Pushin' on Through

I am in this very weird place of conflicting emotions. First, I am trying to move on from the events of this past week, but I know that is what is bothering me. We haven’t seen Martha yet because she has been away on a trip. Things are getting better, but I know that a lot of people, or rather I think a lot of people (like Martha, the woman from Arcadia, and whoever else heard their versions of the story), have a bad impression of us as a group. It’s frustrating because on one hand I am really pissed at how we were treated on a couple of occasions. On the other hand, I do think that the other people on the program can be rude sometimes (I’m sure I can too, but I at least have control over that). So even though I don’t necessarily want to apologize for the way I acted, I also have inadvertently been associated with the entire group. And as much as I love them, there is a general tendency to act just a bit entitled without recognizing it.
Even though I am nervous about the entire semester being tainted by the past few weeks, I also think that all this is probably what I am supposed to be learning. Sometimes, you can’t help who you are associated with, and sometimes you can. You can never control what someone else thinks of you, which is really, really hard for me to accept. Knowing that there are people out there who might in the slightest bit not like me or think that I am a spoiled American (even if I am) is really hard. So, I’m just caught between a lot of groups that I both like and disagree with. Most of all, I’m pretty homesick. I don’t want to leave Tanzania because I love it, but I also really, really want to be home.
On a good note, this morning we took a trip to the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). I’m really glad we got to do that, and hopefully I will go back and watch trials a lot. Basically, it is a UN international court that was set up for the Rwandan genocide and the Arusha International Convention Center hosts it. My school is a little house behind the convention center, so I am in there a lot to get lunch or just kind of hang around. This morning we went and watched some court proceedings, then watched a movie about the ICTR, and then the spokesperson (very important I think) gave us a talk.
The trial that we got to see part of is actually a pretty famous one. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was the Minister of Family and Women Affairs in Rwanda. She supposedly organized the rape of thousands or women. Rape, if done during war against a population, is now considered a crime against humanity and (I think) genocide. Nyiramasuhuko is the first woman to be charged with crimes against humanity for rape. Her son is also being charged. I only watched for about two hours, and most of it was in French, but it was an experience. There are a lot of problems with the ICTR (like only Hutu are put on trial and they are moving so slowly that it would take something like 200 years to convict everyone at this pace), but it is changing a lot of things in international law. Not that wikipedia is credible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Nyiramasuhuko
Dad comes in just a little more than one week! Perfect timing I would say.

Things I am worried about that will hopefully become obsolete once I get them out in writing:
-People back home who are having a hard time
-Not being good enough at Swahili
-My senior thesis proposal that’s really hard and not done yet even though it should be (this is a biggy)
-Not taking advantage of being here
-Martha or anyone else having been hurt or thinking I am a bad person
-Being a bad person
-Not meditating enough and therefore worrying too much
-Not having visited my host family again
-Being associated with rude Americans
-Gaining so much weight because I don’t get any exercise and I only eat carbs
-Letting the fact that I might be gaining weight make me vain while I should be grateful for being in Africa and not worrying about how much I weigh
-Friends who worry about what they weigh
-Wanting to go home
-Not wanting to leave
-Dad moving out of our house
-3 pending papers, internship, thesis, volunteering, not doing enough, doing too much
-Feeling like the oldest of the group by 800 years and being a little fed up with it
-The fact that I hardly ever really worry and now I can’t stop worrying even though I designated plenty of time to make sure I pay attention to my worries and let them pass, so something must be wrong with me
-My worries making me worry more and getting in the way of experiencing Africa because I am walking around under a cloud of worry
-No one wanting to read my blog because it turned dark and angsty

I’m probably just going insane because I haven’t danced in approximately 85 days. That’s a whole lot of days and I’m not likin’ it one bit. The weekend is ahead, though, and things are looking up!