Just a few snapshots

I've grown impatient -- with this computer in the conference center lobby. It's painfully slow, which is why I haven't blogged in a couple of days. Takes an hour just to check email. I'm also at a bit of a loss for what to write tonight -- there's just so much to say. And, I think I'm running out of steam, too. I'm very aware that within the week I'll begin to focus not on my next African destination, but on home.

Meanwhile, there's still so much to absorb, so many people to meet and talk to, people with whom this may be the only chance I get in my lifetime to know and to connect with. Every new person I engage in conversation has an incredible story to tell and I want to hear them all. The speakers here at Amahoro have been really interesting and challenging, but I'm getting just as much out of the one-on-one conversations I have with people from all over Africa, Australia, and North America. Oh yes, and there's one Japanese guy here, too. I went to introduce myself to him yesterday, speaking Japanese with him for a while. Meanwhile, he had been sitting there next to an Ethiopian couple speaking Amharic with them. He lived in Ethiopia for nine years. He's fluent in Kinyarwandan, too, and has lived here in Rwanda for the past three years. Just one example of the interesting people you meet here.

Most of them are Africans, of course. Too many stories to tell here, however. You'll all have to come yourselves and have this experience!

Yesterday was a very challenging day. We had one session with an incredible Rwandan woman named Frida. She spent about an hour telling us the story of her life in 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide. It was absolutely the most fascinating, terrifying, gut-wrenching story I have ever heard, and one that is ultimately inspiring as well. Without going into all the details here (she has published her story in a book however, named Frida), she is a victim of the genocide, having lost all of her family members. She, too, was thought to be dead and was buried -- alive -- only later to regain consciousness and scratch her way out of the mass grave in which she had been thrown. Her story is one of survival, hatred of her Hutu neighbors who had betrayed her and her family, and ultimately forgiveness. The grace and poise with which she tells her story is amazing. She was the only person in the room not in tears.

Later yesterday, we heard from a Hutu woman who has come to terms with the reality of what her people did in the genocide, and has become a controversial and outspoken voice from the Hutu community for admitting their collective guilt and asking for forgiveness of the Tutsi community. She is from a prominent political family, some of whom had been involved for years in planning the genocide. She is engaging in this very public campaign of truth-telling as an act of confession and reconciliation, even in spite of the fact that the Tutsi-led government encourages people not to identify themselves any longer as Tutsi or Hutu, but just as Rwandan. Most people here no longer say whether they are one or the other.

Today we heard from a member of the Burundian Parliament who is from the Batwa ethnic group. They are a marginalized group in Rwandan and Burundian society (derisively called Pygmies), and he spoke of the need in these societies for reconciliation among all of the groups, including his own, which is easily overlooked. Tonight we heard from a group of three really interesting Latin American church leaders drawing on evangelical and liberation theology models of church in an unlikely kind of synthesis, but one that is really creating transformational communities of faith.

Lots of music and dancing here! One of Africa's award-winning musicians who has received three of Africa's equivalent of the Grammy is leading a lot of the music in our daily gatherings. We also were led in our morning worship today by Richard Twiss, an Oglala Sioux Indian from Oregon, and have heard from a variety of groups from Tanzania to Ethiopia to South Africa. At last night's dinner we had entertainment from a dance and drumming troupe from Burundi. Amazing stuff. I've got some of it on video.

Today we had some free time, and some of us went into the city center to do some shopping for souvenirs, sip lattes at a coffee shop, and then go to the Hotel Rwanda -- the one about which the movie was made.

These are just barely a few snapshots of my life here the past couple of days. I'm either too tired or maybe just too full right now to do very much serious reflection at this point, but I'll do my best to take advantage of the experiences I'm having, and let them sink in as deeply as I can. I know they are changing me -- I hope for the better -- and I'll do my best to share it all as I am able.

On Friday some of us will be traveling to Burundi. I'll be preaching at a newly established church in Bujumbura on Sunday -- an intentional community that is forming among the city's educated young professionals and expatriates. Had a really fascinating conversation with the pastor this evening at dinner. One more of the hundreds of amazing people here, many of whom will, I'm sure, be friends for life.