Most of you who know me, know that I like to knit. I love it - blankets, potholders, scarves, afghans (different than blankets, just so you know), dishcloths, doileys, whatever. I have amassed quite the yarn collection too. You see, whenever you make something, unless it's a really thin scarf, it takes more than one skein [thing] of yarn. And you have to make sure you buy enough for each project the first time around. Yarn is dyed in lots. So if you are making a blanket out of terra cotta brown, all 20 of the terra cotta brown skeins at Hobby Lobby or Michaels or whatever, are not exactly alike. They were dyed 15 or so at a time. Each skein has a dye lot number written on the label. If you need about 8 or 9 skeins to get the job done, you better buy 9 NOW...because you have to make sure you get 9 with the same lot number, so your project has consistency...it would be awful to come back and end up with the last foot of your blanket lookin' a little off...
If you buy yarn like this for years, you end up with a little bit left of all kinds of colors...then of course there's the yarn you can't pass up...you know, the yarn that's usually 4 dollars a skein but's on sale for 99 cents...it would be just perfect for this scarf pattern...that you never get to. So every couple of years or so, I make something out of the scrap yarn. But since law school started for me three years ago this August, I've slown down a little on the knitting, and haven't had the chance to get to a scrap ANYTHING.
Well, today I started on a scrap Afghan. Knitting with two skeins at a time, I'm making a blanket with black as the constant color, and the other will be all the scraps of all the colors I have left. When I finish, the blanket will be black with many colors. There will be some of the orange chennille left over from the UT scarf I made my best friend for his birthday two years ago; frilly pink and purple mixed yarn left from the scarf I made my cousin Erika when she went skiing; red, white & blue yarn from the Obama scarf I made this year, and a different tinted red white & blue mixed yarn from the Bush scarf I made in college. There's green from the blanket I made my mother; UN blue from the blanket I'm making John; purple and white from the ACU blanket I made, and red from the GATA diamond scarf I made Kat. There's various shades of purple left from the blanket I made Shirley, and a small ball of blue mixed from the blanket I made Jay for his 24th birthday. Somehow, somewhere, I bought all this yarn...across the country and across the years, hauling it with me everywhere I go. And even though it's been sitting, stored and sorted by color and kind, for a while - some for years - now I need it. Now I'll use it.
Everytime I make one of these projects - these scrap projects - I'm always amazed at how beautiful they turn out. You'd think that all these mismatched colors, all these undertones and seemingly clashing hues would look absolutely terrible together. But they don't. Somehow, the undertone color makes it all fit...makes it look like somehow I knew I'd need enough Boston-Celtics-In-The-Finals-Again-Green for seven rows of this blanket, but only enough I-Dated-Too-Many-FRATS-And-Not-Enough-Kinsman-Blue for one row. All it takes is that black undercurrent. All it takes is one underlying consistent thought to string it all together. I guess not all that is random is aimless.
Not all who wander are without purpose.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
In violation of copyright laws...
I bring this to you all as a violation of copyright laws, but I don't really care. Think of it as my reading it to you.
The Cure of Troy
by Seamus Heaney
Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt, and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
The Cure of Troy
by Seamus Heaney
Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt, and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyeard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and birth cry
Of new life at its term.
It means that once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
So You Think You're A Radical
So I have been reading these Human Rights Watch reports on torture and the war on terror etc. and I gotta say, I'm really really disappointed. As I'm reading, I notice that if I turned any one these reports in for a grade in High School English [and not the AP stuff I'm talking "Hi my name is Bob and I can barely read because I smoke pot all day" kind of English Class] I would probably not have passed...and thats saying a lot because somehow there are Bobs all throughout the US who manage to pass...
These reports are terrible!! They are poorly written, redundant and don't really conscribe to any particulary set of academic standards. They cite what they find convenient to cite, but never the most important stuff. For instance, In a report I just read about Command Responsibility for Torture [which was way too long - the reputable information they had was about 10 pages], there is a HUGE section about memos written by White House Lawyers. HRW asserts that the memos attempt to reason away the Geneva Conventions, that the lawyers are responsible for nuclear holocaust and spiders under your bed, etc. but they do NOT cite the memos!!
At all!!
Later they cite a memo by Colin Powell, but there's not even a shout-out to one by Gonzales or Yoo. Now, we may all have read these memos, or some of them already, but that doesn't excuse HRW from being lazy or un-academic.
