A poem for her

 Fortunate is she who knows how to collect the sun and the wind in the clothes of her beloved.

Who wakes and peers at the dawn and wonders what the day holds… whether a rainstorm

hides out somewhere in the midday and whether the morning sun will be enough.

Whose hands move under cool morning water as she scrubs a sock, stretching

its fibers long against the rough brush as yesterday’s bunker flows brownly

down the drain. Who drinks her coffee and packs lunches and braids hair

and rinses plates with jam and egg yolk, while the cycle hums in the

background. Who then takes her basket, full, to a spot of sun, of

quiet, (because clothes must dry in the quiet) and,

setting down her basket, she bends down to

lift out one piece

by one

piece.

What the breeze carries

African gospel music

Smell of honey

Dragon flies

Dust

Stories

A firefinch's song

Wound

The word that most Rwandans use to describe to me the horrors that were left after the genocide is “wound.” The translation comes from the Kinyarwandan ibikomere which means a deep pain. But I have to say that I appreciate the use of wound in contextualizing such an atrocity. To me, a wound sounds like something corporal, something of the flesh that can be fixed with some of mama’s spit and stitches. Even the sound of the word seems destined to wholeness – with your mouth formed in a round soft circle.

But what deep wounds they are.

This morning I was told two stories of female survivors of the genocide. Such stories are not told, or heard, lightly. But nevertheless, they are relatively common to hear and then to share. Sometimes I feel like they are heavy bowling balls which, upon hearing their contents, one has to carry around until they find someone else to give it to temporarily. You literally heave with the effort of telling it and then passing it to the next person. The stories flesh out the specific horrors of the genocide. That it was not only “a genocide” but also 800,000 singular murders. The stories also demonstrate how the most common tools of the genocide were the machete and the rape. Many women and girls were murdered after being raped, but some went on to live and to give new life.

The first story I heard today was told on the radio by a young woman of 22. She had been 6 in 1994 when the Interhamwe raped her and her mother then murdered her mother as she stood next to her, holding her hand. When the little girl cried out in despair, only able to utter to her mother’s murderers that she was thirsty, the murderers slit her mother’s wrist and forced the young girl to drink her own mother’s dying blood. The second was a story of a young couple in love. They became engaged with plans to marry. But when the genocide began, the man told his fiancé to put on trousers to appear as a man so that they could escape through the night. But they were soon found and the young man was murdered while his fiancé was raped repeatedly. And then they raped her with the gun they had just used to murder her fiancé. Months later she realized she was pregnant.

Well, this woman raised the son she was forced to have. And she loved him. And she still does love him, 15 years later. That is the good news of the story.

But what about the bad news? The news that still bleeds and cries and scabs over and scars and aches with each memory? What mama's spit can possibly heal this wound?

"I am not divisible"

“I am not divisible” were the words that Shalom Director Jean de Dieu used to describe his mixed Hutu-Tutsi parentage. “I just am who I am, I’m Rwandan, I’m not divisible.”

How do you tell that to a genocide? I am not divisible.

It reminds me of a quote I read in John Paul Lederach’s “Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies.” Lederach describes the characteristics of contemporary armed conflict - they are increasingly more internal than international in cause and response, they are based on narrowing concepts of identity, they are fueled by Cold War small weapon production, and, finally, they are “by nature lodged in long-standing relationships.”

Long-standing relationships. Conflicts lodged in long-standing relationships.

Like the Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats. Like the members of the FARC and the Colombian army. Like the long-term inhabitants of Israel and Palestine. Like the Tutsis and Hutus. These are all groups that have been and are in long-standing relationships. Just saying the name of one group is often enough to evoke the name of the other.

But doesn’t it sound so much more difficult to justify violence when you speak of the two conflicting parties as being in a relationship? People who are in relationship seek to understand each other. People who are in relationship try to compromise. People who are in relationship learn to accept one another's faults. And naturally, sometimes people in relationship divorce, move away, lose contact, disagree, neglect, and ignore one another. They grow divided by interests or attitudes, priorities or locations. But does the relationship end there? Or does it stall? Does it die or does it go into hibernation? Do we bring in a third party to fix things? Do we go to a counselor?

