"Healing She"
by: Emma Kironde (Uganda)
- Emma reads between the lines of the ugandan creative... this article is in the first half of the 6th edition.
What happened to Godessa? I loved their song, ‘Social ills’ because it appealed to all the questions I have about people, and essentially, myself.
The most overriding thing for me has always been love, and I am learning everyday that I have no idea what love truly is. When I am left by my ‘almost boyfriend’ for no better reason than that he’s ‘messed up’ of his own admission and then listen to Julio Iglesias and Stevie Wonder’s song together that they called ‘My love’, I realize that love is not one thing or the other, and indeed I crave to spread love all over, just like it says in the song.
The most overriding manifestation of love appears to me to be tolerance-the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the practices or beliefs of others.
"In a world where every difference is taken note of and used as a benchmark against which people are perceived, my goal has become to love through tolerance."
Religious affiliation, race, sex, are things that I strive to respect, appreciate and yet not regard in my perceptions of anyone.
In Uganda, there are over fifty tribes, but I am only familiar with a handful. I was about nine years old the first time somebody asked me what tribe I’m from. It was a child, a classmate at the school I was enrolled in when my family and I moved to Uganda from India where I grew up and went to school at an International School called, ‘The British School’.
I had no idea what this kid was talking about. "Tribe?"
You mean like from the movies? I admit, my ignorance was pretty extreme, but I admire that girl. The one who had not the slightest idea about tribes and what they represent in Uganda, and everywhere else that they exist. The girl who just thought a guy was cute, end of story, and did not have to go through mental gymnastics contemplating whether he would still look at her the same knowing her tribe, or if, like has happened to many and continues to happen, her tribe would be the deal-breaker for that guy. Or vice versa. That girl is still, but she has learnt to be quiet; And in being quiet, she has learnt to observe; And in observing, she has learnt to see. To see the intolerance that comes with differences. Interestingly, Africans have preached the gospel of tolerance and an end to discrimination because, well, they’ve had to in order to secure any kind of hope for a successful future for their children after them in a world where Africa is still thought to be-and perhaps rightly so, you decide-struggling to get over the bar. I say it is interesting because we have counteracted our cause through our own discrimination, our own prejudices, along lines of tribe and other insignificant differences that really ought to be celebrated. We have hated, killed out of inter-tribal conflict, and in the same breath, we blame the Western world for its prejudices against us. Double standards.
I have never liked the idea of labels, or subscribing to this or that, I strive to be a citizen of the world. If only because I see in the Thai girl with pigtails and a cheese sandwich packed for lunch, in the South African mother who works twenty hour days to give her children a good life, in the French man who lost his wife to Ovarian cancer and wonders each day how he is going to raise the three children she left him with and still keep his demanding librarian job that puts food on the table, myself. I see in them myself. Pieces of myself; because essentially, we are each other. We are one another, and we mirror one another’s experiences. So, I cringe whenever I hear tribal, racial slurs or any other manifestations of intolerance that I am exposed to, for you cannot love he who you cannot tolerate. Of course with people, as with life, you can never expect one thing or the other, black or white. There are always greys; And so there are always things you will not subscribe to. The message, however is that you do not have to subscribe to something to respect the fact that the next person actually does.
It was Voltaire that said,’ I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ And therein lies the message.
That girl I admire, that girl was possibly once you, and was definitely me, and I find that her journey into healing the world, would start with healing she.
Julio Iglesias with Stevie Wonder (My love):
My love sees love with not a face
And lives to love through time and space
If all of everything about my life fits to the
tune of you. Then you can say that you are
my love too.
Let my love shine throughout the world
To every mountain top and steeple
Let it be felt by every soul
‘Til love’s all over
- emma kironde(2008) ©
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