We made it to the camp, which was filled with tents as far as I could see. People walked toward us, eyeing us curiously. And I felt something different from what I had expected. Seeing the faces of my people, I experienced a rush of sudden joy. They all looked just like me. Even though they had never met me, they seemed to know me—they were my people. I didn’t need to explain anything about myself like I do in America—my accent, my homeland, my heritage. They spoke my language, Kinyamulenge. They welcomed me because I was one of them. I was home.
At the same time, they seemed to know right away that we were from another world. Children ran up to us, staring and trailing us like we were celebrities. I had expected to blend in. But there was something that set us apart. On the faces of the people around us, I could see a universal expression, among the young and old—a look of hopelessness, a sense of resignation. This camp was their universe, and they had accepted that. My sisters and I had arrived with hope in our eyes. We looked different.
The sounds and memories of my own childhood refugee camp came rushing back—children playing, pots banging. Women cooked on clay stoves outside; babies cried. Camp officials, we learned from a group of teenage boys, were in the midst of a “drug cleansing” that day. Outsiders had brought drugs to the camp to sell them to young men. How awful, I thought, for drug dealers to try to get poor people hooked on drugs. The officials walked around the camp, burning the drugs in front of people. There were kids playing dodgeball with makeshift balls made of wadded-up plastic shopping bags, tied together with shoelaces—the same kinds of balls we played with as kids. I hadn’t thought about those balls in years.
Outside a tent, a young girl in a pink T-shirt and long skirt dutifully swept the entrance with a broom.
“Hello,” I said, walking up to her. “I’m Sandra. What is your name?”
“Francine,” she said.
“And how old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
She had short hair like I did as a girl, and it sent me soaring back to my childhood again. I saw myself in Francine; I was a little younger than her when I was in the camp, and she carried herself as I did. She didn’t talk much, unlike the other kids who brazenly followed us around the camp. She told me it was her job to do chores for the family, like caring for her little brother and fetching water each morning from the public fountain. She said she had lived in the camp for seven years, more than half her life. She told me she went to school, walking an hour up and down the hill each way to get there, and I was glad to hear it.
“What do you want to do when you finish school?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said, as if she had never even thought about it.
I pressed her. “Surely you must dream of something?”
She couldn’t think of one single thing she wanted. She had no dreams. I encouraged her to think about what interested her, and what she might want to do when she grows up.
Finally, after some thought, she said maybe she could be a nurse in the camp one day, caring for children. She couldn’t visualize a life outside the camp.
I told her, “You know, you could be a nurse in a hospital, in the city, or somewhere beyond the camp.”
She couldn’t imagine it. That was a world she did not know.
“Your life doesn’t have to be here,” I said. “It doesn’t have to end here.” My eyes welled up at the thought of it. She noticed and watched me curiously. She must have thought I was crazy.
We walked together for a few minutes, and then she had to return home to her chores. I took pictures of the two of us, thanked her for talking with me, and said good-bye. It broke my heart a little to see her walk away.
Across the way, a woman who looked a little younger than my mother welcomed us into her tent. Inside, there was no furniture, just mats on the ground for sleeping. Curtains served as walls between rooms. She said she had lived there for several years, along with her children. She asked if I wanted any water or food, and the offer could not have been more generous. There, water is the best gift you can give—a precious commodity. It is the difference between life and death, not something you drink at your leisure. To get water, people have to walk about thirty minutes down a hill to the fountain, stand in line, fill a bucket, and walk back. I accepted the water because it would have been rude to say no. Then I let my mind take me back to my own treks for water as a girl in the refugee camp in Gatumba—the long lines, the fights, the bullies pushing me to the end of the line. I remembered how I longed to return to school. Back then, I never imagined how my life would change.
As we continued to walk around the camp, a man kept staring at us. He seemed to recognize us, but I had never seen him before. He stopped us and spoke to Princesse.
“Murabana ba Raheri,” he said. “Are you Rachel’s children?”
“Yego,” Princesse replied. “Yes.”
“Yooooo!” he exclaimed. I tried to recall his face.
“Ndi nyokorome,” he said. “I’m your uncle!”
“Nibyo?” Princesse asked. “Is that so?”
In our culture, if someone says you’re related, even if you don’t know the person, you respond with respect. We smiled and listened to him. I don’t think anyone recognized him, not even Adele, who usually knows everyone. He told us that his father and my grandpa are brothers. He said he had been close to my mother in Congo. He didn’t know how many of us had survived the attack. He had heard that my mom had lost some of her children. He hugged us tightly, then took us inside his home and offered us some food.
And, again, I was transported back to Gatumba, reliving the tasteless food, the confined spaces. Our uncle told us stories of our mother and introduced us to his family. I wanted so badly to remove them from the camp. I could imagine all the fear, isolation, and hopelessness they must be feeling. No one deserves to watch life pass them by in a camp.
The day moved too quickly into evening, and it was time to go.
“Say hello to your mom,” my uncle told us. “Tell her you saw your uncle. She will know exactly who you are talking about.”