Something that has fascinated me about Rwanda post-genocide has been the government’s insistence that all Rwandan refugees return to Rwanda. There are various reasons for this insistence. For one, many refugees were continuing to organize Hutu Power (anti-Tutsi) campaigns in the refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other neighboring countries, essentially continuing to be a danger to Rwandan society. Some will also say that the goal of getting genocidaires back into the country is to punish them either through vengeance killings or through prison time. Whatever the intention of the reuniting of the country, it is an interesting phenomenon to me to declare “we are all going to go through this process together.” And they have. Gone through it together. Like the gacaca local judicial tribunals. The community work day, umaganda, where all are requested to chop down overgrowth on roads or dig ditches. The 2,000+ economic cooperatives that have surged post-genocide to incorporate survivors and perpetrators of the genocide into responsible business models. And the thousands of Rwandan homes cohabitated by widowed and orphaned, Tutsi and Hutu. (Philip Gourevitch's book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow we Will be Killed with our Families, has many interesting cases of this last phenomenon.)

President Kagame has asked the people of Rwanda to 1) start wearing shoes and 2) forgive one another. And we are all waiting to see what happens when a people comes together to do just that.

Shalom: Educating for Peace

Shalom’s Director, Jean de Dieu, was eager for us to get immediately to work when I arrived. So at 8:30 am, I was halfway through a breakfast of bread and jam and Rwandan tea (1 part black tea, 99 parts warm fresh cow milk) when I saw him through the lacy curtains arriving to the large porch of the house where I am staying, unpacking his computer and other work papers. I could see he was cheerful to begin our labors together. I was jetlagged.

I joined him on the porch where we were shaded from the midmorning sun and able to enjoy the breeze and birdsong. Since we have already been collaborating for the past few months on writing grants and preparing trainings, the conversation was easy. The plan for the morning was to orient me to the work, vision and mission of Shalom – or in other words, the work, vision and mission of Jean de Dieu. Here I have tried to put together some of the story he told me:

Jean de Dieu was a young, married man with a child on the way, when he felt a call - (a word he accented from here on out in the conversation by rubbing his chest with his right hand and grimacing his face as though the “call” were a physical pain) – this call was to study the paths of peace and nonviolence. And while issues of peace and nonviolence were not completely new for this young Christian (as an undergrad in psychology, Jean had been required to do short military training, but instead wrote a letter to the authorities expressing his dissent with the obligation. As he justified it to me: “When they train people in the army here, they teach people that the gun is their mother, their father, their everything. I didn’t understand the idea behind learning to use guns because we don’t have animals to kill. And so teaching me how to use a gun was teaching me how to kill someone.”), it was certainly not what he or his sweet, pregnant wife had expected for their lives. He chuckled a little to recall that this new call to study peace was paradoxically a “conflict” – “It was my first time to have a conflict such as that, I cannot resolve it. My mind said no to studying conflict resolution, but my heart said quickly.”

As Jean began to investigate possibilities to study this call, he found a distance-learning university in South Africa that would offer 2 years of coursework. He contacted one of the professors of the program who told Jean to send in his materials as soon as possible to begin the following semester. Jean did this, but told me, his application lacked so many things to be complete, among those - visa paperwork and the $50 registration fee. A week later, Jean was advised that he had been accepted and that the professor who had encouraged him to apply was going to cover his registration costs as well as his 2^nd term of study. But Jean had to cover the first term – which, in addition to the plane fare to get to South Africa, was the money that he and his wife had saved to build their home. Plus, the initial meetings for the Masters in Peace and Conflict Resolution were set to begin on January 25^th – meetings that Jean really needed to be present for.

But Jean’s first son, Shema, was scheduled to be born January 27. It was a hard time for Jean and his wife as they discerned what was important to them at this juncture. Jean told me that he asked his wife: “My dear Grace, I ask you just one thing. Just listen to me and understand me. I do not have justification. You have questions. I do not have answers.”

Apparently dear Grace did listen and understand Jean and on January 23^rd the “first miracle” (in Jean’s words) took place – his son was born. He was named Shema which means pride. And on the 25^th, Papa Shema (parents become known by the name of their first born) kissed Mama Shema and baby Shema goodbye and boarded a plane to South Africa.

