3-25-09
3/25/09
When I decided to come to Ghana, I thought that this trip was going to give me clarity. Help me make some big decisions about what I wanted in life, in love, in a career.
And it has. I have gained clarity so blinding that I got a headache. A heartache would be more appropriate I guess. Yes, I am homesick, but it is more than that. I have realized that life and love are inseparable. Life is love. Love for your family and friends; love for a place that will always be home, regardless of whether you have a house there; love for that person who makes you feel most alive; love for all the little, wonderful things in life that make it worth some of the big, terrible things. And sometimes, a love you have to dig deep to find, that enables you to find compassion for those who have committed unthinkable crimes against other human beings.
I have found the clarity I was searching for, but I wasn’t expecting the doubts I found. I was prepared for living in a country in which so many people are living in poverty and working day and night to simply survive. I was prepared for the third world. I was not prepared for talking with the refugees. It has shaken my beliefs about humanity and my vision of the world to its core. I should have been prepared for that, but I wasn’t.
I have listened for days as people tell me stories about their lives in Liberia. The rape, murder, hatred. I met a women who was forced to choose between killing her own infant so that she could flee in the night with her other children or staying and possibly losing all her children. The baby would have cried in the night, giving away their presence. I met a woman who was married to the brother of a dictator. Her husband and her father were murdered in a coup. She was beaten and raped repeatedly. She fled with her children and has lived in Ghana for 20 years – knowing there is no future for her children here. She wakes every morning in a cold sweat at five a.m. when the camp makes announcements about repatriation. There is nothing for her or her children in Ghana…but she told me her how she plans to kill herself if she no longer has the option to stay in Ghana. A woman police officer told me how her squad was murdered in the coup. They made her watch each and every brutal death. Another group of rebels broke into the apartment she was sharing with her brother. They told him to rape her. When he refused they slit his throat and kept her as a sex slave for a month. She was never able to have children after that. I met a man who watched his mother and father be killed in front of him when he was six. He snuck on a fishing boat and ended up in Ghana where he lived as an orphan on the street.
It is not so hard to believe that, watching the pain and the terror in the faces of these people as they tell me their stories, I began to lose faith in humanity.
I have always believed that we should not villainize people who hurt others. There are people in this world who do terrible things, for which their victims can never forgive them. But they are human and we can not know that details in their lives that lead them to that point. I do not believe in good and evil…I do believe in people who are terribly damaged and do horrible things. It is easy to hate them for what they have done. A friend of mine on OD has a picture of a sign that says, “hate is easy, love takes courage.” To hate what a person has done, and find the courage to dig deep and find the love and compassion (not always to forgive) but to understand that they are human beings who have walked a dark and twisted path to this point. Whichever point that may be, they are still human beings who were innocent children once; who have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, lovers, spouses, children. It does no good to demonize them – to make them larger than life as an abstract evil concept. Because when it comes down to it…they are just people, as fragile (perhaps broken) as any other human being.
War and militarization can warp a mind, especially if it belongs to someone who is young, disempowered, and disenfranchised. I know that. I believe that. But it is difficult to keep that in perspective when hearing these stories. Knowing that the world is turning its back on those who fled the violence makes me doubt my ability to do this work. That is a scary doubt; doubting my ability to cope with the terrible things people are capable of. Doubting my ability to make a difference. Doubting the inherent goodness of mankind. Doubting that there is kindness, goodness in us all. Doubting the power of hope. That is a lot of doubt to be carrying around when I have gained clarity about what I want, and what I want isn’t here. That is a lot of doubt to be carrying around period.
I have not been coping well here with all my doubts and the atrocities that humans can commit against each other floating around in my head. But today I was filling out an application for a summer internship with AFSC. I was filling out questions on my opinions on non-violence and racism, sexism, and homophobia in today’s society. I wrote:
“It is in societies in which any human being is considered less than any other, for whatever reason, that violence is most likely to occur. It is absolutely essential that we recognize the worth of every human being as a human being and foster compassion and understanding of them and in them. We cannot demonize those who feel that there are others who are less human than them. This concept is inevitably rooted in ignorance and/or tough life experiences that have socialized such individuals to believe that there are others who are less on the basis of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Through compassion and understanding, we must seek to foster a reverence for human rights and the recognition of every human being as a human being.”
I knew that I was doubting my faith in the human ability for love and compassion, but it occurred to me that I was just as guilty. Those individuals, through violent, unspeakable, horrendous acts, created refugees who will be haunted all their lives. But as I was writing the above paragraph I realized, that even though my faith in this belief has been shaken, I truly felt passionate about that concept. Yet, I myself am guilty of it. The thought of some unspeakable evil committing crimes against people makes these actions seem too large to cope with. I was demonizing those who hurt thepeople I have talked with. I made them larger than life. But really, they are just human beings who somehow got to that awful point at which they felt justified in robbing people of their lives, dignity, sense of security, and loved ones. But at some point, perhaps at the time they did these things, they loved someone and someone loved them. It is their human right to be viewed as human beings.
It does not diminish what they have done. However, if my hopes are that we will achieve a world in which every human being recognizes and respects every other person as a human being equal to themselves, and thus less likely to commit violence, I must take the first step for myself. That means digging deep for the love and compassion to recognize the right of those who commit violence to be viewed as human beings. How can I ever expect all the people in this world to do this if I cannot.