Think Up | 07/21/2008 12:00 am

Ashley Judd's Rwanda Diaries Part Seven: It Takes a Village … and Then Some

By Ashley Judd

Courtesy of Ashley Judd

Editor’s Note: Our friend, Ashley Judd, joined YouthAIDS as Global Ambassador in 2002, after seeing the effects of HIV/AIDS on communities and children in the United States and around the globe. With no cure in sight, and the realization that education is the only way to prevent the spread of this disease, Ashley uses voice and platform — on behalf of those without a voice — to promote YouthAIDS’s programs and to provide young adults with immediate solutions for fighting the global epidemic. Most recently, Ashley went to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she kept a daily personal journal detailing the heart-wrenching experience. Each week this summer, wOw shares one diary excerpt and corresponding photos from her trip. The following journal entry was written on Monday, April 28, 2008.

Creator, thank you for emotional sobriety. Thank you for Reverend Ruth, and the tears you put in my eyes when she stood up to welcome us to lunch. Thank you for helping me realize I needed to ask her to enter the church with me, and that when I did ask, she understood my need and began to walk me there immediately. Thank you for all the tears on the way, and for how I curled up like a baby and sobbed at the altar, the tears I had been flirting with for days finally consummating. Thank you for the way she laid her hands on me so softly. Thank you for the intercessory prayer for perpetrators, and the reminder that not only they, but I, can make a fresh choice, a better decision, any moment of any day. I can start my day, my very life, over with a simple decision to do so. Thank you for the freedom that came after, including the ability to leave the orphanage and say as I passed its threshold, “Okay, Ashley, give them to God. They are God’s. You are not meant to carry them yourself. They are God’s.”

And thank you for the resonance this has with similar moments in India, leaving children in brothels, the discernment that I needed a quiet, holy place with someone stronger in faith than me in that moment to simply be there with me as I grieved, and the absolute certainly that you give me that there are gifts on the other side.

Click here for photos from Ashley Judd’s Rwanda Diaries Part Seven.

Dushishoze – say that three times fast! Meaning “Think about it” in Kinyarwandan, Dushishoze comprises four youth centers nationwide where kids may access free medically accurate reproductive health information, services and products such as voluntary HIV/AIDS testing with rapid results and counseling (and appropriate referrals if they are HIV-positive. I saw a positive test while I was there) and birth control, as well as activities that improve them socially and economically, with an emphasis on employability. The centers are full service, and I believe this holistic, integrated model is the best and most cost effective way to reach vulnerable youth for total poverty reduction; it is the way forward.

For us at PSI, based on what we are used to, it looks a little expensive per young person educated and protected from a health perspective per year; we are used to an investment of ten bucks per kid/year. With Dushishoze, though, and the bigger “basket” of services offered, the price per child is a bit more, but, my gosh, is it worth it. We are grateful currently to have funding from the CDC (Center for Disease Control), and if that is not a strong statement about the efficacy of using social, cultural and economic activities to reach the at-risk in order to protect their health, what is!?

Read more about: Africa, Ashley Judd, Change the World, Health, International, News, Rwanda

24 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

I had written a screenplay just for you Ashley to star along side George Clooney. “Counter Attack” (political action adventure) is about a female college professor who is trying to shut down the Plum Island Animal Disease Center because they are bringing live diseased animals through the community. Now her son Alex is sick with an unknown disease, and the government is out to stop her no matter what the cost!

By Helise Flickstein on 07/21/2008 12:56 am

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Ms Judd, astonishing the goodness in your writing, to be able to see things whole, to accept limitations, to understand this—you are a truly remarkable woman and what you do is a wonderful thing. My admiration for you having read all these writing of yours is boundless- thank you once again for opening my eyes to things I knew were there but tend to forget. I shan’t forget again.

By Frank Peterson on 07/21/2008 1:56 am

It’s emotionally draining just reading your diaries. I can’t imagine the emotional toll it takes on you witnessing all you witnessed.

By Lorraine Bates on 07/21/2008 7:49 am

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The idea of giving things to God is a great one to remember. Very hard to do. This extreme example of needing to do that is very helpful.

By DeBúrca obj on 07/21/2008 8:00 am

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It is shocking to western ears to here about sickness and illness from malaria. Ironically, I was sitting next to my Ugandan friend in Church yesterday who is trying to get the rest of his family out. He told me that his son has malaria - again - and how desperate he feels to get them out of the refugee areas where they are forced to live. We have started a 503c so we can raise money for netting and water wells. He also told me that the 503 c has been approved this week. So now we can start. As I have read Ashely’s story and all the wonderful things that are being done to help people, I still reflect on what could have been done to prevent all this in the first place. Because the UN was unwilling to act, like they are unwilling to act in Zimbabwe, and were unwilling to act in Sierra Leone until it was too late, we must demand that other options be put on the table to send in private forces to at LEAST guard the refugees. Right now the UN is pulling their people and protectors out of the Sudan and surrounding areas BECAUSE it has become too dangerous. This is wrong, it is immoral to abandon people to their deaths and to their suffering when there are private forces available who are not afraid, who are highly trained, and who could make a real difference. The UN says that doing so would be a humiliation to the UN. Do you see the corruption in all this? The starving mothers, fathers, and children are expendable, but the UN reputation is not, according to them. I am praying that John McCain is elected and he will keep his promise to start a League of Democracies that he says will not tolerate the carnage in these countries. With China and Russia vetoing intervention in Zimbabwe and Sudan, because the violence works for them, and, in fact, China is building Mugabe a band new mansion, the people are doomed to suffer unconscionable horrors. I hope we have the courage to prevent these genocides before they get a full head of steam and shift our support from the UN that is a passive enabler.

