Running Wild

Beloved readers, a catch-up post is much overdue. As I never seriously intend to blog frequently while state-side, I recognize that living in California I am separated from many of whom I love the most, so I should be more serious about updating this page regularly.

What has happened since I left London?
I finished the semester, and headed back to Atlanta. Hang on for this whirlwind:
Saturday - London to Atlanta, Sunday- drive to Alabama, pick up Grey, drive back (almost 10 hours in the car), Monday - fly ATL to LAX followed by a surprise party with all my friends thrown by my sweet boyfriend. By Friday, I had signed a lease on a new place to live. We spent Christmas in Orange County on the beach and then I moved into my new place the next day.

It took a bit to get it all set up, and there is still a project or two left to complete, but overall I love living here. Since I have a job in downtown this summer, I needed to live somewhere half way between the city and school. I live on the edge of Santa Monica, where two streets over its technically LA. It's got a lot of character. In addition to my art, the art I've collected from travels, tons of pictures and furniture from our Atlanta house, its got Spanish tile throughout and new appliances and cabinetry. Anyways, it feels like home.

Over the holidays, I had several friends get engaged - including two of my closest friends so I am absolutely thrilled for them! One of my best friends in law school with me is pregnant, and another couple that I love just had a baby. It's a really fun time to be supporting them.

This semester, I am taking several classes and also doing a program where I am working with clients who are applying for Asylum in the US because they have been persecuted or have a fear of persecution if they are forced to return to their country. It takes up a lot of time, but is incredible work. The first few weeks, we worked with one family on their case and it was granted! Lots of stress, hard work- totally paid off! It's great to know we helped make a huge difference in their lives, and they no longer have to fear for their lives. Now, we are working on another case and preparing for a trial that will be held in March.

For Christmas, my beau surprised me with concert tickets for the next five months. Our January concert was a band from Nashville called Moon Taxi that put on a great show. Our February concert is Greg Laswell, a very chill singer-songwriter. We go tomorrow, so I am excited! Dad and I also had a particularly wonderful opportunity to go VIP to the Eagles, which was incredible.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. I haven't had any revelations yet as an old and wise 25 year old, but you'll be the first to be informed of one.  My actual birthday was spent working all day, and I was in a trial courtroom for trail practice and preparation until 9:30.

But the night before, Brian had taken me on a wonderful sushi dinner right on the ocean in Malibu. Then, the day after my birthday, we headed to a favorite wine-bar for "Wine Wednesdays." Then on Sunday, about twenty of my friends braved the cold California weather (it was 60 degrees) to hang out at a winery in the Malibu mountains. The drive up there weaved through the canyon, looking down on the ocean and was really beautiful. On our way back, the stunning Pacific was in our right lane. We had a huge picnic, lots of great food and company and tried a few different very creative wines like Orange Muscat and Pinot Noir Rose.

The spring semester is off to a great start, and there's a lot more excitement to come!

"Oh, I'm asking why can't we live tonight? 

We are running out of time. 

Just for now, we could come undone with the rising sun. 

Oh, oh, running wild. 

So, drink it in." 

-Moon Taxi, Running Wild 

printer paper

The last few weeks the office has been in a complete frenzy over the process of re-registering IJM as a non-profit in Rwanda. This is an incredibly complex process as it involves reviewing IJM's Memorada of Understanding (MoU for short) with all of our partners - other nonprofits and governmental organizations. IJM staff meets with each of these partners to discuss and negotiate the "annual report" and "5 year strategic action plan." In addition to ensuring our annual report documenting the previous year, forecasted activities, and expected outcomes are in line with our MoUs, and our directives from IJM Headquarters in DC, each word on this 100-page-registration document must be approved by each of the three districts of Kigali City. All of our clients and casework must be divided into each district and described in detail to show what we did in Kigali this last year and what we are planning to do in the upcoming year. It has been a laborious process to say the least, and it may take up to six months to complete. I've only attempted to contribute minute details to these documents, and I've become overwhelmed by the challenges that the office faces to make each of the reported words successful.

