of being” itself. For a few beautiful moments, I caught a startlingly clear glimpse of the reality that is theirs, and the simple hardships that are so average they escape notice and so matter-of-fact as to be unworthy of mention. Consider a life lived high on a mountain, where the daily climb ceases to be a point of any relevance, but whose energy-draining impact is toiled through each day, and whose aches are felt every night.
We had just reached a deep silence during a particularly intense discussion about the weight of an invisible stigma against youth from the Coastal Region – a stigma rooted deep in the cultural value-system. Stigma of this sort can crush dreams, and represents an obstacle to hope of incalculable size. As a young Muslim woman of humble roots shared her personal story of being victimized by ignorance and hatred, I slunk back in my chair, sighed with my head in my hands, and muttered “I don’t know how you do it.”
I was defeated.
It had been a long conversation, and their stories of disappointment, and their experiences with doors systematically and repeatedly slammed in their faces, were building on each others masses. Without warning, they built into an obstacle so great as to block my sun. I abruptly discovered my own, supposedly unshakable idealism, was mired in the darkness. I was defeated.
A young man touched my knee gently. He looked me in the eyes with a smile and said “I think you now understand.” Before I could respond, the man beside him stole my eyes, raw sincerity pouring forth from his being, and said words I will never forget: “we will cry with you now, if you want.” I looked around the circle at 14 human beings. Fourteen pairs of eyes glued to my soul with love, willing to pour forth unimaginable pain and voice profound confessions of weakness, so that I might understand. I shook my head as the tears welled deep inside my soul. “It’s ok,” said the first man gently, “we are together now.”
Once upon a time I wrote about hope. I described it as the spring from which all things flow. I equated its absence to the purest form of impoverishment. Personally exploring Africa’s challenges, it is easy to lose hope. To hear a single description of the “glass ceiling” (24 inches thick and bullet-proof) that stands between the poor and so many simple, but impossible to overstate opportunities, will abruptly knock the idealism from a person like a donkey kick to the stomach. And that’s not even the beginning of the beginning of the introduction.
I have been mocked and patronized regularly for years for my “youthful idealism.” But sitting under that tree, catching the feeling of a tiny sliver of the vast ocean of bleakness that is Kenyan reality, I was shaken. My hope was shaken. It’s unfair of me to speak like this; deeply and near-criminally unfair. There is so much more to say. I hope you will stay with me while I try to make something whole for you.
2
I want to tell you about a new friend of mine. Her name is Evelyn, but everyone knows her as “Shikoo,” and everyone knows her. She is a volunteer at “Kwacha Afrika,” the local NGO with which we have partnered here in Mombassa. But first I must back up a little, for to understand Shikoo, you must understand something about the land in which she lives. The Coastal Region of Kenya is dominated by Muslims and Christians. They may disagree on many things, but they are in staunch agreement that wives belong at home with their mouths shut. Women are reminded of this fact quite regularly; the message delivered with the back of a hand, leaving little room for argument or doubt. I am generalizing, and this is unfair to very many wonderful, loving and open-minded people of this region, but I want to help you understand what it means for Shikoo to be who she is.
In a land where the role of the woman is to be weak and quiet, Shikoo is strong and loud. Though only in her mid-twenties, she is articulate and intelligent, and never shies from and opportunity to take the lead, and make her presence felt in a positive way. Of course, she can be a bit over-zealous at times, and forceful with her opinions, but she is young and learning, and when she speaks, everyone who can hear is listening.
She is one of a small group of young people who have taken leadership roles at Kwacha, designing and implementing all sorts of programs aimed at strengthening their communities through the power of youth. They use drama to educate, training others not just in how to act, but in how to design powerful skits that entertain, while disseminating important messages about HIV, and provide positive, gender-aware, role models for their audiences to discuss and emulate. “dance 4 life” takes HIV education into schools, using the natural positive energy of dance to promote active and healthy lifestyles. They write and perform songs that matter, and when they join voices, goose-bumps shoot forth in every direction, touching people in a way that can only be described as indescribable. They sing not about common-Western irrelevancies like broken hearts or bright lights, but about broken communities and bright futures.
“Social change is coming through,
Joining forces me and you.
Social change is coming through,
Joining forces me and you.
We’re campaigning for a reason.
Every hour and every season.
We will lead to social change.
Global youth will re-arrange.
Social change is coming through,
Joining forces me and you.”
It’s awe-inspiring! Truly! And they talk! They talk to anyone who will listen, even if it is only to each other. They talk about challenges and ideas and potential and the future. They discuss and debate and engage, each and every day, challenging each other to push forward. And though they spend all their time there, many of them working long, hard days and weekends, they are all volunteers, doing it purely out of passion for a better world and a belief in what they can achieve together.
