Trip to Rwanda

Sat (Aug 29):

Left UCU at 5am; drove for 12 hours. Crossing the border between Uganda and Rwanda was kind of hairy. The process requires getting off the bus, standing in line at Exit Immigration for Uganda with a special form. Then walk across the bridge that forms the border and show your passport to the guard at the gate. Then go to Entrance Immigration for Rwanda with another form. Your passport gets stamped by both sides. Then wait for the bus to be searched and driven over the border. We arrived in Kibungo in time for dinner. We stayed there for 2 nights at the Arch Dioceses Guest House.

Sun (Aug 30):

For church, we were divided into small groups and sent to rural churches in the area. As guests of the congregation, we were expected to lead a significant portion of the service. We sang 3 songs, including one in Swahili. (The words are: Yesu, mi wangu. Wasu ma, wami le le. Roughly translated, it means: Jesus, we love you. You are great/amazing). One of our group, Redman, gave a sermon and 3 of us, including me, gave testimonies. The service was very long, but nice. There were 4 choirs who sang a couple of songs before the traditional part of the service took place. There was a children’s choir, a secondary school choir, a mixed adult choir, and a women’s choir. The service was good in spite of a mistranslation problem. The people only speak Inyarwanda. So we had a translator who explained what was going on to us and translated as we spoke and sang. For my testimony, I praised God for my dad. I explained about his heart attack last year and the life-saving surgery he was able to have. I ended by saying that my family was happy to celebrate another birthday with him this summer. Somehow in the process of my story, it was translated that my dad died. We didn’t realize the mistake until the benediction. The pastor turned to me and apologized for my loss in front of the congregation! I never corrected the mistake because it would have been too complicated to explain and risk the chance of another mistranslation. After the service, we had lunch with the pastor and the deacons. It was a very nice, if stilted meal. We finally got back to the guest house around 4pm.

Mon (Aug 31):

We left Kibungo for Kigali, the capitol. We stayed there for 4 nights at the Presbyterian Guest House. (By the way, the reason we stayed in guest houses rather than someplace else like a motel is safety. It is safer and healthier than any other type of accommodations). Rwanda is much more organized than Uganda. Part of the reason is the high population density in Rwanda. Every square meter of land is used in some way. The farm fields extend all the way to the summit of the hill/mountains. The roads are also better maintained (i.e., no potholes every 5 feet).

Tues (Sept 1):

This day was the start of our education about the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994, the aftermath, and the official work towards reconciliation. Our first stop was the Belgian Memorial. This memorial is on the grounds of that former occupying forces’ barracks. Some of the first to die at the official beginning of the genocide on April 6, 1994, were the Belgian soldiers under the command of Romeo Dallaire of the UN Peacekeeping Force. (He remained throughout the entire genocide working to save people and get ex-pats out of the country). The memorial had 10 pillars of rough stone with notches cut into the corners. 10 pillars for the 10 soldiers killed, the number of notches represented their ages at death. The first barracks building inside the gate is the site of the murders. The front of the building is pockmarked from machine gun fire and grenade explosions. Inside, one of the walls had notes and pictures of remembrance family members have written to their lost loved ones.

The next stop was the National Memorial Museum in downtown Kigali. The museum is dedicated to educating the Rwandans and the world about the history of the genocide, the ideologies that were propagated telling the people that genocide was good and necessary for Rwanda’s survival, and the devastating effects of the choices of a million killers who murdered over a million people in the span of 3 months. The first part -- the social, economic, and political history leading up to 1994 -- of the museum was really more intellectually interesting for me than anything else. Before this trip, I knew almost nothing about the genocide (that there was even a genocide) in Rwanda. The rest of museum was more disturbing. There was an exhibit of bones and skulls, an exhibit of clothes of the deceased, one about children who had been murdered, and an exhibit about other genocides that have occurred around the world. We also watched a Frontline documentary about the genocide.

Wed (Sept 2):

On Wednesday, we visited a memorial in a rural church outside Kigali. This church and the surrounding village was the site of a massacre of over 600 people, many inside the church itself. The gate of the church is severely twisted from a grenade blast the let the killers inside to the people seeking refuge in the sanctuary. The walls and ceiling are also pockmarked from grenade shrapnel. Inside the sanctuary, all of the pews are buried under piles and piles of clothes. The altar cloth is blood-stained from several pregnant women who had their babies removed from their wombs before they themselves were killed. Our tour guide was a survivor of the massacre in that church. He was 8 years old at the time. He survived by smearing the blood of others on his body and lying beneath several corpses for days. He did tell us one encouraging story: at the time, there was an Italian ex-pat living in the village. Because of her white skin, she was not immediately killed. She used her relative freedom of movement to bring food to those, like our tour guide, who survived the initial wave of killing. Behind the church, there were 2 mass graves. We were led down into them. On one side of the 100 ft space, there were coffins stacked 8 deep holding the remains of those who could be identified. On the other, there were shelves after shelves of skulls and bones of those who could not be identified either because of the state of their corpse or that that entire family was wiped out and no one was left to identify the bodies. Needless to say, this memorial was devastating for me. I will never forget that image of those skulls. I have rarely cried so hard in my life. I was crying out of pity, anger, disgust, shock, disillusionment, and absolute horror. The greatest impression I took away from that church was the dead silence. It was that sort of silence that tells you that there are no longer any living beings in that space.

