Rwanda Journal – Day Three

Today we were witnesses to the depths of horror, and the heights of joy. I can’t say much tonight, because it is late after a long and emotional day, and tomorrow we have to get up for an early departure. But here is the thumbnail version.

We began the day with the drive to Nyamata, which is about an hour to the southeast from Kigali. Nyamata is the site of one of the genocide’s most infamous incidents, where over ten thousand Tutsis sought refuge at a church, thinking they would be safe there -- and indeed, this particular church did have a history of being a safe haven in one of the earlier precursors to the 1994 genocide. It didn’t turn out that way this time. The Interahamwe militias came to the church and massacred the people not only on the grounds outside the church, but also those inside – over ten thousand in all. They used automatic weapons and grenades to kill as many as they could, then walked through the church with machetes to finish off anyone who had not died. After the genocide the church was turned into a memorial site. Today we walked through the church, where the pews are piled high with the blood soaked clothing of the people who were found here. Their remains are interred in mass graves on the site. You can walk through them and see rows and rows of skulls and bones, the evidence of death-dealing machete wounds everywhere. We heard stories I won’t even dare to write about here. Shocking is too soft a word.

REACH has worked in the town of Nymata for quite a few years, where they have developed Unity Groups. These Unity Groups were a response to the isolation and loneliness of women in the community after the genocide, and the absolute breakdown of any sense of community. Some of the women had lost their husbands and children. Others were “widowed” when their husbands went to prison as offenders in the genocide. Everyone’s life was shattered. And everyone found it difficult to speak to anyone else, knowing that their neighbors were often on the other side of the genocidal equation. Into this hopeless-seeming situation came REACH, and the beginnings of a way forward. Women were invited to come to a meeting where they could tell their stories. They found some who shared their own deep grief, and they learned to sympathize with those who had been on the other side, but whose lives had also been shattered by the genocide. Women who could not even look at each other or speak to each other gradually became… yes, friends. I’m thinking now especially of Immakulee and Berenside, two of the women who gave their personal testimonies today. Perhaps more of their stories later.

We visited Unity Groups in two different towns – Ngenda, which is a very rural area near the border with Burundi, and Nyamata. At Nyamata, we met the only person to have survived the massacre in the church at Nyamata. She is still living there, and is a member of the REACH Unity Group. Heartbreaking tales were told. But the remarkable thing was the absolute joy they shared with us at what had happened to their lives because of REACH. They have made friends. They are no longer lonely. They realize that everyone there has suffered greatly. And the fact that we would come all the way from America to see them brought them more joy than we could imagine. They danced and sang. They gave testimonies to the healing they have experienced in their lives.

It helped to put some of the divisions and conflicts in our own lives back home in perspective, at least for me. And most of all it renewed my hope in the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation even in the worst situations you can imagine.

And for the folks at Christ Church in Andover, both of these groups of women have received goats from our Goats for Rwanda project -- and we got to see some of the goats and their offspring. Joy indeed.