Thoughts from the Washington Mall, Post Migraine

More than half a year ago now, I came first to this new city. My seventh capital of the world to live or study in, I think? It is strange to me, that a year ago I came with my brother on a trip, thinking perhaps he would find work here after graduation. It never occurred to me that I would come, instead. Now I walk past every day where I celebrated my birthday last year in novelty. 

How is it that a person can love so much in this world, carry so much heart for so many very different places and people? 

I am so exquisitely happy in this place. Hearing every day languages of home. Walking beneath buildings of familial architecture, stepping once more into the paths of people whom as global expatriates you know your whole life. The fashion, the art, the galas. 

But I find my heart equally close to breaking as to bursting, from sorrow as from happiness. Only the sorrow is so much more difficult to share or even visualize. It is sometimes hard to embrace the wonder of my life right now when worlds I know feel like they are on the brink of chaos. Or have already fallen into it, fighting and despair and confusion. When I am reminded of how fragile life is, when countries can implode overnight. When places which (or who, because to me they feel like people, like family) have bled into my being are bleeding again and I am far away but the blood calls. Countries to my south, countries to my east, all north to my heart. 

And then you add the single stories. The rape of every person woman man child, rape of country. The kinds of rape and violation that make you sick in public on the floor and it is nothing, your waste is nothing, to what you responded to, what is happening. Even stories outside of my countries, stories like the kidnapping of hundreds of girls, enslaved as wives (is that at best or at worst?) and taken away from education that they risked everything for. I just risk debt for my education. 

I went and toured an opera studio workshop here in DC, and one room was full of clothes, racks of shirts and dresses and pants hung and freshly laundered. Shelves of shoes, boxes of props. Clean and waiting full of promise to be stepped into and I stepped instead back into my mind, my memories; to walking through Birkenau and Auschwitz with the rooms of piles of shoes piles of hair and glasses and suitcases labeled with names of the dead. Of the people I met who survived, who walked like ghosts the streets of the cities I grew up on and stopped me to tell their story, this old story over and again. I stepped instead of into opera, the schoolhouse in the countryside of Rwanda, where I studied, where I witnessed room after room of white limed shattered limb fractured bone bodies. I think there were some 17 rooms I counted but I tried not to remember that too specifically. And then a big room there, with clotheslines every which way, draping ornamentally, awfully, bloodied torn bulleted clothes of women men and children. But I kept on touring an opera studio, which was wonderful and amazing in itself! and reveling in the fine arts instead. Instead of what? 

I think of these worlds I love. I think of how fragile ideas are and how hard we have to fight for them and sometimes against them, of how much is often sacrificed and how only sometimes we come out whole. 

I work hard in myself for these worlds I love, to let them stay together, to find a history that works for them all even when the cultures clash, even when the different histories I have imbibed and come to embody over the years are so different as to make this almost impossible. But I like to hope that if somehow one person can come to hold the world, maybe one day the world will also be able to hold itself. Maybe more of us will come to reshape our world and fit the pieces so beloved to someone, together. 

Experiencing the Governance of Government

It is election night in These United States, and for the first time in my life, I am a part of this process. I have been old enough to be legally permitted to cast my ballot for some years now (no, I will not specify how many), but was not ready until today to do so. Not that I actually was ready to do so today, either. But I would never be more ready than today, and so it is done. I voted.

As someone who has grown up ever on the outside of government, though always fiercly affected by them, this is a momentous occasion. To me it is not simply the act of voting, which is, honestly, pretty exciting in its own right. It is in the choosing to claim a privilege offered to me in a country which happens to have also offered me citizenship. It is the accepting of that privilege, and the desire to do right by it.

