We're Good People, Right?

I'm up early this AM with thoughts bouncing around in my head... Caleb just left for his last day of golfing and the kids aren't up yet.  Figured I'd take a few minutes to reflect here.

Last Wednesday we went to Mr Chips after school to grab some food for the kids, but it took so long (classic) that Mazie & Caleb had to leave before it was ready (they were going golfing with Mazie's friend Jeeya and her dad).  So Athena, Lexi, and I ended up walking home with an extra bag of chips (fries) and chicken that Mazie was supposed to eat.  When we got to our street, three kids we didn't know greeted us muzungus with the familiar, "Hello! I'm hungry!"  Realizing I was carrying an extra bag of food that would likely go uneaten, I stopped and handed it over to one of them, trying to explain that he should share it with the others.  A tussle ensued, with the three kids scrambling over the bag and MORE kids running over to try and get their share.  I kept saying, "No! Share!!" to no effect... a guy came over and tried to help mediate, and we turned and walked the rest of the way home, a little dejected.  As we got home, Lexi said, "Mom, we're good people, right?"

This story came back to me yesterday when I was telling Craig, my newest lab member/Hedgehog, about our weekend and our great but complicated block party.  (I got a little weepy during our Zoom meeting ... reeeeaaalll professional... grateful once again for understanding and supportive co-workers.  Thanks Craig. :))  We have such a longing to feel like what we're doing here is good and right, to be able to walk away knowing that we are Good People and that we have Fixed Things.  But we can't, and that's kind of the whole point.  The problems we're looking at here, the massive inequities in wealth and opportunity, the systems that created and maintain all of it - it's all so fundamentally rotten that it's hard for any of us to do anything that is truly Good.  Every well-intentioned action has negative consequences.  And that makes it challenging for all of us, from the 8 year old on up, to make sense of what we're doing here and what the sum total of our Good and Bad impacts has been.  

I can't remember exactly what I told Lexi in that moment.  Probably that yes, we are Good People, and we're doing our best, but it's a complicated world with some big problems that we can't solve on our own.  

The weekend block party and our impending departure have prompted a lot of stock-taking: where have we landed at the end of this chapter, and what do we do with all of this?

We have to accept our limited role and abilities - as individuals, we can't solve anything.  We are not saviors.  

But we also can't let that paralyze us into inaction.

Staying committed to seeing everyone around us, wherever we are, as worthy and fully human and deserving of love and support and opportunity seems like a Good way to live.  It's also really hard, because it makes us confront the deep wrongness of a world that takes equally deserving people and hands them such vastly unequal lots.  It makes us accept that we do not have what we have because we are Good People, but because we were born with white skin in a rich country.  That is not fair.

And if it's not fair, we're obligated to do something about it, but (back to the beginning) what on earth can we do?

Because the unfairness and the impotence and the discomfort it all causes is hard to handle, it's tempting to build different stories about why our lives are so different from our neighbors.  We've heard those stories here.  People are drinking and having too many kids.  They're not Good People, which is why they don't have, and that's ok.  If I believe that, I can feel better.  I noticed that after being here for a few months, I had many days where I didn't really see the inequities so much... I got used to them and maybe started to accept that this is just how things are.

But I don't want to do that.  I want to keep seeing and feeling.  And I want to act.

So we've done some things.  We've set up SACCO accounts for our neighbors, and committed to putting in small amounts of money on a monthly basis for each family until each kid turns 18.  We've tried, as best we can, to make it clear that this money comes without conditions.  Our intention is to support the kids we've grown to love and their families, and they are in the best position to decide how that money should be spent.  We also haven't done this alone, by a long stretch.  The money is coming from our big generous extended family, and we've relied on the guidance and help of our friends here (Kevine, Odette, Lambert, Anaclet) to set up and maintain this scheme.  

And we've tried to look at the larger systems, too, and to partner with others who live with and understand those systems and are working to make changes across different domains.  We've invested and partnered in Great Native Safaris with Anaclet to support his conservation and eco-tourism work.  We've learned from Joseph at USAID about work towards peacebuilding and good governance.  I'm working with public health colleagues to build capacity for climate and health research-to-action in Rwanda and East Africa.  

I think that overall, these are Good Things, and yes, Lexi, we are Good People.  We're all good people.  But all of it is also incomplete and imperfect.  And so we can't just walk away.  We have to stay connected and keep working to build connections and actions that will last.

At our block party we told the neighbors that while we're leaving now, we will come back to Rwanda to visit.  One of the mamas asked, "When you come back, will you come HERE, to this neighborhood?"  We told her that we will.  (Odette has actually told us that when we come back, we can stay here at her house for free, which is very sweet.)  So we're going home-home for now, but we will be back to this home again.  When?  Who knows.  One step at a time.