From Rwanda: with Love.

Rwanda Night One:
Got up at 4.30 in the morning to drive 12 hours to somewhere in Northern Rwanda on a dusty, dirty, cramped bus piled with USP students and the Ugandan Honours students that came with us as well (about 42 of us?). It was an interesting trip before we even hit the main road as Fahad and Eddie (Honours students) had a bit of singing war and Fahad's voice stopped the engine of the bus to a dead halt (that's the story we're sticking with for explaining the bus dying). It was nice to sit on a high city wall eating gas station lunches and talking politics with the Ugandan students while they fixed our bus. The border crossing was a little intense, having to present our passports to men with rifles across their chests. Between the border of Uganda and Rwanda was this vast dusty space of complete "no man's land" which was terrifying and freeing all at once…

…sitting outside in the African dark on the smooth, cool, dirt red concrete that seems to be the common foundational material of East Africa, leaning against brick wall under one of the few building lights here that reaches outdoors. I can hear chickens, unfamiliar birds cheeping sporadically, a cow moaning and crickets everywhere- until the breeze comes and moves the long, crisp, dry tree fronds and carries children jabbering in Rwandan from across the hill- I hear all of this. But looking out across the deep valley between my hill and the hillside producing this whole African night song- I see absolutely nothing beyond the two inches of pavement past my toes.
I could stay here forever...

Quotes from USP students: "do chickens travel in packs?"
"can you be rabid if you don't have teeth?"
"it was just a hot, sweaty, wonderful worship mess"

...I have no pictures from the first beautiful guest house we stayed at. I feel like I'm so intentionally soaking up everything I don't even have the physical capacity to hold a camera for need to keep both hands always ready for everything else, and to keep both eyes ever fixed on everything happening. I feel no stress to take pictures here, only a burning need to just live every single second. I think Africa and I have an understanding: she is here for me; exposed, raw, presented. But I dare not try and tame her or box her in with a camera lens…

SUNDAY: Today I met the Africa I have always dreamed of. We split into groups to go to Rwandan Anglican churches and as my group's bus turned into the dirt lot for our parish in Gatore- there was a pile of about 60 plus children there jumping up and down and waving and singing in beautiful Rwandan language. Next we were ushered in to meet the reverend by a line of singing Rwandan choir- goosebumps head to tattooed foot. The most beautiful, heavenly sound. We spoke in their service and got to hear seven choirs SING like angels. It was especially cool to see the faces of all the congregation when the children got up to sing and dance- to see that proud parenting and the endearing smiles that watch innocent children stamp their feet translates exactly the same all over the world. I learned that "Neetwa" means "She is called…" as I was introduced "Neetwa Alli" to the congregation. I am learning the flexibility of names in this culture as I seem to adopt a different title everywhere I go… I am called Spartacus by another Ugandan student Joel who discovered I like the movie Gladatior… I am called loca by Eddie since I told him that's the Spanish word for "crazy"… I am Pauline by Timothy who looked at my passport on the bus and thinks I act like an old woman… the list goes on. I also discovered that "hallelujah" esta la palabra mismo en cada idiom (is the same word in every language). THAT may have been the most astonishing, AWESOME part of Sunday.


08.30.10
Squished myself into the back of the bus with Eddie & Fahad (newfound Ugandan friends from the same dorm complex as USP students who went on the Rwanda trip with us) to drive the supposed two hours here to Kigali. Except…after two hours of singing Disney songs and Whitney Houston ballads, we stopped on the side of the road where a little kid had thrown a rock at another bus of ours and shattered the window. So two hours turned into an African two hours…aka almost four before we landed at the marvelous buffet then the Kigali Genocide Museum…

POST RWANDA: 09.06.2010
Everyone keeps asking how Rwanda was. I don't have a lot of words for the trip as a whole. I can say that it was incredible (not like…good incredible…just… undefined incredible) living in the tension that Rwanda presented. On the one hand we were visiting memorials and hearing first hand accounts of people directly effected by the 1994 genocide. I stood in a church (Nyamata) whose tin roof outside the front door still had burned holes in it from grenades that the Interhamwe used to blast open the church door. I walked into a sanctuary and leaned on a wall where various innocent Tutsi people were dismembered and called "cockroaches". I smelled a room piled high of clothes still covered in dried blood from only 16 short years ago and covered in the dust that tries to cover all the history of East Africa. And in that moment, for the first time in my years of being a believer, I found myself incapable of believing that our God is a merciful God. Sitting there, unable to even stand, unable to cry, unable to move- I found I could not let myself believe that He is merciful. Pero en el otro mano, I also experienced the best and most beautiful and sacred of humanity in the developing relationships of our group those nine days in Rwanda. It was amazing to see what came of putting 15 Ugandan students and 32 American students (who still barely knew each other) on a bus to all go experience Rwanda for the first time. To have the variety of interpretations and perspectives of Americans and Africans in this broken country so pushing towards peace and reconciliation in the aftermath of tragedy. Our down time was spent eating, taking tea, doing yoga, playing silly camp games like Ninja, Mafia, zip-bong and blink-you're-dead (kind of appropriately morbid games). Long conversations, theological debates on bus trips and in the open stone courtyard of one of our hostels under a giant red, African moon. As I said- living in the tension of learning about and seeing the results of the worst that humanity has to offer amidst experiencing and growing in the most beautiful moments humans can create- those of developing intimacy and friendship- was breathtaking and bewildering.