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.