Day Three--Stories

The first story the brothers told us was about a time they were building a school in the Andes and they ran out of time and couldn't finish the school in time. They told the elder of the town that they'd come back later to finish it, and she said, "it's no problem, I'll call a minga." They didn't know what she was talking about. She went outside and shouted "MINGA!" at the top of her lungs. People in other villages across the mountain range heard her and passed along the message. People from miles and miles around dropped everything they were doing, walked hours to get there, and helped finish the school without asking for so much as a word of gratitude. He said the closest way they could describe it was "a riot for good." He said our culture has words for what's important to it, like money and cars. How many synonyms do we have for the word 'car'? But we don't even have anything close for 'minga.'

Then he told us a story about a young man named Santosh. He was the student council president of his high school in Sierra Lione. Hi school was invaded by anti-government soldiers. They took the teachers out back and shot them. Then they took all the kids into the auditorium and gave them a choice. The first option was to join the militia group. To be initiated, they would have to come up on stage and get a small cut made on their temple. Then the militia leaders would put some brown-brown (a mix of cocaine and gunpowder) into the cut. The brown-brown would make them emotionally unstable. Then a member of the militia would take them to their home and force them to shoot their mother and father. They did this so that the kids could never go back home once they had joined the militia.

The other choice was equally simple and equally dreadful. They could come up on stage and have their right hand cut off by a machete. The soldiers did this so that the kids could never join a government army--they could never pull a trigger.

Santosh walked to the front of the auditorium and said, "Mr. Rebel Leader, I am the student council president, so I am in charge of these students." He put his right hand on the desk at the front of the auditorium. The rebel leader was so mad he chose a dull machete on purpose. It took two strokes to sever his hand completely. Santosh ran out of the auditorium and through the night to reach the border, where UN troops managed to save his life.

When they met him, they asked him how he could continue to afford school. He took them to the back of his house and showed him beautiful carvings he had made. He did them all left-handed.

Then they said, "Santosh, that must have been the hardest, most painful decision you ever had to make." He said, "no, telling them to chop off my hand wasn't the hardest, most painful decision I ever had to make. Last week, I saw the rebel leader in the market. Holding out my left hand to shake his right hand as a gesture of forgiveness was the hardest thing I ever had to do."

They told us if he had the courage to do that, we could have the courage to do all things.