Two years later Jean de Dieu had a Masters degree in Peace and Conflict Resolution. He had studied from home, taking care of Shema and his younger brother Jabo (“Conviction”) while dear Grace worked a few hours from home. And now he was ready for Shalom. Together with a fellow student from the MA program, Jean began taking the slow, but eager steps towards developing a peace education model in Rwanda. The first year of Shalom was dedicated to strategic planning. The second year to program development and design. In Rwanda there is a lot of respect and appreciation for a well-designed program and many entrepreneurs and professionals here have told me that before embarking on their projects, they spent much time making sure it was right and good. Now, in his third year with Shalom, Jean tells me he is ready. However, there are many complications still. First, he is a man with a family and he feels a lot of pressure from others to use his Masters degree to work with one of the big national or international organizations here in Kigali. Also, there is the issue of money. At this point donations to Shalom solely cover operating costs and Jean de Dieu goes without a salary. (I would find out over the course of the week what this lack of funding really means for an organization as ambitious as Shalom: each day we walk 10 minutes and take two crowded chicken buses (yes, I can call them that because there really are chickens), to get to the center of town, whereas the other day, a pickup truck owned by the international NGO World Vision took us into town in less than 15 minutes.) But despite the inconveniences of not having deep pockets at this point in his career, Jean tells me, “Mary, money will come. First the ideas must be there and then money will come.”

As the morning turned into midday, Jean began to conclude his story. Now you understand, he said to me, a little about the vision, the mission and the struggle behind Shalom. He closed his eyes and rubbed his chest and then looking out over the valley below, said to me, “My dream was to find myself in community, educating people for peace.”

And that is where I have found him.

Africa arriving, Rwanda rising…

It was 6 am in the rainy Brussels airport. In the past two months, I had traveled from Buenos Aires to Durham, Durham to Costa Rica, Costa Rica to Washington DC, DC to Durham, Durham to Richmond, Richmond to DC and DC to Brussels - and I suppose I should have been exhausted, but I wasn’t. I was wide eyed and focused. After all, I had a mission: to switch seats with someone on the plane who had a window seat. I was going to be flying over Africa for the first time, and I needed a window.

As we boarded the plane and I took my aisle seat, I looked anxiously at the arriving passengers for the person who would switch seats with me. Would it be one of the Guatemalan nuns? The young nurse from Boston? The National Geographic-looking guy? Or perhaps one of the many Canadian-passport clutching Rwandans that I saw? No, it would be Beatrice from Burundi. Agreeing to switch seats was one of the first of many non-verbal communications we would have over that 8 hour flight. She spoke French and I spoke English, but we were both fluent in smiling, nodding, and pointing.

At first my intention to see Africa from above was frustrated by clouds, but then, the bright white below began to fade away into rolling expanses of tawny brown and smears of black cutting across the landscape. The Sahara desert: all feminine and fierce. I began to search for blue, for water, for signs of life, but 30,000 feet above didn’t reveal any of those things. It continued like this until just before dusk, when I became aware that we were flying over the Nile River. Below us the sky had turned to a soft charcoal blue with the late afternoon as if all of the Nile’s H2O components were mixing with the atmosphere. And then, with the brief burst of an electric sunset, the sky and everything below went black. But completely black. I saw no hazy orange skylines, no slow moving highways, no neighborhoods ribbed in street lights. It was night, completely.

This visual silence could have been disconcerting, but it left me feeling peaceful. (The same feeling I now get walking through the dark hills of the neighborhood I live in. Walking beside a sure-footed companion, my vision is more limited that I am accustomed to, but I trust my feet to carry me.)

As we neared our destination in Kigali, lights began to dot the space below. Hills began to rise up above the wings of the plane, and suddenly we felt the ground below the wheels. As I descended the plane, greeted by tall, serious-faced Rwandan airport employees in reflective gear, I took a deep breath, giving thanks for Africa arriving.

sur america

ciao ciao, un beso fuerte, saludos a la gente alli, te quiero, ciao ciao, que dios te bendiga, un abrazo, ciao, adios

meat dreams

In Bolivia, I decided to stop eating meat. In Argentina, I decided to start again.

