Remembering Rwanda

Yesterday we went to the Kigali Memorial Center. It was really hard. I am slowly beginning to realize how my body shuts down when I am really sad or do not know how to process things. When we came back to the house, my body went into recovery mode. I took a two-hour nap, felt like vomiting and didn’t really function well the rest of the day. I am learning how hard it is for me to hide my emotions; it seemed impossible to snap back into happy Noël after seeing so much death and destruction.

I do not really know what to do with the reality of this tragedy. It does not really do those who were killed any good to mope around. But I also do not want to be numb and let it fly over me because it is hard and uncomfortable to think about. That is also not beneficial. Denial of life’s tragedies and many injustices leads to them reoccurring.  This is unacceptable. It would be so much easier to let this knowledge pass because it did not directly happen to me. But that would be a tragedy in itself, wasted knowledge on a hardened heart. I refuse. So now what? 

How do you process seeing so many photos of young children who should have been the future of Rwanda? How do you possibly process a two-year-old smiling little girl murdered by being burned alive? Or a 16 month old being smashed against a wall? Or a 9 month old being killed by a machete in his mother’s arms? These things are so radically horrible; my mind is having trouble even believing such wretched brutalities could ever happen.

There was a portion on the memorial that looked at the history of genocide. These atrocities keep happening. You would think we would learn! We see these now and think “we have come so far since then” or “no one has that level of extreme prejudice anymore” or even that “we as Americans, will not let a mass genocide happen again”, but that is what we said after the Holocaust. I learned about so many other genocides that I was not even aware of. I never learned about any of them in my history classes. This is horrible. It is a slap in the face to those who died, not to educate others about the genocides and come together in preventing them. There is a horrible pattern of hate in our history. How do we stop it?

There was a man who worked at the memorial and he was giving some people a tour. There is a large room with countless photos people have given to the memorial of those in their family they have lost. For many, it is the only photo they have of their loved ones. He led the group to two photos among the thousands, and said “That is my mother. That is my father,” and proceeded to tell them that all of his siblings were lost in the genocide as well. He said it plainly with such honesty, vulnerability, and with such an acceptance of the loss that I was amazed. I am stunned at this country’s capability to forgive and live peaceably with one another.

We are learned on Friday about the Lord’s design for a biblical community and development. God is radically righteous and radically compassionate, the only way to celebrate these two extremes of justice and love is to worship Him. The life of Jesus is a representative of God’s radical compassion for the sick, women, poor and children, and His radical righteousness with the Pharisees, the cross, and all sin. Our response to others is not to be contingent upon whether or not they are deserving. Our biblical mandate is that we too live justly and compassionately because of who we are as children of God. We are called to represent His character to the best of our ability. 

Sorry for the depressing blog. Knowledge, definitely not fun, but extremely necessary.

Next time I hope to write an entertaining anecdote about hippos :) or a funny story about yours truly, the culturally awkward Mzungu.

thank you for reading, love you all.