I finally cried today, which, in all of the backwardness of this statement, was a very very good, much-needed thing. 

Convocation Address for the convocation of the Easter 2009 semester:

Gregory Hodgson British author and historian:

"Forty years ago, we were told that we had nothing to fear but fear itself. Today it seems like we have nothing to hope for but hope itself. But there is hope."

Oh how breaking makes a sound

I never knew could be

Oh how beautiful and loud

Fury filled and we

Collide.

Here it comes a beautiful collision...

the constant gardener. part 2.

to clarify.

sometimes i write about africa. and when i say sometimes, i mean all the time. because it's always in my head. and yes, the stories are a paradoxical juxtaposition of beauty and horror, life and death, hope and despair. and when i write them, more often than not, it's about the latter parts: the horror, the death, the despair. 

maybe this is a part of why that is. 

that movie, the constant gardener, that i've been writing about all week, embodies most of the reasons why africa won't leave my head. why the people and the place haunt or grace, whichever way i look at it in my roller coaster moods, my thoughts multiple times daily. 

the constant gardener came out in 2005. a british movie with voldemort and rachel weisz. ok fine, obviously it's not really voldemort but dave said it was either the actor who plays him or a twin. only dave would think about the option of voldemort's twin and gripe about it the whole movie. 

but we watched it last monday. before it began, the thought went through my mind that i didn't have to watch a movie, that i needed alone time to process the events of the last couple days. my heart raw, my emotions tattered, my mind confused, i just wanted to go to bed and deal with everything in the morning, but as he started it, and the opening scenes of lake turkana's flamingoes flashed across the screen in front of my eyes, i knew i wasn't going anywhere. 

i think i've sorta got a thing going on for africa. it's not exactly a fling either. this is one of those "things" with a bit more substance. and no, it's not just about the weather, although i'm a pretty big fan of that too. "things" things with the weather, that is. ;-) it's a bit of a love-hate relationship i think. and i still experience all the emotions of a post-breakup syndrome or something weird along those lines. i know we all do. sean, marcus, jill, bethany, mia, shannon, and all the others. 

because every time i see africa again, either in my iphoto or in my art projects, in a movie, in my dorm room, in Salgado's book, a tangled mess of fear, love, passion, life, death, pain, excitement, and terror all compete for my attention. my heart rate jumps and i breathe faster and harder, just like i mentioned in my last post. 

so as lake turkana turned into images of niarobi, all that happened again. the cold of our playroom suddenly seemed hot and i felt that longing again. it never really goes away, just sits there waiting under the surface. lurking in the corners of the deepest, most real places of my heart. 

i'll spare the details of the movie. go out and rent it.buy it.watch it.feel it. it's a beautiful film full of love, hatred, exploitation, oppression, a tireless pursuit of justice, and all of those things that embody all interactions of the west and africa. the smashing together of my two worlds. 

dave was moved. i felt him behind me. not his touch. not his heart rate. but as the death toll mounted and justice was sought i felt the presence in the room, that aura, change. 

what got to me wasn't the story of  the oppression and exploitation done to the people by the pharmaceutical companies. yeah, i begin to feel guilty when that which normally moves my family and friends doesn't move me. anymore. i'm beginning to see that it doesn't mean i'm calloused like i've thought, but i've dealt with it and now it just moves me to act. on the good days, at least. so i didn't cry about that part of it, though it does stir up the old, hopefully righteous rage and anger at evil and oppression. what stirred the deepest depths of my emotion was the shots of the scenery and the beauty of the place and the place living there. 

