Mariko appreciating the experience of living in the moment and reevaluating perspectives

My peers and I have come to the general conclusion that the human rights weekend was nothing like what we were expecting. However, I have also come away from the weekend with the realization that experiencing in the moment is far more valuable than living in anticipation. Upon arriving on the Goedgedacht Olive Farm, I was blown away by the beauty of the venue. 

I was also taken aback by the overwhelming warmth of the thirty other program participants who came from a variety of neighboring countries. My first meal, of many delicious meals on the farm, was spent in the company of an incredibly impressive man who is the coordinator of an organization focused on issues surrounding child marriage, HIV/AIDS, and youth empowerment in Malawi. While listening to all that he has done for his country, I felt a sense of shame in that I have done nothing comparable worth mentioning to such an inspiring figure. All of the people I met throughout the weekend share a passion for human rights, but more importantly, they share the initiative to act on such passion, which I am personally lacking.

Fortunately, my feeling of incompetency in this given field, accompanied by my desire to “keep up” with the other people on the trip, seemed to be at the foundation on which Africa Unite designed the weekend. Through a multitude of activities, ranging from world politics simulations to refugee focused discussions, I was forced to think about abstract issues and learn how to strategize for action in the fight against human rights violations. Additionally, I acquired a substantial amount of background information and was encouraged to evaluate gap between written polices and their global implementation.

However, I, along with a lot of my classmates, were also faced with quite a bit of discomfort upon discovering the severe cultural incongruity that exists between beliefs we take for granted, such as those regarding children’s rights and women’s rights. I went into the weekend with the assumption that, because we all are concerned with human rights, we would have the same views on how groups of people should be treated. And while I understand how powerful one’s background is in determining a given belief system, I still have a hard time accepting that there can be multiple acceptable views on a given issue. Maybe that’s just my white savior complex kicking in, but I truly did struggle to maintain composure when others were voicing certain opinions. In turn, the biggest takeaway from the weekend is that I now recognize how much I need to work on uprooting my ideas of what’s right and wrong just enough to at least reevaluate why I am so inclined to deem them superior to those of people from other areas of the world.