A Reversed Recital: Delayed Reflections Part I

What with the numerable occurrences in life recently, I’ve only just realized my silence since settling in to Vallejo. It was not intentional. Life, as I’ve said when describing my return from Africa, has a consumptive manner to it that doesn’t release sometimes. Something about this past weekend between the reunion, the 90’s flashback music on the radio, and countless other events have forced me into reflection on the past several months and realizing that I have written nothing about this American life. So, I’ll offer some formally written (in blog format, not sure how formal that is) promise to try to reflect, write, and respond to life.

I’ll begin with the easiest, something I’ve already written. Even before coming back to the States I knew I was heading up to Portland soon to revisit old friends and my favorite state. I had been invited to speak at the Love Rally there about my experiences in Uganda. This invitation, in fact, formed a good amount of how I forced myself to process the experiences as I was packing up and heading out. The result is this speech, the details of which I very well may discuss later, but for now, here it is, something vaguely similar to what I said in Pioneer Courthouse Square over Fall Break some weeks ago: (sorry it’s kind of long, trust me I tried to deliver it in ten minutes.)



Paving the Road to Heaven

Thank you for that introduction, and thank you all. One thing I learned in Uganda, you can never thank people enough, so for them and for myself, thank you. For stopping and listening, wether you are parked here for the whole day learning, loving, and dancing, or whether you are passing through and were stopped by a story about a child, or a genocide, or a health clinic, or a global crisis, thank you for responding to that impulse, the impetus that tells us the world can be better, that improves our intentions and how we live our lives.

Being back here in the Square reminds me of how powerful that impulse can be. About a year and a half ago, I stood here with two thousand other people who slept overnight in solidarity with the children of Northern Uganda. On the road to and from that night to here, I have been shown remarkable examples of how our best intentions can go dramatic distances to improving the world. There are people who will tell you that isn’t true, that the “road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” They will tell you, citing entrenched histories of violence and death in Africa and elsewhere, that for all the money spent, we have done no good. They will say that donations and efforts do little besides placating Western guilt and advancing vague capitalist causes.

I, of course, disagree with this perspective. I have seen, in myself and others, the power that this simple idea can have. When a story or a picture or a person inspires something in us that is better than ourselves, we are driven with this desire to do good, and our best intentions carry us. I can only tell you from what I’ve seen that when these intentions are carried through honestly and fully, while the results may not be what we imagine when we first start out, they can reap great Good. A Goodness of the capital “G” sort.

The story of my own inspiration is the only way I can think of to explain this. I started out on this road as a college student, some mild experiences in developing countries, mostly in Mexico. After watching Invisible Children for the second time, I began to imagine what real impact I might have in the world. For those of you who are not familiar with it, the documentary Invisible Children depicts a civil war that has raged and destroyed lives in Northern Uganda for over twenty years. The conflict has resulted in tens of thousands of children abducted –forced to become child soldiers and sex slaves, in around 1.8 million people displaced from their homes, and in innumerable secondary effects from a decimated educational system to heightened HIV/AIDS scenario. After watching the film I was griped by the desire to do something anything—my best intentions calling out for justice and repair. I could have dropped a dollar in the cup and called that enough, but luckily I was offered the opportunity to travel the country and raise awareness with Invisible Children. That route led me to numerous high schools, colleges, churches and other places where I was inspired by the profound good will of the youth of this country. The experience culminated in the event I mentioned, with bodies strewn in sleeping bags all over these bricks. And after that I felt good, like I had done something, we had all come together and we accomplished a small step towards peace in Northern Uganda. The opposing sides entered into peace talks shortly afterward and hope loomed heavy for the first time. I could have stopped there.

Just as my money was not enough, the fact that I raised my hand once with over 80,000 other people to cry out “Injustice” did not solve the problem. If I was going to follow through on my intentions fully, I would have to do more. Again, I was graced with an opportunity to travel to Uganda and help create a program called Schools for Schools with Invisible Children aimed at rebuilding the North. I had profound ideas of what I could accomplish after studying International Relations and scoffing at the history of folly that Americans and Europeans have reeked in Africa. But if I was going to provide any real assistance there, I was going to have to learn more. As I sat in meetings with government officials, headmasters, teachers, students, and anyone who would talk to me I learned more about what real needs were and what real solutions could be offered. I saw schools made out of slants of scrap wood that produced quality students while relatively resource-rich schools struggled. I learned about the deeper qualities that were needed for development.

One of the most profound of those was community. Out projects in the Internally Displaced Person’s camps always provided us with inspiration. To describe an IDP camp for the uninitiated, imagine the refugee camps that you have seen on tv and in photos. Now imagine something worse. Because of instability caused by the rebel army, the Ugandan government forced a majority of the people from Northern Uganda into these camps where there was no water, no sanitation, no schools, no farming. Now a great percentage of the population is dependant on foreign aid for medicine, food, education, and other essentials. The rates of death, rape, alcoholism, and other tragedies in these camps are staggering. We try to help how we can but it wasn’t until a fire destroyed hundreds of tightly packed mud huts that I learned about profound help. As these huts where struggling families kept their few possessions were destroyed, a group of our beneficiaries in neighboring camps came together to assist the affected families. These people who themselves had next to nothing, who we provided a small boost of income and hope, and they turned around and offered a large portion of that back to us to rebuild the burnt and destroyed huts and homes. Only after witnessing exchanges like that of real love and community did I come to a more profound understanding of aid these good intentions of mine would ask of me.

But this is a growing, living thing. This spark of initiative that I’m describing in these good intentions continues to grow in me as I meet and discuss with people here and everywhere. And if I can offer you one thing, in my gratitude for the fact that you stopped and listened to me it is the understanding that I have come to. We can pave the road to Heaven with our good intentions, we can create a better world, we can answer that call inside ourselves that says we must do something, anything. But to do so honestly and fully, we have to follow through. It was only by investing myself and learning about the situations and talking with people that I learned how to help even more. If you have heard a story today that inspires you, I ask that you don’t just give money and let your conscience by assuaged. Get involved, the only way to change the world is to allow yourself to first be changed. And I’m not saying we all have to run to Africa. I was lucky, and I am enormously grateful that I could do that. But so much could be done right here. A couple of months ago, Invisible Children held another event and tens of thousands showed up to call for an end to the war in Northern Uganda and an end to the Internally Displaced Persons camps. Since then, the State Department has taken strong steps to assist the peace process, and hope continues to grow in Uganda.

That is what I offer you. Do not just be inspired, be changed. Learn about the people and the cause that inspires you. Then let that change in you shine out into the world in a new song, yours combined with others. That is love, that is the fruit of good intentions, of honest inspiration and wanting to improve the world with the courage to see it through. The call that Ghandi made, to “be the change you want to see in the world,” is your soul’s inspiration, your good intentions calling out, offering the only real hope for change, one that starts and continues with you.







(By the way, if the topic interested you and you want to be truly angered, read Michal Maren's "The Road to Hell")