kibera. the white, beautiful mzungu walking through the tin roofed, mudbrick, slum hand in hand with the children of the slums. talking to them. laughing. smiling. and then i see jill and bethany in the slums, doing the same. i see them talking with the street children, and remember how sophia felt in my arms in the early dawn of kilome rd. and i see again the little girl in burundi playing with jill's hair. i see jill walking in front of my eyes looking through my lens with a little girl's hand in both her own as shiva and aaron rush past. i see bethany and lisa dancing with the girls above the paradise of mstoni ya zamani. the sun setting over the savanna at the family's house i've forgotten, on the way to the coast. athi river base and the giraffes chased across fields greened with new rain. a letter with images of bucket showers and water washing over my eyes. rich women from boston and their cheese. teacher mia. huruma. mumo when i actually enjoyed his incessant attention. attention i'd give anything to experience right now.dan.joseph.cliff.mercy.willie.rachel.kenny.jen.steph.ELLIOTT!!!!.greg.cambie.jill.bethany.me. standing underneath a sky full of stars in machakos singing acapella in all the beauty of young love and life. the hyracks screaming in the trees. building the fire in the cold... and when i say building the fire i mean bethany building the fire and jill saluting me. mariah carey at christmas and baby it's cold outside. and that effing irreplaceable. yeah, about that: buzz's girlfriend... woof. a lesson in skipping rocks that almost resulted in a big lump. on my face. erik and a stupid, insane poster in dodoma. train rides, bus rides, matatu wrecks, and a first class plane ride. plains, trains, and automobiles. the insanity of a shirt about ice in burundi as sweat drips down my brow. a ring of people and then balance game. 

and all that can't come without the paradox. civil war at election time. burning rubber on the way to mombasa. the riot police. the army along lake tanganyika from nyanza lac to bujumbura. rocket launchers. kalashnikovs. ak-47s. a drunk policeman in uganda. the boy whose hands were gone in kigoma. the boy whose head was burned in maramvya. an infant in the streets of bujumbura. the boy beaten in nairobi's streets. the stories of street children raped, shot, brutalized. the fight in the morning. wild eyes. sad eyes. reserved eyes. starved eyes. yellow eyes. bloodshot eyes. orphans in congo. women raped by rwanda's criminals/genocidaires in bukavu. the genocide memorial in kigali. insanity. evil. death. destruction. pain. sorrow. my pain. our pain. our tears. our tears and sobs and frustration when we walked past the lady with the baby in nairobi. after a day in burundi when we had given little. 

the stark contrasts. the dichotomy as i so often said. 

now i know it was the adventure and the memories and the fun and the beauty and the truth. contrasted with the danger, the passion, the pain. and all weaved together in a beautiful conga of our time there. the reds, the blacks, the greens, the blues. 

most of all the place. naivasha's sunset framed by buffalo, antelope, and zebra. plains of giraffes and wildebeests. tsavo park and mombasa's swahili coast. the plains of tanzania and the jungles of congo. naivasha lake. kivu lake. nairobi's slums of people packed together in a swirling mass of life brazen and brutally present. riding the dirt bike into the sunset with the wind in my face and a scream erupting from the depths of all i was. the southern night sky. bunyonyi. the rope swing the hills the sail the tents the rain. the sky and the storm rolling in whitecapping the waves. ngong's hills... knuckles in a fist towards the sky. big sky. red dirt. huge, bloodred sun. 

yeah, the constant gardener brought all of it back in a way i haven't felt since riding the piki that last night all alone on march 4th, 2007. 

my friend summed it up better than i ever could. 

"I just have to say how urgently i miss africa this year. I say urgently because I know I'm going back, and every day is a brutal lesson in self-restraint, because I feel that I'm tied to this city by very slender threads that might break without warning at any second, if the city shrinks a little in the cold, or if I pass one more person with one of those cell-phone headsets. This week I've owned a crumbling heart, because it's fixated on my family and friends still in Kenya and TZ, and what a transient, precarious, and vivid (that's the word!) life they live when they're there almost by default. I'm jealous beyond words, and at the same time so frightened for them. I don't think I will ever, ever reconcile this overwhelming lust for danger with my wish for a peace that's universal - but maybe both are appropriate cravings, in a world this unstable."