That night we had 2 speakers. They were orphaned survivors, a boy and a girl. The boy is in secondary school and being supported by a member of his church. But, he is also living with HIV. I didn’t quite understand this part of his story, but I think he contracted it from the blood of a corpse when the killers first came to his village. He became so emotional by the end that he could not finish his story. The girl was a pre-teen during the genocide, so she is a little older. Only she and her brother survived from her family. Her brother is in the hospital with HIV/AIDS so she can’t see him as much as she would like. She herself is suffering from a head injury caused by a machete. She also has cuts on her leg, arm, and shoulder. But, the head injury damaged her frontal lobe. She has to take several medications daily to function.

Thurs (Sept 3):

This day we started with speakers. First, there was a church official who is working with the government and the Anglican Church to bring about reconciliation. Reconciliation is the official policy of Rwanda and the Church. Basically, it requires the people to restore unity and peace through forgiveness and the rebuilding of their communities. For the most part, the killers were not military or militia, they were ordinary citizens incited to violence through propaganda and oppression. Before the genocide, the Hutus and Tutsis were neighbors and sometimes even intermarried. The colonial powers, Belgium than France, exploited differences between the ethnic groups that fueled inequalities and hatred of the Tutsis by the Hutus. The genocide began with military of the Hutu extremists, but it spread to ordinary people killing their neighbors. Part of reconciliation is justice. But the only way the government and the Church could implement any sort of punishment is not really justice at all. Then again, killing the killers just perpetuates the cycle. The government used the traditional rural courts to try the murders. It is called Gacaca (gah-cha-cha). If people confess to their crimes, they get a reduced prison sentence. The prisons were beyond capacity, so this was the only solution. Usually, the murders spend half of their sentence in jail, two-thirds of the remaining half doing community service, and then the rest on parole. The government has used that community service labor as a way to rebuild and improve the country’s infrastructure. They repair and build roads, they cut terraces for farming, and demolish and build new homes and villages. The most difficult, but most necessary, part of reconciliation requires the villagers to live together as they once did. So now killers and survivors live next door to each other.

The other speaker also works with the Church, but has training in academia and works as a professor. He elaborated on social and political circumstances that led to the genocide. He also explained more about reconciliation and what the government is doing to help aid orphans and widows and facilitated their livelihood and advancement.

In the afternoon we visited two church projects: a women’s project and an orphan village. There was an interesting episode along the way to the women’s project. That village is on top of a mountain/hill and the road up is a dirt road. About halfway up we started to see workers along the side of the road. They were widening the road by digging farther into the side of the mountain and leveling the road by putting the excavated dirt in the low spots. At first, I thought they were ordinary road workers until I realized they were all wearing the prison pajamas. There were probably 100 men working on that road, all convicted murderers. Unfortunately, our bus was the first vehicle to travel over the newly leveled road. The soft patches of dirt captured the bus’s wheels and we were stuck. Almost immediately, the workers nearest the bus abandoned their pick axes and moved to help push the bus onto harder ground. The bus was too heavy with all of us on board, so half of us had to get off and then the bus was able to make it up.

The women’s project is a village that is designed to bring fruitful work and a livable income to widows. They had crafts, carpentry, farming, cooking, and baking, as well as schools for their children and a church. The orphan village is a section of homes built specifically by the Church with government subsidy for a group of 46 orphans. There is a social worker who lives among them and acts as “Big Mama” to all the children. The orphans are all getting older, so many are marrying and having children; some are finishing school or going to university or trade school. We had a short worship service with them, and then toured their homes. They are building a church/community center, so we toured that as well.

Fri (Sept 4):

We left Kigali and drove back to Uganda. The border crossing was just as interesting as the first time. This was a different border, though. As we were driving, we were only told that we were going to a place on a lake for debriefing. They surprised us by taking us to an island hotel. We arrived in the evening and were taking by motorized canoe to the island. Since we are such a large group, we were the only visitors on the island. Some people stayed in dorms, some in cabins, and some in platform tents. I stayed in a platform tent. It was really nice! I also had the first warm shower I’ve taken since I left home.

Sat (Sept 5):

The morning was spent in debriefing. We talked about what we’d seen and heard in Rwanda, had a little worship, and wrote a short reflection paper. The afternoon was free. So, after lunch, I went on a dugout canoe trip. We had a really big canoe that was rather unwieldy (or we were just incompetent). But it was fun to go around the side of the island and look at the scenery. This lake is the 5th deepest in the world and has dozens of islands ranging in size. There was even a tiny island that had a single tree on it. After canoeing, we went to the rope swing. The water is so deep that you can only stand 5 feet away from shore. There was a platform about 10 feet up the side of the hill that you could jump from and swing way out into the lake. Everyone else was able to swing all the way out, but I fail at rope swings. The first time, I jumped from the platform, hit the ground first, and then fell into the water only a few feet from shore. The second time, I jumped from below the platform at the edge of the water, only made it a few feet and fell again. Finally, the third time, I jumped from the platform and landed in the reeds near the shore. I have nasty bruises on the inside of my knees from that landing. I gave up after that. I swam a little bit after that from the dock and then went back to the tent to get warm. It’s not hot in Rwanda or that part of Uganda. The high altitude keeps is relatively cool all the time. The lake was comfortable to a little too cold. After dinner we had a worship service. 2 people sang songs that they had written; that was nice. Later, some of the girls went skinny dipping. I was invited by I didn’t go because I was still cold from my last swim. It was funny to hear the screeches through the trees. We drove back to school Sunday morning. Classes started Monday the 7th.