Rwanda Diary

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Some last thoughts about being in the Congo:

Toilet Facilities
I’d been using the indoor facilities at the workshop site.  To say it was “indoor plumbing” would be a stretch.  Typical of most of the indoor spots in both countries, it had a toilet, but not one that flushed.  There was, however, a large tub of water and a jug that one uses to pour in some H₂O after one has finished.  On the third day, I noticed that I had been the only one of our group using this indoor site.  When I asked about it, it was explained that the others had been told to use the outdoor, traditional toilet to save on the cost of water.  To tell the truth, I was happy to have been excluded from that announcement.

The UN Presence in the Congo

On our shopping afternoon, I saw a few UN jeeps go by and commented on them.  This started a discussion  about the nature of the UN presence in the Congo and the general confusion about it.  What the population sees, it was explained to me, are well-maintained cars and trucks with plenty of fuel, carrying well-dressed and clean “peacekeepers” and other UN personnel who get plenty to eat.  What they don’t see, apparently, is any intervention by the peacekeepers, even when there is blatant crime and violence while the UN personnel are present.  This has caused growing uncertainty and even hostility on the part of the Congolese toward the United Nations.  According to the United Nations’ own site, this is their definition of peacekeeping:

Peacekeeping is a way to help countries torn by conflict create conditions for sustainable peace. UN peacekeepers—soldiers and military officers, police and civilian personnel from many countries—monitor and observe peace processes that emerge in post-conflict situations and assist conflicting parties to implement the peace agreement they have signed. Such assistance comes in many forms, including promoting human security, confidence-building measures, power-sharing arrangements, electoral support, strengthening the rule of law, and economic and social development.

It’s understandable, then, how an uneducated and desperately poor population could misunderstand the UN’s role, especially when there is such a seemingly huge economic gap between the UN’s personnel and the general population.

No Governmental Support for Initiatives
Unlike in Rwanda, where the government does take responsibility for some of their major infrastructure projects and does occasionally offer some assistance for local initiatives, there is no such governmental support in the Congo. 

Some industrious people, tired of waiting for the government, have taken matters into their own hands.  Here are two examples, one that shows incredible entrepreneurial spirit and one that is a perfect illustration of non-violent direct action.

In a neighborhood typical of the one I wrote about earlier in which the electricity was spotty at best, one of its residents decided that he no longer trusted, or wanted to wait for, the government.  He purchased a huge generator, hooked the neighborhood houses up to it, and now everyone has electricity when they want it.  His neighbors pay him (instead of the national electric company) enough to keep the generator going, plus something for him to maintain it.

In another neighborhood where the road had been scraped flat (not a small undertaking) in preparation for paving, the workers had said they would be back to surface it in a matter of days.  Weeks went by with no further action on the road.  In the meantime, noting the very unusual occurrence of a flat road, drivers were zipping through the neighborhood quickly, stirring up a cloud of dust through which the residents couldn’t even see their hands.  So they did what they could to slow the cars to their former snail’s pace: they collected sharp lava rocks of all sizes and spread them out on the road, causing the cars to go extremely slowly through their neighborhood in order to avoid blowing out tires or ripping off transmissions and other car parts!

Their Final Sentiments
Before I left the seminar, the group presented me with several gifts:

For my funder in the States, a card signed by many of the participants and a large volcanic rock.  There was a hole in the rock into which they had placed a little flower, representing the seed of peace they said I had planted in their harsh environment.

I also received a card, and a handmade caftan from some tie-died cloth.

Here are the translations of the inscriptions in our cards.  It’s clear that their gratitude was immeasurable, although I learned at least as much from them as they did from me.

Translation/Transcription of the Funder’s Thank You Card from Congolese Workshop Participants:

1.    We thank you to have made it possible for Jan Arnow to come and share her knowledge.  We have been blessed by her presence.  We promise to put what we learnt in practice.  May God bless you in all you do.

2.    I thank you for having sent Jan Arnow to come and tell us about Interfaith.  May God provide you with His peace.

3.    May God bless you from the workshop Jan had with us with our input in the Congo.  May peace come back to the Congo with your contribution (of Jan’s time here).  

4.    We are very thankful to the messenger that you sent to give us these instructions that are constructive.  May the everlasting God strengthen for you this spirit of brotherhood with Africans.

5.    Thank you for having sent this messenger of peace to our country, which is characterized by divisions of communities, insurrections and hatred.  Thank you for thinking about this outside country.  May the peace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, together with your preaching, get all nations.

6.    I am honored to greet you and thank you for the good act of sending us Jan Arnow to come and teach us about this very valuable material for three consecutive days.  I am so much satisfied and wish you a great prosperity in your activities of charity.  Thank you.

7.    We are very much thankful and grateful of how you sent us Jan Arnow as a messenger for peace in Congo, our country.  Thanks to you.

8.    It was so nice to hear from Jan that you made her trip to D.R. Congo possible.  Her training on interfaith relations has been very inspiring to us.  We thank you very much for your generosity and good will.  May God bless you.

Translation/Transcription of My Thank You Card from Congolese Workshop Participants:

1.    We thank you for your participatory method and spirit of humanity.  We invite you again.

2.    We thank you for your contribution and participation of our workshop in the Congo.  May the good God bless you.

3.    Thank you so much for your sacrifice to our favor for we have gained from you and we received a precious armor, which will help us fight for peace.  Please don’t stop here.  Thank you.

4.    I thank you for the courage and devotion, which have characterized you during the workshop form which we have gained from your side.  We make a joyful noise for your humanitarian vision, which we are going to plan to implement in the world: the culture of peace and pacific cohabitation and equality of human beings. God bless you.

5.    Thanks and congratulations.  Dear Madame Janne: I am so glad to see you arrive in the Congo to train us and give us knowledge which is very much from your experience.  May God bless you.  I wish you come back as soon as possible so the material that we have learned will be much dug (as in “digging in the brain”).

6.    Dear Jan, Your coming to Goma has been a great blessing to us. The seed you have sown will grow up and contribute to build peace in Congo, our country.  Many, many thanks to you.

7.    Dear Jan, I really appreciate the leadership training concerning Interfaith Relations, during these days.  It was so inspiring and it has solidified what we have learned before.  We trust that this training will not be the last.  Thank you very much.

8.    It has been a blessing from the moment I saw you.  Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.  I believe this is the beginning of a lasting relationship.  May God strengthen you as you work, may His light shine upon you!

Leaving the Congo
Immediately after the close of the workshop, Camarade, Zawadi and Innocent drove me back to the border. Because no visa is required to enter Rwanda, they were able to accompany me into “no man’s land,” helping me with my bags and with the multiple stops I had to make through the volcanic cinders and stones to show my passport, then my Congolese visa, then fill out the entry card for Rwanda and, finally, to show my luggage.  When I was asked how many more days I’d be in Rwanda before leaving to return to the States, I said less than a week.  “It’s not worth it to check your bags then,” the guard said, waving me off with his hand.

Celestine  was waiting for me on the Rwandan border, along with Emmanuel, the brother of one of my CIRR participants, Theoneste.  After many exclamations and hugs (an observer would have thought that I’d just been released from prison after a long and arduous stay except there were no CNN reporters around), we were on our way again back to Kigali.

To pass the time, they taught me a lot of new Kinyarwandan words, and then we sang songs to each other. They started with their national anthem.  I responded with mine.  (If anyone had ever told me that I would be driving along a highway in Rwanda doing a fairly good interpretation of the opening of the Super Bowl, I would have bet him or her money against it.)  They sang some religious songs, harmonizing in their deep voices, and I sang them a medley of my favorites: Trouble in Mind, Tell Old Bill, I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter, You Are My Sunshine, Summertime, There Is Nothin' Like A Dame, I Love You a Bushel and a Peck, and Johnny I Hardly Knew You. They gave me what I’m assuming (and hoping) was a wonderful compliment: “You sing like an Ethiopian!”