I also don't think I will ever reconcile this overwhelming lust for danger with this ever-present, overpowering HOPE for PEACE. These memories of skies and sunsets and friends and communion and happiness and love with all the negative, hard, painful things. The peace with the excitement of adventure and ever-present danger. 

gods, i miss you africa. bethany. jill. like never before. but it's beginning to be a good miss, like the way you miss an old friend you haven't talked to in a while and probably won't for another while. like the way you miss the good times of high school. or the "good old days" when we played with toy guns under a texas summer sky. 

and i think of a quote on a letter that sits open on my bedside table. 

"It occurs to me, as it sometimes does, that this day is over and will never be lived again, that we are only the sum of days, and when those are spent, we will not come back to this place, this time, to these people and colors, and i wonder whether to be sad about this or to be happy, to trust that these hours are meant for some kind of enjoyment, as a kind of blessing." 

Donald Miller in Through Painted Deserts. 

Until tonight, it was a sad miss, without peace. An angry frustration that this mountain is where I am now. A hurt and a painful groaning at the things that made my emotions raw last monday as I watched the film. Because many days, most days, I don't want to be here. I don't want to live this right now.... because often enough, the past is easier or more comfortable, like andrew manion's words about an old room, that you haven't seen in a while. 

But I realize that this time is for me, to reconnect, remember, and learn to believe once more. This time is a kind of blessing, just as that time was. And as I sit here and write this, I realize that I couldn't have gone back... shouldn't have gone back, until tonight. This realization. Because before, that desire was just to relive what already occurred, not experience anew, living for a joint liberation. Africa, old friend, thank you. For a happy miss tonight. And an eager expectation. 

I await the coming reunions with hope and excitement. 

Thank you, constant gardener for the reminder to diligently tend to the plants in my own garden as God sends the rain. 

The hardest thing and the right thing are the same. and tonight it was letting go. 

to the coming newness.

oh You make all things new. 

the daylight seems to want you.

falling.whistles.

for sarah.

my friend sarah called this afternoon and asked if i knew any stories about evil and suffering. she's writing a speech for a worldview class about evil and suffering. 

evil. and suffering. 

those words. flashes of the alleyway in nairobi.  the street children. white words on a black background. the late nights in mama tom's house, struggling to put words to evil and suffering. the stories of invisible children. congo. women raped.abused.neglected. burundi. children.bellies swollen.sickness.headburned. 

and with all those images that flashed in front of my mind's eyes, i'm sure i only touched the surface...i know there's so much more of the suffering that hasn't yet been seen by my eyes. 

but sarah needs a concise version. evil and suffering. the story i'll relate, isn't even my own, but is an excerpt of one that has moved me to relive every emotion of those six months all over again. has moved me to reexamine all over again what my life here should look like. what i should live for. what we must live for. 

this from the blog of sean carasso. www.fallingwhistles.com

"Many of us have heard the stories of child-soldiers. Invisible children and stories such as A Long Way Gone have been groundbreaking in granting us glimpses into their tortured lives. 

I had heard.known.cared. I had even reacted and raged. But when these boys told me of the whistle blowers [of Eastern Congo], the horror grew feet within me.

Captured by Nkunda's rebel army, the boys not big enough to hold a gun are given merely a whistle and put on the front lines of battle. 

Their sole duty is to make enough noise to scare the enemy and then to receive-with their bodies-the first round of bullets. 

Lines of boys fall as nothing more than a temporary barricade.

