I am umuzungu. I am white.

"Umuzungu!"

It's hurled at me from across the street. It's tossed from the seats of bikes and from passing car horns. It's catching up to me with the pitter-patter of school children's laughing feet. It sees me coming from an impossibly long way off. As I wade through the world, this word pools behind me in swirls of whispers and shared looks.

Umuzungu. Foreign. Umuzungu. Rich.

Umuzungu. White.

I am umuzungu.

I have not been anonymous for one day in Rwanda, and as this word attaches itself to me every morning, I am again reminded of the privilege of anonymity I enjoy in the United States. It has taken me 23 years and a journey across the world to feel "other" because of my skin color. Some people are made to feel that from birth.

But comfortable anonymity seems to be the only part of my racial privilege I left in the U.S. The rest of it slipped in silently among my dresses and scarves, and has seen fit to accompany me everywhere.

It came along when my I went to a soccer game in Huye, a town in the southern province. While hordes of Rwandan and Congolese fans were pushed back by police and threatened with nightsticks, my friends and I stood to the side-unsure of what to do and unwilling to enter the fray for fear of injury. As I looked up toward the gate a guard gave me an almost imperceptible nod, and just like that-me, my two white friends, and the three young Rwandan boys that made up our party were invited in.


The same issues of race and privilege that plague my home country have confronted me anew here in Rwanda, and I don't have all the answers about how to fix these systems. In fact, most days, I feel like I don't have any of the answers. 

I have arrived only at this: I cannot change these systems on my own, but I also can't passively accept this unearned power, this privilege. I can't passively accept a world where Rwandan children can correctly assume by my skin color that I have money I can give them. I can't passively accept a world where my friends of color are daily profiled and marginalized-labeled with words like "dangerous" and "thug"- while, rather than being racially likened to the centuries of dangerous white colonists who destroyed, exploited, and enslaved this continent, I am welcomed into homes, classrooms, and congregations as a "special visitor".

I cannot passively accept this world. I am called to not passively accept this world.

So I will continue to wrestle with the privilege I packed in my suitcase, the privilege that will inevitably land on U.S. soil with me in a few short months. I will work to monitor my own actions, especially those that contribute to these systems of privilege and oppression. I will try to listen to the struggles of communities of color more than I talk about my own opinion. I will seek out stories from the voices that history and culture have silenced for so long.

And I will probably mess up...a lot.

But especially in those moments, I will pray. I will pray for mercy from those who suffer under the heel of oppression, to whose burden I too often thoughtlessly add my own weight. I will pray for mercy from a God who has demanded I "do justice", who so frequently watches me fall painfully short. I will pray for mercy for a broken world, that we may find a way to knit the torn fabric of our shared humanity-in all its many skin colors and sexualities and nationalities and religions and genders-back together in love.

Ihangane. Patience.

I want to tell you a story about two kind, faithful souls on opposite sides of the globe.

Dan was a friend and mentor that played the bass guitar in the praise band I sang with at my church in Texas. Though he was older than the next member of the band by maybe 20 years, Dan always showed up to practice with a kind word, a smile, and of course, a rumbling bass groove that echoed in your bones. Dan constantly encouraged me when I was nervous to sing, and from my very first practice made me feel like I had been a part of the team forever. When I left for my year in Rwanda, Dan told me “Please be careful, have fun, and remember: God’s work, our hands.”

The Faith Lutheran worship band (including Dan and I) praying before
leading worship at Synod Assembly last year.

Dan passed away two days ago.

When I heard the news, I was shocked. I mourned for Dan’s family, for my church community, and for myself. I mourned that I couldn’t be there to say goodbye, to support the people I love and the people that loved Dan.

And in the midst of my grief, Mose came home for his night guard shift.

Mose and I when I visited his family at home!

Mose, maybe 10 years younger than Dan, is the closest person I have to a Rwandan host family member. Mose took one look at my face and knew I was not ok. So after I told him what had happened, he grabbed my hand and told me (in kinyarwanda):

“God has each of our names written down. We don’t know when we will go to be with God, but God knows. God knows the year, the month, and the day. So to some of us, God says ‘buretse’ (wait) it’s not time for you yet. But to others of us, God says ‘gwino’ (come).” He said, “’Inshuti’ (my friend), I know your heart hurts. ‘Ihangane.’”

Patience.

“Ihangane” is a word often used in Kinyarwanda when someone is in pain-physical pain or emotional pain. Not “I’m sorry”, not “Hang in there.”“Patience.”

