The
Cradle of Humankind: A Challenge to Solidarity
Reflections by
Toni Harris OP
International Dominican
Co-Promoter
for Justice and Peace for the Dominican Family
Her name is Clementine. From her size, I estimated that
she was about 4 or 5 years of age. On her dark brown skin,
a crusty, black, scab-like condition was continuing to spread. Although
the day was warm, she wore a dirty windbreaker with the hood up
over her head to cover the signs of the disease on the sides of
her face. The jacket’s long sleeves covered her arms for
the same reason. Her eyes were clouded gray but she seemed to be
able to see us. Her disease remains undiagnosed. We
learned that she is in fact 15 years old and that all those in
her immediate family are dead. In 1994 -- the year of the Rwandan
genocide -- she would have been an infant. She now lives
with an aunt who struggles to feed Clementine as well as her own
children.
In the same hospital ward with Clementine,
we met a woman with one leg, forced to walk stooped-over on crutches
too short for her tall frame. We learned that she lost her leg to a landmine.
She has two young sons. The younger of the two (perhaps 3 or 4
years of age) is so malnourished that his spindly little legs cannot
support his torso. He moves around, “walking” on
both his hands and feet to support himself -- his skinny, bare
bottom up higher than his head.
As is the norm, the hospital does not provide
food for any of the patients. Unless family or friends bring meals, patients
go without food. The next closest hospital is in Kigali,
an hour and a half drive through the mountains.
Rwanda is slightly smaller than Maryland in
the USA. It is a beautiful land. Tourism materials describe it
as a tropical Switzerland. It
is known as the land of a thousand hills. (“Hotel Des Milles
Collines” is the actual name of the hotel from the film, Hotel
Rwanda. This hotel continues to operate in Kigali.) Rwanda
seems to have endless hills and valleys covered with lush flora
and fauna (thus the story and setting for another film, Gorillas
in the Mist). Given Rwanda’s relatively high altitude
(Kigali at 4800 ft), the temperature is comfortable.
Rwanda is home to more than 10 million people. During the
first 100 days of the 1994 genocide, more than 800,000 people were
brutally killed. That means on average 8,000 people were slaughtered
every day for 100 days. In addition, the UN estimates that between
250,000 and 500,000 women were raped during that period. The
nations of the world failed to act to stop the genocide.
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Dominican friars, sisters,
students and guests in Kinsasha |
We traveled to Rwanda at the invitation of
Dominican Sisters Africa who are celebrating their tenth anniversary
as a collaborative movement. This third tri-annual assembly of
DSA was a gathering of hope. About 30 Sisters representing 19 Dominican congregations
serving in Africa gathered from 16 countries around the theme: “Dominican
Women Working Together to Enhance Our Mission and Rediscover Our
Richness and Diversity.” Some of these Sisters have
endured horrendous personal tragedies. Many come from areas
in great conflict. Others serve people in unimaginable poverty. But,
amazingly enough, they maintain their Gospel confidence. There
were many expressions of appreciation for Dominican Sisters International. This
was especially true for the DSI Solidarity Fund which has made
many programs and services available to Dominican Sisters in Africa.
If someone had told me when I began my ministry as International
Dominican Co-promoter for Justice and Peace that, in a year and
a half, I would have visited five countries in Africa, I never
would have believed it. In January ‘07, we visited
Kenya. In December ’07
and January ‘08, we visited the Central African Republic,
Cameroon and DR Congo-Kinshasa. This past May ‘08,
we visited Rwanda. During each trip, we visited wherever
we could Dominican Sisters, Friars, Laity and Nuns in the country.
In Nairobi, Kenya, I cannot forget our Dominican Nuns dancing
to the Magnificat that we sang together at Vespers. Our Brothers
in Nairobi were most hospitable. We met some of our Sisters and
Laity, as well. However, I reflect with sadness that the city of
Nairobi, which effectively welcomed more than 80,000 people for
the World Social Forum in January 2007, was sufficiently fragile
enough to be thrown into conflict and upheaval only one year later
because of disputed elections. Kenya is slightly more than twice
the size of Nevada and is home to nearly 38 million people.
An image in the Central African Republic that
remains with me is that of men pushing their burdened, wheeled
carts along the roads. Each small cart balanced a large number
of tree branches, trunks and other pieces of wood piled and tied
together in long, narrow loads that stretched out 20 to 30 feet.
They call this piled wood on wheels a "jaguar." (The long, sleek shape
of the stacked wood probably could be compared to a jaguar running.)
This heavy load propelled slowly forward by a man throwing all
his weight into moving his burden down the road is an apt metaphor
for the each person’s struggle to survive another day there. I
was deeply moved by the plea of Gianna Masera OP (JP Co-Promoter
for Africa) that we work to make the Dominican world aware of the
African reality -- especially for women and children, more
and more the first victims of war. CAR is slightly
smaller than Texas with a population of less than 4.5million people.
In Cameroon, I remember the miracle of the new St. Martin de Porres
Health Center, a collaborative project of five congregations of
Dominican Sisters, built to serve people in an area of extreme
poverty in Yaoundé. Cameroon is slightly larger than California,
with a population nearly 18.5 million people. The Sisters there
gather every year between Christmas and New Year’s to focus
on matters of justice and peace. I also recall our witnessing
in Cameroon ongoing deforestation: many, 16-wheel flatbed trucks
on the highway, each one hauling five or six huge trunks of virgin
timber (each trunk about thirty feet long and 8-10 feet in diameter)
to the port for shipment out of the country.