The whistle blowers."

when i talk about blowing the whistle, this story is what i'm referring to. the story sean and marcus tell of the boys in the jungles of the congo, where whistles fall from tiny,palm-sized hands. 

throughout history, the world has been changed by those who speak up. by those who cry out, raising their voices in the deafening sound of oppression and affliction. by the whistleblowers. 

as sean wrote at the end of that story, "Around the world, the sound of the whistle means STOP. PAY ATTENTION. Speak up and say the same."

sometimes my optimism turns into realism turns into pessimism as i remember. and now as i look around and see tanks roll into gaza. see georgia shelled. see the LRA attack and abduct again and again in Congo. see Nkunda's men advance on Goma. along the way: rape.pillage.burn.kill.kidnap.destroy. 

and sometimes, my throat closes tight and my stomach rolls as i think about it all and it seems to engulf me. you know that feeling you get after a breakup, or when you find you've been cheated on, or someone you know sits sobbing in your arms... that stomach in your throat, i don't know what to say feeling. the heartbeat quickens and the chest heaves with the labor of each breath. yeah, that feeling. 

but lately, my hope lies in the hope i see in our generation. in you. my hope... in God being made visible in young people committed to freedom, love, beauty, justice, truth, PEACE. and now, i even see young Christians stepping up with the desire to live out the gospel of our Christ. to become the hands and feet of Christ in a broken world, believing that another world is possible... that we still haven't found what we're looking for, and we're beginning to realize

that our liberation is bound up together. 

sometime i'll write more about this, but there's this thing called walkwithuganda that gives me hope. because i have two friends--keri and luca-- who saw the invisible children GO documentary and they decided to GO. they saw that child abduction and exploitation is wrong, and horrible, and evil. wrong. and they said no more in their heads and dreamed an idea to live it in their lives. they lassoed in reed and compton and are going to spend this summer walking from sewanee to washington, d.c. to make invisible children visible. walk as the kids in uganda have walked for years. those children walking from their homes to a place of safety to avoid abduction and my friends walking from our home to a place of power to "blow whistles" for them. they realize that our liberation is bound together. that our freedom is linked to the freedom of those oppressed across an ocean. 

and that. can move me to tears. i see whistles being blown on the front lines of a battle here. we're beginning to know. to search. to research. to care. we are ignorant no longer. and we will not settle for oppression, injustice, pain, suffering, and evil. we want to make "never again" true and evident in our lives. and we aren't letting the media's negativity have the last word. we are beginning to believe again. that God has the last word. that in and through us, he's moving, working, changing, breaking, and beginning. 

to make all things new. 

to put us back together again. 

buy a whistle. blow the whistle. STOP. PAY ATTENTION.

never again.

may you have the grace and peace to believe that this evil doesn't have the last word. that all things will be made new. that another world is possible.

today, do something that inspires you to be a part. blow a whistle. stand on a cliff in the rain and scream as loud as you can like in garden state. dance. live. laugh. love. 

for love and freedom,

will

"Today we can hear the whisper of God where we least expect it: in a baby refugee and in a homeless rabbi, in crack addicts and displaced children, in a groaning creation. In the words that Indian activist author Arundhati Roy proclaimed in the World Social Forum in Brazil, 'Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.'" 

-Shane Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution

your battery now runs on reserve power.

nine minutes of my shot battery left. the urgency of it gives speed to my resistant fingers. 8 now. 7 now. the minutes tick down. 

6. in between the minutes i've erased all the lines i wrote. was going to write about the constant gardener... that movie dave and i watched the other night. it moved something deep inside of me that i haven't felt in forever. 5. it's maddening that i don't cry anymore. unless it's about that one thing. but africa, you don't make me cry anymore. after the thousandth thing that should have made me cry, i just stopped, and i see that picture so often. or those pictures. 

4. 

and in the movie, i didn't cry about all those things that should be heartbreaking... the murder of his wife. the senseless, merciless killing of the patients for the testing of dipraxa, the TB drug. and the drug companies get rich off of it. 3. that death should make me cry. 

but it doesn't. didn't. probably won't. because the only tears i could force out of my locked up insides came from the shots of the scenery. the flamingoes flying. nairobi. the serena hotel. the one jill and bethany joked with me about. 2. the overexposed, stark shots of little boys and girls clutching the mzungu woman's hands, pulling... like the day above naivasha... 1.

the girl pulling jill's hair. bethany lifting huruma kids. all came flashing back like waves overpowering the water of the shower as i hit the wall. 

reach inside and feel the beat of your pulse. 

computer dies. 

the constant gardener.