Sights Along the Way
We didn’t stop along the way like we did on our way to the Congo because we wanted to get back to Kigali in 3 or 4 hours, so I didn’t take pictures of these things.  But I thought I’d mentioned them so when you’re reading these, please feel free to render them in full color with your imagination:

• Women in full African dress working on paving the road…by hand
• Mud houses on a cliff
• The Lord is Our Savior Saloon
• A small child carrying water on his head with his baby brother on his back
• A mosque in the middle of nowhere
• Tea and coffee plantations
• A sea of blue uniforms running down a hill as school lets out
• The results of a giant wreck involving two big trucks on a small road
• Children running after the car yelling, “Umuzungu!  Ichupa!” which meant, “White person!  Bottles!”  They were asking for our used, empty water bottles so they’d have something in which to take water to school.

Dinner at Cecile’s House
We got back just in time to change clothes, drop off the bags, and head out to Cecile’s house for dinner.  As with the other homes I’ve visited, friends, neighbors and relatives were also invited because having a respected guest is a special occasion. 

And it was, indeed, a special dinner: pasta, French fries, white sweet potatoes, plantains, roasted ears of corn, rice, stewed greens, some meat and sauce.  I asked if they eat this way every night and, laughing, they told me that this was the kind of meal that they make only as a Christmas feast, or when having very special company.  It was such an honor to be invited to Cecile’s home, modest though it was, and to be considered such a privileged visitor.

Dinner at Zainabo’s House
The next day was for planning, writing and preparing for my final workshop beginning the following day.  And dinner that evening was at the home of another workshop participant and friend, Zainabo.  This time it was light enough out when I arrived that I was able to be shown around the house.  Zainabo’s husband, who was working late that night at the Heineken plant, is Catholic, but she and her children, several of whom were with us for dinner along with other relatives, are Muslim.  The meal was much the same as the night before, with the addition of deliciously seasoned rice and cassava leaves.

Zainabo’s little 3-year-old niece was there, too, and as the television was on, we were all half-watching an American soap opera that had been dubbed in French.  The hilarious moment of the evening came when this little girl, having seen the leading man try to kiss the leading woman on the television, shouted out in Kinyarwandan, “Don’t you put your mouth on her!!!!”  Everyone howled!  Looks like this little one might be successful in avoiding sexual abuse when she grow up!

Then, finally, back to my room and my mosquito net for a bit of shut-eye before starting my fifth, and last, workshop of the trip.

Congo Training, Day 3

This time when we checked in with each other at the opening of the third day of training, people were finally ready to talk. 

Sharing Their Feelings
One man said that he works with an association of women and they were having problems.  Some of the women were even stealing and selling each others’ belongings.  He thought about the parable I had related the day before,** and about the violence pyramid, and he's now going to look for the causes of the quarrels.

Another said:
“Thank you for letting me speak.  (This sentence was repeated by everyone who spoke.)  Your teachings match what we are facing here in Congo today.  They are very valuable.”

And another spoke up:
“Before you came, I was losing heart.  I have raised 18 children, none of them my own.  Many are not even aware of their differences.  So your lessons about collaboration were very valuable.”

And another:
“I compared this seminar to others we have had.  I saw that this is a shortcut to peace.  You have been emphasizing leadership and how we can help resolve conflict.  When people collaborate and work together, peace can be found faster.  I compare your pyramid model to the situation in this region.  At the bottom was before the war.  In the middle were signs of coming war.  Then at the top: war.  When we squeezed into the top, it was like people fleeing and entering the camps.  People there are still in the top, are still suffering, weeping, and the numbers are increasing.”

And still more:
“These skills, especially about knowing our environment and building trust, are so valuable.  Also, power with people is a new concept for us because our leaders use power over.  And the fifth skill – that we need to teach each other – works with the sixth skill: that we first need to know ourselves.”

“Your pyramid of violence model will be good for our work in the camps.  It is very valuable.”

“These teachings really brought back our hope.  I see many leaders leading with power over, never power with.  But in this situation these teachings will help us reduce conflicts.  Even in our households, especially for mothers.  They never learned this.  You speak of gender balance and without it you have one of the roots of conflict in homes and communities.  We now see how leaders can help with that.”

“We will not only work with this new interfaith group, but each of us is taking these lessons to our individual congregations, cooperatives, groups and families.  Our Mother (he was referring to me!  Age does have its benefits.) has equipped us, given us tools, to create peace and reduce conflicts.”

Laying the Groundwork for This New Interfaith Coalition
It was clear that they were on the right track.  After several more exercises that stressed communication, gaining alignment, stress and burnout, diversity issues  and getting what they needed in order to do the necessary work, and then lunch where they chatted excitedly (I think it was about the workshop, but they could have been saying, "Hurry before that old white lady takes all the pineapple!"),  we began to talk about different types of interfaith communities.  I next asked them to work in small groups to discuss this question: “What can you do together as a group that you couldn’t do alone?”  After lunch, we regrouped and I answered questions for about an hour. 

Then it was time for them to answer some big questions:

1.    What do you want to call your group?

2.    Who will you choose as members of a transitional  “executive committee” to lead your interfaith group into the next months of work together?

Interestingly, their first response was to vote for the committee members, even after all of our conversations and discussions about consensus building!  All of this really was pretty new to them, so I said, laughing, “No!  We’re not going to vote!  When you vote, there’s a winner and a loser.  Anyone here want to be a loser???” 

They snapped out of that mode pretty quickly and began to cautiously dip their toes into the consensus pond.  We didn’t have enough time together to carry out a flawless consensus process, so as a compromise they ended up with two people sharing the job of President, two people sharing the job of Vice President, a Treasurer, a Secretary, and two “Advisors,” or members-at-large.  This is probably for the best since it’s going to be more difficult to get people together in Goma than in Kigali, and job-sharing might prove more practical in this part of the world, at least for the transition team.

Naming the group was easier.  They felt that since there was already a sister group in Kigali named the Center for Interfaith Relations of Rwanda (CIRR), they should name themselves the Center for Interfaith Relations of the Congo (CIRC), and then be mentored by CIRR.

And thus was born what we believe to be the first interfaith association in the Congo’s history.

(Tomorrow: Leaving the Congo and the Return to Rwanda)

** The Parable of the River

Once upon a time there was a small village on the edge of a river.  The people there were good and life in the village was good. One day a villager noticed a man floating downstream in the river, flailing about and drowning.  A Hero was walking by and the villager asked the Hero to save the man.  So he quickly swam out to save the man from drowning. The next day this same villager noticed two men floating downstream in the river, also drowning.  He called to the Hero for help, and both men were rescued from the swift waters.  And the following day four men were seen caught in the turbulent downstream current.   And then eight, then more, and still more! 

The villagers organized themselves quickly, imploring the Hero to continue to save the drowning men.  Finally, the Hero said, “No!  I won’t jump in the water anymore!” 

“But, why not?” they asked.  Surely all the men will die!”

"Because I’m going to go upstream to find out who’s throwing all of these men into the river in the first place!  If I can find out who is throwing them in, we can stop the problem and no more men will drown!”

Training in the Congo, Day 2

After another silent breakfast at the convent, Camarade picked me up for our second day of training.  We began by “checking in” with each other, something they are not yet used to doing as their culture teaches them to hold their feelings inside of them, not unlike the Rwandans.

Blindfolded Star
I officially opened the day’s training with one of my favorite exercises: The Blindfolded Star.   (I usually do this outside in a large space, but the ground outside the training room was dangerously peppered with lava rocks and stones.  I knew if I was blindfolded, I’d soon find myself scraping my hands and knees in the cinders so we did this exercise within the confines of the training room.)