The problem I have with all of this is that if you want people to think you're talking about more than some vision you had smoking pot in a drum circle with your friends from the Yale Human Rights Clinical, then I'm going to need for you to cite things. You need to have EVIDENCE. This is why those who put their lives on the lines in war zones in the Sudan cannot stand overly educated lawyers and marketing majors and fancy-pants carpetbagging senators who don't know what fascism looks like. Because they see America for what it really is - the coolest country on earth and the ONLY one in the world where you can, during war time, stand on a corner in a busy metroplex with a sign blaming the President for actively causing the deaths of your country's largest terrorist attack to date and NOT DISAPPEAR. Instead, the people you accuse or terrorizing the whole world at will are dying out there so you can continue to stand on street corners like the loudmouth ignorant fool that you are.
My solution is that we send all of these people to Somalia for a little while, then ask them how they feel about the evil oppressive force that is America. If the world wants to eat McDonald's and drink Coca-Cola, let 'em! Honestly, the only people who are oppressed around here are these people - they are too stupid to think for themselves, to a little research, or make an intelligent decision about ANYTHING. Instead, they jump on whatever bandwagon Barbra Boxer is driving, and grab their kids along for the ride. You tell me, how is a Palestinian kid with a gun because his parents taught him to have one any different than a 5 year-old on a Malibu street corner with a sign calling Bush a fascist? This person's world may be even MORE dangerous then the kid with the gun...
and only in America, will we let that kid's parents continue to teach him to keep on truckin'
These reports are terrible!! They are poorly written, redundant and don't really conscribe to any particulary set of academic standards. They cite what they find convenient to cite, but never the most important stuff. For instance, In a report I just read about Command Responsibility for Torture [which was way too long - the reputable information they had was about 10 pages], there is a HUGE section about memos written by White House Lawyers. HRW asserts that the memos attempt to reason away the Geneva Conventions, that the lawyers are responsible for nuclear holocaust and spiders under your bed, etc. but they do NOT cite the memos!!
At all!!
Later they cite a memo by Colin Powell, but there's not even a shout-out to one by Gonzales or Yoo. Now, we may all have read these memos, or some of them already, but that doesn't excuse HRW from being lazy or un-academic.
The problem I have with all of this is that if you want people to think you're talking about more than some vision you had smoking pot in a drum circle with your friends from the Yale Human Rights Clinical, then I'm going to need for you to cite things. You need to have EVIDENCE. This is why those who put their lives on the lines in war zones in the Sudan cannot stand overly educated lawyers and marketing majors and fancy-pants carpetbagging senators who don't know what fascism looks like. Because they see America for what it really is - the coolest country on earth and the ONLY one in the world where you can, during war time, stand on a corner in a busy metroplex with a sign blaming the President for actively causing the deaths of your country's largest terrorist attack to date and NOT DISAPPEAR. Instead, the people you accuse or terrorizing the whole world at will are dying out there so you can continue to stand on street corners like the loudmouth ignorant fool that you are.
My solution is that we send all of these people to Somalia for a little while, then ask them how they feel about the evil oppressive force that is America. If the world wants to eat McDonald's and drink Coca-Cola, let 'em! Honestly, the only people who are oppressed around here are these people - they are too stupid to think for themselves, to a little research, or make an intelligent decision about ANYTHING. Instead, they jump on whatever bandwagon Barbra Boxer is driving, and grab their kids along for the ride. You tell me, how is a Palestinian kid with a gun because his parents taught him to have one any different than a 5 year-old on a Malibu street corner with a sign calling Bush a fascist? This person's world may be even MORE dangerous then the kid with the gun...
and only in America, will we let that kid's parents continue to teach him to keep on truckin'
Monday, February 18, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
The Last Unicorn
As I sit up in bed, the exhaustion teems over my eyes, but still sleep escapes me. Like the love you can never quite hold on to, so too lately is undisturbed sleep. So numerous are the unconnected thoughts that swarm in my mind that were they colors, the greatest of Klimt's masterpieces would still pale in comparison to the sea of pigment it would produce. But amidst the rushing thoughts and the din I create in my mind, there is one thing that brings me peace - the image of a small porcelain unicorn.