It was the first night in Argentina. After 30 hours on two freezing buses and a 5 am border crossing, you could say I wasn't conscious of what I was doing. I ordered a salad thinking my body needed cold raddishes and lettuce. Then Mario's plate arrived. It was a plate made out of meat. I judged him as he teared the flesh from the bone. But then he offered me a bite and like I said, I was not thinking, so I tried this dish that has made Argentina famous, and as Mario would tell it, light suddenly came into my eyes and it is very possible that due to the richness and flavor of that juicy carne, I cried...

and ever since I have been under the spell of the cow.

They are very proud of their meat in Argentina and reprimand the butchers for a bad cut. A good carne takes 2 hours to cook and is only permitted to come into contact with salt, no sauces, no salsas, no A-1. One evening, our gracious hosts had prepared a bbq and as we sat down to eat, I struggled a little cutting into it, my knife just not wanting to find the plate below. The usually robust table got quiet, and the host put down his fork and concentrated on me. I knew that I was clearly disrespecting his meat, same as if I were to paper his house or break his only son's heart. I got nervous, started sweating, sawing with all my might at this frustrating piece of blubber. He finally said, "That knife must not be cuttin´" and his wife quickly added "Sí, must be the knife, it's not the meat." "Not the meat" "Not the meat" everyone at the table rapidly chimed in from their bowed, embarassed, places over their meat plates. Finally, I freed the piece from its thick body and stuffed my mouth full, remaining silently chewing for several awkward moments. You don't disrespect the meat.

So, like that, I left behind the world of the round onion, the crisp carrot, the sleek green bean. I am a meat-eater. Each day at lunch, I eat a Steak Milanesa, at night, a dripping rack of ribs. I go to my bed and fall asleep and the meat visits me and gives me dreams more vivid, more disturbing, more real than any I have ever had. Literally, becoming ...

dreams incarnate!!!

Bella Bolivia

Bella Bolivia. You have been a cold country. The rivers in your lowlands run warmer than the tap water that freezescalds my fingers. I still haven't recovered from that sting. Your hillsides are naked, exposed, small potato fields struggling to warm themselves in your rocky earth. Clouds scratched across blue endless skies. Faces made of leather, shoes made of tired tires. I can see the bones of your elbows, your ankles, chalky with cold. The wind leaves your cheeks a crackly red, and your eyes, dry ceramic pots.

Bella Bolivia. In your Spanish chapels, the gold peels and I see earth material underneath. Jesus hangs on a faded cross of leather canvas. In your once silver-coated mountains, Indigenous blood paints the rock. Your history is skin and bones.

Bella Bolivia. From my bus window, I see your day meet night on the horizon, smelling sweet. I see your trees bending into the sunset, beaming with the golden reflection. Your lakes are a sea of tos'd glitter. Your streets a stony hallway. Your ancients, dressed like dolls, sink deep into the puddle of their skirts, melt down into the earth from whence comes the warmth, like your adobe homes. I watch your youth digging at the earth, revolving the minerals found there. I watch your men, coca juice filling their mouths, moving to a rhythm birthed in their torsos, wrung from the sorrow of the zampoño.

Bella Bolivia. You ARE beautiful.

"NO LLORES POR UN PAIS QUE ESTA LUCHANDO,

LUCHAS POR UN PAIS QUE ESTA LLORANDO"

-graffiti in Santa Cruz
"don't cry for a country that's fighting, fight for a country that's crying"

Roads like Journeys

Roads like journeys
there, always before you

A room like religion
dark, candlelit with waxy prayers

Hot water like democracy
promised, icy on your neck

Toilet paper like a journal
prioritized, when one runs out

Bolivia like a Texas landscape
conquered, still stubbornly sovereign

Bolivia

Bolivia lay at the top of the hill. Hidden from my view by the incline, I could only imagine it. Filled with mines and buried Eldorados? Indigenous women, babies slung cross backs. Socialist presidents. Cheap markets. I know that most of the people who knew about this trip, told me to skip it.