I asked everyone to stand up and gather around to watch me take two large rope circles and lay them on the floor, overlapping them in two intersecting triangles, to form a six-pointed star.  I asked if anyone thought they could do this and they all said they thought they could.  I asked them how many of them would describe themselves as being collaborative.  Once again, they all raised their hands.  So I divided them into two groups, made certain that the first group understood that their task was to repeat what I had made on the floor, and then added an additional requirement: they had to do this task blindfolded!  After tying on all the blindfolds, I handed the two pieces of rope to two different participants and told them to begin the exercise.  As always, it was hilarious to see the various members of the group trying to coordinate with each other enough to even approximate the shape I had made.  And, as always, there were people who actively tried to maneuver by themselves with no coordination with others, some who stood completely immobile, and still others who used some of the senses they had left – hearing/speaking and touch, in particular – to try to complete their assigned task.  Needless to say, the first group didn’t come close to forming a star. 

The follow-up discussion centered on what was missing – a leader! – and on how difficult it had been to function without someone directing their efforts.  When the second group tried it, several people stepped forward to assume leadership and their “star” was much more complete. 

As I had done last year with the Rwandan group, I explained that there had been a study by one of our leading foundations in the United States (the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) that identified a number of critical skills and capacities that collaborative leaders needed to have:

They are:

1. Assessing the environment for collaboration (understanding the context for change before you act)

2. Creating clarity -- visioning and mobilizing (defining shared values and engaging people in positive action)

3. Building trust and creating safety (creating safe places for developing shared purpose and action, especially important in this region of the world)

4. Sharing power and influence (developing the synergy of people, organizations and communities to accomplish common goals)

5. Developing people (mentoring and coaching; committing to bringing out the best in others and realizing people are your key assets)

6. Self-reflection (being aware of and understanding your values, attitudes and behaviors as they relate to your own leadership style and their impact on others.

Each of these elements, I explained, is key to the collaborative process. They are not mutually exclusive but support each other and provide a comprehensive picture of the essential skills of a collaborative leader.

So, I said, here’s the real question:

Do you want to establish your interfaith group as empire (dividing and conquering), or as community (coming together and sharing)?  Again, the question came down to power over, or power with.

They all agreed that the history of their country had evolved through the former...and not very well, either…and that power with was their best course.

A Lunch Break
During lunch, I ventured out back again to say hello to the cooks (and the baby that had been sleeping on the back of one of the  women the day before but this day was just finishing up a rice meal), and realized that the small space was doubling as a sewing school for area women.  Like many parts of the Great Lakes Region, there are countless widows and women who, for one reason or another, need to be the primary income earners (if at all possible) for their families.  This group of women was being taught to sew through a cooperative started by Immaculee, one of my workshop participants, and the class was in full swing with ancient hand-wheeled Singer sewing machines.  Since many of the garments worn by these Africans are made by hand rather than mass-produced (especially for the women who still, for the most part, wear traditional dress) sewing is as good a potential source of income as any for these women. 

The Training Continues
The day proceeded as before – pause café, more exercises, discussions,  small group work, slowing down as the room got hotter and hotter.  There was a slight breeze that rattled one of the large sheets of paper on the wall, and before I could tear off another piece of tape to anchor the paper to the wall more securely, someone got up and shut the windows!  Aaaccck!  Luckily, it was just hot, not hot and humid. 

Despite the heat, we covered coalition building, diversity issues, turfism and conflict.  During lunch I had laid out a model of my violence pyramid model on the floor with tape and that lesson following lunch, I believe, had more impact on the group than any of them.  The premise is that conflict and violence (or any social problem) is like an iceberg.  (Despite living near the equator, they all recognized this picture of an iceberg!)  Only the tip of the iceberg shows above the water.  Similarly, only the action component of the problem (in the case of violence and conflict that would be rapes, murders, fighting, etc.) showed.  But what creates and supports those actions are the structural and cultural causes of violence and conflict.  Another way to describe this, I explained, is to think of an earthquake – the earthquake is the action, or direct “violence;” the movement of the tectonic plates is the structural piece, and the fault line on which the tectonic plates sit is the real origin of the earthquake.

Further, when people are stuck in the “tip of the iceberg,” their only responses are one of the three “F’s” – fight, flight or freeze.  I demonstrated this by asking for 4 volunteers to first step into the largest part of the pyramid, and then moved them up through the middle section to the tip.  Naturally, they wanted to push the others aside to give themselves more room, or to leave the section altogether.  We talked a lot about the ramifications of this model and how they could use it in their work, both as individuals and as a group.  I think this is when the light really came on for this cohort.

Another Excursion After Work
Zawadi, Innocent and Camarade wanted to take me to see the refugee camps after work, but before we could get out the door we were met by a family from the camps who came to beg for money. Zawadi told me that this is not an unusual occurrence.  Each family gets a monthly ration of food – beans, rice, that sort of thing – but the food runs out way before the month does, even with careful planning on the family’s part.  With no source of income inside the camps, many families leave for the day and walk the miles into Goma to see what they can either forage or beg.  I gave them some money for which they were very grateful and talked with them for a little bit.  This family consisted of a grandmother, a young girl, and a mother with a nursing baby and another on her back.  I was especially sad when I realized that the grandmother might easily be as many as 20 years younger than I am.

We drove out to two IDP (internally displaced persons) refugee camps – first an official UN camp and then an “unofficial” camp where refugees had moved when unhappy with the official site (although I couldn’t tell the difference) – and I was not allowed to leave the car because 1) we hadn’t received permission to visit, and 2) it was potentially dangerous for me to do so. 

The conditions were appalling.  These packed, squalid pieces of land have been home to thousands of people, in some cases for years on end.  It was a living nightmare.  The ground, like in other places in Goma, was solid volcanic rock.  The dwellings, if you could even morally call them that, were constructed of reeds over which thatch would be attached, with plastic tarps on top of that reading, “UN-HCR” or “USAID” on them.  They were not tall enough in which to stand; yet entire families lived in each of them.  Smack up against another hut.  And then another.  And then another.  I wanted to get out and talk with people, and when I return to the Congo I will make sure I get permission in advance.  I can’t imagine living in these conditions.

On our way back to town, we stopped at a place they called Green Lake because they wanted to show me that among the deprivation there is also some beauty.  And it was extraordinarily beautiful – a lovely green lake at the bottom of high cliff walls surrounding it, looking almost like a crater lake.

There was a family there and I asked if they were having a picnic.  “No,” Zawadi explained.  “These people come to wash their clothes.”  They climb all the way down to the lake because this water is free.  They’re not having a picnic.  They’re resting.”

We take so much for granted in our lives.

Training in the Congo: Day One, Part 2

(Continued from previous post)

After everyone had a chance to show off their Lego sculptures and explain their visions of peace, I asked if anyone knew why I had chosen to take so long on the introductions.  Their answers were all similar and right on the money – because we didn’t know each other and, especially in this culture of instability, it takes time to learn about one another.  Further, we couldn’t be sure we were in a psychologically safe place until we had taken the time to get to know one another.

Equity Perspective
To broaden their understanding about each of us having potentially different worldviews, I next placed some objects on the floor in the middle of our circle – a roll of tape, some markers, Legos and pens.  I then asked each of them to describe what they saw in just a few words.  “A design with many colors.”  “A circle.”  “These are materials we are using in this seminar.”  “Things gathered together.”  “A window of a house.”  And, of course, “Pens, marker and tape.” 

“Which description is correct?” I asked.  “All of them,” they replied after a few seconds.  Obviously, that’s right, and it was the first part of the equity perspective they were to learn about: no two people share exactly the same world view; and even though we in the room were each different from one another, all of our perceptions were valid and “correct.” 

After going over the day’s agenda  and some basic rules of the seminar, adding some that the participants suggested, we had our first pause café with Fanta.

