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Roots
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I held my passport in my hand, still shiny and nearly brand-new. I’d only garnered two stamps from trips to Canada and the Dominican Republic. This time I was crossing larger seas into a continent I imagined would be a place of great tension and conflict for me.
For years, I had said no to opportunities to travel to Africa. In particular, if I was invited on a mission trip that seemed to be focused on poor Africans being helped by middle-class or wealthy Americans. In particular, if there seemed to be a dissonance between the concern for poor Africans and the concern for poor African Americans.
I didn’t want my first trip to Africa to be riddled with viewing her as a place that needs assistance, as a place to visit because pity disguised as problem solving seemed like a good, Christian, American thing to do. The history of my ancestors was there in that soil. The woundedness of the bloodline of a people whose language and culture and customs were stolen from them was still waiting at the bottom of a Middle Passage sea.
I wanted my first trip to Africa to honor the ancestors whose names I would never know. I wanted to mourn the continent they were stolen from while basking in the joy of the rich cultures still thriving there.
I met Dr. Una Mulale at a women’s conference where we were speaking. Her hair was twisted into a beautiful coif, and her hips were wrapped in bright and beautiful fabric from her native Botswana. I told her I loved her outfit, and we exchanged a few pleasantries. I was even more impressed when she took the stage to discuss the nation where she was born and raised and how God was using her medical degree and education in global health to improve the conditions for children in Botswana’s hospitals.
We met again at another women’s conference the next year, and she asked me to step into her office at an after-party, which basically meant occupying a vacant corner and talking through an idea she had going. She and her best friend, Leah, had cofounded Barona Children’s Foundation, an organization created to establish Botswana’s first Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and children’s hospital.
“I want you to come to Botswana,” she said. “I am hosting a Gratitude Gala there for medical professionals. I want you to come and share some poetry, and I want your husband to deejay,” she said.
I ran through my usual Africa trip checklist: Does this make me feel uncomfortable or sick to my stomach or like Africans will be treated as less than? I felt none of those things, only the pride Una had in her country and in her people. Four months later, my husband and I were on a plane to Botswana.
We met Una and Leah in Maun, a medium-sized city in Botswana. There we met Bonty Botumile, a storyteller and community activist who converted her property to an arts center for young people to create, find their purpose, and build community. We learned about Love Botswana, an outreach mission founded by Jerry and Jana Lackey. We toured the Village Church where the Lackeys pastored and where the Gratitude Gala would be held. Jana took us to the Okavango International School, where we spent time with students from Botswana and many other countries. We visited Love Botswana’s home for children who had been abandoned or had special needs.
We went on a horseback safari at the Royal Tree Lodge, where the giraffe made it very clear to us we were in their territory, not the other way around. We saw herds of zebra, impala, and gazelle. We saw flocks of ostrich. We went to sleep and sometimes stayed awake at the lodge where we were staying, listening to the noise of the mammals and birds around us.
At the gala, dignitaries sat next to common folk, chiefs sat next to nurses, while Una and Leah watched their dream of bringing the community together to build better medical care for Botswana’s children become reality. After the gala, we traveled to the Okavango Delta for Leah’s wedding. The only way to travel to the lodge where she would be married was via a tiny plane that could only seat six people, including the pilot. I may or may not have sung “In the Name of Jesus (We Have the Victory)” over and over until we landed.
When we arrived, the staff at the lodge sang a traditional Botswana welcome song. Shortly after sunset, Leah and her husband said their vows under a beautifully dark and romantic Botswana sky and spent their first few moments as a married couple being celebrated with the singing and dancing of the lodge staff and their friends from Botswana. I held Matt’s hand, thankful for the adventure of our marriage and all the adventures our marriage had brought us, including rejoicing in a newly married couple’s wedding vows underneath a sparkling lattice of stars.
The day after the wedding, we said good-bye to Leah and her new husband, and six of us rode seven hours to Francistown, Una’s village, in an uncomfortable van with our knees in our chest. It was easy to forget about our rough travels after nearly the entire village greeted us when we arrived.
We met the village chief and Una’s dad, uncles, aunts, and community. They prepared food for us, and we prayed and ate together. They asked us about America, and we asked them about Botswana.
