Choosing Joy

This blog has been a long time coming. I've started and stopped it in a couple of nap times (which have become a regular way of marking my days now). I've had some time of self-instated maternity leave/doing less work over the last few months--but that time is officially over. So it's about time I share the process of bringing home our baby. I was reading something a parent of adopted children wrote about "learning to be a family" and then how at some point, you just feel like you are a family. The last 5 months has been like that. It's really strange, bringing home a child that you don't know, but is your child that has existed totally independent from you in the world. A stranger--that you love, but don't even know how to love yet. Who you comfort, in a way that feels familiar to you. But your hands stroking her back aren't familiar to her yet and it doesn't make her feel safe. You say "shh" softly in her ears when she cries, but she doesn't respond until you think to whisper "lingo" Acholi for quiet. She adjusted amazingly quickly, but when I look back at those first few days I realize how far we've come.

We didn't have 9 months of preparation for her birth. But the journey of becoming a family has been a gestation period of sorts--just much less predictable. No one has written the book "What to Expect when you're expecting" for adoption outlining a finite timeline of what will happen each month until you'll finally be holding a child in your arms. We had years of knowing we wanted to be part of a family that was formed through adoption. We had 8 years of marriage, 4 years of being ready to start a family. And 4 years of having hope deferred, again, and again. A few months of paperwork. And then, we had one week after being asked to parent a baby before welcoming her home.

In June, we decided to start the adoption process. We applied and were accepted as potential foster parents at several babies' homes and they told us to wait--that they would call if a potential baby was brought to them. Ever day we knew we might get a phone call telling us there was a child for us, or we might wait a long time.

She was the first baby we met. She was 4 months old then. It was our first babies' home visit as potential adopting parents. The administrator nonchalantly called across their grassy compound to a woman carrying a baby, plopped the infant into my arms and said, "Do you want this one? See! She already looks like you." We laughed when they told us her nickname--in Acholi, it means "white girl." I looked down into the face of a particularly fair skinned baby girl (She is beautiful--but looks nothing like me) with sweet chubby cheeks and thighs that had a pitiful little cough and wrapped her miniature hands around my finger. Ben and I laid in bed that night and wondered if the baby we'd held was our child or "just another baby." We wondered who would comfort her if she woke up that night. If she was going to be ours, we thought, we should bring her home as soon as possible, but how do we know or decide? How do you choose a child? This was one of the strangest things, and I'm tempted to re-write history a little, so that the narrative of our adoption story has a certainty of direction in its plot--like love at first sight, knowing "this is the one" and an instant connection. But I had a lot of ambivalence right up until we made a decision. We'd planned to adopt a newborn, and besides, at that point, a number of efforts were still being made to see if there were any known relatives that might be able to provide a home for her, so we needed to wait.

Then in the beginning of September the social workers from the babies home came to our house and asked us to take her. They had the blessing of the government social workers, the police and the babies home administration. Two months had past and she was 6 months old. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that long, but in the life of a baby--so many things happen. I'd already missed so many firsts and it made me sad. I just didn't feel peaceful, so I took a couple of days to do some things that help me still and quiet my soul.

Right at the beginning of the first day, something happened. I realized that I needed to let go of my feelings of entitlement to the first 6 months of my child's life. Entitlement. I've had multiple opportunities in the last years to experience and relearn how entitlement is a thief of so many good things. It makes decision making a more jumbled mess of ugly motivations. Letting go of entitlement to something doesn't always mean not having it, but it creates freedom to accept and appreciate what I'm given instead of demanding what I feel I deserve. So, I took a deep breath, and let go. A few more deep breaths and I let it sink in. And I watched all that yucky entitlement vacate my heart and a peaceful grateful feeling rush in to take its place. And then I felt peaceful about being her parent. Not just peaceful--happy, excited, appreciative. I wanted to be the mother to this particular baby, and so instead of spending the rest of my prayerful time wondering if she "was the one" I CHOSE her.

Earlier, I'd had this dream about her. She was a baby still but she was having a conversation with me like an adult. I don't remember details of it, but I remember her asking me about why I wasn't sure I should take her home. She wasn't being manipulative, or pleading with me. Her tone was very matter of fact and she logically explained why my objections, and inhibitions weren't very satisfactory reasons not become her mother and concluded that she thought I should take her home. It's odd to think about how tumultuous I felt from this side of the decision. I can't imagine not having her in my life. Ben and I are so totally in love with her. And I know her now. She's not a stranger. She's my daughter.

