Rwanda 2010
A
Dark Place


I awoke this morning in Africa. Children and mothers call to each other in gentle rolling words like marmaladeon the tongue, "Amakuruh! Ne meza!" Sounds carry easily across these
steep hills reaching to the heavens. At night, when His work is done, God goes
home to sleep in Rwanda the proverb states, and I feel a sense of heaven on
these tiers and terraces and the lazy play of sunlight on fog. Men, working
with pick axes, strike ringing blows to quarried stones they carried to this
spot the day before, pause to lean on long-handled hoes and mumble softly as I
pass. They do not smile. The intermittent thwack-pause, thwack-pause outside my
window means the kitchen helper has started splitting wood for the cook fire, and
the incessant whine of a buzz saw slices through morning mist just beginning to
lift from the valleys. Cattle bellow from one hill to another. Their challenges
are futile when I see that each is restrained in a pen hardly large enough for
it to turn in. There is no PETA here to rescue them, only people in dire need
of the nourishment they can provide. It is ludicrous to consider humane
treatment of animals in this place where so much inhumanity existed only
sixteen years ago. This is my Africa; sounds I can seldom translate; yet the
familiarity of knowing without knowing, something tangibly my own.
Young boys or perhaps girls, it is difficult to tell beneath layers of red dust and
androgynous mix-matched clothing, sprint to the fence or sit removed on a knoll
watching us. Bold ones venture closer in hopes of handouts, attempts at
conversation, candy or cash from Mishugas, rich white people. It is difficult
to watch them; their eyes are so large and earnest and old. Somber spirits
whose beautiful smiles ignite only briefly, they stare directly into my eyes,
unflinching, and mine secrets from my dark soul. I cannot reach out to them as
others do. My hands stay busy with a pen and don't reach for stones to juggle
or cheeks to caress. I am afraid of exposing myself -- of being found out.
Today we are without water. A ten gallon bucket sits on the white tiles of our five
by five non-functioning bathroom. The squeegee provided to mop the precious
shower water back into the basin sits dry. A plastic water bottle floats on the
surface of the bucket. Its paper wrapper soaked and bloated has settled to the
bottom. It took two of us healthy pilgrims to carry the bucket from the
kitchen, up the flight of stairs and down our hallway. Groaning we lift and
laugh at ourselves as we move down the smooth cool cement passageway. We are
struck by our momentary hardship in light of the people around us who daily
balance burdens of jerry cans, lumber, yams and coffee on their heads making
the trip from market or well to home on the dusty rock strewn roads. Cars and
motos whiz past them spitting up a miasma that envelopes, settling in their
hair and eyes. My nose chokes closed with this dust and my throat constantly
aches from breathing in the heavy residue. My body, too, is covered with this
dust, and I don't believe any amount of scrubbing will wash it out. I have
become imprinted with the indelible mark of this place.
Clouds roll in to hide the sun; a depressing sight for pilgrims who understand the
water pump runs on solar energy. We will make the best of it and off our
sufferings to God. I hope. My fear is that my selfish needs and vanity will
overwhelm my fledgling spirituality. I can try, yet wonder how authentic my attempts are. Do they come from a place of authentic spirituality or a need to fit in with the true pilgrims of this
place? My failure to feel weighs heavily on me as I watch others' faces
transfigured at the shrine or the well. I hide my failures and blend in to be
good.
Immaculée reminds us that everyone, at least the adults we meet, participated in some way
in the genocide. Survivors, perpetrators, bystanders and rescuers -- or those
perpetrators who killed one day and rescued the next. The complexity of this
genocide in its barbaric simplicity, makes it baffling to contemplate let alone
to understand. I sit at the feet of survivors; women who buried their parents,
bludgeoned to death with crude machetes, after dragging them from the
blood-soaked soil in front of their homes, and who held beloved sisters in
their arms as their lives slowly drained away. It would have been beautiful
here in April with the rainy season just ending and the dust settled and the
grasses returning. I shed tears for Saudha as she speaks of the boy who saved
her by running ahead of the killers to warn her who will then return to kill
those she leaves behind.
I recognize my arrogant statements about traveling to Africa to study genocide
for the foolishness they are. I can never understand the sorrow or the hatred.
How can I comprehend neighbors who kill other neighbors in order to keep safe
the neighbors they hide in their own homes? Men who act as "good
killers" in order for their homes to escape scrutiny and keep safe their
hidden Tutsi wives and children. How does evil perpetuate itself, indeed,
thrive in such a place as beautiful as Rwanda? Answers form that I can seldom
articulate, yet the familiarity of knowing without knowing, nags at me,
something tangibly my own.