I love that in this election, I can actually know some of those whom I had the choice of voting for, too. It is one thing to be able to claim, I greeted the Queen of the Netherlands at the airport once, or to say, I shook hands with the President of Slovakia (back when he was president). But to say, I have looked at what such and such person did, and dialogued about it in the community, and met that person different times and heard in person for myself what they have to say, how they feel and think on issues of importance and relevance to my local community, to my extended community, even to my international home community--that is something different. And then to voice my opinion; do I want them to continue their mission? To continue working in my service, in the service of the people and localities around me? Who do I choose to shape my world, and who do I set in place to do that shaping?

These are new experiences.

I like the idea that this does not have to be a choice of life or death. I like that I can vote in peace. I like not having to wonder if after tonight there will still be a government or the same country at all. I like that there are so many reasons I can determine who I wish to vote for--did they do that thing i wanted them to? do they believe in my preferred form of government? (which if i may say--it is interesting that perhaps it is not always best to choose your preferred form of government. not all government is good for all places. Hmmm. easy to say when you look somewhere else and think--they shouldn't do that kind of government there! but when you have to look at your own world and say they shouldn't do my kind of government here.... that's funny.)

I like that I am sitting outside a cafe right now, my booted feet propped up on a fire pit, gloved hands typing this and spiced hot chocolate next to me, and i can watch the results come in on my free wifi to this device i'm using. I like that it is peaceful and quiet on such a big night here.

I have no idea what to expect or even what really to want, because who can ever possibly predict what the passing of the moon and the sun will bring. But I am proud of myself tonight for finally taking part in government; for accepting a privilege and for taking ownership over something. And I will sleep well for that reason alone.

Going To Court

My very first day back in the States, I had class all morning for a leadership program in the county that I am a member of. While it was a bit rough to try and stay awake through it all after so much travelling the last few days and jetlag, I can't imagine a more interesting way to have passed that morning.

That Thursday was what we call an "Industry Day," when we do site visits and have speakers talk with us according to the theme of the day. Thursday's was the judicial system, so we spent our morning between a conference room, a courtroom, and the county jail.

Yes, I spent my first morning back in the States in court and then in jail. You can laugh. :)

But in all seriousness, it was really an interesting morning. I've never sat in on a live court session in the States before. This was a special court, in fact--something known as Drug Court. It is where people who are guilty of non-violent drug crimes (possession of, falsifying prescriptions for drug use, etc) who might otherwise get up to even 9 years in prison for their crime, can instead be sent to drug court for trial and conviction there. In this court, they go through a special programme with four phases, and if they successfully complete this program they are free to go.

The programme that they go through in the Drug Court is a restorative programme; one that helps them to work through their problem instead of merely punishing them for the results of that problem.

It was really fascinating to experience that and talk with the judge and other people part of the court process to see how and why this court is run.

In fact, the very last time I sat in court as a witness was back in Rwanda, in the days when the Gacaca (pronounced Gachacha) courts were still operating. You can, in fact, read the post I wrote on my then-blog about that experience here if you want. These were courts that opened up to try those from the genocide as the international tribunes would never get through them all. These courts also operated according to the traditional village court model. One of the really beautiful aspects of these courts was their emphasis not on justice to the full measure (because an eye for an eye is justice to the full measure, yes, when in comes to genocide crimes? Yet if you operate on an eye for an eye system, you will have no society left to restore; no hope for redemption; no promise for a brighter future.) but rather on mercy. They wanted to have a society to rebuild, not merely a punished society.

I had never seen such a beautiful blending of mercy and justice before in my life as I witnessed day after day in Rwanda; as I witnessed that one particular six hours in court in Rwanda.

I love the fact that the system in the States is realising that punitive justice is not always the best way of dealing with people. We are humans and as such we are all broken in some way. It is the human predicament. So to begin instead to help us heal ourselves; to learn how to become whole people again and know that this exercise of mercy (not simply a releasing of the wrong-doer, but an investment in their restoration) is better for our society in the end than carrying out full justice on people who have committed crimes out of their brokenness is exciting to me. To exercise mercy and grace and to repair and heal instead of punish and lock away and leave the problem to continue to grow or fester and likely repeat itself when they are released from prison. I am so happy to see that transpiring here.