My sisters and I said farewell to all of our new friends, a sentimental moment, as we were leaving them behind. We roared back down the mountainside on motorbikes, and a bus eventually rolled up, crowded with dozens of people. We squished ourselves into the seats, exhausted from the day. I thought about how when you grow up in a refugee camp, you don’t know how terrible the camp is because you have never known anything better. I thought about Francine, the girl with no dreams. She wasn’t growing up expecting things like basic human rights, a real home, or a future.
As night fell over the hushed, shadowy hills of the countryside, I thought of the women in the camp, spending their days cooking with corn and rice, tending to their children, gossiping about camp life. I thought of their husbands, desperately seeking day labor in the city, trying to find any work that they could. I thought about how my family had been resettled because of the massacre. Officials were worried about retaliation after the attack, and so we were given an opportunity to leave the country and start anew. If it hadn’t been for the massacre, I could still be living in a camp like that. But also, if it hadn’t been for the massacre, I would still have my sister Deborah.
My sisters and I sat silently on the bus as warm, dusty air blew in through the windows. We had wanted to record a cell phone video to document our feelings about our experience that day. But there were no words.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE NIGHT BEFORE MY SISTER’S WEDDING IN Rwanda, we attended a big party to celebrate the giving away of the bride. Our elders told stories, kids danced, and women cooked an entire cow—at the party, you’re supposed to eat a whole cow. I saw relatives I had not seen since I was a child, and I met some new ones I had never seen before. Because my family now lived in America, everyone assumed we were rich, which I thought was funny. A few people asked us for bus fare.
I relished seeing the familiar faces of my relatives, and I essentially met my
grandparents for the first time. I could not remember meeting them in the mountains when I was a baby. I met my grandpa on my dad’s side and my grandma on my mom’s side. The others had passed away. It was fascinating to spend time with my grandparents and see where my parents got their personalities.
My grandmother looked very much like my mom, and I could also see where Mom got her strength. Grandma had raised four daughters and four sons, and she was a true matriarch: Her husband had died after my mom got married, and she cared for the family on her own. Mom had once told me that when Grandma was raising her kids, she hadn’t really seen the logic in educating girls. She thought they would just get married and take their knowledge to another family. That was the way her generation thought—simply part of the culture. But years later, after Mom started her own business and put all her girls through school, encouraging us to learn and grow, Grandma said that she could see the value in girls. It was a big moment for Mom.
Grandma was funny and sarcastic like Mom too. The first thing she said when she met me: “Oh, you turned out short.” And then, “I wasn’t sure that you were going to grow up to be pretty.”
I said, “Grandma, you just met me!”
My grandfather was just like my dad—sweet and serene. He told me that he had been following my activism. A radio show in Congo had discussed my appearance at the Women in the World Summit, and he had heard it in his village. Such a small world! “We hear about all the good things you’re doing for our community,” he said. However, he joked that I had also caused some problems for him: The people in his village thought he must be rich since his granddaughter was hobnobbing with American celebrities.
“Since you’re so wealthy, I brought a bag for you to fill with money,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll bring it back to the village.”
I was pleasantly surprised by his support of my activism. Like my grandmother, he had once believed that girls did not need to be educated. He had worried that my mom was too educated for my dad when they wed, and of course, she had attended school for just a few years. But clearly he had evolved, just like my grandma.
Princesse’s wedding was immense, with hundreds of people arriving. Everyone always brings their entire family, all their cousins and aunties and uncles, to the ceremony, no matter how many people you invite. I wore a peachy silk bridesmaid dress and beaded necklace. I had such a phenomenal time, I did not want to go home.
But I had to get ready for college.
That fall, I packed my bags and left for Houghton College, a Christian university not far from home in New York. My sister Princesse had gone there, so we knew the school well. My parents liked the idea that I would be close to home. They would have preferred that I live at home and commute to school, but I wanted to live on campus. It was time for me to go.
At first, I loved it. Away from home for the first time, I felt independent. I had a roommate named Meredith, a quiet, sweet person, the perfect roommate—almost too perfect! I quickly met an African girl wearing awesome braids. Petite and cute, she said her name was Mary Louise. She had been adopted by a missionary couple on the Ivory Coast. I started calling her “Nugget,” a nickname my sisters had once given me. Before long, everyone called her Nugget.
She introduced me to a girl in my dorm named Shannon, and we became friends right away. Shannon had grown up in a conservative Christian family in a small town near Rochester. She had recently reconnected with her dad after a difficult divorce. Tall, a bit shy and clumsy, she was incredibly warm and friendly, with kind eyes and a big smile.
I met another good friend in a digital-imaging class. The professor had told us to find a subject and go take some portraits. I looked at this gorgeous girl named Kaya, who had midnight-black hair, pale skin, blue eyes. We left the class together to find subjects for our portraits, and nabbed some boys in the hall who were game. An artist from California, she seemed free-spirited and fun. We soon became inseparable.