As a child I had such the fascination with the enchantments of childrens' fairytales. I was awed by the simple beauty in a kind woodland maiden aiding a lost creature, or the nobility with which a noble steed would stand by his master. It seemed more than just "too good to be true," for I really believed that kindness and mercy existed in the world. All I knew, is that somewhere there had to be a place where my favorite of playtime fantasies, the Unicorn, existed.
And why shouldn't it? Lonely streets and cold nights numbered many in our silent and fearful world, but I had always felt warm. So many lived without a home, but I had one. And so, I began to love unicorns. And when I moved away from my first best friend, she gave me a small porcelain unicorn to connect us, for always. I remember it well - it had a main of rainbow colors that were far brighter in my mind than they could ever have been represented by cheap paint in the uninspired spectrum it had been painted. It was small enough to fit in my cupped hands, tiny though they were, but big enough to fill my whole heart.
As I grew, many other depictions of this fair creature began to mark the shelves and spaces of my humble bedroom. But no matter how beautiful each new addition was, no matter how intricate the detailing or the awesome talent each new artist had for her art, no image or figure could take the place of that one tiny icon. I remember talking to it when I moved away from all my friends as a little girl. I remember holding it when I wished I could go back to my "old home," where everything was alright. And as the years passed and I perhaps had grown to like my new home, I would still glance at it, or hold it, whenever I was disheartened because it reminded me of the beauty of true friendship. I recall often with a smile, and perhaps even a small tear, the day my prized possession broke in half. My mother understood that I could not just throw the gift away! She knew that none of the others would matter without this one precious pearl. She helped me glue it back together and proudly I continued to display it as if everyone else would also be indifferent to the obvious crack all around my little unicorn's neck.
As I grew, I lost my affinity for child-like knick-knacks in my room, and one by one, my unicorns disappeared. They grew old or shabby or tacky with the changing of the seasons [and my moods] and were gradually thinned out. But not the one - the Last of my Unicorns. I still have that unicorn, wrapped in tissue paper in my hope chest. From time to time I take it out and stroke it and remember...The thing about the unicorn, is that she represented mercy and justice. She protected all the creatures in her forest, and if she left it they would all be in danger. All those who were truly good knew her when they saw her. But then, so did all those who were truly evil. Much like the soldier of Christ, she is easily recognized by both friend and foe.
But what of the Last Unicorn? She would have hardly anyone left to recognize her in eyes of love. What would it be like to be known by your enemies, but by very few friends? What would it be like to stand for good and justice, and still go unrecognized by most?
I saw a man, a man whom I knew to be evil in my recent travels. He is large, he is powerful, and I am not. He owns much, I own little. He commands attention, I am just a small woman. But when he saw me, he stared at me. And when he stared at me, I could tell he knew me, and the one who sent me. God's army is full of Last Unicorns.
THE LAST UNICORN
When the last eagle flies
Over the last crumbling mountain
And the last lion roars
At the last dusty fountain
In the shadow of the forest
Though she may be old and worn
They will stare unbelieving
At the Last Unicorn
When the first breath of winter
Throught the flowers is icing
And you look to the north
And a pale moon is rising
And it seems like all is dying
And would leave the world to mourn
In the distance hear her laughter
It's the Last Unicorn
I'm alive... I'm alive
When the last moon is cast
Over the last star of morning
And the future is past
Without even a last desparate warning
Then look into the sky where through
The cloudes a path is formed
Look and see her how she sparkles
It's the Last Unicorn
I'm alive... I'm alive.
As a child I had such the fascination with the enchantments of childrens' fairytales. I was awed by the simple beauty in a kind woodland maiden aiding a lost creature, or the nobility with which a noble steed would stand by his master. It seemed more than just "too good to be true," for I really believed that kindness and mercy existed in the world. All I knew, is that somewhere there had to be a place where my favorite of playtime fantasies, the Unicorn, existed.
And why shouldn't it? Lonely streets and cold nights numbered many in our silent and fearful world, but I had always felt warm. So many lived without a home, but I had one. And so, I began to love unicorns. And when I moved away from my first best friend, she gave me a small porcelain unicorn to connect us, for always. I remember it well - it had a main of rainbow colors that were far brighter in my mind than they could ever have been represented by cheap paint in the uninspired spectrum it had been painted. It was small enough to fit in my cupped hands, tiny though they were, but big enough to fill my whole heart.