“It honors us that Una wants to bring her friends home to meet us. We are Una’s roots,” her uncle said.
I took pictures of the older women in Una’s village, their shawls wrapped around their shoulders and tied with a pin or brooch not unlike the ones my grandmother and great-aunts would have worn. Somehow, we were all inexplicably tied together, even after centuries and miles of distance.
Una had given us the opportunity to see Botswana as more than a two-dimensional representation of the faux African accents found in American movies or the “savage” narrative that pervaded America in an attempt to make slavery and racism acceptable. I experienced Botswana through the dance, music, strength, and stories of her people.
A year later, I traveled to Rwanda with women from the IF:Gathering and Africa New Life. Of a group of more than thirty women from America, I was the only black woman on the trip. I was nervous. During the week and a half we were in Rwanda, there were repeated incidents of violence, police brutality, and racism in America. With little Internet access, I was unable to drown myself in the news and in my Facebook newsfeed. I was unable to console my friends who were heartbroken by all that was happening, but I was also better able to be present with the things I was learning in Rwanda.
The tensions of systemic racism that boiled over in America were a tough burden to bear while walking through a country that had been sliced open by the fear of its people — fear that caused neighbor to murder neighbor, friend to murder friend, relative to murder relative; fear that had produced one of the worst genocides in history.
I walked through the Kigali Genocide Memorial with Rwandan poet Michaela. I saw how the ravaging wounds of colonization brewed a division among the Rwandan people, how corrupt government and religion collided to cost the country the lives of so many citizens. My chest tightened at the pictures of babies, aunts, uncles, family members who had been killed. I read about genocides all over the world. I thought of my own country’s sordid history of genocide, racism, and slavery; how fear, ignorance, and unfounded assumptions of supremacy led people to rape, enslave, and murder.
The memorial left a caution in my heart, to watch how far my fears can take me away from love and from seeing other people as creations made in the image of God.
That night, the Africa New Life children’s choir and dance team performed traditional Rwandan song and dance for us, and for the first time since I had arrived in Rwanda, I cried. I wept for the wounds in my own heart and in my own country. I wept for the places where my joy as a black girl had been lost. I wept seeing the freedom in the eyes of each boy and girl, how the light in their eyes gave me hope for how much freedom was truly possible. I wept at how God can take a wounded place and begin to heal there, even when that process is not quick and is not without its flaws and imperfections.
Later that week, I was asked to speak to a room full of Rwandan young women who were high school students at one of Africa New Life’s boarding schools. I shared poetry with them; I told them about my mom, grandma, and sister and why they were my own personal sheroes. One of the young women asked me where in Africa I was from. I tried to be present with the pang in my chest while I explained to her that I, like most African Americans, didn’t know my African country of origin because no records were kept of which country and village Africans were taken from during the slave trade; there is no record of the languages, customs, and cultures lost.
“You are Rwandan,” she said, and the other students smiled and nodded in agreement.
Even though I was pretty sure there was no way that my being Rwandan was historically possible, my heart heard, “You are home.”
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Allow God to Heal the Broken Record of Your Soul
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HOW TO FIX A BROKEN RECORD
by Amena Brown
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What does the soundtrack in your head sound like? The hurtful words of others and the failures of your past often determine what record you play the most in your mind. Those painful repetitions often keep us from speaking up, standing up for what's right, being loved, pursuing our dreams, and growing closer to God.
Spoken word poet Amena Brown's broken records played messages about how she wasn't worthy to be loved. But after years of playing those destructive rhythms over and over, How to Fix a Broken Record chronicles her journey of healing as she's allowed the music of God's love to play on repeat instead.
From bad dates to marriage lessons at Waffle House, from learning to love her hair to learning to love an unexpected season of life, from discovering the power of saying no and the freedom to say yes, Amena offers keep-it-real stories your soul can relate to.
Along the way, you'll discover how to find new joy in the beautiful music of your life.
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~ Rachel, Amazon review
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Spoken word poet, Amena Brown, a powerful voice of her generation, has a word for you... Think about what you think about. Allow God to heal the broken record of your soul, so you can step into your calling, speak up for what's right, and dance your own story of God's grace.
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