About a year before all this happened, I was at my parents house while they were out of town. I took long walks in the woods and prayed. That was the time when I first started feeling like maybe, the person who would become our daughter existed somewhere. Now, we know she was probably the shape of a peanut in her mother's womb. I thought about her mother, and what situation she might be in, in her pregnancy and what painful or broken circumstances would somehow make her child an orphan that would eventually form our family. It made me sad and simultaneously hopeful. A picture of how beauty can be made of ashes and mourning turned to joy.

Elliyah Joi Akidi.

There is a lot of discussion in adoption literature and circles surrounding an attitude of "rescuing" or "saving" orphans. So many people here thank us for our "good hearts" to care for a needy child. Others will say how lucky she is. I see the formation of our family differently. It's true that part of our motivation for adoption is a response to what we believe is God's call to care for orphans, an extension of what He's already offered to us--adoption as his children and heirs of his kingdom. But that call--I think, is less about obligation or altruism and more about love. It's not a humanitarian endeavor. It's not charity. We WANTED her. With the exception of our partners, we don't ordinarily get to choose our family members. But we got to choose her. And I'm so happy we did.

How to get girls at Makerere (warning: this blog includes adult subject matter)

The dinner conversation in a house where people work on issues like rape, commercial sex work and child-trafficking can sometimes be heavy. We used to have a rule based on the occupations of those around the table at the time: no rape, torture or hostage crises after 9pm. We've since moved but still have similarly macabre vocations and now we have a clever 2-year-old at the dining room table with us, so we tend to reserve the rated R topics for after bedtime.

So the last couple of weeks a topic has come up later in the evening that we've had limited information about and then in a moment of genius (read: libation induced inhibition) we decide to randomly poll our friends. This is where "D" dialing meets research. (D stands for dinner dialing, obviously--why? what were you thinking?)

Research topic #1
At a little dinner party, someone was commenting on how depressed I must get hearing so many tragic stories of sexual violence. I brought up something that gives me hope--how much things have changed between what some of my Ugandan male friends grew up with and the way they treat women now. On particularly bad days I try to have lunch with friends that remind me that there are good Acholi men. I told the table about a conversation I'd had with one of them who recounted how his uncles began their marriages, basically, by getting together with their brothers and abducting the girl they fancied when she was on her way to the market or to the well. I asked what he thinks contributed to him having such a drastically different approach to wooing women. "Education," he said. But as we got into it, we realized he meant social education, not actually what he learned in a classroom. "That's not how you get girls at Makerere University," he said. At this point in the conversation, someone, I can't remember who, asked, "how do you get girls at Makerere?" and thus started the poll. Our Ugandan friends all answered with perhaps a brief laugh, and then a tone that was extremely matter-of-fact-- like they had a list of answers that were read- to-hand.

What we discovered:

"There are 2 ways to get girls at Makerere:"
1) Help her with her homework, papers or exams. (if you do poorly, that's too bad for her, but "you will have already gotten what you wanted")
2) Buy her a pizza. ("You'll need a little bit of money. Taker her out for a meal and buy her something she might not normally get for herself like a drink and a pizza. Then she's all yours.")

Then we thought, how different is this from "our" context? (the table included Americans, and an Irishman) So we called our brothers.

What we discovered:
1) Get her drunk. (put more or less delicately depending on the brother)
2) Buy her a nice meal.
3) Impress her with your dance moves. (this may work better if you're a professional dancer)

Actually, wooing University girls doesn't seem all that different, the world over. Impress her. Buy her a meal. Alcohol helps. (I know, sweeping generalizations, but don't forget it's based off of hard evidence and research) We did comment that none of the women at the table were "gotten" in quite this manner, but that might be beside the point. And the point is: pizza is a better way to get a girl than abduction. It's a sign of social progress.

Research topic #2
Ben recently did a consulting gig where he was developing a curriculum that will be used with commercial sex workers. Sometimes it was a challenge to marry the realities of life in Uganda and the philosophies of some of his Dutch advisory group (the Netherlands is known for a very particular view on commercial sex work--think Amsterdam). One example that we discussed over dinner: they (the dutch people) thought the section on sexual and reproductive health needed to include a demonstration of how to put a condom on a man with one's mouth. Hmm. OK, that could be true. Maybe, if that skill leads to more regular use of protection it could be justified. But is that true? Research with commercial sex workers suggests that sexual intercourse is most common, and they rarely perform other sexual acts. So, how relevant is this in this context? Was there any evidence to suggest that a client that is refusing to wear protection would acquiesce if offered an alternative way of putting it on? Thus started the poll.

What we discovered:

1) Yes, Ugandan women do sometimes put condoms on their partners with their mouths.
2) No, if a man is decided he doesn't want to wear one, an offer to spice up how it gets on wouldn't change his mind.