As I grew, many other depictions of this fair creature began to mark the shelves and spaces of my humble bedroom. But no matter how beautiful each new addition was, no matter how intricate the detailing or the awesome talent each new artist had for her art, no image or figure could take the place of that one tiny icon. I remember talking to it when I moved away from all my friends as a little girl. I remember holding it when I wished I could go back to my "old home," where everything was alright. And as the years passed and I perhaps had grown to like my new home, I would still glance at it, or hold it, whenever I was disheartened because it reminded me of the beauty of true friendship. I recall often with a smile, and perhaps even a small tear, the day my prized possession broke in half. My mother understood that I could not just throw the gift away! She knew that none of the others would matter without this one precious pearl. She helped me glue it back together and proudly I continued to display it as if everyone else would also be indifferent to the obvious crack all around my little unicorn's neck.
As I grew, I lost my affinity for child-like knick-knacks in my room, and one by one, my unicorns disappeared. They grew old or shabby or tacky with the changing of the seasons [and my moods] and were gradually thinned out. But not the one - the Last of my Unicorns. I still have that unicorn, wrapped in tissue paper in my hope chest. From time to time I take it out and stroke it and remember...The thing about the unicorn, is that she represented mercy and justice. She protected all the creatures in her forest, and if she left it they would all be in danger. All those who were truly good knew her when they saw her. But then, so did all those who were truly evil. Much like the soldier of Christ, she is easily recognized by both friend and foe.
But what of the Last Unicorn? She would have hardly anyone left to recognize her in eyes of love. What would it be like to be known by your enemies, but by very few friends? What would it be like to stand for good and justice, and still go unrecognized by most?
I saw a man, a man whom I knew to be evil in my recent travels. He is large, he is powerful, and I am not. He owns much, I own little. He commands attention, I am just a small woman. But when he saw me, he stared at me. And when he stared at me, I could tell he knew me, and the one who sent me. God's army is full of Last Unicorns.
THE LAST UNICORN
When the last eagle flies
Over the last crumbling mountain
And the last lion roars
At the last dusty fountain
In the shadow of the forest
Though she may be old and worn
They will stare unbelieving
At the Last Unicorn
When the first breath of winter
Throught the flowers is icing
And you look to the north
And a pale moon is rising
And it seems like all is dying
And would leave the world to mourn
In the distance hear her laughter
It's the Last Unicorn
I'm alive... I'm alive
When the last moon is cast
Over the last star of morning
And the future is past
Without even a last desparate warning
Then look into the sky where through
The cloudes a path is formed
Look and see her how she sparkles
It's the Last Unicorn
I'm alive... I'm alive.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
What My Life is For...
FROM GARY HAUGEN'S THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT INJUSTICE
Anyone who has spent time with infants knows what amazing machines of tireless learning and curiosity they are. We can also see that during an early stage of development, an infant has no capacity to maintain interest in anything that is not immediately before its eyes. When a brightly colored ball or rattle is held up before babies, their attention is riveted on it. Their eyes seize on the new item with urgent curiosity. They display an almost compulsive urge to touch it, feel it, embrace it. But move the toy out of sight and infants lose all interest. They do not look for it. They do not try to bring back the hand that took the toy away. The do not express any disappointment that the toy is no longer there to explore. As far as child psychologists are able to discern, to babies the toy ceases to exist the very moment it is removed from sight. They have not yet developed the mental capacity for object permanence, that is, the understanding that objects exist even when they are out of sight. It is truly a case of out of sight, out of mind.
I must confess that this is very much the way my mind often works when it comes to maintaining an interest in the reality of injustice in our world. I read about innocent people being slaughtered in Rwanda on page A1 of the Washington Post, and I am appalled. But my mind moves onto other things with amazing speed and thoroughness when I read on page D15 that the movie [I was] hoping to see actually starts a half hour earlier than [I] thought. When I read about the way abandoned orphan girls in China are tied to their bed rails and left to starve and die in state-run orphanages, I am very nearly moved to tears. But a year later when a conversation with a friend reminds me of the article, I realize that I have not shed a tear, uttered a prayer or even given it thought since the day I put down that newspaper article. I can move from torture on the evening news to touchdowns on Monday Night Football with almost the same mental and emotional ease as my channel changer.
Of course, much of this is perfectly natural and probably healthy. I do not aspire to be someone with a psychotic fixation on evil and human suffering. It s a poorly lived life that cannot experience joy, peace, laughter, beauty, and mirth despite all the oppression and injustice that mars the goodness of God's creation. If the evening news or the morning paper keeps me from [going] to a movie, from laughing at [] stories or from enjoying the exhilaration of a bike ride on a crisp fall day, then something is surely out of balance.