A guy named Philip rounded out my eclectic group of friends. He was the openly gay son of a pastor from Pennsylvania, and I met him through a mutual friend one day when we needed a ride off campus. Philip had a car and offered to drive us, and I sat with him up front. He asked me to feed him jelly beans as we drove, and a friendship was born.
I made friends easily, in part because Princesse had gone to the school, but also because people recognized me from choir performances we had held there over the years. The campus newspaper had also run a piece about my appearance at the Women in the World Summit. So some people knew about my history before I met them. Strangers would come up to me and say, “Hi, Sandra,” as if they knew me already. Other times, random people would approach and give me a hug. I knew nothing about them, but they knew something about me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted my past to be the first thing people knew about me. I realized I couldn’t introduce myself like a regular person and let people get to know me. But I also knew that this was a result of my activism, and it was a new reality I needed to accept.
It happened to my mom too. One day she came to visit the campus and was in a public bathroom when a student approached her and said, “Are you Sandra’s mom?” Mom nodded, and the girl gave her a big hug and started to cry. Mom was totally mystified. She didn’t know much English, and she had no idea what was going on. Later she said, “Sandra, what did you do? Why did this girl hug me and start crying?” I had to explain that the girl must have heard about our past, presumably from my appearance at the summit.
My activism had caught the attention of some men in my culture too. Some of the older men were concerned that a young woman was speaking for our tribe. I didn’t see it that way—I was just telling my story in the hopes that it would help people understand my experience. But the men weren’t sure what to think. They would call my dad and ask about what I planned to say in my next speech. I had begun talking to refugee groups, and I posted details about the events on Facebook. The men did not think I was qualified. They saw me as a child. Dad relayed the messages to me, but told me not to worry. “Do what you want. Say what you want,” he said.
No one in my family ever tried to direct what I said. Sometimes they would give me advice—for instance, Mom once suggested that I explain that there was no one to protect us from the attackers in the refugee camp—but they let me find my own voice. The younger generation of my tribe, meanwhile, totally cheered me on.
On campus, I developed a brief romance with a guy who was a tattoo artist named Xavier. He was a lost soul, and we connected because I was a bit lost too at the time. Xavier gave me a tiny tattoo of a black heart on my collarbone, and I loved it. I had always wanted a tattoo, and I was finally free to get one. I picked a black heart because it reflected my innermost thoughts—that everything I held dear was tainted and dark. I managed to hide the tattoo from my parents when I saw them on the weekends—until one Sunday at church. I wore a blouse that revealed the heart. A woman at church noticed it and said, “That’s so cute!” She turned to my mother, telling her how adorable it was. Thanks a lot! I don’t know why she needed to point it out to my mom.
Mom looked at it and said, “No.” She reached out and tried to rub it off.
“Mom, let’s not get angry,” I said. “The tattoo is there. It’s not going away.”
She sighed heavily. My poor mom. I dragged her through hell with my American ways.
Eventually, life on campus got complicated. The majority of students were white, and again there was a racial divide. I first encountered it with a girl named Angel in my dormitory. She was white, like most girls in the dorm. I didn’t know her, except to say hello when we crossed paths on campus. One day she was crying in the hallway. I asked her if she was okay, and she looked at me strangely. She actually said these words: “Can I touch you?” She said she had never touched a black person. I humored her, and let her touch me. She closed her eyes and announced, while stroking my arm, “Wow, if I close my eyes, it’s like you’re white.”
She was astonished that my skin f
elt like hers. I laughed and said, “Do not ever try that with any other black kids. They will not be so amused. They will knock you flat!”
Then she wanted to touch my hair, which was in braids. Again, I said, “Do not try any of these things with other black kids!” She had come from a tiny rural town with no black people. It would be the first of many such incidents for me on campus.
I had been looking forward to college because I thought I would be meeting a diverse range of people. I was excited to be independent and to experience life without my parents’ watchful eyes. I wanted to make new friends, to feel like an average American teen. I was finally out of high school, so the “no boys until you graduate” rule from my parents had been lifted. And my brother Alex was not around to shoo away every boy who coughed in my direction. But I quickly realized that there was a definite type at Houghton: white skin, long beautiful hair, everything that I didn’t have. For the most part, white boys liked white girls, and black boys liked white girls. There was no space for my dark skin. I had male friends of both races, but I felt more like an accessory to enhance their coolness factor than a pretty girl they could ask out on a date.
One day I called my mother, sobbing. She asked me what was wrong, and I had no answer for her. I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought that if I told her that I didn’t feel beautiful, she would find it silly and dismiss it. Instead of sharing my feelings, I cried and told her I missed home.
One night at a college dance, I was talking with a cute boy. But then a flirty girl swooped in and pulled him away. I knew her, and I had thought she was a friend, although I could see that she was self-absorbed. Her name was Donna, and she thought she was hot—she thought she was all that and a bag of chips. She whisked the guy off and started dancing with him, and that was the end of that short-lived romance for me. It was also the end of my friendship with her.
How Dare the Sun Rise Page 14