Posts Tagged ‘“Kelly”’
Dear “Kelly”: An unsent apology
Dear “Kelly”,
When I sat down to write my book about the journey into Congo, I started with a list- everything I did not want to include in the book. The list was long- the secrets that could cost lives, the painful breakdown of my relationship with “Ted” over Congo work, the awkward collaboration with my sometimes-crazy mother, the romantic escape to Zanzibar with (gasp!) a man I met on the terrace at the Orchid Safari Club, but mostly my embarrassing ego and grandiosity and epic (but inevitable) missteps along the way. You were on the list.
In early drafts, I tried to skim over the unspoken tension of our supposedly “joint” trip in an effort to be fair and tasteful, but editors called me out. In fact, 90% of that do-not-include list ended up in the book. Nothing trumps an honest, emotionally transparent story – except life-threatening safety issues. (It’s Congo. What can I say?)
After getting notes from yet another editor saying I needed to flesh you out and tell the whole story, I sat at my desk on Vashon Island, overlooking the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains range beyond, squirming, thinking “I don’t want to write this.”
Then I re-read some of your post Congo notes and blogs, and caught the not-so-subtle jabs. Obviously, the tension was pronounced and mutual.
I spilled it. The walk under the Capitol Building in DC, when you called my work “just pity.” The weirdly indirect manor you let me know- on our first day in Congo- it would not be a joint trip at all. (Basically doubling the cost of my trip!) The mazungu girl-fight on the ride home from Baraka. How you left me scrambling to explain to your own sponsored sister why you would travel all the way from America to Congo, but could not make the time to meet her.
Yep, it pissed me off. And I wrote it all. The book is now off to the printers.
I still feel like a jerk. Worse. A hypocrite.
Because if there was one thing I learned from you, and especially your long silence following the trip, it was that nothing is more damaging to a movement than criticizing fellow activists who are giving it their best effort. However imperfect, perhaps buoyed with ego and grandiosity, maybe saying and doing the wrong things, our job is to show up. To say something. To take a step. The rest we can figure out as we go.
I don’t expect you to like the way you are represented in the book, or even understand. If I were you, I wouldn’t, and for that I am so sorry. But I do want you to know this: whatever judgment or frustration I express in the book, absolutely none of it trumps my profound respect for the fact that you showed up for Congo. You have played a critical early role in building a lasting movement, the reverberations of this journey, our honesty about our mutual shortcomings and missteps, we can’t ever know. But I know this for sure: By showing up, you have changed the future of Congo and by extension the face of humanity.
Well done, lady. Well done.
With deepest gratitude,
Lisa