This over speaker phone at the Chinese food restaurant in Gulu. (We don't know how universal this is, because we already used up too much phone credit on international calls in the last poll.) It was actually kind of a depressing topic, but the absurdity of our inquiry brought some light-heartedness to it. Sometimes you have to allow yourself to be entertained by what is actually evidence of our broken state as humanity. Sometimes you just have to laugh, or else you might cry.

Babies' Justice

Maybe it's the effects of living with Judah that I'm all the more fascinated and amused by this article in the NY Times. Perhaps we're born with a universal desire to see "bad guys" get punished?

Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.

You can read the rest of the article here

The article actually sparks some more provoking questions, like: Is the core of "justice" and morality universally impartiality as the article suggests? Could it be some other trait that enables the most harmonious functioning of any given society? Or is the replacement of impartiality for harmony a sign that societies have lost sight of the truth we were born with?

Sex is a mental thing

by Holly
It was a hard day. For vicarious reasons. I have little claim to feel sad, angry and betrayed. I’m trespassing on someone elses pain and I have no right to take it home with me. But I do and I can’t help it. I always come home to a violence-free house and a partner that loves me madly. I never, ever worry what he might do to me tonight.

No one I talked to today* could say the same. I've decided I need several hours in the presence of really wonderful men to each hour of hearing about rape. Thankfully, there are amazing men in my daily life—Ben—and many excellent Ugandan colleagues and friends that help me balance out my over-exposure to the wake of other men’s depravity.

A couple of days ago I went to a meeting with some agencies working on Gender Based Violence. Suddenly, I was taken back to Lira, 2005. It’s funny how little “coordination” meetings change in 5 years. But that’s beside the point. (the point, is still to be determined—perhaps it’s just the catharisis that comes after sharing things too heavy to carry alone) Sitting there, I kept thinking of how many women have no idea these NGOs exist or what services they could provide them. I’ve been asking women who they would go to for help if something happened to them. They typically say something like, “Well, I hear that there is a group in town called ‘Human Rights’ but I don’t really know what they do.” Several different NGOs have hotlines—one for counselling, another for legal advice, etc. I suggested they make a joint card with all of the available hotlines—written in Acholi and distribute it as widely as possible. I’d like to have such a card to leave with some of the women I talk to.

It might do a little good. I recalled one of the women. She’s not going to report her husband to the police or seek legal advice. She just wants him to stop. She wants to talk to someone without them making her feel more ashamed than she already does. “If I tell anyone,” she lamented,” they’ll just ask me why I got married if I don’t want to have sex. They’ll say it’s my duty to satisfy him.” She wants someone to tell her it’s not her fault. She wants someone who can commiserate. “My sister,” she touched my arm and shook her head, “when he comes home so drunk and violent and with the smell of alcohol, how am I supposed to begin?”

A card with phone numbers isn’t going to help her. She can’t read. She doesn’t have a phone.

And then I remembered (the gist of) a provocative question my supervisor asked me. (I think/hope he was going for a reaction and not reflecting his opinion.) If marital rape is a normalized experience, does it do more damage than good to problematize it? Maybe, if women don’t perceive being violently forced to have sex as wrong they are less traumatized by it’s occurrence, accepting it as a normal part of interaction with husands.

Preposterous. (this is my obligatory more refined substitute for what I really think: b*** sh**. My mom always said that using vulgar language was a sign of a poor vocabulary—but honestly, once in awhile profanity is simply most apt.)

Every woman I’ve talked to that shared her experience of being raped by her partner experienced it as something wrong. They KNOW it’s not right. To suggest otherwise is demeaning. “What I know,” one of them told me after sharing the violent forced conception of her first child, “is that making love is supposed to be an agreement between a man and a woman.” Living in a village in Africa, makes this no less true than anywhere else. Another woman told me how she has never talked to anyone about it except for her husband. “I tell him, ‘What you’re doing is bad! This is the wrong way to treat your wife! Strangers do this to strangers but you should be ashamed to do it in your own house!”

Say what you want about cultural relativity. Acholi women like foreplay just as much as the next woman. Whether you sleep on a papyrus mat on a dirt floor or a pillow-top king-size mattress, women want the person lying next to them to respect their yes and their no. Perhaps to persuade them—but never to force them. Most of them are angry that they live in an environment where people around them identify ways they are to blame and make excuses for the man’s behavior. One of my personal fravorites: “well, maybe he is just trying to save them both from HIV” –implying that the only alternative to benevolently forcing one’s wife to have sex is to have sex with someone else.

A couple of months ago I had a chat with the Resident District Commissioner for Gulu. A male colleague came along and made a comment I might’ve been tempted to slap him for if I weren’t a pacifist (to be fair, I’ve seen how well he treats his wife and he’s a good guy)—something about how marital rape was a difficult issue because men have “greater sexual appetitites than women.” I bit my tongue. And sat on my hands.