Designing Pathways
The next part of the seminar was the exercise about designing pathways between a series of office buildings that had been built around a central green.  I stated the problem as this:

An architect in Goma built a cluster of office buildings around a central green space.

When construction was completed in the spring and the buildings were occupied, the landscape crew tried to find the architect to ask him where he wanted the sidewalks, but he’d already left the Congo for his next assignment in Burundi.

Their challenge was to take over the architect’s job and come up with the best way to determine where to place the paved paths between and around the buildings.

They worked together in small groups for about 15 minutes and then shared their solutions.  The first thing I noticed was that, unlike any of my other groups, they each restated the entire problem as though we had never heard it before.  The second thing I noticed was before any of them spoke, they said, “Thank you for letting me speak.” This held true throughout the entire 3-day workshop.  Furthermore, whenever taking anything I offered – pens, papers, notebooks, anything – they held out both hands, palms up, as though they were being offered something of value and were gracefully, and gratefully, accepting it with enormous respect.  A small difference in cultures, but noticed.

Their solutions to the exercise varied, of course, from group to group, the most interesting (to me) being the one solution that removed the green space entirely and paved it with roads to keep the lion population down, thereby keeping the population safe!  The only thing common to all the groups was that the structures went from being office buildings in the original problem description to houses or churches!  As usual with this exercise, no one had thought to ask the residents of the buildings what their needs were.

We then took some time to talk about the lesson in this exercise: sometimes we think we know what’s best, but often the best resolution is to work with the people we are serving to determine together the best solution for all.  In other words, using power with rather than power over.  Not surprisingly, they were able to relate easily to this maxim, connecting it to their own government’s inability to work with their people to jointly discover solutions to the many social and infrastructure problems in the Congo.

Lunch, then Back to Work
Leaving them chatting together, I ducked out the back of the structure to see about lunch preparations.  As in Rwanda, almost all food is cooked in aluminum pots over charcoal braziers (or, more simply, just over rocks holding in the charcoal) and I found three women working on the  floor to cook lunch for our 25-person group – one woman grinding garlic in a wooden pestle; another, with a baby on her back, stirring the stew; and yet another supervising the operation.  It looked like incredibly hard work, but I was assured that these women were grateful for the employment.  Lunch that day was a bean stew with lots of garlic, boiled plantains, a little meat (beef?), rice, what they called “soup,” but was really a thin sauce, French fries, and pineapple and those little, sweet bananas for dessert.  (They tell me that they're so sweet because they're allowed to ripen on the vine, but I think they're a completely different type than what we get in the States.)

After eating and resting a bit, and as it got hotter in the room, we slowed down somewhat to accommodate the heat.  We did some additional exercises (none too strenuous!) and talked about finding causes rather than focusing only on effects, something we’d study more the following days.  We also talked about barriers and how to move around them rather than continuing to repeatedly butt our heads up against them, hoping they’ll move or disappear.  I was delighted when one of the participants, Bahizi Emanuel, who is a nurse in addition to his peacemaking work, correlated my lesson with taking antibiotics.  “When we take an antibiotic and it doesn’t work,” he said, “we are foolish to continue with more and more courses of the same drug.  Then it’s time to try something else.”  It was really gratifying to me to hear them relating what we had been talking about to their own lives in whatever way they could.

End of the Day’s Lessons
I ended the day’s workshop with this story:

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign that said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"

The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way."

What he had written was: "Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it."

Both signs told people the boy was blind. While the first sign simply said the boy was blind, the second sign pointed the fortunate ones to their positive possibilities.

Be creative. Be innovative. Thinking differently and positively can bring some unexpected results.

An Excursion to Find Fabric…and Chukudus!
There was still some time after the day’s work before dark when we all had to be inside, and I wanted to try to find some African cloth.  I had been told that it was less expensive in Goma than in Kigali, so Zawadi, Camarade and I took off on my quest.  I did find some cloth (although not significantly less expensive), and made the aquaintance of many different cloth sellers.

But what really piqued my interest were the hundreds of wooden scooters, called chukudus, conveyances that adolescent (and younger!) boys were using to ferry about huge loads of things from one part of Goma to another – bags of rice, produce, building materials – sometimes as much as 300 pounds at a time, Zawadi told me.  Chukudus are cobbled together from whatever materials can be found locally and are maneuvered by the rider kneeling on a “pad” (sometimes an old flip flop) nailed to the center of what would be the down tube on a bicycle.  Some of them even have rudimentary brakes, although I couldn’t quite figure that part out just by looking.  I was so fascinated by these that I bought a miniature one to bring home with me.  (Interestingly, when I got back to Kigali and showed my Rwandan friends my mini-chukudu, they told me that these scooters had also been used in Rwanda but had been banned by their government because they were “too African!”)

Another Potentially Hare-Brained Idea
Now, I have this off the wall idea about making a form of these in the USA (or providing a do-it-yourself pattern) for use by Americans who want a cheap, fossil-fuel-free mode of conveyance made from local materials for tooling around their neighborhoods, and then sending the profits back to the Congo to help with the interfaith and peace programs there. 

Anyone out there interested in helping me get this project off the ground???

Training in the Congo: Day 1, Part 1

Like clockwork the next morning, after a silent, solitary breakfast, the gates reopened and Camarade appeared at the convent to pick me up, ready to take me to the training site down the ubiquitous rutted roads, where there were any roads, and across tons of lava rock.  The training site also happened to be the headquarters for the Ebenezer Peace Center, the Friends Church and CAPP – Change Agents Peace Program – run by coordinator Jeremy Zabinita, a wonderful Congolese Quaker who spent many years studying in Oregon before returning to the Congo to help his people. 

Our First Encounter
Slowly the group filtered in, more cautious of one another than the Rwandans had been during their first day last June.  Not much eye contact between them.  No talking among them.  Seemingly watchful and guarded.  Innocent was there to translate for me, and after I set up my teaching supplies I introduced myself with the Rwandan name that had been given to me: Nyirarukundo.  That broke the ice, and they told me what the translation of that name is in Kiswahili: Mapendo, meaning, “love.”  So, wanting to make sure I was speaking their language at least as much as I could, I said next in Kiswahili, “Naitwa kwa jina la Mapendo,” meaning, “My name is Love.”  I’ll never know if their laughter and applause was for my keen language skills (I doubt it) or because my pronunciation was badly muddled (more likely). I do know that it was at that moment they began to relax and accept me as more than just another Westerner coming to drop off my information and bolt. 

Opening, Again, with Legos
Once again, I opened the workshop with my oft-used Legos  (although this trip I would be leaving them behind for the children of Gate of Hope and the George Fox School), and I asked the group  to each create a metaphor for their idea of a peaceful community.  Hesitant at first since, like the previous groups, none had ever seen Legos before, they soon stormed the table to grab handfuls of the colorful plastic pieces, and gamely began working  in earnest on their sculptures.   

Their finished pieces were wonderful – sometimes poetic, sometimes more practical – and all focused exactly where I wanted them to be: envisioning peace among many who are different.

 Jeremy Zabinita, Evangelical Friends Church, Coordinator of the CAPP Program:
Mine is like a tower.  This tower, green color, is the foundation of peace.  I built the tower on the foundation with different kinds of people – colors – different people, all who built the tower together.  On the top there is one person, the one who has lifted her hands – come and build together on this foundation of peace.

Nizuzeh Zawadi, Evangelical Friends Church, Jeremy’s daughter, Coordinator of the HROC Program (Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities, a program that was started at the Friends Peace House in Rwanda):
I’m amazed that I made something so much like my father’s!  Green means good harvest.  The different colors around it (6 colors) represent different communities.  These communities will build on a place that will have a good harvest.  There is a door here.  Everyone can enter the door to be with others who don’t discriminate with each other.  The tower shows them all together – yellow not supposed to be with yellow, green not only with green.  It’s a door of peace so everyone can enter and live together.  This is representative of lessons that we are going to learn this week.

