Over lunch one day, I was chatting and having lunch with some of my babies outside of the library. We have stopped eating in the library because very aggressive bugs started coming in and biting the kids’ faces, so we are taking preventative measures. One of my boys asks me, “Madam Teresa, what do I need to do to work for the UN (United Nations)?” Now, I have never talked to my kids about the UN as a potential career path, so I was surprised. This boy, Hassan, is one of my Muslim students. His family is originally from Somalia, which can be hard for him because Al-Shabaab is a Somali terrorist group that has attacked Kenya multiple times, including the horrific attacks in Garissa that left 148 people dead. Judy told me the story about a woman going to present a prominent politician a gift in the village she works in. The woman was a broom-maker, so she hands the politician a broom and says, “Here! This is to sweep all of those Somalis out of Kenya!”
Hassan fled here from Tana River where tribal militias were at war. The Orma and Pokomo have a history of tension during the dry season when the Orma bring the cattle to graze on Pokomo land. Politicians and local and foreign investors have been growing increasingly interested in resource-rich Tana River and have been giving local tribes weapons like spears and machetes, agitating and lighting the match of violence. Hassan told me that the politicians drew borders across the river, but the problem with that was the cows would sometimes cross to graze on the other side and others would claim the cows as their own. Normally, the tribal elders are able to smooth things over and ease such disputes, but the violence has escalated beyond anything that was previously seen before. As one man in an article I read said, "They are trying to push rivalry to enmity…You can live with your rivals, but you cannot live with your enemies.” Tana River is said to be Kenya’s most fertile region and there are rumors that the Orma militia, backed, funded, and trained by politicians, are pushing the Pokomo off of the land.
Hassan said his family was able to leave because they had a car, but many aren’t as fortunate. They stayed in the town until things settled down, but eventually moved on to Mombasa. He said that in the hospitals, all he saw were burned and charred bodies.
Out of all of my students, including those quite a bit older than him, Hassan always asks the most insightful questions. One day, when we were discussing death, he said, “Death is when the body and the soul separate.” When we discussed the bus attacks in Mandera where a bus was stopped by Al-Shabaab and Muslim men and women shielded their Christian brothers and sisters with their bodies, disguised them with their buibuis and their niqabs and I asked my students, “Why would they sacrifice their lives for people they didn’t know?” Hassan said, “We are all brothers and sisters. We have to protect each other.” This, from a child who has been driven from his homeland, who faces discrimination daily because of his place of origin, who has seen more violence than I can comprehend. He believes that we are brothers and sisters. He wants to work for the UN to bring about change. Hassan comes to the library every single day during lunch to read, to grow his mind. He points to pictures and asks me about giant anteaters and orca whales and the Incas, about the pyramids and global warming.
Brothers and sisters, this is how change happens. It’s about taking the pain and suffering that the world has given you, holding it, and using it to open yourself up, to bloom. These elections seem to be bringing up a lot of rhetoric in our country right now about “us versus them,” about “winning at all costs,” which has perhaps always been present and is now coming to the surface. I see a lot of false displays of bravery when all I can smell is fear. Fear of what will happen if so-and-so wins, what will the future hold, what if, what if, what if…
Lent is a time to hold these tensions, to surrender them. Not to pack them away, but to trust that just holding the tension, the fear, the uncertainty is an act of courage. Like Hassan, let us hold these prickly things in our hearts and allow them to change us, to open us, and to help us bloom.