Forgiveness

The other day, I was washing dishes with sister Delphine and she told me that she feared muzungus (white people) because they don’t forgive. We had just been discussing one of the girls from school, an orphan, whom the nuns had to rescue because her older , HIV+ sister tried to sell her to a man (for marriage or prostitution—we don’t know) to get money to pay for treatment. Now the girl has forgiven her sister, brings her food, and plans to delay her own career to care for her nieces and nephews when her sister passes away. I went with the girl to visit her sister and her sister’s family in the village, where they seemed to get along extremely well. We also discussed Idi Amin, who, although responsible for killing numerous people and hindering development, is not hated. Sometimes we talk about Kony and the northerners, whom he has widowed, orphaned, raped, and hacked into bits. People whose lips, ears, and limbs have been cut off by Kony, women who watched their spouses and children be hacked to death then have had to cook the bodies and serve it to soldiers who then gang raped them, now talk of forgiveness. Many say that they don’t want to kill Kony, they just want him to repent and change, and to forgive him.
I asked sister Delphine how they can do this. She said that in the past, elders used sacrificial lambs between warring factions and persons, and told people that their ancestors would be angry if they did not forgive each other, so it became a part of the culture. At that moment, I felt like such a barbarian, hessian, and savage. I told sister that I could not do that, forgive some of those things. She, of course, talked about how forgiveness is for your own personal release, and that people cannot live angry at others. She also said that Christianity helps whites, with its revolutionary emphasis on forgiveness. To this, I say, help me, Lord. Who knew, that in the Ugandan bush, I, the savage, would be exposed to such deep reform?