Details and Beauty of the Whole Mess
I get a quiet moment here this weekend. Finally putting the porch on our house to good use, the fact that "power is here" lets me type, listen to music, and sit in the shade on an otherwise heated day. Not exactly a scorcher, but hot enough to make you glad for the shade and possibly a nice bottle of water. The light fills up the green yard and the red dust of the roads and the brick walls of our compound, just beyond which the traffic and people make just enough to fit in through the headphones and have that constant notice of where we are. The women practice singing somewhere near, perhaps the school across the street in a broken staccato of their various parts. I have heard this before. Once the fragments are placed together, the cohesive whole of the song has a specific beauty, but alone there are just these punctuated notes that may comprise of words, but all I hear are progressions, repeated and practiced, an unnatural and not entirely soothing but pleasant and fine accompaniment to the afternoon.
The previous night was busier. The weekend, as originally conceived, was calm, filled with cards with the boys and other pastimes. However the filming planned for earlier in the week was delayed following the typical Ugandan and IC-related inconveniences, mostly relating to power, proper equipment and other hiccups of the developing world. We started Saturday afternoon, rearranged a local library to fit the esthetics of the plans and began filming in our reconstructed library, smaller, brighter, more pronounced than the original with details melting away to inspire the students of the States to partner with students their own age, half a world away. We try to link them through the compassions to their struggles and the pronounced humanity of the Ugandan children we have met. We filmed progressions of empty rooms, tables, and shelves to fulfilled images of education as candlesticks melted away into computers.
Filming comprises a considerably detailed and cumbersome process. As the hours of the night passed away, the furniture maneuvered through numerous stages and rooms, the lights moved from one concentrated area to the next, the children came and went with the scenes, sitting in the corners and amusing themselves and us through the moments of waiting boredom. At one point, they all joined in singing Acholi praise songs, clapping and each performing the requisite motions to the songs. As I talked with them, taking a break from moving or lighting one thing or another, their stories flew out at me. Through everything they struggle against, we tell ourselves that schools offer the best chance. Through hunger and disease, violent histories and a lack of support, the idea is that education offers the mystical key to the ability to improve one's own lot. As a rule, you should be immediately suspicious of anything that smacks of a panacea. I wondered occasionally through the songs if the four to five hundred kids we put through school, taught in the new libraries and labs we plan to build, could grow into the leaders we hope can save their playmates that we left behind, unable to help them all. Still, though, you have to try.
The next day offered another program. After sleeping past the scheduled time to meet a friend and head off to his church, I woke to learn that Jan Egeland was in town and some people were heading off to hear the UN's Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs—among other flashy titles—speak. We sat in a room crowded with other development workers, enjoying tea and biscuits and watching the man field questions about the direction of humanitarian efforts in the area. Questions ranging from interesting perspectives on the influence of the Karamajong in the conflict to the ubiquitous pondering of the appropriate course of action for the International Criminal Courts, and the possibilities of amnesty or justice for Joseph Kony and the direct link of that question to the entire prospects of the peace process. Sometimes seemingly unanswerable questions were deflected, other times acknowledgements were made, plans discussed, organizations of multilateral work, combining efforts, all the hopes of humanitarianism struggling to shine brightly through the discourse amid the chaos of international politics.
I hold onto some basic understanding of the history of this conflict. I can hold my own in discussions of causes and repercussions, bending through the dialogue not with great ease or impressive fortitude, but still with some small ability. I imagined today the aspects of that impressive title and the myriad of complications that lay underneath it. This one corner of history represents only "the most neglected humanitarian crises in the world," and yet there are others today. All the background minutia of this conflict represents information most of the world doesn't know, as a great portion of the world couldn't acknowledge even awareness of it. Among all the crises of our lives, like a hallway in our minds leading to troubled thoughts and awareness, each one only opens to another hallway with many doors closed and locked off due the information and understanding that we'll never have, limited as our perspectives are to ourselves. And these are just the crises of our lives, not even considering those of the rest of the population. Each little paragraph summary in the world news section of the paper represents not only an entire history behind the events, but also uncounted other conflicts that didn't even make the news cycle that night.
The depth of the issues we face should almost fill our thoughts and could almost paralyze our intentions. And what do you say after that. I'm here. I found something that speaks to me for whatever reasons—many of which are possibly chance or Fate, depending on the perspective. There's no real lesson for the great masses waiting to be inspired.