It is a sentiment filled with so much more hope than "sorry." Patience, there will be a way. Patience, one day pain will end. Patience, don’t give up.

And after he said all of this to me, Mose made me grilled corn on the charcoal stove in the back yard. He chatted with me about his family.  He gave me part of the avocado he brought from home. I was hurting, and Mose accompanied me.

So often, especially this year, I find that even as I seek to accompany others, I am constantly being accompanied myself. Dan and Mose are two of the accompanying saints walking with me on this journey, and it pains me that these two beautiful souls will never know each other in this life. But.

But I heard God’s voice in Mose’s yesterday. I heard God saying “ihangane”. Patience.

Romans 8:24-25 says: "Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

I hope. I hope to meet Dan again. I hope to reunite with all those that my heart aches for right now. And in my hoping, I get this response: "Patience."

Patience, Dan has been called to “gwino”, to come home. Patience, you have been called to “buretse”, to “wait”, to keep sowing seeds where you are. Patience, one day, the Kingdom will be realized in all its fullness.

And the Kingdom is like this: a place where all the saints from all corners of the globe will sing, and play the bass, and eat corn cooked on a charcoal fire, together.

Be hopeful. Be patient. Ihangane. 

The (Rwandan) Christmas Song

I have had very few white Christmases. Though the seasonal music of my childhood spoke of ice and snow and Jack Frost, most of my Christmases have been more along the lines of a Heat Miser holiday-so I was ready to spend Christmas just south of the equator. However, this Christmas season I have been even more struck by the disparity between holiday music and the realities of Christmas in Rwanda. Finally, listening to The Christmas Song for the millionth time, I decided to re-write it to reflect my Christmas experience here with a little help from my fellow Rwanda YAGM.

The video link is below, followed by the lyrics. Hope you like it!
Noheli nziza, Merry Christmas!

The Rwandan Christmas Song by YAGM Rwanda

The (Rwandan) Christmas Song

Corncobs roasting on a charcoal fire

Mosquito netting by your nose

“Mwami Yesu” being sung by a choir

And folks wrapped in kitenge clothes

Everybody knows

Laura wearing kitenge and teaching the YAGMs
how to cook at orientation!

Kigali Chorale Christmas concert 

Adventist choir singing on Christmas Day!

Banana trees and avocado

Help to make the season bright

Motos beep, with their headlights aglow

And make it hard to sleep tonight

Banana trees and rolling hills in the
tiny village of Mumeya.

Chad and the famous head-sized avocado.

And when it comes to Christmas day

Well, you won’t find any reindeer or a sleigh

And though there won’t be a spangled tree in sight

You may see Christmas seems a little more right

Christmas Cantata in Kigali 

No trees, no stockings, no gifts but the
savior-and what a gift He is.

And so I’m offering this simple phrase

To kids from Huye to Kivu

Stunning Lake Kivu

My sweet Laura and I in Huye, Rwanda

Although it’s been said many times, many ways

Merry Christmas,

Noheli nziza,

Merry Christmas to you.

Noheli nziza from our family to yours.

Turkey and Typhoid: A Thanksgiving Story

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Anyone who knows us knows that my family is really close…like they-made-a-cardboard-cutout-of-me-to-cart-around-with-them-all-year-and-sometimes-they-dress-her-up-in-seasonally-appropriate-clothing close.

The picture I received from my family on Thanksgiving,
my four people plus flat Sav in a scarf.

 It’s the kind of close that makes a little sister secretly collect letters from her big sister’s family and friends to send with her to Rwanda so that when she’s feeling down, she always has a loving word from home. It’s the kind of close that makes a father and a daughter unknowingly get each other the same parting gift. It’s the kind of close that makes a family quote the live action Grinch until they are laugh-crying one day and have knock-down drag-out arguments the next. It’s weird close.

Holidays have always revolved around this, around the gift of my family and around our shared faith. Yes, there is always the classic southern Thanksgiving complete with banana pudding.  Yes, there is the annual decorating of the house with no less than 13 Christmas trees. Yes, there are the marathon Christmas Eves that keep us at church from noon to 1 a.m. I’m not saying I don’t and won’t really miss these events, I will, but what I will miss most is time with the only four people in every one of my memories of these events. My people.

So I knew the holidays were going to be tough. I was, for the first time, not really looking forward to celebrating, and just a few days before American Thanksgiving I found myself subconsciously taking inventory.