Maombi Dorcas, Evangelical Friends Church, wife of the pastor and a Sunday school teacher:
This is kind of a house.  The different colors represent those children I take care of.
(She and her husband care for 18 children.) 

Kursumu Mwongo, Muslim, Chair of Muslim Women in Masissi area (where a great deal of the worst fighting has taken place).  She also takes raped women to the hospital:
Before, Muslims worked alone.  Friends have taught us that we can work together.  So I built a small house with a big door.  We enter through the door to get peace.  There are lots of colors for all of us.

Nkubihinda Julien, Seventh Day Adventist, secondary school teacher of French and history and a student in community development at the university:
My foundation is the natural environment.  All people must live together on this land.  I have 7 different colors and they are all mixed up.  They represent society living together as if there was an earthquake: through there is calamity, we can stay together.

Bernadette Bashanga, Evangelical Friends Church, takes care of women who have been raped and leads a cooperative of women:
My piece is a combination of different women who don’t discriminate by tribe or race.  They all work together.

Alexis Hatumbimana, Christian Assembly of Goma, law student at Goma University working on human rights:
This is a vision without frontiers.  According to this opening, of how we can look at peace in the Congo, this is Congolese society.  It has many different parts.  Congolese society is full of many tribes.  So that they can live together, they have to learn about one another.  It is easy to get glued to one another because, in my piece, they love one another and can accept one another.

Byamungu Ismael, Evangelical Friends Church, businessman:
I also made a tower.  The foundation represents a church.  It resembles everyone else’s.  When I preach the gospel, I preach to different tribes who come to church.  When they reach church they have fellowship together, share their thoughts and ideas and have joy.

Emanuel Nyarusaza, Baptist, pastor of a church:
For the first time I’m realizing it is hard work.  I refused the color red because it is an image of blood.  For me, I do not accept that picture of blood in a house of peace.  I have two stories in this house: the foundation is blue and represents people who are bad but have good in their hearts.  The next color is white, the desire of all people to have no bad things.  There is also an extra story – yellow – for people to sleep.

David Barayagwiza, Seventh Day Adventist, geography teacher and community development student at the university:
I wanted to design a circle, but it’s difficult with these pieces (much laughter) so I designed a rectangle instead.  The circle means love.  That means that if everyone loves one another and holds hands together, from there peace will be found.  As I am doing development work, they say there is no development without peace.

Christophe Musebecki, Baha’i, taking care of 11 – 14-year-old children:
According to my work, I have made my sculpture.  The foundation is the soil, and the other colors are other tribes.  There are empty places, like water near the soil.  Through these colors the earth and world are one.  I can be in Africa, Europe, Asia, even if you come from one continent, we are created by one God to live on one earth.  If we are together, we cannot fight anymore.  Because if I love my neighbor, I won’t want him to suffer.

Eddie Nzamurambaho, Catholic, works with the AVP (Alternatives to Violence) program an is a civil servant in the government:
Mine is like a machine, a crane, to lift things up.  It means the Great Lakes Region (Rwanda, Congo, Burundi) has had serious wars that have destroyed everything.  The war is almost finished and we want to rebuild.  It was not only the Congolese but many people were involved in the destruction.  So now the rebuilding must be by everyone and our techniques must be modern.

Mukankaka Immaculee, Evangelical Friends Church, AVP Facilitator and Mediator, leads peace workshops for CAPP:
This picture equals the work I do.  The big gate represents different women who enter because our purpose is to have all of the women to bring back the peace that we are lacking in our life.  The colors are mixed.  They equal the area tribes because we have realized that if you teach one woman, you have taught the whole nation since women are the engines of the nation.  Next to the women are the children – the hope of tomorrow.  That is why we have a big gate, so we can hold one another to bring back the peace.

Bahizi Emanuel, Seventh Day Adventist, facilitator and nurse:
Before, Congo used to have peace.  That is the meaning of the white in my piece.  The yellow is mineral resources.  Red is war, with bloodshed, too.  The UN has sent us peacekeepers, so why is the blood still shed?  As we are gathering together here, we are coming from different tribes and communities and each and every family has lost people.  The whole world is praying for us that we regain the peace.

Mudateba Aime, Evangelical Friends Church, law student:
Bear with me.  I have designed many things here.  In the way I have tried to conceive peace, I have the authorities leading the country in the right way.  I have tried to show that the pride of the leaders must be broken in order for peace – the President is not supposed to make decisions without the input from others.  Others are children, and they must be taught peace.  I have a school here and teachers who should be teaching peace.  The black in the middle is a gun that remains.  All guns must be put down.

To be continued...

 

Crossing Into the Democratic Republic of the Congo

My Rwandan friends had advised me that as bad as the roads were in Rwanda, they would be worse in the Congo.  I couldn’t have imagined how bad they really were.  And how much they were to herald what I would be seeing there, almost as a metaphor for the devastation and poverty of the country.  As soon as Innocent and I started walking, I realized that we were stepping almost exclusively on lava rocks,  cinders and dust.  I remembered that this was the city that was nearly covered in lava after the eruption of 11,400-foot Mount Nyiragongo volcano 2002.

Devastation in the Congo



“Volcanic Eruption Devastates War-Weary Congo City,” read the world headlines in 2002.  Once a popular playground for white settlers in Africa, and described in the 1950s as a "heaven on Earth," Goma, the city closest to the Rwandan border, has in the past several decades become almost synonymous with misery.

In 2002, Mount Nyiragongo – one of Africa's deadliest volcanoes – erupted, spewing orange lava onto this town. Swathes of magma up to 165 feet wide oozed down streets, burning everything in their wake and finally pouring into Lake Kivu, contaminating the water with poisonous ash.   Later, cooling lava left walls of black stone, in some places five feet high, cutting off one section of the town from another. The volcano wrecked about 40 percent of Goma and sent an estimated 350,000 people fleeing across the border into Rwanda.  The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that 200,000 of those were children under 15 – half of them under five years old.

In humanitarian terms, people from Goma have endured maybe the worst series of crises imaginable.  Not that it makes these catastrophes any easier, but people from this region are accustomed to hardship. In 1994, more than one million Rwandan Hutu refugees, escaping prosecution and retribution from the Tutsi-led government, fled to Goma, putting an enormous strain on the city.  Also in 1994, there was a cholera outbreak in Goma that killed more than 15,000 people.  Then, civil wars erupted in late 1996 and 1998, bringing the unpopular Rwandan-backed rebels Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) into town. They set up headquarters in Goma, and were accused of human rights abuses, allowing the population to go hungry, and exploiting natural resources.

There has been deadly fighting and unspeakable violence in the Congo in one form or another for too many decades to count and it continues today in many regions.  It doesn’t help that there are more than 250 separate ethnic groups, or tribes, that make up the Congolese population, each with its own dialect and set of customs.  Add to that the use of the Congo as a battleground by Rwandans, Ugandans and Burundis and what you’re left with is an unstable population by any count.

For a more complete history of the most recent fighting in the Congo, log onto
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/congo.htm.

Post-Apocalypse
Even knowing all of that, and remembering Rachel’s warnings, I was not ready for the post-apocalyptic scene I witnessed when crossing the border.  It seemed to me that this is what a town must have looked like in the old west, but without the sheriff and a lot more crowded.  As poor as Rwanda is, the Congo is so much more destitute.  As meager as are the Rwandan resources, the Congo is living with far less.  And in contrast to the Rwandans’ personal resiliency, the Congolese, on the whole, seemed to be depressed, angry, and at times openly hostile.  They have no consistent source of water even though Goma is located right on the beautiful Lake Kivu, and their electricity is totally absent at worst and sporadic at best, sometimes coming on only for a few hours a day for several days before their bill is to be paid each month.  One Congolese friend explained, “It is simply not a priority of our government.  They turn it on right before the bills are due and say, ‘Pay up!  See?  You have electricity!”

