Hopelessness?

So I’ve been wrestling with a certain lack of emotions during my time here in Uganda. Maybe this is extended culture shock, maybe it is an unwillingness to process what I’m experiencing here, maybe it is a coping mechanism. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but as I was reading our assignment for this month, Liberating Jonah by Miguel De la Torre, I think I discovered perhaps one possible root of my lack of emotions. De la Torre wrote this book about the marginalization experienced by persons of color, especially within the United States, because of the very nature of power structures that favor a privileged minority. He traced the historical and social roots of these problems bringing up facts of history that either I was never taught or I conveniently forgot. He talked a lot about what reconciliation is and what it should look like, not the cheap grace of insincere apologies or useless guilt or forced forgiveness, but a tearing down of the structures and empire that privileges the few. It requires that we in the privileged few identify with the marginalized by forsaking our privilege. I have realized the privileges that have been afforded me largely because of my white skin especially during my time here. In the US we so often try to be “color blind” which basically means letting things remain as they are privileging white people. Being called mzungu all the time has made me realize all the baggage associated with my skin, and how much of this baggage is not just perceived, but real. OK I know this is probably offensive to some people and I’m sorry if I’m using race or color in wrong ways or if I should be using ethnicity instead, my wording is probably off, but just hear me out. Because I’m here with an American university if there is ever political unrest or a medical emergency, I have my ticket out of here paid by a company the school signed me up for. I can go to coffee shops whenever I want to study and get out of the house. These privileges go beyond just my experiences here, but extend to life in the States, though I’m less sure of how this looks in the states as my skin color is noticed by others more while here and therefore makes me more aware of my white privilege. I do know that the neighborhood I live in and the church I go to is primarily white and there is definitely a privilege in that. It is a good book and I would encourage you to read it (note: it is kind of anti the American empire so you may not agree with some parts). But he basically ends the book on a note of hopelessness.

I have never considered hopelessness as a possibly legitimate response to the wealth disparity and death and disease attributed to poverty surrounding us in this temporal world, but as a writer from the marginalized group he challenged the hope we in the privileged group always feel compelled to end so many of our discussions with. Yes, there are people who live in slums with abundant hope, but many live in a state of hopelessness about this temporal world. Very few have aspirations to achieve anything close to the affluence they see on billboards or television. As I read letters from other interns talking about the Rwandan genocide or the horrible acts of violence against women that are occurring at what seems an ever increasing rate, I don’t hope in the people or structures to bring us through this mess, in fact I see these structures as causing many of the problems. Why do we of the privileged group feel the need to constantly end on notes of hope? Is it to make us feel somehow better about the injustices we indirectly commit everyday? Is it to help us cope with the privileges we still stand on whose foundations began to be built during the times of early colonization and slavery? Is it to help abate our guilt a little bit and encourage those dying in poverty to hold on just a bit longer because there is a light at the end of the tunnel while we ourselves are reveling in the privileges afforded us by the raging fire at the end of the tunnel?

Living and interacting with those who are of Uganda’s elite class gives me little hope that the gap between the rich and the poor is decreasing. Though I have interacted with some extremely generous people here, it doesn’t mean they are looking to fully sacrifice their privileges to live in true solidarity with the global poor. Seeing sprawling pastors compounds give me little hope, and why should we expect them to have anything but large compounds, they learned this lifestyle from the missionaries who brought the Gospel to Africa in the beginning. Living on the gated compound where I am protected from those who would want to do evil, but at the same time cut off from possible interactions with those who don’t have the nice cars or clothes that admit them entry onto the compound. Going back to the States gives me little hope that the gap is closing. Seeing the mega malls here contrasted with the wetland homes people build that flood when the rains come gives me little hope. I doubt the people living in those homes have hope they will find homes elsewhere or that they will ever be able to shop in these mega malls full of ex-pats and Uganda’s elite. There is hopelessness just seeing that the world is so unreconciled. We aren’t reconciled to each other or to God. Saying much of this is difficult for me because I realize that it is privilege that has afforded me the opportunity to go to Wheaton, privilege that enables me to take out educational loans for medical school, privilege that enables me to be who I am. I am beginning to ask how much this identity has defined me over and above my baptismal identity, how do I begin to go about making my baptismal identity supersede the identities the world recognizes in my skin color and passport?

I think much of my inability to emotionally process what I see and experience has to do with my hesitancy to really feel, experience and admit the hopelessness that I feel. By having a writer blatantly state that he has little hope that things will change in his lifetime or even his grandchildren’s lifetime allowed me to realize that I kind of feel similarly. I do recognize that we have eschatological hope that Christ is reconciling everything to himself, but that doesn’t change the plight of the child who can’t be more than 1 year old begging on the streets of Kampala. This doesn’t change the immediate plight of the man whose legs have been cut off, probably during the genocide in Rwanda or the conflict in northern Uganda who has to walk around Kampala on his hands begging from others. I just don’t know where to go.

My small contribution won’t even make a mark on the disparities and contradictions that surround me. The hope I have is that’s not what I’m in this battle for. I’m not called to make a difference, but live in obedience to Our Father. I do hold responsibility for the rights that are denied others while luxuries are afforded me. Hopelessness is not a reason to stop trying, it is just a realization that this problem will require much more than my generation or the next generation will offer. It is a realization that the power structures are SO ingrained that it will take more than the millennium development goals or our best intentions to change things. It is looking at the problem from the underside, from the perspective of those experiencing marginalization everyday. People not only need to be “brought up,” but we need to begin to forsake our privileges. I don’t know where to start and the ever-present option to return to the privilege offered me by my skin color is unavoidable. I do know that hope feels scarce in my life. Only by abiding in Christ will I learn how to really let go and begin attempting identification. I need to open myself up to the pain of the world and the love in the world. I am so self-protective that I won’t allow people and hurt in, but I need to realize that I am out of control and fall into the abiding arms of Christ to allow myself to really experience reality, the good and the bad. I need to realize that self-protection is just another aspect of the baggage afforded me by privilege.

For all you Wheaton students reading, I find myself able to resound with some of the more “depressing” HNGR chapels I’ve seen during my time at Wheaton. I can understand the chapel of the class of 2008 where they presented their experiences and didn’t end on such a hopeful note but rather a note of powerlessness. I can understand the necessity of the repeated mantra in last year’s chapel, Come Lord Jesus! That is our only hope and sometimes in the midst of this material world and through the sinfulness of humanity this truth is robbed its true hope as we oppress our brothers, sisters mothers, fathers and children. I hope like Ninevah we can put on sackcloth and ashes at the privileges afforded us due to oppression. May this not be an immobile guilt, but a sincere commitment to fight the power structures that go unquestioned and see things from the underside. I feel like a hypocrite saying really all of this, but it’s where I’m at and it’s a process of learning, I have NO idea how this ought to affect the rest of my life and the small decisions, but I hope you can prayerfully join me as I consider these questions. I fear even posting this because by sharing it with you I am more compelled to move these statements from the abstract, from the paper, to the lived out experiential and I just don’t know how to do that. Please forgive me, I’m in process but I really felt compelled to share this.