Savanna’s Pre-Thanksgiving Inventory, Take 1

What I did know I didn’t have:

 A way to watch football

 Pumpkin spice anything

Cool weather

Turkey

My family

What I didn’t know I did have: 

Typhoid fever

Yep, just a few days before Thanksgiving I made my way, disoriented, feverish, and dehydrated, to a clinic in Kigali where I was diagnosed with Typhoid Fever and immediately admitted. (Note: At the behest of a beloved mentor-who also happens to be the best storyteller I know-I have written the whole misadventure down for posterity and would love to share it, but it’s long and I won’t recount it all here.)

My Typhoid room!

My view of the outside world.

As I spent the next five days in the clinic hooked up to an IV being pumped full of fluids and antibiotics, I had a lot of time to think. Typhoid (and drugs and a significant amount of alone time) does things to a person, and I took another inventory. This one looked pretty different.

Savanna’s Pre-Thanksgiving Inventory, Take 2

What I did have (for sure):

My health

Folks from five different countries pray over me in the hospital

Friends from Rwamagana travel an hour to Kigali to visit me

A God of healing

A phone full of well-wishes from friends and teachers at RLS

Notes of love and prayer from my sending communities in the U.S.

Four people halfway around the world, in Texas, who I love more than life

What I didn’t have (anymore): 

Typhoid Fever

I want to go on record of saying that I fully acknowledge how much it sucks that it took a serious bacterial infection to make me realize just how thankful I should be on Thanksgiving. I am a (mostly) healthy, white, upper middle-class American with countless loving communities; I am privileged beyond belief-I know that. In my oversight I can only ask for grace. But I will also say that the pain of being without people we love, especially during the holidays, whether that separation is temporary or permanent, is very real. My mistake in approaching this holiday season was that I thought I was without my family, but I wasn’t, I’m not.

Banana pudding I made for part of my Rwandan family on Thanksgiving!

I have family in teachers and students at Rwamagana Lutheran School. I have family in a local baker who opened her home to me, no questions asked, so that I could wait on results from the clinic. I have family in Rwanda, in the U.S., and in YAGMs around the world who were, as my grandmother says, “praying hedges around me”. And I have family in the five other beautiful and broken and straight up weird souls that make up the YAGM Rwanda team.

Sometimes family finds you, I'm lucky to be a part of this one.

So yeah, this Thanksgiving I didn’t have turkey, but I did have Typhoid. And finally walking out of my hospital room of my own accord, breathing in the fresh air, and wondering at the bright blue Rwandan sky, I have never been more thankful. I am thankful for a strong body that can fight illnesses, for awesome medical personnel around the world, for clean water and good food, for friends that send me play-by-plays of football games (Go tigers!), for chicken when there’s no turkey, for the universality of banana pudding, for this beautiful country I get to call my temporary home, and for an ever-present God. I am thankful for my four people in Texas, and for my family, all of you, wherever you are-from Rwanda to Jerusalem to the UK to the US. 

But most of all, I am thankful that in this world that is often so dark, there is still so much to be thankful for. 

So may your heart be filled with gratitude and your life be filled with light,

 And may your holiday season be filled with just as much love... 

and a lot less bacteria.

Love,

Sav

How can I not be thankful to spend the holidays here?!

Beneath the Cross

Munsi y’umusaraba. Beneath the cross of Christ.

It is one of my favorite songs sung in the Lutheran Church of Rwanda-the bittersweet melody is folded into poignant lyrics about the human condition. My first Sunday in Rwanda the choir sang it while dancing unreservedly, arms slightly bent, looking like birds about to take off in flight. It’s a song full of promise and pain. It’s the only song that was on my heart this morning, because this morning I was devastated.

This morning I checked the news, and I learned about Paris. This morning I didn’t know what to do-so I ran. While I was running, I processed the grief threatening to crush me. The result was this:

Beneath the Cross

The bloody river flowing from beneath the cross of Christ:

Paris pierces hands and feet, Missouri cuts His side,

Syria brings jeering crowds, Burundi breaks His legs,

And the scores of silent faithful press the crown down on His head. 

Christ is bleeding, right now, today. Every time one of our neighbors bleeds, the body of Christ itself bleeds. Yes, that means every time terrorists attack Paris. But it also means every time a student of color gets a death threat in the United States, every time a Syrian refugee is met with a slammed door, every time a political protester is murdered in Burundi, every time justice and peace and equality are threatened anywhere in the world, another drop rolls down the face of the Savior. When our neighbors are dying, our God is dying. It’s not enough for the faithful to stay silent.