New volunteers arrive all the time. Many are women. Some come from strict Muslim homes. At first, I am sure they are overwhelmed by the energy and laughter that bubbles forth from every corner of the room. But in time, they find something. They find a corner of Kwacha – an activity that fills a need in them. Gaining friends, they find the courage to take that terrifying first, tentative step. Whether through song or dance or drama or debate or peer education, they speak, and with their first words, they find a voice that they never knew existed. Suddenly something is real for them that was never real before – a way of being, or a future, or a dream that had lived neglected in the darkness of their oppressed lives. With those first words, those first steps, the windows are thrown open and life-giving light suddenly pours into the darkened room, and envelops that tiny flower called ‘hope,’ long-struggling to survive on the floor.
But now it is real, and a fire has been lit. What happens when hope becomes real? What happens when that crazy, secret dream comes into focus for the first time? The electricity that drives them takes on a life of its own, and though they are pouring out energy as never before, they find vast new dream-fed wells from deep within themselves. As each step drives the next, they move faster and faster and faster in pursuit of that dream. Surrounded and supported by the powerful and the brave – others, like Shikoo, who braved these first steps not-long before – successes mount and courage grows. They are a team, a unit, feeding and drawing from the common well of positive energy which renders things possible and no idea too far-fetched to be made real.
They stand in front of rooms full of conservative, rural men, and challenge them to see women as equals. They stand in front of rooms of peers, and frankly discuss vaginas and herpes and why it is so, so, so important to wear condoms. They stand in front of rooms of total strangers, and with voices breaking, look up from their feet and say “I am HIV positive,” shaking the fucking ground, and smashing people in the face with the difficult truth that the HIV+ person does not look sick. They are courage. They are hope. They are the future. They stare in the face of a virus that has torn apart their families and their continent, and with heads high, flatly refuse to be knocked down. They are raped and they are beaten, and they are mocked and shunned by their families, but together they stand – strong, proud, Kenyan.
3
I want to help make something whole for you. I want to help you to understand. HIV is a scourge – an invisible virus that preys on love and lust. It is spread not so much by fluid, as by ignorance, and by the subjugation of the woman. It is a problem of incalculable scope, but with immeasurable hope, a group of young Africans have mobilized themselves in a war for a better tomorrow. In 2000, a handful of people with few resources, save passion and desire, joined forces, and initiated a virus of their own. They took what they knew and loved – the arts – and turned them into a weapon. Slowly-by-slowly, they infected others, each discovering a new piece of themselves in the struggle. One became two, two-four, four-eight, eight-sixteen, and onward to today.
Today, a hand-picked group of 10 Kwacha Youth set forth, supported by six Canadian Youth, to a near-by community called Mwakirunge. Mwakirunge is the site of Mombasa’s enormous garbage dump, and though it’s only 30-minutes from Mombasa, it may as well be on another planet. Traditional ideas about the role of women and the reality of witchcraft prevail. Knowledge of what HIV is, and how it is spread, is in tragically short supply. How do you prevent yourself from getting a virus, if you don’t know how it is transmitted, or how to use a condom?
Enter the Kwacha youth.
Using song, drama, games, lectures and group discussions – large and small – they worked with 55 local youth, hungry for information. Though some were barely literate, they walked as far as 3 hours, over hills and through raging rivers, to be there every day. In the Kwacha youth, they saw the very same thing that those very same Kwacha youth saw in others not long ago – passion, energy, hope. For four days, through heat, frustration, fatigue and tropical downpours, the Kwacha youth taught and challenged and opened their own hearts to a room of strangers. Now, 55 local Mwakirunge youth have had their minds torn open – their lives changed forever.
Of course, there is far to go. They are only 55, in a large, isolated community. What’s more, a lifetime of deeply held values and ideas don’t dissipate in four days. But the window has been thrown open, and light is pouring into 55 lives, onto 55 long-neglected flowers of hope. A new virus has found its victims. Leaders have emerged naturally from the crowd, and are eager to spread the message of life and equality.
Next week, those youth, supported by Kwacha youth, supported by Canadian youth, are holding a community outreach. Though they themselves have only just learned and had their minds opened just a little, they are eager to share, and will draw hundreds of community members from distant lands. They will use drama, song, games, poetry and discussion to transfer the simplest, but most crucial and life-saving ideas to their people. “This is what HIV is.” “This is how HIV spreads.” “This is what you need to do to protect yourself.”
Lives are spared. Communities protected. Youth empowered. Futures brightened. Dreams awakened. Hope restored.
4
Kwacha Afrika. “Kwacha” is a Swahili word that means “awaken.” Awaken Afrika. “A new dawn.” A small tin roof, over a small courtyard, next to modest building, on an average street, in an ordinary district of a typical city. For hundreds of Mombasa youth, the birthplace and breeding ground of the most powerful virus of all – hope. For me, the savior of my own.
Peace and love.