But we can grow into a more mature way of engaging the reality of injustice in our world if we take just two steps: (1) We can develop a compassion for the people suffering injustice by looking through the eyes of missionaries and other Christian workers who see this suffering firsthand, and (2) we can prepare ourselves to help people by looking at them through God's eyes, that is, through his Word.
Perhaps a next step in our development as children of God is a capacity for compassion permanence - a courageous and generous capacity to remember the needs of an unjust world even they are out of our immediate sight. Not content with the infant's out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach, God calls us to a grown-up capacity to engage a world of oppression with our heart and mind, even though (thankfully) it is not always before our eyes.
Anyone who has spent time with infants knows what amazing machines of tireless learning and curiosity they are. We can also see that during an early stage of development, an infant has no capacity to maintain interest in anything that is not immediately before its eyes. When a brightly colored ball or rattle is held up before babies, their attention is riveted on it. Their eyes seize on the new item with urgent curiosity. They display an almost compulsive urge to touch it, feel it, embrace it. But move the toy out of sight and infants lose all interest. They do not look for it. They do not try to bring back the hand that took the toy away. The do not express any disappointment that the toy is no longer there to explore. As far as child psychologists are able to discern, to babies the toy ceases to exist the very moment it is removed from sight. They have not yet developed the mental capacity for object permanence, that is, the understanding that objects exist even when they are out of sight. It is truly a case of out of sight, out of mind.
I must confess that this is very much the way my mind often works when it comes to maintaining an interest in the reality of injustice in our world. I read about innocent people being slaughtered in Rwanda on page A1 of the Washington Post, and I am appalled. But my mind moves onto other things with amazing speed and thoroughness when I read on page D15 that the movie [I was] hoping to see actually starts a half hour earlier than [I] thought. When I read about the way abandoned orphan girls in China are tied to their bed rails and left to starve and die in state-run orphanages, I am very nearly moved to tears. But a year later when a conversation with a friend reminds me of the article, I realize that I have not shed a tear, uttered a prayer or even given it thought since the day I put down that newspaper article. I can move from torture on the evening news to touchdowns on Monday Night Football with almost the same mental and emotional ease as my channel changer.
Of course, much of this is perfectly natural and probably healthy. I do not aspire to be someone with a psychotic fixation on evil and human suffering. It s a poorly lived life that cannot experience joy, peace, laughter, beauty, and mirth despite all the oppression and injustice that mars the goodness of God's creation. If the evening news or the morning paper keeps me from [going] to a movie, from laughing at [] stories or from enjoying the exhilaration of a bike ride on a crisp fall day, then something is surely out of balance.
But we can grow into a more mature way of engaging the reality of injustice in our world if we take just two steps: (1) We can develop a compassion for the people suffering injustice by looking through the eyes of missionaries and other Christian workers who see this suffering firsthand, and (2) we can prepare ourselves to help people by looking at them through God's eyes, that is, through his Word.
Perhaps a next step in our development as children of God is a capacity for compassion permanence - a courageous and generous capacity to remember the needs of an unjust world even they are out of our immediate sight. Not content with the infant's out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach, God calls us to a grown-up capacity to engage a world of oppression with our heart and mind, even though (thankfully) it is not always before our eyes.
Friday, January 25, 2008
The One
This past Winter I had the opportunity to meet a number of interesting and beautiful people in the country of Uganda. But among all of the new people I met, the one who left the largest impact upon me, was a young girl I interviewed in a dirty and run-down Orphanage just outside of Kampala. Let's call her Mikay.
Mikay, like many other young children in Uganda, has fallen victim to the atrocities of the War in the North. While peacefully living a simple life in her village with her family, Joseph Kony's rebel army quickly thrust her into a nightmare. They burned her village down and she and her family were forced to flee into the bush for safety. They lived there in abject fear for over a year, terrified that each new day would bring with it the realization that the rebel army knew where they were. And one day, I'm sad to say, she met that fear face to face. The rebels found her and her family, killed one of her parents, and took her away. She doesn't know where her other parent is or her siblings. She served as a sex slave and domestic for Kony's militants for over 2 years, until she escaped one day amid a skirmish with the UPDF.