In Congo-Kinshasa, the impression that stays
with me is that of a city of 10-million people with neighborhoods
of unimaginable poverty where houses are tacked together from
pieces of corrugated aluminum, cardboard, wood and mud bricks. Rutted dirt roads
are cluttered with years of uncollected garbage. The DRC
is almost one-fourth the size of the US with more than 66.5 million
people. Its citizens have never had an opportunity to vote
for government officials. During the most recent interstate
war, 3.8 million people died there between 1998 and 2004. That
is an average of more than 1,500 people dying every day for seven
years. Where was the rest of the world? I ask myself,
what was I doing during those years that left me unaware of a tragedy
on this scale?
On first hearing, it may sound very exciting
to have visited five countries in Africa. And it was. It was a privilege. But
the resulting problem for me is what to do with the experience
and the learnings from those travels. Sharing information that
serves only to make people in the so-called “least developed
countries” feel as though there is nothing hopeful or positive
in their countries is demeaning. Sharing information that
serves only to make people in the so-called “developed countries” feel
guilty about the disparity between the North and the South is not
particularly effective. So, what do we do? My words
feel hollow in the face of the reality but I am determined to somehow
carve them out.
Africa is the world's second-largest and second
most-populous continent,
after Asia. At
about 11.7 million sq mi.,
including adjacent islands, it covers six percent of the Earth's
total surface area and about 20 percent of the total land area. With
more than 922 million people in 61 territories (53 countries; 8
dependencies), it accounts for about 14percent of the world's human
population.
Africa, particularly central eastern
Africa, is widely regarded within the scientific
community to be the place where humans originated – with
the earliest Homo
sapiens (human) remains found in Ethiopia and
dated to about 200,000 years ago.
Dominicans (Friars, Sisters, Nuns, Laity) live and minister in
30 countries of the African continent, in five regions:
- WEST Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast,
Senegal
- CENTRAL Angola, Burundi,
Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Niger,
Rwanda
- EAST Ghana,
Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe
- SOUTH Lesotho,
Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland
Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term
used to describe those African
countries which are fully or partially located south
of the Sahara Desert. It contrasts with North
Africa, which is part of the Arab
world. The Horn
of Africa and Southern
Sudan are technically part of Sub-Saharan Africa,
but nevertheless have Islamic influence.
Generally, sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest region in the
world, suffering from the effects of colonialism, economic
mismanagement, local corruption and inter-ethnic conflict.
The region contains many of the “least
developed countries” in the world.
Our Brother Emmanuel Ntakarutimana OP (Burundi), who addressed
the DSA Assembly, stated that almost 50% of the countries in
Africa have been in situations of open warfare during recent
years, with new the phenomena of armies without borders, child
soldiers, rape as a weapon of war, large scale massacres, ethnic
cleansing or genocide. And the resulting displacement of populations
makes African Peoples more than half of the world’s refugees.
Emmanuel also pointed-out that Africa offers
every opportunity for a very attractive market in weapons trafficking
and that there is nothing to indicate that those countries that
benefit from this industry are willing to let Africa become stable.
He said that there is evidence that even Church organizations
have shareholder investments in companies that are involved in
such trafficking. He
challenged us with the observation that there are many Dominicans
in the countries whose governments and corporations supply weapons
to the various parties in conflict in Africa.
Emmanuel emphasized that while Dominicans “on the ground” in
Africa may be working very hard to address critical, local, human
problems, the causes of those problems may have their origins in
economic, social and political systems operating far beyond the
African continent. Dominicans in Africa -- and throughout
the entire world – must master the techniques of social analysis
as well as a deepening of theology if the truth of our world
reality is going to be seriously considered.
The phrase, the burden of knowing, has been
used in a variety of contexts. It captures for me the ongoing
challenge of these brief visits to the African continent. What
do I do with what I’ve learned? How do I integrate
such an experience into my soul? How do I avoid the temptation
to excise from my memory the incidents of our terrible inhumanity
to one another?
One of the Millennium Development Goals is
to “Develop a
global partnership for development.” Both the 2007
Assembly of Dominican Sisters International and the 2008 General
Chapter of Bogotá called Dominicans to promote and implement
this goal as well as the other MDGs. The worldwide Dominican Family
provides for us a ready-made structure for “global partnership.” We
have that advantage. We are challenged to continue to learn
about our global Family and to strengthen our relationships. Truth
about our world reality must shape our understanding of the meaning
of authentic “development.” This same
truth must inform efforts to guarantee the right to this authentic
development for all peoples. With our global relationships,
we have a unique opportunity as Dominicans to strengthen our solidarity: “least
developed” with “developed;” “North” with “South;” “East” with “West;” and
between and among all the separating categories in which we find
ourselves.
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Toni
Harris, OP |
Dominicans living and ministering in the most
desperate places on Earth, please know that you are not abandoned. Your
Dominican Sisters and Brothers in other parts of the world stand
in admiration of your efforts to create a more compassionate
and just world and want to be in solidarity with you. Dominicans
living and ministering in the “developed countries” whose
policies have much to do with the systems that structure injustice
in the “least
developed countries,” we cannot permit ourselves simply
to dismiss desperate parts of the world as areas beyond our influence. We
cannot live pretending that we do not know or convinced that we
are powerless. Let us put our minds together and respond. Let
us pray with our Sister Catherine of Siena that God will always
trouble us with a “holy discontent.”
June
2008
Some data from Wikipedia sources, photo source: Toni
Harris, OP |
"Unless family or friends bring meals,
patients go without food."
..."How do I avoid the temptation to excise
from my memory the incidents of our terrible inhumanity to one
another?"
"...
Africa offers every opportunity
for a very attractive
market in weapons trafficking..."
"We cannot live pretending that we do not know
or convinced that we are powerless."
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