Sara's Story Intro?
(Note: on August 24, 2000
Father John Kaiser, a priest from St. Cloud, MN was found dead outside of Nairobi. He had been shot in the head and left on the side of the road.)
People invariably want to talk to her about the priest. Had she met him? Did she know him? They were both from Minnesota, there at the same time. Friends and relatives want details: wild animals on Safari, exotic flora, quaint tribal customs, brutal dictatorships. Mystery. Adventure. They ask about the priest pretending concern, but she knows they really just want to be entertained.
She'd never seen him. Never heard of him. Priests were mysterious creatures who lived in slums and spoke out against the government. Missionaries were fearful wanderers holed up in gated communities in Nairobi. Some ventured out as messengers, delivering supplies to remote areas. Occasionally they made their way out with medicines or books or news from home. The mail could not be trusted.
She had been at the foothills of Mount Kenya. At the equator. She crossed it twice a day. Nairobi was a place she had been to briefly after leaving the airport. She remembered there were cattle grazing in the flowerbeds of exclusive hotels. The drought brought “the landless” in to the city. Her host was nervous because she'd forgotten to remove the thin gold chain from around her neck. A foolish risk. A mistake.
It is a shock to be back. A shock to be surrounded by all these white faces. No one is staring at her, which seems strange. She finds herself staring at everyone. Everything. Where did all these white people come from? Their skin seems transparent, insubstantial. They squint in the bright, distant sunlight, complain about the humidity. Everything seams too clean. Roads are smooth. Grass is green. There are lakes and rivers and streams. It rains.
They ask her about the priest. She can tell them nothing about him. And she can’t bring herself to tell her own story. It doesn’t even feel like hers to tell. Tell us about your trip. How was your aunt? Always the same questions. Without fail.
She walks away.
Nonviolent Response
In Quakerism 101 we were talking about the different Testimonies that the Quakers hold dear:
Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality
This led into an activity dealing with violence. There were four quadrants:
Violent/OK
Violent/Not OK
Non-Violent/OK
Non-Violent/Not OK
The leader proposed a scenario, and we were to stand in the quadrant that corresponded with the situation.
1. You shoot a duck during hunting season.
This one was split pretty evenly between Violent/OK and Violent/Not OK with a large number of fence sitters. The rational for the Not OK folks was that many of them didn't eat meat, so for them to shoot a duck would be just for sport.
One person saw this as a non-violent/OK act. He saw it as part of the circle of life. I disagreed with his position in that I see the circle of life as being naturally violent-- not maleveolently so, but nature is not a pacifist.
2. Someone is trying to mug you; you knock them down and run away.
I was surprised at the number of people who classified this as non-violent/OK. How is pushing someone down NOT a violent response? If asked to come up with a non-violent reaction to a mugging, knocking someone over wouldn't be tops on my list.
The majority was in the Violent/OK side. One lone voice said it was violent and not OK.
3. There is an armed burglar in your home. You shoot him in self-defense.
This nearly came to blows. People felt very passionately about where they stood and believed they needed to convert the other side to the correct way.
From the Violent/Okay side: I have four kids; he's threatening my family. I have no choice. It's him or me. He forced this on himself. It was in self defense.
From the Violent/Not OK side: What am I doing with a gun in the first place? What if I shoot one of my four kids accidentally? We told you you needed to spend more time at the shooting range! There is always a choice. Aren't all shootings "in self defense?"
4. Your neighbor has an army recruiting bumper sticker. You write "work for peace" on it in permanent marker.
Here I got very very irritated with the people who called this a Violent/Not OK act. Some of them were the same ones who saw pushing someone down as non-violent. WHAT? Writing something is more violent than knocking someone over?
Those of us on the correct side saw this as a non-violent, not OK act and tried in vain to pursuade the others that it wasn't a violent act, it was just very not OK. But they insisted it was violent. As is calling someone "stupid." As is verbal abuse.
There is gets kind of gray for me. I believe you can be verbally violent. But the written word just doesn't have the same wallop for me.
Advanced Fiction - "This is a novel about..."
We did an exercise where we started "This is a novel about..."
First one sentence to summarize:
This is a novel about a girl from Minnesota who travels to Kenya for the summer to visit her aunt and is confronted by drought, poverty and corruption.
Then one paragraph:
This is a novel about a girl from Minnesota who travels to Kenya for the summer to visit her eccentric aunt who works there as a Doctor. She comes face to face with drought, poverty, corruption and tragedy through the history of the space she is in as well as current events. She returns to Minnesota with bruised idealism.
Then one page:
This is a novel about a girl named Sara, who lives in suburban Minnesota and grows up spending summers at "the cabin" with her grandparents and cousins. She wants to see the world and is sent on a trip to Kenya after high school graduation to visit her 72-year-old Aunt Meg, In Nanyuki Kenya.
Meg has been working in Kenya as a doctor for 10 years. Sara can't understand why her aunt is so distant from the people she treats. Why can't Meg speak even a little Swahili? Why won't she learn the names of her patients? She insists on calling all the women "Mary" and all the men "George." And when she has so much apparent disdain for the cultures here, why has she stayed?
Sara finds the answers to these questions as she learns about the history of the area and her aunt's own personal history with the tribes she deals with in her practice. As she is confronted with widespread poverty, killing drought, and corrupt government officials Sara's idealism is challenged.
At the start of her journey she longed to make connections with people she met. When she returns to Minnesota she cannot wait to put the whole experience behind her. Essentially she puts up the same barriers that she saw in her aunt.