Returning to the Bush for safety, Mikay ran into a childhood friend who offered her a chance for hope: "Let's go to Kampala and get jobs and an apartment together." Overjoyed at a chance for a new life, Mikay gladly assented. But upon her arrival in Kampala, she was sold by her "friend" into prostitution. This beautiful young girl was a child prostitute in the streets of Kampala for what seemed like forever. Her escape from this new nightmare was being sold into domestic servitude. After being moved from house to house in the Kampala underground slave trade, she finally lifted her cries up to God: "Lord," she cried, "I have never stolen from anyone, lied to anyone, or cheated anyone because I know that it's wrong. But I'm starving and alone and tired and if you can't help me, I would rather die." She was soon kicked out of the house she was working in, and found herself once again on the streets.
The One
By Sharon Cohn - Vice President, Interventions
Rather unoriginally, I suppose, Mother Teresa is one of my heroes. She exemplified better than perhaps anyone, the significance of the one. When a priest was trying to discourage her from a dangerous mission, she replied, “It is not an idea, Father, I think it is our duty…If I didn’t do it that time [pick up the one] I would never had picked up the 42,000 in Calcutta.”
I think back to this sometimes when I am asked how I keep from being overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the injustices we labor to combat. Or when I am challenged with grim statistics and asked, “So you have rescued hundreds of bonded slaves in the past few months. There are tens of millions still enslaved. What is the point?”
The point is the one. Let me tell you about her. I met Simla* more than two years ago in May 2002 when I was assisting with my first brothel raid with IJM. Based on our information the police rescued six children and arrested one offender. Simla was the most reserved of the girls rescued that day. Her eyes darted with skepticism and distrust and she was loath to smile when I met her.
With good reason. Simla had been promised a job in a restaurant two-and-a-half years earlier, and had instead been taken to the brothel where she had been subjected to exploitation day and night without end. When our investigators first met her, she begged them to give a good report to the brothel keeper because she had been beaten severely the last time a customer had complained.
Simla and I walked back into the brothel together one hot day when the police took us to retrieve her few possessions. It was a painful glimpse into the life of a teenager enslaved, the bizarre juxtaposition of childhood and brutality, posters of teenage idols and bank ledgers of customers’ payments.
Why this one?
IJM has assisted in rescuing hundreds of girls from commercial sexual exploitation since Simla, some of whom I have come to know. So why do I want to write you about her? Simla’s story is not unique, except that, of course, it is. It is unique to Simla. She has plans and dreams just like you and I. Men and women conspired to crush her uniqueness and her value, but we are committed to seeking justice for her.
And so, too, for one little girl in a rock quarry in South Asia. Kani* wasn’t among the others when IJM went with the authorities to raid the quarry. As a matter of fact, our investigators did not know about her family and had not documented this case of slavery during the investigation. At the end of a successful raid, IJM staff members were leaving the quarry where 76 people had been freed from slavery. A desperate woman, Kani’s mother, began banging on the door of one of the cars in the caravan. She explained that her family had not been present for the investigation, but they wanted to be taken out of the quarry. She explained that Kani had been injured while working at the quarry. After inadequate medical care and a raging infection, her middle finger had been amputated just that day to save the rest of her arm.
IJM stopped the caravan and with the help of local police officers found the husband and the eight family members, including the young girl. The family had been working as bonded slaves in the quarry for three years trying to pay off a $400 US debt. The pleas of a desperate mother were heard and her family was freed. IJM staff members have been working with Kani to help prepare her for a more promising future. She’s now back in her native village with her family, attending school and getting the education she deserves.
To Simla and to Kani it mattered that IJM brought the hand of justice to them despite the massiveness of the problem of oppression. Not only is each victim the one, but we likewise can be the one. The one called, the one listening, the one willing, the one sent to bring freedom and justice to innocent ones who are suffering.
Being overwhelmed by the numbers is an indulgence the oppressed can ill afford. Thank you, dear friend, for your willingness to stand with us for each child, each woman and each man who longs for the chance of a new life of hope.
