"My Interests Are People"

In Mississippi I was given a small sharp shard of a story. It happened when we were at Betty’s house, hearing her talk about her flowers and plants that she cared for like children and which had survived Katrina’s winds and water. She was worried about her cactus and her orange tree over in the side yard. A few of us went over to that part of the yard to investigate.



I found Darlington staring at the cactus. And the story arrived in a whisper barely louder than the hum of the insects in the weeds. “They hurt,” he said, pointing to the spines, his lips barely moving. “They were…,” and he held his arms up mimicking holding a rifle, shooting bullet after bullet after bullet. “I ran. We ran” More shooting motions, more bullets. “We ran into these,” pointing at the cactus. “They stuck in our skin. We didn’t feel it, not until after we passed the border. Then we pulled them out. It hurt. We ran like that, with these in our feet.”



And there it was, the story of how Darlington had survived the genocide in Rwanda. Later he would let me hold his pictures: a pile of skulls at a memorial, a family gathered on the plains with mountains in the background and cooking pots in front celebrating the re-burial of his uncle whose bones were identified by the unique bracelet he still had around his wrist, five little boys grinning only one now alive.



So this was Darlington’s story, Darlington who could wiggle his ears to make us laugh and who spun long Rwandan fairy tales of lions and giraffes and monkeys. Darlington who, upon finding himself alone on the bleaches at a Minnesota football game, shunned by the fearful whites around him, told how he stretched out on the expanse of seats and declared himself king. Darlington who had been in the US only six months but felt the need to help rebuild the Gulf Coast. Darlington who played for us CDs of songs of faith sung in Kinyarwanda, who spoke 6 or 7 other languages besides English his newest one, who made us guess what level of education he had and when we said high school at the very least, he said he’d never been in a classroom a day in his life. Darlington who made a living in Rwanda making toy cars from discarded scraps from construction sites and selling them to the rich. Darlington who wanted to get an education and a job here in American so he could help his young surviving relatives go to school and buy meat. Darlington who every morning wrote slogans on his Tyvek suit: “Helping is good!”, “My interests are people”, “Let us love one another” and one day simply “Darlington from Rwanda Africa”.