Rwanda 2010
Tracing
Rwanda; A Series of Joys & Sorrows

" Among Christians and other
students of the New Testament, Cana is best known as the place where, according
to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus performed his first public miracle, the turning of a large quantity of water into wine
at a wedding feast when the wine provided by the bridegroom had run out (John 2:1-11. Although none
of the synoptic gospels records the event, mainstream Christian tradition
holds that this is the first public miracle of Jesus; however in John's gospel
it has considerable symbolic importance: it is the first of the seven
miraculous "signs" by
which Jesus' divine status is attested, and around which the gospel is
structured."
~ Wikipedia [i
know . . wiki! lame, right? but it works!]

Arriving
at the Cana Center in Kibeho, I'm impressed and surprised by the sturdy
workmanship and delicate craftsmanship of the facility. After the dusty, bouncy
trek lined by dwellings built from sticks and corn stalks, mud bricks and
occasionally a regal adobe hut, just the idea of this oasis of Cana welcomed us
to our new home. Our temporary home,
someone is quick to point out with a laugh, as we have quickly learned that
every jest or comment takes on more meaning than we could ever intentionally provide
even at our most spiritual, and that we're traveling with a bunch of
wisecrackers who can't let any opportunity pass to make wise.
Tucked,
not perched at the crest of the hill, we first approach walls feet deep with
stacked mortar and rock smoothly polished; a detail of pride in any Rwandan
dwelling from ceilings to walls to floors. Like the exquisite wood carvings in
the hotel, the chapel, the museum, walls of quality are sanded and smoothed
until they are as soft as a water worn pebble from a Colorado river or
Connemara marble. It's understandable, this desire to smooth away the sharp
edges after only one or two excursions on the dusty trails studded with
spear-head sharp shards camouflaged and lying in wait to impale the
unsuspecting foot. At least an Umuzungu's
foot that hasn't been bare toes in the grass since infancy. The feet of every
person we've met in Kibeho make us realize why the gesture of washing the feet
of a traveler portrayed such great
humility and love. Toe nails like hooves, heels like leather, tanned leather.
My gaze is caught by feet several sizes too big slapping the dirt past the worn
rubber rims of the orange shower sandals and dust-covered feet too tiny for the
prized cast off tennis shoes worn safely around the neck until the owners grows
large enough to fill them. I wonder about these feet that tried to scale these
walls during the genocide and if they were escaping or assaulting.
Wooden
gates swing out to let our tour bus enter. Timbers six inches thick only
missing the requisite iron spikes to complete the medieval fortress facade. Ahead
of us, Father Lesek's Range Rover bounces over the last washed out ruts, and we
wonder aloud how many sets of shocks, axels or transmissions he goes through in
a year. The tourists from Philadelphia and Rhode Island question aloud what we
Nebraskans have for a life back in the states. This is, after all, the end of a
three hour trip around the edges of the mountains of Rwanda where winding roads
and hairpin curves, like the Needles Highway in South Dakota, have turned us
back on ourselves to reach our destination. Where, hanging out of tour bus windows,
and choking on red dust thick as silage, we identified crops and trees and
pointed out flowing wells; our agricultural senses attuned to this new place.
We pilgrims trying to name the unfamiliar. We try to make the new our own. We
want so badly to be participating after months and months of anticipating.
The
impressive walls end at the edges of the center end, and iron fencing takes up where
the stone leaves off. Black wrought iron with spiked pickets encloses the
center, and we watch as a small gaggle of children flock to the fence in the
corner of the compound. They could easily scale this barrier, or slip between
the spikes, but hang back respectfully or fearfully, it's too early to tell.
Faces are as smudged and dusty as our own, but the shorn heads and motley
clothing makes it impossible to distinguish genders, and malnourishment makes
us doubt our ability to assess ages. They are small, medium and large like the blue
and white tie-died t-shirts we have brought from the States that proudly
proclaim "Club World Aide" with Gandhi misspelled on the back. They
do not reach through the fence to beg, they simply stare. A simple, unblinking
gaze that watches us closely for signs of weakness or signs of love; as if one
is separate from the other.
"Go
straight! Go straight!" Father shouts to our driver in heavily accented
Polish, but as we have already learned, Jean Baptiste does not always
accurately translate verbal directions and instead we go around the gates of
Cana and enter in through the back entrance; the service vehicle entrance,
Father explains with a smile and a shake of his head. We have already become
comfortable with this contemplative shrug of Father's when Rwandan time plays
havoc with schedules and plans. His resignation formed in good humor makes us
all more patient and by what better place to enter Cana, we muse, than through
the servants' entrance.


Author's note: Every single portion of
the trip was an experience of great sorrow followed by great joy. At every joke
we'd laugh and then grow silent with guilt or sadness. I couldn't shake off the
genocide specter for more than a few moments. It was an eerie, difficult
journey; I fervently wished that I didn't know as much as I did. I hope to capture that throughout the pieces I
write about Rwanda. That said, I don't want it to get annoying or melodramatic.
It always happened, this melancholy. ~ J