Munsi y’umusaraba. Beneath the cross of Christ, we cannot help but see the blood. But do we see it all? Do we see the blood in Burundi, in Beirut, in Syria, in Baghdad, in Paris, in Central and South America, in colored communities across the U.S.? As Christians, we must see. And as Christians, we cannot see and be silent. We are called to call for peace. We are called to call for love. Not just in our country and not just in western countries, but in the whole world. And though that world is often mired in evil, though it can seem bleak and dark, we are called to work for justice until at last we all walk in light together. 

Heart of the [Meat]ter

Muhire dropped the blood-soaked bag at my feet.

“Sorry it took so long,” he grinned, “we spent all day cleaning it.”

I smiled and tentatively reached for the bag. With considerable effort, I lifted it from the ground, blood droplets pooling on the pavement. No cigar-the bag was too heavy and too bloody for me to get in the house by myself. “Thank you so much!” I exclaimed, trying to both hide my alarm and breathe through my mouth.  I waved Mose over to help, said goodbye to the teachers, and turned toward the house.

Mose got the 22 lb bag to the front porch where I took over and dragged it across the living room to the kitchen-leaving a gruesome crimson trail behind me. I plopped it on the ground and peered inside. The metallic smell of raw meat slapped me full in the face, and as I quickly stepped away from the bag, I felt panic bubbling up inside my throat again. Mose, seeing my helpless face through the back door, immediately hopped to action.

Katie, Ben, and a blurry Mose cooking last week
(not raw meat night, it was just Mose and I then)

“Imyaka ni menshi, Mose”, I called in broken Kinyarwanda.  Too much meat. He chuckled as he reached into the bag with his bare hands and pulled out the first side of raw beef. Finding a knife, he expertly started hacking at the mass. “Egide?” He asked, suggesting that we take some to my landlord. I nodded enthusiastically and, as I placed the newly freed bit in a plastic bag, he hurried down the street on his bike to deliver it.

Finding myself alone in the house, I collapsed on the nearest chair. What in the world am I doing? Hands covered in raw meat? Floor fit for an Agatha Christie novel? Entire house reeking of animal blood?

 It was the teachers, I thought.

They had asked Katie and me Friday if we wanted meat. A few Muslim families in Rwamagana slaughtered cattle for the Eid and had offered beef to the teachers at RLS-free of charge. This was quite generous-meat is expensive in Rwanda, and most families only find room in their budget to eat it on special occasions. I was humbled to receive such a gift. However, when I tried to tell the teachers that 2 kilos would be enough for our household, they insisted we each take 5.

“You can share!” They said.

The site of the fateful meat discourse,
my 'desk' at work.

I can share. Suddenly remembering this sentiment, I felt a pang of guilt. The slightly overwhelming receipt of a 22 lb bag of raw meat had all but driven its purpose from my mind. My first thought had been of waste, of taking only enough for myself. My community’s first thought had been of providing for one another, of sharing.

I reflected on my reaction. My thoughts about waste management had come from a good place, but they also came from my own cultural understanding of provision. America often feels like an everyone-for-themselves type operation, yet community after community has tried to teach me a different lesson. My own parents, whose generosity to the point of ridiculousness has awed me since childhood, my home congregation, Faith, whose huge hearts send more out the doors of the church than I can sometimes fathom, my rag-tag band of friends from camp, who, having little themselves, will share their last lonely slices of bread with each other before hikes. And in Rwamagana, again, a lesson in giving, in sharing, in provision. This community provides for each other, they take care of each other…they take care of me.

It reminds me of this beautiful image of the Body of Christ painted in Acts 2: 42-44. Jesus has ascended to Heaven and suddenly this new community in Christ finds themselves let loose in the world. What do they do?

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer… All believers were together and had everything in common.”

They shared everything in common.  

In Kinyarwanda, there is a word I’ve learned that, for me, embodies this idea. The word, twese (tw-eh-s-eh) means “all of us, together”. I love this word not only because of the meaning, but because of the way it is used. For example, when someone sneezes in the US, we say “Bless you”. The response: “Thank you.” It’s very polite, nothing wrong with that. But in Rwanda when someone sneezes and you say “Urakire” (Blessings to you), the response is “twese”. Not just bless me, bless all of us together.

In Rwamagana, I have found a community like this, a community of “twese”. I have found a community whose first thought is not of scarcity and self, but of the collective bounty of Christ. To the teachers at school, this community does not just extend to themselves and their families, but to two young American women, to our night guard, to our house mama, to our landlord. To all of us, together.

Some of the teachers who helped with the meat
preparation, Victor, Dan, and Dennis!