Laws are vague and poorly written. Prosecutors and judges are overloaded, lacking the capacity to give time and attention to detail to each of the 30 cases on their docket for any one given day. There is no such thing as "grounds for appeal;" if you're unhappy with the verdict, you can just appeal. This substantially delays justice for our clients and the victories that we can report when in fact the cases are looming on appeal for many years. Children under the age of fourteen must have their testimony corroborated by extrinsic evidence. When evidence is rare in a rape case to begin with, asking that the victim's testimony be corroborated is a substantial hurdle to justice for these victims. Funding is limited. DNA testing is expensive. Medical reports are poorly written. Birth certificates are incredibly difficult to track down. Sentences are not given according to the Code. There is no safehouse to care for our clients if it is not in their best interest to live at home.

Trying to wage war on all these fronts, its astounding to see the incredible success that IJM has had. Every conviction is a victory of epic proportions. Yet, it's in our nature as Americans to constantly push towards improvement. We had X convictions last year, this upcoming year, we want to see X +10! This is how our minds process improvement. We like to measure results by raw numbers, statistics, names and short descriptions of the successes we achieved for our clients. And we like things to be clear- on paper in black and white. But the reality is that IJM's work is not best described on paper. Or in words.
It is best OBSERVED.
Certainly there is always room for improvement, but along the way, let's not get too distracted with the idea of "growing" that we forget how personal each step of that growth is.
I was sitting in the home of one of our clients, Louise, a humble six foot by eight foot concrete rectangle. Ignorant to the irony of her offer, she kindly asked if she could bring me a Fanta (a soda is an entire day's worth of wages for most Rwandese). In response to the question of what impact IJM has had on her life, she said, "I thought I would never again be happy for the rest of my life. But IJM intervened and gave me so much support to overcome my trauma and to finish my studies. IJM gave me a smile when I thought I never would again."

When her mother spoke about how tremendously IJM had impacted their lives, she said, "I don't have words to express my gratitude for what IJM has done for me and my family. I thank God everyday for IJM and IJM staff."

So, I get it Rwanda government. I understand your need for numbers and targets. But I just want to vent that it's unfair. IJM's work is too raw and real to be translatable onto printer paper, even 100 pages of it. The change that IJM incites in these victims is too amorphous and abstract to be filtered into targets and "progress measurements."
IJM gives smiles back to people.
IJM brings hope to these victims lives just when they thought it was lost forever.
And I have been so blessed to be a very small part of it.

I told the counselor who took us into the field that day that she had clearly changed Louise's life. She bashfully replied, "Only by the grace of the Lord."And it will be only by the grace of the Lord when IJM gets re-registered and gets to continue doing this amazing life-changing work.

to relish is both a blessing and a curse, but it is mostly a blessing

"What is it like there??" you've been asking.
Here's the best I've got. A typical weekday around here:
Wake up at 6:30: take a semi-warm shower. The "shower" is actually a tray on the ground against a corner with a loosely hanging curtain that only covers 1 side and leaves the side by the toilet completely exposed for water to go spraying everywhere. But it is a shower and not a bucket, which I am very grateful for.
Get dressed: work attire is business casual, I usually wear a pencil skirt with a nice top and cardigan or dress pants. Women dress very conservatively, professionals are expected to dress smart, and the backs of a woman's knees are the sexiest part of her body. So, shield your eyes America.
Eat breakfast: usually cereal (which costs about $8-10 per box), Mango Juice (a highlight of my day) with a piece of toast and jam if I am extra hungry. Milk comes in fortified Ziplock bags, which is the sketchiest thing ever, but thankfully it also comes in unrefrigerated boxes. Fermented milk is also big in Rwanda, but in the wise words of Shelley, "it tastes like milk with some hoof" so I stay away from that.
Walk to Work: this takes about 10-15 minutes and is about half a mile. It's usually crisp in the morning, by the afternoon it is hot.
8:00 am- Stillness - this is an IJM-wide phenomenom, a time of silence and reflection with God over the work. Taken more seriously at HQ than in the Rwanda office, it is still a highlight of my day. I have been reading through some devotionals that I would encourage you to add to your daily routine. Click here!
It is culturally expected to greet anyone as you walk past them, and with my desk at the very front lobby of the office, the mornings are full of Maramutse! Amakuro? Nmeza. (Good morning! How are you? Good.) to each person that walks in. This continues all day as clients pour into the office, visitors come in for various meetings and staff walks in and out.
I take this time to pray over the staff, IJM work globally, and to journal, read my Bible and pray for anything that comes to mind. Let me know how I can be praying for you by leaving a comment or sending me an email. I will add you to my morning routine!
8:30 am - Staff Devotional begins - Led by a different staff member each day, we usually sing 2-3 songs in either English or Kinyarwanda and take time to reflect over Scripture. Then we take Prayer Requests and Praises. We close with a prayer over all that's just been discussed and a blessing over each of us for the day ahead.
9:15ish - Check Emails, and get right to work on whatever is the most pressing. A few of the projects I've been working on:

• (current project) Preparing IJM for its annual registration with the Rwanda government. IJM activities must be in line with the government's priorities and their envisioned plans for the future of Rwanda. This involves making an "Action Plan" of all of IJMs activities, recording the realized activities from last year and also forecasting for the next years. We are applying for 5-year registration, and fingers crossed, prayers up - this laborious process will be easier next year if we get registered for 5 years. The registration paperwork must be approved by all of IJM's government partners AND by each of the 3 districts of Kigali. It is a huge, laborious process with documents that are 100 pages each.
• Writing stories of our clients for Headquarters to share on www.ijm.org
• Doing legal analysis on the strengths and weaknesses of potential client cases and making a recommendation as to whether or not IJM should accept or reject the case
• Doing legal research in several areas- criminal procedure, evidence law, Child Protection laws
• Preparing the quarterly report for headquarters from each department
• Assessing donor's needs and requirements, and whether or not we are meeting them
• Reporting on our compliance with our Memoranda of Understanding with our government partners
• Inputting cases from hard-copy files into the online case tracking system

We have a nice long lunch break in the middle of the day. If we aren't meeting someone, like the Pepperdine students working at the Ministry of Justice, or girls we have met through church, we usually walk home for lunch.
5:00 pm - on the dot, we all get kicked out of the office.
6:00 pm - The only decent window to talk to my boyfriend, who has been such a trooper to chat with me on his lunch break everyday. A huge highlight of my day!
Then, Carmen and I work out. We do these videos from Hell called Insanity. We have improved though from the first time I did it. But basically I end up laying on the floor sweating, as red as a tomato and thinking "this is what dying feels like."
Next, we usually attempt to scrounge together something for dinner. Sometimes, our house staff cooks for us, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes we attempt to cook and fail, sometimes we attempt to cook and it is decent. We have learned quite a bit, but its still cooking in Africa and thus is a great gamble. We have made banana bread about 10 times and really have it down. We have also managed to burn rice and nearly set the house on fire. So, hey, you never know.
Sometimes we go do something like go on a walk to the cafe with internet, grocery shop or meet up with friends. Sometimes we watch a few episodes from the DVDs I brought, or read books, or play around on the Internet.
More or less by 10:00 pm, we are both in bed and exhausted.

They say that 9:00 is "Missionary Midnight" because the days are so jam-packed and the work is so mentally and emotionally exhausting. I read child sexual assault cases all day. Lots of words and phrases make me feel like I've been sitting in dirt like a pig rolling around in mud. Time passes quite slow here. It's remarkable because I am cognizant of what I am doing, each word I am typing, everything I am thinking. It's a nice treat to get to relish in a moment and truly appreciate it. Something we rarely, if ever, slow down long enough to do in the US. It is also troublesome to sit with the dirt and the challenges and the obstacles that the office here faces everyday. It is frustrating to not have power or Internet when the work is pressing. Frustrating doesn't even cover the feeling when you read the evidence for a case and then read the perpetrator was acquitted. Or that his sentence was much less than what the law explictly calls for. The time spent waiting on the power to return feels painstakingly slow. The weekends and the nights pass slower than a snail's pace. As it turns out, slow paced life is both a blessing and a curse.

Working for IJM has truly been everything I could have ever dreamed it would be. It has exceeded my expectations in every possible way (and my expectations were high). I love that I crawl into bed knowing that what I did that day could have made a legitimate difference in someone's life. I love the feeling when my head hits the pillow that I have done something with my day that was "worthy of the calling I received." (Eph. 4:1) And I love that I legitimately jump out of bed in the morning to do it all over again the next day. I've even kicked my atrocious snooze habit AND stopped drinking coffee!!
I repeat, I love that I legitimately jump out of bed in the morning to do it all over again the next day.