march 5, 2008

So today after school me, Sarah Trebat leder and Ian all went to the house of the leaders of the Lehigh valley chapter of amnesty international to meet with Jacqueline Murerekatete who is only 23 years old but she has already done so much for activism. First her story is just amazing. She lived in Rwanda during the genocide and at only 9 years old she lost her parents and her six siblings as well as most of her extended family. What struck me the most was her kind demeanor. She did not seem angry or bitter. She joked with us, she talked with us, and she was optimistic that change can occur. She is also so humble and grateful. She talked about losing her family but she said, “I count myself as one of the lucky ones” and she goes on to talk about how she considers herself to be lucky because she is living in America and she has been able to get an education. I asked her why it seems that some people, after going through such devastating circumstances, are able to rise above and help others whole others stay stuck and bitter. And she told me that she has two choices to remain bitter or to use her experiences to help others. She chose the second option and she said that in the end being angry and bitter only hurts yourself. And that is so wise and beautiful.
She struck me so much with her peace and her gentle spirit. And she is continually working. Right now she is helping an organization called miracle coroners and she is working on having a school built in Rwanda. She is just so amazing. She is also helping organize a conference where victims from other genocides come and share their experiences with each other and other people who have never been involved in genocide.
I also asked how can people who have never been in such tragic circumstances help those who are going through so much and she told me, that often times just listening is enough. Wow that really touched my heart because I am the kind of person who feels like I have to change the world or my life will have been worthless. But she said that just listening to people who have gone through genocides, and just showing that you care is of great help and value.
She really shows me how to appreciate the small things in life. I mean I remember sitting around with Mr. Sommers and everyone else at the dinner table eating and laughing. Sometimes we broke off into groups and had like two different conversations. It was awesome. I remember me, Ian, and senor sommmers talked about all the evil the Christian church has committed but that people need to learn to separate what the religion teaches with that the Bible actually says.
And then as we prepared to live Ian and I were cracking up about the mad TV sketch called, “irack.” We were cracking lines for like five minutes and laughing over and over about it.
Lines such as: “where’s the exit?”
“There is no exit strategy!’

Or: “the iproducts don’t even look like they are getting along!”
‘Stop putting stuff in there, the irack is unstable.”
“That’s ok; let’s just keep throwing money at the irack.”
“Don’t worry about the irack we need to focus on the newest iproduct: the Iran.” (A running shoe is reveled)

And even though the Mad TV sketch seems horrible and inconsiderate when I think of it like Mr. Caldwell said one time, Iraq is a situation where you either have to laugh or cry.

But back to the dinner. The food was amazing. Catfish, ice cream with chocolate sauce.

It was an awesome time. I loved feeling so connected with other people and Jacqueline has really inspired me to value each moment, each life. Actually lately I have been noticing a lot of books, songs; etc that have been talking about valuing each moment with loved ones. And each life.
Maybe God’s trying to tell me something…well even if it’s not like “oh someone is going to die soon” I do think that God wants us to value each moment no matter how long we live. I really am trying to take that to heart and will try to write down things in more detail.
In fact I plan on organizing all of my journals and computer diary entries into one memory stick hopefully and maybe create a private anonymous myspace page and post all my stuff there. Obviously I will have the password and stuff written down but only in case I die. I know I have some old xangas and livejournals that I want to dig up. I def want to try and do that during spring break.

But today was such an awesome and great day. Jacqueline and the others have taught me so much. I really do want to slow down and try and value each life and each day. I want to try and value each and everyday with my mom and my dad and try not to shut my family out so much.

Jacqueline gives me hope that no matter what happens in my life, with God’s help, I will be able to survive.

And the hosts, I think there first names are Bill and Karen were really gracious and made yummy food.

Jacqueline also placed a heavy emphasis on education because in Africa some of the Africans were taught that the other ethnicity was evil, and they were taught that from an extremely young age so Jacqueline believes that teaching tolerance and the value of human life is one step towards ending genocides.

We also talked briefly about the genocide in napking. I was surprised, even though I shouldn’t have been since she has made it like her life mission to end genocide but I was surprised that she knew about napking since hardly anyone has heard about that genocide. And we talked about how while the genocide was going on, people all over the world knew what was happening but it was after the fact that the cover up conspiracy began. The united states and other countries aided in the cover-up by just being so intent in getting good relations back with Japan after world war 2 for economic purposes. And we (not just me and her but the others two) talked about how other the wealthier countries only care about their own interests. China is funding the genocide by providing weapons but they don’t want to stop because they are making money off of it. And we talked about how people in other countries distance themselves from the event by saying, “oh it’s not happening here so we don’t have to worry about it” and until that thinking changes genocides will continue to happen.
I also remember saying after I stated the infamous quote “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat’ I told her it’s actually those “who do not LEARN from history are doomed to repeat it’ and she agreed it’s not just about knowing facts.
So it was a really awesome day.


And even before that I just realized that today was really good. In drama honors class it was so funny. We were talking and laughing about so many things. Marisa Brau apparently likes chalk and she was writing on the board, “this class is dedicated to Kat.” Since Kat was extremely sick and she still came to school. And Mr. Molloy was talking about how Kat left her death bed to come here and Marisa Brau wrote something about Kat’s imminent death and then we started talking about chalk because Mr. Molloy asked Marisa Brau if she wanted to be a teacher since teachers are allowed to use all the chalk they want. And Marisa asked if there was enough money in the budget and Mr. Molloy says, “listen if I use up all the chalk in the school we would order more.” then we started talking about smart board and how Mr. Molloy didn’t like his smart board because they had to cover up his fire place to put it up instead of putting it up on one of the two other walls that had chalkboards that he never used since students were always sitting in front of them. then Vishal talked about breaking the walls to uncover it and me and Laurie were just ribbing him about how impossible that was and Mr. Molloy said what Vishal said and we all just laughed and Vishal was like, ‘oh it’s ok when he says it” and I said something like, ‘well he’s better than you..”

And yesterday Mr. Molloy was talking about how he thought Paul Newman was one sexy fellow when he was younger. And yesterday we also laughed like crazy. It’s the small things like that that make life interesting.

Wednesday March 5, 2008