By Bella Mia on 07/21/2008 11:01 am

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I don’t mean to be insensitive to the suffering of children the world over…but I believe we should clean up our own backyard before we walk into others. Children are starving, homeless and without education right here in the greatest country in the world. I have worked in ghettos right here in the south and seen children without hope, living in homes with dirt floors. Many of our schools are falling in on themselves and our teachers go begging for the bare necessities they need to teach…and they do it for wages so low, our government should hang its head in shame. Children “fall through the cracks” every day here in our country. Anyone who thinks there are no “issues” to be addressed here, at home, should spend a week in Appalachia…or in the “at risk” neighborhoods that are all too prevalent in and around most major cities. I live two hours from Washington D.C. but our family never goes there. Just one year ago, there on business, we decided to stay over night at a posh hotel near Capitol Hill…we were told by the desk staff that under no circumstances were we to be out and about after dark, unless it was in a cab going to and from a restaurant..absolutely no walking around OUR NATION’S CAPITOL after dark. The city is a war zone when the sun goes down…and yet our government has more than enough time and money to devote to issues on the other side of the world. End of rant.

By J B on 07/21/2008 11:47 am

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We should be able to do both.

By DeBúrca obj on 07/21/2008 11:57 am

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Yup

By Frank Peterson on 07/21/2008 12:30 pm

JB, your story makes me, again, wonder what in the h-e-double hockey sticks the Supreme Court was thinking when they lifted the handgun ban in D.C.

By Lorraine Bates on 07/21/2008 12:54 pm

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Oh yes, you mean the case where the Supremes created new law the the congress should do? Man I haven’t trusted them since they elected the Twit.

By Frank Peterson on 07/21/2008 1:11 pm

Lorraine - Everyone I know was stunned by that decision. D.C. is already Dodge City…the argument among the NRA crowd is that now, Joe Homeowner will be able to defend him or her self…I don’t buy it. I think this is just a powder keg, given the violence that occurs each and every day in that city. I can only assume the Supreme Court doesn’t watch the local news.

By J B on 07/21/2008 1:35 pm

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Specious argument as usual from the NRA—more guns will make everything nice and safe for everyone.

By Frank Peterson on 07/21/2008 1:39 pm

Anywhere in the US where you have personal gun bans you find the worst gun crime rates. New York is the exception, but the it is extremely expensive to live there, and it is an island. Philly is also a gun banned city, and we just had another massive shoot-out today with 35 bullets fired mostly by the perp, who illegally possessed a handgun. On Friday, a husband and wife were murdered working in a small clothing store saving money to bring their family over from Africa. I think the city of Philly has had at least 20 peace marches and the gun crime and murder rate continues to escalate even though guns are banned. Until innocent people have the right to protect themselves with deadly force, the crime rate will not abate - it is common sense. Thank goodness the DC gun ban has just been repealed. Unfortunately, one of the people who brought the case and who carries a gun professionally, tried again to register his handgun for personal use, and was denied a permit unless he agreed to have it disassembled, and it couldn’t be bottom loading. Criminals calculate their risk, and love taking over cities, like Chicago, also going through a gang crime wave, where law abiding citizens cannot protect themselves. I think it was Barrows Alaska where the city mandated that everyone possess a firearm to use against polar bears - and the crime rate dropped to zero. For more information on how the psychology of public gun possession effects criminals read Dr. Lott’s book: “More Guns, Less Crime.” his blog reports this story about the poor Jamacian who beleived that gun control was the answer to a bad crime problem - and since it’s implementation gun crime has soared: “Murder rates in Jamaica through the roof/Law abiding citizens want guns (Lott: “Well, these gun control regulations don’t seem to have done any better here than the gun ban regulations in DC.”) “In the late 1990s, Jamaica did not make it on the top 10 list. Then in 2003 when our murder rate more than tripled the rate of the early 1970s, we made it to number three on the list. By 2005 we were standing atop the sordid pile at number one. All of the nasty and sick politics which had been practiced since independence to 2005 had caught up with us… . ” “At present only business persons who have applied for and met the stringent requirements are in possession of legally held firearms. Elected politicians travel with security details while we who supported them and voted for them in the hope of us building a better and safer Jamaica are forced to face the criminal gunman empty-handed.” “As the police force signals (by its action over time) that it has no answers to protecting the poor and those most vulnerable, the justice system creaks and only delivers if one has 10 years to spare. The criminal gunman knows that no witnesses will come forward, so he has about a 90% chance of making it to the next killing. In this scenario the state has failed to protect us, continues to fail us and when our elected officials speak, it is mainly to sell us another fairy tale about our safety… .” Gun bans create the breeding grounds for failed states, and failed cities: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20080719T160000-0500_138054_…

By Bella Mia on 07/21/2008 5:08 pm

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Bella your premise is misleading, but I know it’s what the NRA likes to spread. The thing about “Anywhere in the US where you have personal gun bans you find the worst gun crime rates.” It doesn’t take a genius to see through that argument…. the fact is, those cities already HAD high crime rates and that is why they imposed the stronger gun laws. The gun laws did NOT drive the crime rate up.

By DeBúrca obj on 07/21/2008 7:45 pm