Because there is no consistent electricity, and the resources are so scarce, no one goes outside after dark, which comes between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m., unlike the situation in Kigali where people walk around all day and night. If you are not home by dark in the Congo, you sleep wherever you are.  In Rwanda, every household that can afford it hires a night guard.  In the Congo, I was told,  that just doesn’t work because the perpetrators are armed and simply kill the guards to gain entrance into the houses. 

Rape, and No Money, Are Facts of Life
Rape is a huge problem in the Congo.  The first big building I saw was a hospital called Heal Africa, the place where many women who have been raped are first taken. “Rape is another type of weapon,” a Congolese friend told me.  “So each faction has to rape the women of the other side.  I know of many cases where three generations of women in a single household were raped – the grandmother, the mother, and the 12-year-old little girl.”  In another case I heard about, a young girl from one of the refugee camps was looking for firewood to sell to pay for her school fees when she was raped.  To make matters worse, when young girls are raped, they are frequently kicked out of their families because of the shame.

I never saw a child playing with any toy other than the occasional ball made of rags, or a stick and a discarded bicycle wheel, and I saw hundreds, if not thousands of children.  None of the police, soldiers, government workers or teachers make a salary.  It was explained to me that the school fees that each child who is lucky enough to attend school must pay also provide some money for the teachers.  The police and soldiers either plunder, beg or take bribes to make money. 

I witnesses two such experiences in that many days.  On my first full day there, police stopped our car and our driver, a wonderful young man named Camarade Bahizi, was told that his papers were expired.  They argued because the papers were, in fact current, but Camarade was given a citation anyway.  My friends explained to me that the policeman was looking for a bribe, but that they had refused to give it to him and were issued the ticket as a result. When Camarade went to the police station the next day to complain, and pointed out the policeman who had issued the citation, the man started to run and hide because he knew Camarade was right and could prove it.

The next day, as we were leaving the workshop site, a soldier came up to the car and begged for some money.  In this case, he was given some bills because, as another friend told me, “The soldiers have a much harder job than the police. They are put in danger much more often; they must fight and many more are killed.  They are sent all over the country and must leave their families at home.”  And, it seemed, begging for money was a more honest method than seeking bribes. 

“Yes,” said another Congolese friend who was in the car when this happened.  “But they come home, leave their wives pregnant, then go off again.  When they come home, their little ones are already walking, then they leave their wives pregnant again.”  When I asked about birth control here, they laughed and said, “Condoms and birth control are available for free here, but the Catholic Church says they must not use them, and even others say it is against the Bible.  No one uses birth control in the Congo.”

An Oasis in the Midst of Desolation
Camarade,  who had picked me up with Samuel along with a radiant young Congolese woman named Zawadi on the Congolese side of the border, drove us to the place I would be residing for the duration of my stay in the Congo.  Down unbelievably rutted roads, with no traffic lights, signs, rights of way, street signs or, for that matter, streets in many cases, we came to a set of large iron gates.  Camarade honked, and the gates slowly opened onto a glorious refuge, complete with  manicured lawns and lush plantings, right on Lake Kivu.  I was leaving the black and white world of Kansas and entering the sparkling world of Oz!!!  I fully expected the lava cinder pathway to turn into a yellow brick road!  As we meandered up the long driveway, I realized that we were not in Oz but instead entering a convent.  Eeeeek!  It wasn’t the Wizard of Oz!  It was The Nun’s Story and I was Audrey Hepburn!!! 

A young nun who spoke no English met us, and I was left in her care by my Congolese friends who promised to pick me up at 8:00 the next morning to take me to the workshop site.  Struggling to communicate with my high school French, she showed me my room in the convent – a simple room with a single (rock hard) bed, a small writing desk, a crucifix on the wall as the only decoration, and a stunning view of Lake Kivu, and somehow communicated that dinners were at 6:30 and breakfasts were at 7:30.  She left, I unpacked, and went downstairs to walk around the grounds and then make my way to the dining room for dinner. 

It was eerily silent.  I didn’t see another soul.  Anywhere.  I entered the dining room, and my meal was waiting for me as though it had magically materialized without the intervention of human hands.  Like the room, the meal was simple but good: a chicken breast, some potatoes and avocado.  There was water to drink in a former wine bottle.  How I wished that those invisible hands could have turned the water into wine!  I ate alone, in silence, as I did for every meal but one breakfast when a visiting monk joined me.   And, except for the time I was handed this note from the kitchen man, I saw no other human being:

I am Benjamin.  Please, can you help me with something as money perhaps twenty dollars?  I have six children who haven’t their parents and no school.  Please also, don’t show this note at the Sister or the Prest.  They can put me out of the job.  Don’t speak to them too.

Blessings

Benjamin

I gave him the equivalent of $20 in Rwandan francs since I didn’t have any Congolese money.  Having already seen the poverty in the Congo, and knowing how far $20 could go here, that was a no-brainer for me.

I didn’t, however, hand over money to the hoards of children (and adults!) who ran after me on the streets, shouting, “Umuzungu! (White person!)  D’argent! (Money!)” 

Conflicted Feelings
Maybe it was the exhaustion, or maybe being jerked from what seemed like hell directly into heaven, I had very conflicted feelings about being in this convent.  The beauty, sturdiness and grandeur of the buildings, the cleanliness and lushness of the grounds, and the privilege of opportunity and peacefulness that was so apparent here stood at such contrast to what was just outside those iron gates.  Yet, despite my feelings of being at odds with myself, I certainly appreciated being able to recognize what I was eating – locally-made strawberry jam, hard-boiled eggs, fried eggplant, vanilla pudding – and the clean place to sleep each night.

Exhausted after the long trip, I opened the windows, took a Deet bath*, and went to sleep.

* There are many ways I’m avoiding contracting malaria while here: taking very expensive Malarone pills every day (starting 3 days before I left the USA and continuing for a week after I return), using mosquito nets at night when they’re available, not wearing perfume because it attracts mosquitoes, and using 100% Deet as a repellant in the mornings.  When there’s no netting available, and I want to get some air through an open window, I liberally apply the Deet at night, too, a technique I’ve come to refer to as a Deet bath.

Journey to the Congo, Part 3

(Continued from previous post)

A Rural Church
Moving down the hillside to return to our car was slow going, not only because of the terrain.  We passed a rural church in the village that was in full swing with Sunday services and the pastor's wife came out to greet us.  Apparently, the church also doubled as their home during the week, and we were marched right through the middle of the service, passed the pastor, to see the rest of the dwelling -- a meager bedroom, and the traditional Rwandan "kitchen" consisting of a brazier, charcoal, a jerry can of water and a few pots.  Our final request for a photo came from two little boys who had fashioned a "guitar" from a corn cob, a stick and some string. 

Landed Refugees
As we left the widow's village and got closer to the Congolese border, we began passing villages of landed refugees – people who had fled Rwanda to the Congo during the Genocide and were convinced by the Government to come back home.  But not to their former homes – to these villages instead.  Thousands of acres of forest were cut down to make room for these primitive mud brick huts to be built, without thinking about the consequences of stripping the land.  Now, when it rains, these villages flood and many people die each time.  Now they are wondering why they came back and say they should have stayed where they were.  Rachel says they have a saying in Rwanda: a thousand years, a thousand problems.

I’ve noticed that most of the dwellings, even the houses in Kigali, didn’t look very substantial and most looked to be in disrepair.  Many, especially the rural dwellings, are constructed from locally-made mud bricks.   I asked what the average number of years a house is expected to last.  The answer? Ten years!  So the situation many Rwandese find themselves in is that it takes many years to build their homes because of lack of funds, and once they are finished they must begin almost immediately to do major repairs on them, all the while living amidst the construction. 