Ochora, (the RDC) leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling thoughtfully before he delivered his verdict. His gigantic belly protruding onto his desk when he leaned forward. “Sex,” he pronounced, “is a mental thing. It is mentally driven. If the wife says she is not in the mood then men should be able to understand.”

(*For confidentiality purposes, I did not post this on the day I wrote it.)

World Sorrow

by Holly
I used to like very serious movies with painful subject matter. No need for happy endings--I liked movies that depicted the sorrow of the human experience. Not that I don't still appreciate the art of honesty in film--but I just don't feel like I have the space to take it in. These days I only watch things that make me laugh. At the end of the day I don't need any more reminders of how painful living on earth is.

Lately, I've been pouring all my energy into work--and while the last month has been one that has been unparalleled with impact and significance for me, I'm tired and kind of stressed out. My body tends to take it on, so in an effort to surrender (and inspired by another yoga journal that Ryan sent me via the Celebration crew), I'm spending more time on my mat getting centered, grounded, and opening my heart, making some space in this crowded soul of mine.

There's an article in the journal about sadness and grief. Personally, I feel ridiculously blessed to have had an unfairly preserved life--If there is a reason, then I sometimes think it is so I have the capacity to feel more "Welt schmerz" or world sorrow--a sadness that arises without a personal cause--a transcendant feeling of pain for the state of the world. (apparently, this is written about in a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called the Sorrows of Young Worther, which I've never read but I'm now intrigued and if I can make enough space to handle something sad in my free time I will) I remember once calling my dad in tears, when I was having a crisis of faith and wondering if God was indeed good--and his first response was to ask whether it was me or a close friend who had experienced some great pain. It was neither, I was still in university and a war I opposed was starting and I was studying genocide and angry about unanswered prayer in Darfur and I just couldn't handle it anymore.

So, I've been thinking about the constructive potential of sadness--at the same time the risk of spiralling feelings of hopelessness and lack of vision that lead to a destination of either cynicism or resignation. The constructive potential is when we recognize that suffering is not personal but universal to the human experience. I say it has potential because the risk in recognizing the pervasiveness of suffering is that it can evoke paralysis, or feelings along the lines of the writer of Ecclesiastes, "everything is meaningless."

The other option is that it has the potential to inspire great compassion. I'd choose compassion over paralysis any day--but compassion is not a solitary discipline. I'm convinced that sorrow over the state of the world is channeled into creative and active compassion through community.

That means, as much as I enjoy doing yoga--I can't tranform strong negative emotions by myself--or just by realizing that I'm connected to everyone else, I think it's active, I have to be connected. God's spirit transforms through the experience of community.

It was a great blessing to have these beautiful people from Celebration in Lira. It was encouraging to be with them while they also wrestled with the tension between great compassion and debilitating hopelessness. It's a reminder that the struggle is worth it, and I'm grateful for their presence, from the first evening of receiving cards, books, and yummy things from home (Thank you everyone from CCC that sent us stuff!) to Solidarity Day in an IDP camp, to evening conversations, blueberry pancakes, lions in the rain, and swimming while overlooking the Nile.

Soft

by Holly
When we got to my parents house this is what I saw when I walked in. I cried. I wasn’t sure why. It just looked so soft and beautiful and it felt like it was exactly the shape of the hole in my heart. It was one of those moments where you get a glimpse of the way life or home is supposed to be and most of the time it isn’t where we live. Where we live isn’t even a shadow of what should be. Maybe that’s true everywhere but in northern Uganda it feels particularly true. That’s not to say that everyone here should have a living room like the Randall family cottage but I do think that we all long for something that is there--comfort, beauty, a loving family that actually likes and looks forward to time together and is restored by it, shelter, safety, more than enough to eat, acceptance.

It broke my heart. Partly, because I miss it and partly because it seems impossible for the people of northern Uganda. And then at the same time those moments happen here too. Some are quiet and simple and others are more profound. I had a simple one yesterday when I walked home under a red sun after a meeting with the management team that was energized and full of common purpose. And then Ben and I sat on the front porch and watched the sun sink and talked about the day. I had a moment like that last year when I first saw Acholis dance. While they sweat and kicked up the red dust to the drums I thought, “this is what they were meant to do, this is how it’s supposed to be with the young people dancing and the children trying from the sides and the old people nodding and watching—they weren’t meant for this war, destruction, displacement and poverty.” But that moment happened right in the middle of it. In a way that’s comforting, because it means that whatever those moments are or whatever they reflect—the longing for home—the restoration of things to the way they should be—life at its fullest—they are more powerful and can’t be overcome by the most gruesome war, or by massive displacement or abject poverty. Human beings will still dance.