A man far wiser and braver than I once said: “there will be times when we will be powerless to prevent injustice but let never be a time when we fail to protest.”
The reason I am busy doing something every day of my life is because it keeps me in balance. In everything we have talked about during the GHC quarter workshops beginning from the orientation at Yale training, quarter one workshop, mid-year retreat (and likely at Q3 and the close out retreat) there has been some kind of balance. It’s just nature. In nature there is balance and in that balance there is justice. This is in addition to what my upbringing holds. These are virtues I have believed all my life so far and have been amplified by this community. My mother and the environment taught me most of it as she always refused to be broken in the hardest places. She died 5 years ago; she never even had any better health care system apart from the poorly supplied public hospitals and clinics. I remember her being given a 6 months appointment at University Teaching Hospital (UTH).
She underwent a crucial moment and I knew she was never going to make it. One minute she was talking to me and the next second she was gone. And then she died. The last thing she said to me while dying on my lap at home, not at a hospital, was “take care of each other son”. But maybe I need to start thinking about how to forgive the government, governing system, UTH and the doctor(s) for failing the health system in Zambia where people die anyhow for lack of proper medical care. The question is how many people out there die every day because there is no proper justice, because they can’t afford proper medical care. Where is the justice system?
Four years later I lost my dad. The day I found out dad was dying was like any other day. I was sitting in my office working when the doctor called. My first reaction was panic as I was told he had cancer of almost everything. I reached the cancer research building to try and help them find a cure for what was going to kill my dad in less than two months. But I realized right then that there was no use. It was too late. And so I just stood outside the door and got angry. I hated God with a passion for doing this to me. Everything that was dear to me came to an end that day. I lost my friends who I pushed away, I blamed my brothers and sisters, and I went completely broken all within minutes. Just as Pastor Nemoellor came out of the Nazi death camp to say,
“They came after the Jews, and I was not a Jew, so, I did not protest. They came after the trade unionists, and I was not a trade unionist, so, I did not protest. Then they came after the Roman Catholics, and I was not a Roman Catholic, so, I did not protest. Then they came after me, and there was no one left to protest.”
As stated in the opening statement, we have a right, even a duty, to protest against unjust laws and systems which support the status quo that violate the freedoms of the voiceless in our societies, our mothers, fathers, grandparents and even the posterity to come. The first lady has been championing funding for cancer research but I hold nothing against anyone anymore because I don’t want to go to my grave holding bitterness in my heart towards anyone. Today I have set aside prejudice and politics to make room for compassion and sound policy.
I have many stories but this one fits the scenario. When Golden Wilson’s daughter was wounded by a bomber – his daughter’s dying words were “I love you so much dad”. At the hospital, he chose something unexpected; he chose to publicly forgive the bombers for killing his only daughter. And when he forgave them, others who had lost loved ones took a step back and it changed the course of relations for everyone. The bitterness ended and the war almost came to a close.
We still have war, famine, hunger, ailments because very few are willing to stand up because very few have learned to love and feel empathy, to empower others to stand up for their constitutional rights in the midst of intimidation; we have stood looking while our friends have suffered victimization, humiliation, and loss of employment all because they have protested for the rights of “us”. All of us are the world’s problems and until we look into the mirror and see ourselves as the problems we are never going to get anywhere. And so it is easy to develop anger, frustration, and hate for those who either hurt us or hurt our loved ones, but it’s much harder and much more significant to take a stand and start being an answer to the world’s problems. Isn’t this what my mother and father would have wanted to see me do?
In December 2013, the Zambian government dismissed over 100 nurses at the biggest hospital in the country (http://www.lusakatimes.com/2013/12/03/100-nurses-uth-fired/) for protesting against what they purported as poor working conditions. We are told many patients who entirely relied on the poor hospital and clinic conditions died; women gave birth on the floors of the clinics and hospitals, and men and women who were on oxygen supported machines suffocated to death. Whether the nurses were right to demand an improvement in their conditions of service in this manner that resulted in the death of so many patients is for you to judge, and whether the government too was right to punish this huge number of nurses considering Zambia has an abnormal patient nurse ratio, is for you again to judge.
I have no problem with anyone finding an appropriate definition of who Ladislas is, but the question I have for you is who are you? What will you stand for? Is there any meaning you have found to life? What are you willing to still live for today? If you define me as a frustrated and disgruntled young man who has lost his mind for civil and social justice; it is fine. I will live with that tag. You get to choose your choices. If you will try to stop me as I pursue this path, I will surely disappoint you. But if you join hands with me, I will welcome you, and together we shall sound the loudest trumpet that will break the loudest silence of civil and social injustice, for we are all equal but simply different. As the saying goes, “If you want to go fast, walk alone, if you want to go far, walk together; also nothing extraordinary is achieved through ordinary means”. Surely with this global movement for social justice, I am not alone and together, we will reach far.