Nearing the Border
As we got closer to the Congolese border, the roads continued to deteriorate.  At one point along the way, a trench had been dug along the side of the road for electrical wiring to bring electricity to some of the villages.  Young boys were shoveling the dirt that had been piled up into the huge potholes in the road and then asking the motorists for money, claiming they had fixed the roads!

When we stopped for lunch in Gesenyi just before reaching the very chaotic crossing point, they explained to me that they would be leaving me with Innocent to walk across with our baggage from the Rwandan side to the Congolese side through a sort of no man’s land – about a block long – and that Samuel Kamanzi, Innocent’s father would be meeting us on the other side. 

“One more thing,” Rachel said with a worried look on here face.  “Don’t have your clothes washed there without ironing them.  I did that once and, because they lay the clothing on the ground to dry, insects got into them.  When I wore them, the insects bored into my skin and came back out through skin inflammation as larvae.  Only ironing will kill the larvae.”

Journey to the Congo, Part 2

(Continuing the drive toward the Congo and my visit with the Twa people)

I felt a little like I was back in the ‘60’s at a love-in! (For those of you who are too young to know what a love-in is, first of all I’m sorry you missed it; second of all, look it up in Wikipedia.) They all wanted their pictures taken. I was happy to oblige them, and will be printing out their photos to send to Rachel to deliver to them next time she’s there.

Only three of all the children had been chosen to go to school with the little money they could scrape together as a village. (Keep in mind that a full year of school fees for these children is, at the most, $300.) The leader of their group, a woman who has had some education, talked to Rachel at length about their plight. They brought out their pottery cooking pots to show me, touched, hugged and kissed us, and didn’t want us to leave.


Stopping to Visit Rachel’s Women
After driving for another hour or so along sometimes-treacherous roads, we came to another village, one where Rachel had formerly worked with the women to establish a sewing cooperative. This is an area where there are many widows. In 1998, many Tutsies and Hutus were slaughtered as Hutus who had fled to the Congo to escape prosecution from the Genocide came back across the border to continue the killing spree. In villages and remote areas (and even sometimes in Kigali), when a woman’s husband dies, she is given to her husband’s brother as his wife and his responsibility. This is one way HIV has spread. We discovered that 2 of the women Rachel worked with have died of AIDS since her visit last year.

While here, we used their restroom facilities – a traditional Rwandan toilet! This was basically a hut with a door that didn’t close all the way, with a hole in the floor above a pit – basically an outhouse without a seat. I’m happy to have  had training in the use of this type of facility during the time I was at overnight camp when I was 11 years old. It was like riding a bicycle. Some things you just never forget.


(To be continued...)

Journey to the Congo, Part 1

I was picked up at 6:30 the next morning (Sunday, June 6th), by Celestine and Rachel, who would be accompanying me to the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and one of Samuel Kamanzi’s 5 children, Habirwabatuma Kamanzi Innocent,  who had come from his university studies in Uganda for a summer holiday and to interpret for me in the Congo since even the few Rwandan words I had learned would be useless – they speak only Kiswahili and French there.

We were soon out of the city, climbing the mountains and overlooking stunning vistas of tea plantations and lakes.  Along the way, Rachel told me the story about all of their children:

Sometimes I think the reason we didn’t die during the Genocide was so we could take care of the children.  Four months after our marriage, we took in Theoneste, who was 12 (Theoneste now works with the Quaker Peace House and was in my CIRR training group) and his older brother, who was 14.  Their parents had died of natural causes, but there was no one to take them in because their 4 uncles and 2 aunts had died during the Genocide.  When our first-born was a year old, we adopted Agar, a 12-year-old street girl.  In 1997, we adopted another girl from an orphan center in a different province.  Then Bonheur in 1998 for five years.  Then we took care of our niece because her father was a refugee because of his house.  (They also have two other biological children.)

I wondered about the sentence about the man who was a refugee because of his house, and she explained that after the Genocide, the Rwandan government proclaimed that when the refugees returned, they were to be given their houses back that they had left in which others had squatted.  But it wasn’t that easy.  Many squatters didn’t want to give up the houses and killed countless people when they tried to return.  There are still thousands of Rwandans who are still afraid to come back, 15 years after the Genocide, and reclaim their homes.

Stopping for Breakfast
A couple of hours into the trip, we reached the place they wanted to me to see and have breakfast: the factory where they produced passion fruit juice.  I had never eaten a passion fruit before visiting Rwanda last year and had fallen in love with this treat.  They’re so fragrant that every time I open one and scoop out the pulp and seeds, it feels like I’m eating perfume!  They all know how much I love them and sent me home last year with a huge bag of them straight from the market, all of which I ate on the two plane rides coming home.  So bringing me to the place where the fruit is processes into juice was a big deal and, notwithstanding the fact that the factory was closed, we could still eat breakfast and buy some juice.

I’m not sure what it was that I ate.  I’ve been very careful not to ask what kind of meat, or other foods, I’m served.  I just eat it and assume (for my own benefit) that it’s beef.  I did not order what the man next to us was eating, nor did I order what Celestine or Innocent ordered – some sort of ground organ meat held together by intestines.  Nonetheless, I was brought an omelet that had some kind of meat in it that was absolutely not beef.  I’m not a particularly squeamish eater, but there was something about that taste that my stomach was telling me to reject before it went down so it wouldn’t have to reject it later.  I picked around the meat, ate the eggs, and enjoyed the bread and chai.  And the passion fruit juice, of course.

Visiting the Twa
Everyone who knows anything about Rwanda has heard about the Tutsies and the Hutu.  But there is another tribe, the original people, called the Twa people.  There are many reasons the Twa are little known outside of Rwanda, among which are that they have traditionally lived in the forests, keeping to themselves, but also because they are ignored at best and shunned and discriminated against at worst.  They have been moved off their lands by the government into huts and squalor, are desperately poor, and have traditionally subsisted by making pottery for themselves and selling some of it.  Many Twa believe that the Hutu and the Tutsies hate them and that they brought war and killing to their country, so they don’t mix with the other tribes. 

I’ve read a lot about the Twa and wanted to talk with them myself.  Luckily, Rachel shared my interest because, as someone who works with at-risk populations of their people, she was interested in seeing what she could do to bring them some relief by getting them some training in skills that could then bring some money into their tiny villages.  So, once on our way again, Celestine began to stop every so often and ask people walking on the road about where we could find a Twa village.

Once we found out where their village was located, and walked up a steep, rocky hill that the jeep couldn’t navigate, what we found astounded us!  They were not hostile, unapproachable or unfriendly in the least.  They were, instead, overwhelmingly happy that we would take our time and be kind enough to visit them and want to know about them, and welcomed us into their tiny compound of mud brick huts.  As soon as we reached the top of the hill, one of the Twa brought out two fairly primitive chairs, apologizing that those were the only chairs they had among them.  And once they discovered that we had both Hutu and Tutsi in our little group, they were thrilled to make their acquaintance, disputing the popular notion that there was rancor between the Twa and other tribes.  If there was any acrimony, it was toward the Rwandan government because of the way they had been treated and ostracized.

Need to Finish Later
Celestine is here to take me to Friends Meeting so I'll have to finish this post later this evening.

Stay tuned!

A Day with Children

My two big discoveries this morning were finding the snooze button on the little alarm clock I brought with me, and that my Flax dress I’ve been wearing pretty constantly is reversible! Flax and Eileen Fischer are my new best friends.  (Men…ask your significant others what that means.)

I’m still backtracking, trying to catch up on this blog, so this post is about Saturday, June 6th.  This was a day packed full with events, stories, visiting, working and moving about.  I’ll begin where the day began: with the children.