David Kamau
Kilome Rd.
Nairobi, Kenya

Dear David,

I suppose you are eighteen now—the same age my eyes were when I looked up from behind my lens to see you for the first time, leaning up against that wall, shoulders hunched against the chill. The chill of Nairobi’s "dark, cold streets." As I write tonight, you and the others are just beginning to stir under the first rays of morning’s light. Nairobi’s street children, and Africa’s as well, awake to another day of mere existence. Standing up. Shivering. Crossing the street to spend yesterday’s shillings, earned begging at your corner, on a bag of chips or a slice of bread to share, the only food you’ll eat today.

And I, sleepless again, sit here under a lone light in a quiet room, dry tears falling to my already soaked keyboard, tearless sobs of guilt and frustration racking my chest. You must know, David, that I think about you often, for as I once told you, I, too, have a brother named David who is your age and has your same dream, to become a doctor to help people. I listen to him, even now, breathing as he sleeps, and I turn to see your picture on his wall, as a reminder of his dreams.

I remember that day. Your quick smile. The broken English you spoke. The way your hand felt in mine as we walked out of your “territory” downtown to a coffee shop. We walked inside to Bethany and Jill’s welcoming smiles to sit down to breakfast at the Mug, against the wall. I’m smiling, David, remembering how I ordered you pancakes and orange juice when you balked at the sight of a menu. And my heart breaks again, as I remember your story, as of yet untold, of why you left your home and took to the streets. When we found you, you’d only been there two months, and the horrors you had already seen showed in your eyes, bloodshot and yellow from malnourishment and exhaustion. Your story. Your dreams. The hug. And three photos.

I remember our walk back. Back to narrower streets, muddy alleys, and trash filled sewer. The bridge you ducked under, to relieve yourself. The underside of the bridge, littered with waste, the toilet of the street children. I remember the market, where I bought you a jacket, fretting about the money it took, because in my mind, I had so little. It would have taken you weeks to save the shillings for that jacket, weeks of sleeping in the cold. And I remember the downtown Nakumatt, where we bought milk, bread, and chips for you and your friends, to get you through the day. My thought was that you might save that day’s worth of begging money. And it might keep your friends off the glue for one more day. It might keep you off the glue for one more day. And then I remember the steps where we sat. Where I prayed for you. Where I stood, turned my back, and walked away, tears blurring the vision of my steps. I looked back, and you were gone.

I wonder where you are, if, in fact, you still “are.” I do know the probability that you didn’t survive the past year. The probability that you are no longer alive. And it literally eats me from the inside sometimes, that I didn’t go back to find you. Dad told me, that if I could find you, he’d support you and bring you back, and you could go to school, and be a doctor.

Yet I never went back.

I looked for your face every time we were in Nairobi. I looked for your face on our TV, in the movie tonight, as I sat warm and comfortable on the floor. I look for your face when I dream about Africa.

I never went back. I didn’t find you. I left you on those streets for lack of a better idea. You were smart. You weren’t on the glue. You spoke English. You had dreams. And I left you.

I’m sorry, David.

Dammit, I am so sorry. I pray for you often…that you are safe. That you went home. That you’re back in school. That you made it against all odds. That TB or AIDS didn’t take you, or the many turf wars.

I guess I just need you to know that I remember you. That I’m sorry. That you have inspired me and challenged me. That you changed me. You changed me, David. And though I didn’t bring you with me out of those streets, in many ways I did, and just as I blew a whistle for you tonight, I will blow the whistle for others like you continually, until there is no air left in my lungs. Until there is no life left in my body.

Until you are free.

Because my liberation is bound to yours.

I believe we will meet again. Until then…

for freedom,

will