This I Believe

As we enter into the last month of our fellowship, some of the other GHC Fellows and me have taken some time to reflect on how your experiences this year have shaped our views on justice, health equity and life, to share them with the rest of the GHC Community. And because I love and desperately miss NPR, we decided to write them as "This I Believe" essays! Here are my thoughts; here is what I believe...

Last week I had the unbelievable opportunity to go to the World Cup in South Africa. In addition to spending a huge amount of time watching football and enjoying the atmosphere of the World Cup, we took some time out on Saturday to visit the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum in Soweto.

Soweto is a township right outside of Jo’burg and one of the early hotbeds of resistance to the injustices of apartheid. Hector Pieterson was a 13 year-old boy who was shot and killed on June 16, 1976 when police opened fire on unarmed protesters who were marching in opposition to school being taught in the Afrikaans language.

Walking through the museum are photos, videos, personal accounts and placards describing that day. Young black children, dressed in school uniforms, lining up and walking towards white police officers holding guns. Kids running, chaos and crowds dispersing as shots were fired. A man wearing overalls carrying the lifeless body of Hector; his sister staggering, distraught beside him.

Everytime I visit a place that makes me consider the depth of human suffering caused by division in our world and the strength of human courage to stand against those divisions, it makes me thing one thing: Where would I have been in this situation? Where would I have been in Soweto? Where would I have been during Apartheid? Would I have had the courage to resist Afrikaner domination? Or would I have kept quite because I was afraid of getting in trouble or of getting hurt. Where would I have been in Rwanda during the Genocide? Where would I have been during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States or colonialism in Africa or the struggle to abolish slavery? Where am in today’s unresolved questions of injustice?

Reflecting on my year as a Global Health Corps Fellow I have no easy answers about the injustices that plague our world. If anything, I have a greater appreciation for the complexity and confoundedness of issues like health equity and poverty alleviation. But something I do still have, something deep down inside of me, is the conviction that in the face of injustice and inequality in our world we do have to find the courage to fight against it. We do have to stand up. We do have to say it’s wrong. We do have to find our voice.

Because injustice will always be in the world, and the only thing that can stop it, or change it, is for people to come together and create a new path. But in order to do that, I think the critical step (and the one we often miss) is realizing that we have to be united. We have to come together, talk to each other, listen, and commit to working together towards a common goal. We have to be willing to give up some of our personal vision for the collective goal and we have to be willing to sacrifice individual gain for group success. We have to be willing to stand in solidarity with one another.

I have no easy answers about how to solve the problems of health inequality or any other injustice in the world. But as I’ve lived and worked in Tanzania this year, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the only tenable path forward is the one that calls for deep and profound solidarity. Not simply with people in poverty or facing injustice. But with all people.

Solidarity to realize we are all members of the same human family. Solidarity to know that suffering for some cannot be allowed in exchange for a benefit to few. Solidarity to say I am not always right. Solidarity to give up some of what I have to stand up what you do not have. Solidarity to let believing in something better cost you something.

I don’t pretend that philosophical discussions on solidarity and “togetherness in the human family” alone will solve the problems in injustice in our world. But I do think that if we don’t consider these questions, and struggle with them every day or our lives, then we will never solve problems of injustice.

Because no one wakes up one day and becomes a hero for social justice. We all make a million little decisions, everyday, about the people we are going to be and the lives we are going to lead. And all those small little decisions, actions and thoughts are what add up to the fabric of our moral character and courage. If I want to be the kind of person that marched with Hector Pieterson in Soweto, then I need to be the kind of person who can stand up against the little injustices I see happening everyday. And if I can’t find common ground with the people in my immediate sphere that I do not understand or agree with, then how will I ever bridge the immense cultural, economic and social divides intrinsic in working in the global health field?

What I’ve learned this year, and what I believe, is that who you are matters. What you do on a daily basis, the way you treat people, the extent to which you stand with people and care about them and love them and respect them, matters. It matters because if we are going to strive for solidarity in the human family to fight against injustice, we need to practice it daily, with the people in our own lives. And it matters because if we’re going to find the courage to end inequalities, we need to find the commitment and patience to work together.

I hope that if I had been in Soweto in 1976 I would have been at that march with Hector. I hope I would have had enough strength and moral integrity to go by myself. But, if all of my friends, who cared about standing up for freedom and equality, had been willing to go with me that day? Then I know, without a doubt, that I would have been there. I know, in solidarity, I could have done it.