I learned a lot the night 22 lbs of raw meat showed up on my doorstep. I learned that the smell of animal blood REALLY lingers. I learned that it takes three pots and a couple hours to accomplish the task of boiling said meat. I learned that without Mose, I would pretty much be sunk. And I learned that being a part of the community of believers means that we should receive first with thanks, and then with an immediate thought of where we can give again.

We are the Body of Christ. Let us care for one another. Let us be humble as we receive. Let us be generous as we give. Let us have everything in common.

Let us be twese, all of us, together. 

Letters to America

Pop quiz:

You are writing a letter to someone from Rwanda. How do you address it?

The question is simple enough, but it is one that I would have answered much differently last week than I would today.

 My reality check came during a Senior 6 (12^th grade) English class at Rwamagana Lutheran School. The entire 50 minute class was devoted to writing letters to English speakers: letters to apply to schools, respond to job advertisements, and accept placements. Over the course of the lesson this question arose: How do you address a letter to an American? I was surprised. I didn’t know there was more than one way to address a letter. I assumed everyone slapped a name down, followed it with a street address, city, state/province, country, and boom-done. Nope.

In addition to hanging out with them in class, I also get to help students after school!
Here I am giving guitar lessons to Johnson, an incredibly gifted musician and S3 student.

According to the students, when they address a letter to a fellow Rwandan, they list the country first and work their way down to the smallest organizational level (the cell). Street addresses are rarely included because they rarely exist. Now, with a slight prodding from the teacher, the students in the class started to debate whether or not they would need to change the way they addressed that letter if it was to an American.  “Of course you’d address it differently,” insisted Ornella, “that (points to the board) is the way Americans are most comfortable with!”

There it was. That unwelcome guest that has sidled up next to me so many times during these few short weeks in Rwanda. That elephant in the room that is all too often invisible to me while being fully visible to others. That lingering companion who jarringly makes himself known with the sudden sting of culpability. Privilege.

These students were learning how to address a letter in a way that made me, an American, most comfortable. What had I EVER learned in school to make a Rwandan more comfortable?

I remembered, then, something that the YAGM program director, Heidi, said at orientation in Chicago. She said:

“You can go all around the world, but you can never shake your U.S. passport and everything that comes with that.”

Everything that comes with that: all of the stereotypes and assumptions about you that come with that passport, all of the stereotypes and assumptions you carry because of it, all of the privilege that comes with it.

She was right. I have slowly, painfully, been discovering what an American passport means. It means that, unlike my Rwandan friends, I don’t have to be bilingual to get an education. It means that a basic knowledge of Rwandan culture wasn’t in any way a part of my secondary school curriculum. I didn’t learn how to find Rwanda on a map. It means that I never needed to know how to address a letter in any way but my country’s standard form. It means that I never considered that any other way even existed. THAT is my American privilege: the privilege to not have to know about this culture, the privilege to not have to care.

But (and there always is one). But my privilege to not care is a reality in stark opposition not only to my personal beliefs, but to the message of a God who tells us in Galatians Chapter 6, verse 2:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

There are verses upon verses in the Bible that talk about being called to care for one another, but this is one of my favorites. In this verse Paul, writing to a church in turmoil at Galatia, reminds the people of their call in Christ-to be in relationship. It’s not a verse that allows us to be ignorant of the burdens of others or, conversely, to feel so guilty about our privilege that we self-centeredly try to shoulder our own AND our neighbor’s burdens. Instead the verse calls us to get in the dirt with each other. We are called to walk the road together, to acknowledge the burdens we carry AND the burdens our neighbors carry-and to share the load.

My students help me bear my burden of language by writing down song lyrics they
just memorize so I can be in choir with them.  This is the Kingdom of God. 

Americans, there is a class in Rwamagana, Rwanda learning how to write letters in a way that makes you feel most comfortable. The teachers are knowledgeable and want to give their students the best chance at a bright future-the lesson is an important part of that.

But I have a letter for you, too:

My American friends,

How much we take for granted? That we can attend high school knowing only one language? That an American passport can help get us visas it would be impossible for our neighbors from other parts of the globe to get? That the average income in American households dwarfs those in the vast majority of the world?

Now-of course these privileges vary greatly even inside US borders, but, on the whole, what can we do as Americans to acknowledge the privilege our passport imparts? Can we be humble? Can we, like my Rwandan hosts, be gracious to those who take the time to try to learn our local languages? Can we be gracious to those who don’t? Can we seek out cultures to learn from in an authentic way? Can we work to understand the struggles of others? Can we bear each others’ burdens?

Can we start today?

In red, white, blue, and blessings,

Sav