I Forgive Because I Must

We were quiet in the car on the way back. Brandon was sleeping. Richard had on a brave face. Contemplative. Shaggy head down. I wanted to talk a little, to debrief. “So, what did you think?” Richard asked after a lengthy silence. I had waited for him to speak the first words. This must have been so hard for him. “I still don’t understand,” I said. “All of those people. The Hutu extremists. They all made a choice. I’ve heard about how well organized it was, about how the French were behind it, about the propaganda. But every one of those killers made a choice that goes against who we are as human beings.” There was another long pause. “They chose to kill.” Richard replied, “If you don’t forgive it’s gonna eat you up, man.” “Do you for give, Richard?” I had wanted to ask him earlier, but I didn’t have the nerve. But after seeing all of that… “Yeah, I forgive. I do. What other choice is there?” Another pause. He looked straight ahead. I was crying. WHAT OTHER CHOICE IS THERE? HATE!!! Here is a man who will never go to church again. “I have no use for the church,” he said the day we celebrated mass at Ganza’a church. It felt like a very long time ago, although it had only been two weeks. He is supposed to videotape a church wedding today and he shudders at the idea. Yet he espouses forgiveness. Much of his family was killed in a church where they went for refuge. His brother was killed in front of him. He was shot and left for dead. But he wants the Hutu and Tutsis to live together in peace. He is doing what Christ taught. Despite his lack of faith in organized religion, he acts more like a Christian than many Christians. He helps the poor. Reasonably. He does not judge. He walks the toughest parts of Kigali. Fearlessly. What else could possibly be done to him, right? He counsels. He is a good and kind man. He doesn’t forget… but he forgives. Again, there is God. Beyond religion. Beyond rules and procedures to get to Heaven. It is God.

Children of Ntarama

Children from the school at Ntarama.

When we were leaving Richard was teaching Serafina some English phrases. He wrote it out for her phonetically in Kinyrwanda so she could pronounce it… “It’s-Nice-To-Meet-You!”

The children from the school were around the cars. They wanted to try out their English. “What is you name?” “Where you from?” “Its-Nice-To-Meet-You!” They wanted handshakes. One little girl stroked my arm. “My you are HAIR!”

The contrast of emotions was amazing. How could we help but smile? How could I not see the FACE OF GOD in these children? In these happy moments?

In The Church

The woman who walked us through the church, Serafina, was calm but reserved. She was very beautiful. Elegant. Poised. She spoke quietly and reverently about what happened in this church. She did not tell us her story. No one asked. Richard translated for us. “In this closet people tried to hide. They locked themselves in but the door was shot to pieces. The door is still there… In this area they killed the little babies by hitting them against the wall… In this area behind the altar the blood stains are this deep…”

We walked into the basement of the church. It is a memorial. There were cases of bones and skulls. Rows and columns. Many skulls showed the cause of death. There was a wooden club, a metal arrowhead, a machete.

Upstairs on the altar was a glass container of rosary beads. One way they could identify those killed was by the rosaries found in their pockets. Many rosaries in a pile. The stained glass windows were broken but enough glass was left to be simple and beautiful. Simple, beautiful, fragile and colorful and broken – Just like the people of Rwanda. The white cloth was left on the altar. It was of course spattered, covered really, in blood. Behind the church were spaces where thousands of the dead have been interred. Simple wooden caskets.

In the underground area behind the church there were still many bodies. Just the way they were found. I didn’t go down there. Cindy and I stayed in the outside air and the sunshine. There were birds singing. The wonderful-rich-musical-innocent-sound of children playing in the schoolyard just on the other side of a concrete block wall. Children born after the genocide. Ants still crawled on the ground. Overhead paper wasps built their nests. Children called out joyfully only 10 meters away. Downstairs and in the church unspeakable reminders of the evil men can do. Over the wall uniformed children with shiny brown faces and brilliant smiles played schoolyard games. And the birds sang. Bullet marks, skulls in rows, rosaries, caskets, clothes, craters, blood stains. Music in children’s voices.

God please help me to use what I have learned and experienced here to lead a better life every single day. Every Single Day.

Cindy cried and gasped for air. It was almost too much to even imagine. As the people prayed their rosaries and begged God to save them… How does Rwanda remain so spiritual? How do they go on living with these memories? Many of the 5,000 would not have been killed if they hadn’t gone to the church for protection. And yet Calliste bows his head and folds his hands in unashamed prayer before he eats. I have eaten with him many times. He always prays before he eats. Quietly. Publicly. Calliste. He sat on one of the benches of the church crying. Quietly. Publicly.