We changed our money in Peru. Bolivianos. Suddenly richer than we had been, the air felt lighter. Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out the coins that rattled there... 3 soles. I couldn't believe the coincidence. My spirit soared. I would carry these 3 soles with me through the rest of this journey and they would protect me and guide me. Later I would deliver them back to the USA to verify where I had been. I looked up at Bolivia. I contemplated how I would cross this imaginary line. Leaping. High on altitude and short on oxygen, we leaped our way from Peru to Bolivia.

On the other side, a new country, a new people, a new story... and a beggar. One of those women who look like they melted into their giant petticoats, bowler hat open and extended. I walked past her.

And stopped. I turned around. 3 soles. I turned them over in my hand before they fell soft on the dirty felt. She fingered them and looked up at me, then scuttled off. No Aymara blessing, no Spanish gracias. Just a lighter weight in my pocket, a story, and 3 soles given.

bubble babble

watching a group of middle aged english people blow bubbles at excited peruvian three year olds here in the plaza of Aguas Calientes, the mirrored joy on both sides of the magical globes, watching them fly, float, then foof! now this group of middle aged English people pull, like rabbits from a hat or dollars off a tree, new bottles of bubbles from their bundles tightly wrapped diagonally around their tall torsos and in so doing show these children what fantastical treasures lie in the foreigner's pocket.

the group of middle aged English people have left the plaza, gone to enjoy drinks and pizza in a balcony overlooking a river, but here in this plaza, bubbles continue to float above little heads, tiny eyes glistening, arms reaching up...

hey america!

It is the 4th of July and for the second time in my life, I am celebrating it in Peru. I was 16 and traveling with a gaggle of methodist girls and our mother goose. The day was gray, a la Lima, and smelling of exhaust. Someone, can't remember who, asked me, "Are you not sad to not be celebrating your Day of Independence in your country?" And it was only then that any of us realized, at least I think, that it was the 4th.

A few years ago on this day, I was in Seattle, watching eagles fly higher than the pines. Last year I was in Israel, feeling the Mediterranean spray, eating as much free ambassadorial food as possible, and giggling on the grass with Sarah. The other 4ths; west Texas, Wallace Wade Stadium, Orange County Speedway, Festival on the Eno.

Right now I'm in Arequipa, Peru, a diversion from original trajectories, but a welcomed one. We busslept through the Sierras, our noses frozen and our eyes red. Grateful, then, for the warm breeze and furry park grass of the morning. If the threads are woven right, we will be in Bolivia before nightfall.

I would love to hear about your 4th's. Send me some America.

Also, my amigito Jesus asked me to sing the American Nat'l Anthem and I could only remember the Costa Rican one. ¿ayuda?

wet life

Last night the same fat moon that welcomed us into the Amazons a month ago, was hung low in farewell. A final limon ice cream on a sticky night. A final paseo around the park busy with moms, dads, and tricycles. And at the end of the night, the wet eyes of illari, my 11 year old amiga, reaching up into mine from her koala embrace.

Puerto Maldonado, a city made of dust, trees, flakes of gold, wood, river, motos, catholics and evangelicals, markets, potholes, jungle. A city that held me for a while, will I be able to hold it? So quickly, I find myself back where I began, in Cuzco, 4000 meters up, wrapped in a fleece, and skypechatting with my family. My skin is anglo colored again, the dust and sun having washed off in the first hot shower.

History has shown that the jungle is forgettable. For hundreds of years, Spaniards passed through it on their way to Puerto Lima and Cuzco. Yet unable to dominate what they found there, they left and left behind little more than their castellano names carved into the trees. Later, the rubber barons would arrive, but rubber plantations in India would be more efficient and so they too would leave.

Today, I flew up and out of the jungle. Looking down, I might as well have been flying over the middle of the Pacific. Below, only a sea of trees, broccoli tops, smears of green, concealing the wet life hidden below.

jungle haiku

This past week, Mario and I were invited to a ***** albergue in the folds of the Amazon basin where in exchange for doing an evaluation of the 12 highly professional guides they have and going on all of the expeditions to the canopy, the lakes, and the river, we were given free food and board. It was cool. Weird though to share the week almost solely with honeymooners, fresh from the altar. Fresh faces, fresh rings, young and a little scared looking. Although, tarantulas don't help.