George Fox School and the Headquarters of the Friends Church of Rwanda
I wanted to meet with children for two reasons.  First, I’m working on a project that I started years ago called “Voiceless Victims,” in which I am documenting the effects of war and conflict on children through their artwork and poetry.  The ultimate goal is an exhibition of all of this work (beginning from the Spanish Civil War) that will open at the United Nations and then travel all over the world, accompanied by a book, and a curriculum that teachers can download from the website.  In addition to this exhibition, in every community in which it is shown, there would be a concurrent exhibition of the artwork and poetry of the children in that community who are at risk – from drug abuse, family trauma, neighborhood violence, etc.  Although most of the children I saw here were not yet born during the Genocide, they were all affected in one way or another, most of them losing relatives including parents.  They have all heard their family’s stories and those of their friends and neighbors, and I wanted to see if they could draw about those stories and/or create poetry about the Genocide. 

The second thing I wanted to ask them to do was to take the large postcards that my friend Allan Weiss had given me in Louisville to bring here for his project, “Peace Postcards,” and make drawings on them that answered the question, “What does peace look like to you?”

The kids began to arrive at 8:30, an interfaith group sent from the congregations of the members of CIRR (Center for Interfaith Relations Rwanda) I had just trained during the past two days and last year.  Some of these kids had even attended the Children’s Festival this past December.  They ranged in age from about 7 to 21 years old and were really excited about getting the opportunity to draw and write.
 
After writing their names for me on the large paper on the wall,   we played a few games (including the fruit salad game)  to warm up and get to know each other.  I next explained both projects to them.  I said that I am trying to create a world in which children – like them and like my grandchildren – would always be safe, a world free from war and conflict, but that I needed their help.  After explain both projects in greater detail, I showed them the art materials I had brought with me for them: paper, crayons, markers, and colored pencils along with a couple of pencil sharpeners.  They came to the supplies table, grabbed some paper, and immediately began drawing and writing without any questions or hesitation.  I had my laptop with me and played music from my computer while they worked – Nina Simone, Lenny Kravitz, My Morning Jacket, Coldplay, Carrie Newcomer, Bill Withers, and Django Reinhardt, among others.





Celestine’s Story
After getting them started and leaving them in the able hands of Julianne Uwimana (who is also part of the CIRR group), I headed out to a special memorial service to which I had been invited.  Along the way, our driver Celestine, with the help of the translator, Bonheur, told me his Genocide story.

I am now 32 years old; I was 16 at Genocide.  I was a sophomore in secondary school in Bagesera province in eastern Rwanda.  The President’s plane crashed and Genocide started straight away.  School stopped and I started to hide. I was hiding for a month and a half. My mother was killed.  They had taken her, still alive, then killed her, and I had to find her body. People told me where her body was.  I found her body about a week after she had been killed.  It had started to deteriorate.  The “missing” people in my family are my uncle, my niece, my brother and my sister.  Still we don’t know whether they are dead or alive.  I believe they are dead because it has been so long now and they would have found me if they were alive.  The RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) stopped the Genocide and then searched for survivors who were hiding, like me, and brought them back and started giving us food and medicine.  I couldn’t survive there and had no family left so I came to Kigali in 1997, but I never finished school.  My life had been interrupted.

I would like to say that this tragic story is not the norm, but everyone in Rwanda has a story that is similar.  Only the names change, the number of relatives slaughtered.  And yet they smile, they sing, they dance.  When I asked a Rwandan friend last year how they are so resilient, he said, “We must go on.  If we don’t, we are also dead.”
 
Donatira’s Mass
June 6th has been designated by the Catholic Church as the day for all Catholics to memorialize their dead from the Genocide, and I had been invited to join Donatira at her church  for their memorial service.  Celestine, Bonheur and I arrived at Donatira’s church at 10:15, walking in quietly and wanting to sit in the back to observe.  But as soon as I walked in, Donatira introduced me to the congregation, and called us to sit up front.  The service began at 10:30 with a song from an incredible choir,  then the priest read the names of the dead Catholics from that area.  At some point during the service she prevailed upon me to come up and say a few words.  Not really prepared, Bonheur and I came up to the front, were handed two mikes, and I said something about our being like the sea – from far away, it looks calm and homogeneous, but that close up there is a lot of roiling and conflict and it’s made up, just like our communities, of many different organisms.  And that Donatira and her CIRR group are now trying to get everyone from all religions to work together to prevent any more conflict.  And so on.  I was more than happy to sit back down and play with the children near me.  

Back to the Kids
By the time I returned to the children to join them for lunch they had finished drawing and writing.  Their work was graphic, gripping, and heartbreaking.  Bonheur is translating all of the poetry and I will be bringing all of their work home with me to add to my growing collection of children’s poetry and artwork.  Their drawings of peace were beautiful, showing me, once again, how resilient many Rwandans are.

Tea and Fruit at the Bucura Home
My next stop was to take a tea break with David Bucura and his wife, Rachel.  They have three children of their own and, like many Rwandans, they adopted or cared for many others including Bonheur.  Their home was large by Rwandan standards, and even had the very first lawn that I have seen in Rwanda, except for the Gate of Hope compound.  They’re very proud of their garden, which extended from the sides of the house up a steep hill at the back.  People in Rwanda don’t have the same sense of garden design as we do in the United States, nor do they plant the same way or the same things.  We prepare our soil, dig a hole, and plant a seed or a little plant.  With flowers.  In rows.  Or with some semblance of design, as though we’re painting with plants. In Rwanda and in the Congo, their soil is so bad (in the Congo it’s all lava in many places from the volcanoes that have erupted in recent years) that they have to mound up dirt in order to stick plants or seeds into something in which a plant will survive.  Secondly, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason where they make the mounds and plant the seeds.  There will be two tomato plants next to a sweet potato plant next to a banana tree next to another tomato plant next to a cassava plant or two next to….  You get the idea.  And the flowers they plant are for outside decoration, not for cutting.   The only flowers I've seen inside are ever-blooming, never-wilting plastic.   So there will be a canna here, a hibiscus there, and in between will be some sort of bush with large, yellow upside-down-hanging flowers.  It’s really been fun to visit gardens here and see what – and how – things are planted.

Dinner With an Extended Family
After catching up over tea and fruit with Bucura and Rachel, we were off again, this time to bring me to the hotel for so I could change clothes and catch my breath, and then we were off again, this time with Donatira in tow, to go to her sister’s house for dinner just down the road.  Donatira’s sister had three children, the last one by Caesarian.  Apparently, there was a problem during the birth and it left her paralyzed on one side so she has a non-functioning arm and has to walk with a type of a crutch.  After several years, her husband told her that he was going to Canada to seek medical help for her, took the children, and never came back.  He now sends her pictures of them each year.

It was pitch black out when we arrived at 6:30 p.m. and the house was lit, as most places in Rwanda are, with dim fluorescent lighting.  As it turns out, we weren’t the only ones attending dinner.  It’s a Rwandan custom that the neighbors come in to meet the visitor, and relatives often attend meals with the visitor, as well.  So there was Celestine, Bonheur, me, Donatira, her sister, her brother, another sister and her husband, a couple of neighbors, and too many children for me to begin to sort them out.  One of them, I was told, was a young girl with her own baby, the result of a rape, both of whom were taken in by Donatira’s sister.  The television was turned on to the single channel available, and as we ate in the community room, we watched a educational dramatization about teenagers who had succumbed to sleeping with older men for the perks and had, as a result, contracted HIV.  No one seemed very interested in asking any questions about life in America, and I was dead tired at 9:00, so I congratulated Donatira for her work with CIRR, thanked everyone for their hospitality, and left.  We were starting early the next day and I needed to get some sleep.