Ntarama

7:14 AM Thoughts about Ntarama. God please help me to use what I have learned and experienced to be a better person and to lead a better life every single day. Every Single Day. 5,000 people came to this small church for refuge. They thought it would be safe here of all the places they knew. I can’t imagine 5,000 people in this small space. They must have huddled side by side for there to be so many in this small church. They locked every door that they could. There was a metal bar gate locked tight when the attackers came. The bars were simply shot out. In Rwanda most structures have ventilation bricks laid right into the walls. There is always a place for fresh air to get in. These spaces in the concrete blocks were used to shoot through. There was no place to hide. 5,000 people standing side by side. Craters in the concrete where grenades exploded, bullet marks everywhere, bomb fragments blown through the ceiling like a clear starry night as the sun shone through – thousands of tiny holes in the corrugated metal roof. Constellations in a black, black sky. The room was bare but for a few artifacts and the uncomfortable wooden pews.

Love

Richard at The Serena during out last night together

Friday, July 17, 2007 12:35 AM
I am going to get to sleep in a few minutes. I will write about Ntarama tomorrow. I have notes in my little red notebook. We said farewell to Richard tonight. There was some live music at the restaurant of the hotel. A little combo that played songs in English, Kinyrwanda and French. Lots of Reggae. Our drivers will be here at 4:30 tomorrow and we’ll head out. I Think we’ll stay pretty close to the hotel today. As I turn in this last night in Rwanda I have such mixed emotions. I do want to come back again. I feel that I must, but I never want to be away from you for this long again. That may seem selfish but I have thought about Rwanda almost exclusively for months now. Reading and rereading Immaculee’s book, the Bishop’s book, Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone (about Sierra Leone), reading stuff on the internet about the history of Rwanda, Youtube stuff on Rwanda. Through this time I have thought about poverty and death as well as grace and forgiveness. For months. I will never forget about Rwanda or this trip, these good people. But I have missed you too much. I am dependent, in some ways, on your consistent presence. Perhaps because I focused so much on human mortality It has made me realize that my days with you are finite. I love you, Heidi. I am certain now that one reason I came is to know just how much I love you. I know.

The Girl in the Road

The roads were mostly good. The dust was low. The temperature was not too hot yet. We passed by many large farm cooperatives growing sugar cane The view in the distant valley was dotted with plumes of smoke. Burning off the cane. While we were driving the traffic stopped suddenly. We thought there must have been a wreck. A few car lengths ahead of us a girl of about 13 or 14 lay in the road sprawled on the pavement. Her flip flops lay in the road next to her. A few people were standing around but it didn’t seem that anyone was doing anything to help her. We got out and approached. We heard “Mzunga” (sp?) among the people around us. It is not an altogether endearing term meaning loosely “crazy white people”. It was really scary. Strange. Surreal. The girl had foamy spit around her mouth and nose. The people in the nearby road crew kept on working. No one moved to touch her. Richard spoke to the people around her. Brandon and I kept back, near the car. When he came back he told us that she had had these spells before. It was a seizure. She was laying front down in the road, her face to the side. Richard explained that “these people” believed that a person with this sickness was contagious and that if you touched her while she was unconscious you would contract what she had (which I read as DEMONS). As bizarre as it sounds he said to get in the car and drive on. What could we do? I felt totally helpless. I wasn’t in a position to act. Still, driving away, leaving her on the hot roadbed was numbing. I felt guilty. Richard said that she would be alright. The people said to Richard that this had happened to her a lot of times. We drove about a half mile and Richard talked to two police to let them know so that they could keep her safe. There was some relief in that. All of this happened before we got to Ntarama.

Going to Ntarama

When we left this morning for the Ntarama Genocide Memorial we started out pretty light hearted. It was Richard, Shaboni (the driver), Brandon and me. We stopped at a traffic light behind a van with a huge GOD IS LOVE sign completely covering the back window. It wouldn’t be legal in the States. A smaller sign below had Richard's last name. He said that it is the name of a town in Rwanda. I don’t want to make more of this than it actually was but the juxtaposition of those words while we were on our way to a church where 5,000 people were killed. A church similar to where Richard’s own family was killed, where they had gone for refuge. GOD IS LOVE… RICHARD...NTARAMA.