Mikay, like many other young children in Uganda, has fallen victim to the atrocities of the War in the North. While peacefully living a simple life in her village with her family, Joseph Kony's rebel army quickly thrust her into a nightmare. They burned her village down and she and her family were forced to flee into the bush for safety. They lived there in abject fear for over a year, terrified that each new day would bring with it the realization that the rebel army knew where they were. And one day, I'm sad to say, she met that fear face to face. The rebels found her and her family, killed one of her parents, and took her away. She doesn't know where her other parent is or her siblings. She served as a sex slave and domestic for Kony's militants for over 2 years, until she escaped one day amid a skirmish with the UPDF.
Returning to the Bush for safety, Mikay ran into a childhood friend who offered her a chance for hope: "Let's go to Kampala and get jobs and an apartment together." Overjoyed at a chance for a new life, Mikay gladly assented. But upon her arrival in Kampala, she was sold by her "friend" into prostitution. This beautiful young girl was a child prostitute in the streets of Kampala for what seemed like forever. Her escape from this new nightmare was being sold into domestic servitude. After being moved from house to house in the Kampala underground slave trade, she finally lifted her cries up to God: "Lord," she cried, "I have never stolen from anyone, lied to anyone, or cheated anyone because I know that it's wrong. But I'm starving and alone and tired and if you can't help me, I would rather die." She was soon kicked out of the house she was working in, and found herself once again on the streets.
The One
By Sharon Cohn - Vice President, Interventions
Rather unoriginally, I suppose, Mother Teresa is one of my heroes. She exemplified better than perhaps anyone, the significance of the one. When a priest was trying to discourage her from a dangerous mission, she replied, “It is not an idea, Father, I think it is our duty…If I didn’t do it that time [pick up the one] I would never had picked up the 42,000 in Calcutta.”
I think back to this sometimes when I am asked how I keep from being overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the injustices we labor to combat. Or when I am challenged with grim statistics and asked, “So you have rescued hundreds of bonded slaves in the past few months. There are tens of millions still enslaved. What is the point?”
The point is the one. Let me tell you about her. I met Simla* more than two years ago in May 2002 when I was assisting with my first brothel raid with IJM. Based on our information the police rescued six children and arrested one offender. Simla was the most reserved of the girls rescued that day. Her eyes darted with skepticism and distrust and she was loath to smile when I met her.
With good reason. Simla had been promised a job in a restaurant two-and-a-half years earlier, and had instead been taken to the brothel where she had been subjected to exploitation day and night without end. When our investigators first met her, she begged them to give a good report to the brothel keeper because she had been beaten severely the last time a customer had complained.
Simla and I walked back into the brothel together one hot day when the police took us to retrieve her few possessions. It was a painful glimpse into the life of a teenager enslaved, the bizarre juxtaposition of childhood and brutality, posters of teenage idols and bank ledgers of customers’ payments.
Why this one?
IJM has assisted in rescuing hundreds of girls from commercial sexual exploitation since Simla, some of whom I have come to know. So why do I want to write you about her? Simla’s story is not unique, except that, of course, it is. It is unique to Simla. She has plans and dreams just like you and I. Men and women conspired to crush her uniqueness and her value, but we are committed to seeking justice for her.
And so, too, for one little girl in a rock quarry in South Asia. Kani* wasn’t among the others when IJM went with the authorities to raid the quarry. As a matter of fact, our investigators did not know about her family and had not documented this case of slavery during the investigation. At the end of a successful raid, IJM staff members were leaving the quarry where 76 people had been freed from slavery. A desperate woman, Kani’s mother, began banging on the door of one of the cars in the caravan. She explained that her family had not been present for the investigation, but they wanted to be taken out of the quarry. She explained that Kani had been injured while working at the quarry. After inadequate medical care and a raging infection, her middle finger had been amputated just that day to save the rest of her arm.
IJM stopped the caravan and with the help of local police officers found the husband and the eight family members, including the young girl. The family had been working as bonded slaves in the quarry for three years trying to pay off a $400 US debt. The pleas of a desperate mother were heard and her family was freed. IJM staff members have been working with Kani to help prepare her for a more promising future. She’s now back in her native village with her family, attending school and getting the education she deserves.
To Simla and to Kani it mattered that IJM brought the hand of justice to them despite the massiveness of the problem of oppression. Not only is each victim the one, but we likewise can be the one. The one called, the one listening, the one willing, the one sent to bring freedom and justice to innocent ones who are suffering.
Being overwhelmed by the numbers is an indulgence the oppressed can ill afford. Thank you, dear friend, for your willingness to stand with us for each child, each woman and each man who longs for the chance of a new life of hope.
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