The Non-Introduction -- No.01

What am I watching: Savior Complex HBO documentary (2023)

What I am cooking: Baked mac&cheese

What I am learning: To stand up for myself..always

The Savior Complex in us all

To quote Variety Magazine, Savior Complex documentary is about a white American woman named Renee Bach "who was 19 when she claims to have heard a calling from God telling her to travel to Uganda on a missionary trip to save children from starvation, poverty and deadly diseases.”

Renee originally founded a non-profit to help feed children in Jinja, Uganda who were living in poverty.

There were many malnourished children and one of the hospitals in the area contacted Renee as their facility was only built to take care of 100 - 150 babies at a time and they were at a max capacity of 200 babies per month, so they had to discharge the infants before they were fully recovered.

They asked Renee could she take in some of these babies, all they would need her to do was feed and house them where she lived and conducted her non-profit out of. Renee was hesitant at first but agreed and eventually came to see this as a need for the community and ended her children feeding program and began a malnourished rehabilitation program for severely malnourished babies and children.

Throughout Renee’s time in Uganda over a 5 year period her home converted into a makeshift clinic saw over 900 babies and children. Saving the lives of hundreds of babies who’s mothers would have had no where else to go.

The only issue was Renee Bach had no more than a homeschooling education, she was not a licensed healthcare professional. And 105 of the babies that entered into her clinic, died. Although a 10% - 15% mortality rate was normal for even Ugandan hospitals and Renee cared very deeply for all these children, it was a problem for many staff members (she did eventually bring on nurses and doctors, but still performed medical operations on the babies) and those in the Ugandan community, specifically for a group called No White Saviors, that Renee had not been held accountable for the deaths that occurred as a white person.

Throughout the documentary you discover different sides of this story and ultimately find out if Renee Bach has to face any consequences for those 105 babies that died under her organizations care.

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Watching Savior Complex allowed me to take a step back and analyze my own experience even deeper with issues surrounding race, complexion, whiteness and what exactly that means for myself in an ever changing political world.

There are so many people now taking a look at themselves and taking a step back where they are not needed (nor wanted). And I have had to do the same.

I myself am African American, a black woman — but due to me being born with a medium beige complexion with olive green eyes and brown hair color — I got called nothing but “white” by my fellow African American, black and mixed-race peers. And it was painful. These weren’t pleasant conversations. And everything white people did wrong (or sometimes not even wrong, but just different), always seemed to fall back negatively onto me.

Because of this I was angry..for decades. Never being able to escape an identity that didn’t fit me. People were always obsessed with my whiteness, in the worst way possible. I faced harassment over my physical appearance on a consistent basis.

Even in my early 30s, I still can not sit at a bus station like everyone else without someone (mostly other people of color) questioning me about my race and when I tell them I’m black, that yes both my parents are African American, they get angry. People give me dirty looks and ask me why do I look white? As if looking white was the biggest problem in the world. But the truth is, I don’t look white. My ancestors have looked like me for centuries in America and we have always been classified as African American, negro, colored etc. without question.

Somewhere between the early 2000s and 2010s the obsession with whiteness reached its all time peak. People know when they look at me that I’m not a white person, but yet it’s all they ever saw. It’s all anyone ever cared about. It was like people needed me to be white, just so they could have an outlet for their anger.

While watching Savior Complex I got to reflect on that deeply, as I watched how obsessed everyone was with Renee Bach’s “whiteness.” It felt like I was witnessing America’s obsession with race and whiteness being brought over to Uganda, and the deceased babies and mourning mothers were being used as a tool for somebody else’s rage.

I often feel like the Renee Bach of my own story line, although the circumstances are completely different.

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
— Marcel Proust

AI Art I’m Working On

Collection called #DubaiNights

I have never been to Dubai, but since everybody else has (not really, but it sure does feel like it) I will travel there in art form and the occasional YouTube 4k walking tour videos and live my best life too.

Sarah Dessen Inspired me

I decided to start this Substack after recently reading Sarah Dessen’s Substack (one of my favorite authors of all time — “The Truth About Forever” is a must read) and I instantly knew it was my time to start taking up more space.

Several years ago Sarah was involved in a Twitter scandal that left her ostracized from the literary community and has been creating miniature housing arrangements, giving them to people she cares about in her hometown and sharing them with us her Substack followers.

She wrote about how at least they don’t take up too much space (being that they are around the size of pocket change), when she gives them out to people.

And it immediately hit me that I’ve been behaving incredibly small as well, being careful not to take up any space, especially with my words.

A year before what happened to Sarah Dessen on Twitter, I went through a similar experience at the workplace and the onslaught of pure hatred that pursued afterwards.

In my scenario, I was standing up to a malicious workplace bully, but still receiving the same ending result of shunning, cultural mobbing and ultimately people just want you to cancel yourself.

It was the end of a very short lived career as I was a recent college graduate, and I guess as unlucky as pulling the short straw, ended up working with some of the most unprofessional toxic people that I have ever come across in this lifetime.

IF ONLY I HAD A TIME MACHINE.

They were already looking for someone to make an enemy out of by the time I arrived for my first day on the job. And when people want you to become an enemy (try as you might fight against it) you become just that.

It’s been 5 years since then. There is a deep healing process that occurs — but with it lots of fear and anxiety that I have been scrubbing my soul clean from ever since.

But after reading Sarah Dessen’s words I realized that I’ve been acting very small for all these years since. I stopped expressing myself as freely as I used to.

My workplace experience traumatized me, but it’s ultimately up to me if I allow for it to control my behavior for forever. So in a change of being seen and creating a habit of behaving bigger welcome to “Green Eyes” my first publicly open and honest blog style publication.