So I wrote them a haiku.

new rings like torches

heavy held by trembling hands

illuminate paths

In honor of my childhood buddy, Katie, and her brand new husband, Ryan.

malariainsomnia

Mosquitoes. The warriors of the Amazons. The only place in the US that compares is St Simon's Island, Georgia where old wooden churches are built on top of mangrove swamps.

At least in Georgia, they speak your language.

Here they are organized and tribal. They are bigger, or worse, invisible and then only identifiable by the fever you develop three weeks later; malaria, dengue, la uta.

One afternoon while a bunch of us were camping along Rio de Piedra, Mario developed chills and then fever and had to forgo the southern hemisphere astros for the warmth of his tent. 'Rub alcohol on your forehead', 'drink some tea' were the remedies, and the following day he was well... For 48 hours. Because then the symptoms repeated themselves. Chills and fever, then gone. I didn't look at the confirmation on my Peruvian friend's faces as I said out loud, "These are the symptoms of malaria."

Well, that was 3 weeks ago and for better or for worse Mario didn't get any more strange fevers or the number 1 tropical disease. Not this time. I won't say he wasn't a little disappointed.

I, on the other hand, having received strict mandate from the prestigious Duke travel clinic, am taking Mefloquine, malaria's drug nemesis. It says to stop taking it if I go crazy, aka, get paranoid, think the world is against me, have exploding diarreah.

None of that. But it does wake me up at 3 a.m. every morning, before even the roosters who wake up before the barking dogs who wake up before the motos who wake up before the riotously loud salsa music next door, which is WHEN I'd like to wake up. But instead I am wide awake at 3, debating the topics of free trade and fair trade (look for this in an upcoming blog entry).

There is nothing to do at 3 am. My mom says that is sacred conversation time. My dad says it is ice cream time.

I can't sleep so I think about sacred ice cream.

I have a friend who got malaria in Africa in the 90s. She is normal and has normal children. The Peruvians say there is no malaria here. That they haven't seen a tourist case in decades. I leave the jungle in 5 days and from there on will be in climates and altitudes unfriendly to the insect picante. In the meantime, my active nonviolent strategy will be the drug mefloquine and sacred ice cream.

el cielo

The Source

HERE;I am. Iñapari, Perù

Here, I am at the source. The source of our resources. Wood, rubber, water, oxygen, it all evaporates out of the Amazon basin and into our homes. The Spanish word for source is fuente which is also the word for fountain. I imagine the fountain in front of St. Peter’s where weary summer pilgrims intentionally walk under the spray. You can imagine whichever fountain you want.

Now imagine a dry fountain. One that makes you feel thirsty and even frantic to see its chapped mold and crusty paint. My west Texaners know about this, I think. Too many dry days under an adobe oven. Orange dust caked into makeup and salon hairdos.

Can you imagine the Amazons like that? It already is. Trucks heaving down the road, sun and dust flying up behind them to disguise their cargo – trees. Thick ones, wider than I am tall. Old ones, having served centuries of use in providing oxygen to the ground and air. Dead ones. Piled up like corpses, and although retaining their noble form, decaying faster than they grew. You think you can get used to that sight and envision the development that will be made possible through their life. But even the diesel engines that carry them seem to moan sorrowfully in their slow procession.

Here, my neighbors buy their necessities at the Abastecedor, or mini grocery store. The word is related to basta and bastante which mean enough. To buy enough. Just enough. Unfortunately, the forest still provides enough for the people in these communities, still feeds their children, still offers shade and rivers, consequently they haven’t learned how to exploit their own backyard and the source continues to evaporate out of here.

So I have to wonder whether I am really at the source or part of the source. The source of consumerism, of use and disuse, of mounted wants that evolve into needs. Or… a source of information, a fountain of perspective, un fuente de aguas refrescantes.

park nap

what you need:

a heavy lunch

a heavy head

a heavy sun

a heavy tree

a little sweat

a little breeze

a little time