Category Archives: Rosaria: Discovering Radical Hope at Kagoma Gate, Uganda

I have been home for almost a week now and this week I have been focusing on the acceptance aspect of my research. In short, I found that the villagers were able to create and live in a village of such diversity by sharing their stories. This enabled them to find common ground. Although they were from different tribes and different countries, they all had faced extreme atrocities. So many of the villagers had lost one or both parents, a spouse, children or other people close to them. So many of them have faced violence, starvation, illnesses, and long journeys to seek refuge. When experiencing events and pain such as these, the tribe you belong to quickly becomes irrelevant. The villagers did not even think about the origins of their neighbors. Each villager was looked at as a human being who had suffered greatly and was only trying to survive. So together they all began the journey to overcome their struggles and get through each day.
While the villagers have faced hardships that many of us, cannot come close to fathoming, there is so much we can take from it. In my proposal for the Kenan Summer Fellows Program, I described my experiences working with Latino migrant workers in my community. One of the key things that enabled me to relate to them was telling stories. Although they were from many different countries and cultures that were so different from my own, when it came down to it, we were the same. We all had family we cared about, goals we wanted to achieve, and stories we could relate to in some way. A person can still laugh or cry, or have the same emotions, regardless of where they are from—its part of humanity. If we could all see this more often, many of our problems would be eliminated. All it takes is looking at a person in their simplest form—a human with the ability to feel emotions. Continue reading →