Emmanuel Gatera is not the thinnest or shortest man in
Rwanda, but he knows how to dance. Get him under a gazebo in a suit and tie
with a dozen traditional Rwandan dancers on a spring day—and he gets moving!
People like him do not evoke notions of family or national
tragedy, but everybody has a secret or two. Mr. Gatera was not in Rwanda during
the genocide, but at least 100 of his relatives perished during the bloodbath. Radical
propaganda incited Rwandan genocidaires to
go to “work” and kill up to 1 million of their countrymen, whom they called
“cockroaches,” from April to July 1994.
Awful
Place
“As family, we, too, developed traumas about the genocide due the news we [heard and watched] every day,” shares Mr. Gatera and his daughter Grace. “Lots of Rwandans lost their faith in God after the genocide,” largely because so many church leaders were accomplices in the carnage, he adds. “Many people are fostering internal wounds.”
Specific churches still feel grim—churches with signs,
scattered across Rwanda’s green hills and lush valleys. The signs briefly tell
of the dark horrors of twenty years ago. One says 10,000 were killed in this
church on this date. Some Rwandans were hiding in the churches. Others were
lured there by priests and supposed friends.
One such place is Nyamata, Mr.
Gatera’s least favorite place in Rwanda. Anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 people
were eradicated there in a Catholic cathedral. “It is an awful place,” recalls Mr. Gatera. “It was a gruesome
desecration of the Lord’s name.”
Total
Surrender
On the other hand, continues Mr. Gatera, “Many more found their faith
as they realized that God was with them even if they went through their trials
and tribulations…The church has [had] a big impact on Rwandans and has played a
big role in healing and reconciliation.” His people want to “get over their
deep wounds in order to live side by side like they had done before the
genocide.”
“A typical Rwandan service is characterized by a total surrender to the Creator, who controls our lives, what we do, and our future,” explains Mr. Gatera. Most people feel “involved in the life of the church” and want to serve and honor God.
Double
Standards
Jesse Mugero studied at Uganda Christian University in
banana-tree-filled Mukono, Uganda. He is a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and he agrees that Rwanda’s churches are contributing
toward reconciliation. But with all the churches that participated in the
genocide, he fears that “double standards” remain today. He supports some
political policies, but fears the current government is stifling—or even killing—anti-government
voices. What stories, he wonders, have not been told: “The media plays a big
role in creating awareness and ignorance about conflict.”
For the past ten years, Mark and Abigail Bartels have led
the Uganda Studies Program at Uganda Christian University. Students from Christian
colleges across America spend a semester together in Uganda, but they also
travel to Rwanda for a week or so. Mrs. Bartels has helped lead the trips to
Rwanda multiple times, and she echoes Mr. Mugero about Rwanda’s status quo—some
of the government’s policies are positive, others are frightful.
Amazing
Commitment
Mrs. Bartels senses “an overall vibe and tone to many places
that is sort of reserved, mistrusting, scared, hurt, and closed.” But she also
finds hope in the church’s work there, especially through a ministry called
Christian Action for Reconciliation and Social Assistance, CARSA. The ministry was featured in
the award-winning documentary As We Forgive, which tells about two Rwandan women forgiving their
families’ murderers after the genocide.
Bartels thinks CARSA’s director Christophe Mbonyingabo is “an
amazing man, with an amazing commitment to the long, local process of
reconciliation in communities and individuals.” He also tries to reconcile “misperceptions
of Westerners about Africans and Africans about Westerners,” and his ministry reaches
out to genocide victims and agents, children, and rape victims, and helps
churches reconnect with each other and their communities.
Forgiveness
Faustin Mugabe, of the Ugandan Daily
Monitor newspaper, interviewed an ex-genocidaire in the beautiful city of Nyamata. Emmanuel Ndaisaba, now 40, is “one of the
hundreds of thousands of former perpetrators of genocide released by the
traditional Gacaca court,” which required public confessions, public
forgiveness, and some relatively light sentencing. He shares the following:
“Altogether, I attacked 18 people—men,
women and children. I am haunted most by the 14th person, because she did not
die and is still alive. I hacked her all over and thought she had died. When I
was leaving, I looked at her, and she was still alive. I left her. Today,
Alloys Mururinda is married but she has one arm. The other arm was amputated.
She was about to be married when the genocide started. We now live in
neighboring villages…I am now one of the members of the Ukuri Kuganze association
in Nyamata, which brings together genocide survivors and ex-prisoners who
participated in the genocide. I still want to beg for Mururinda’s forgiveness.”
Such forgiveness is both possible and actual in many
situations. World Vision, a major Christian aid organization in the United States
and elsewhere, recently featured a miraculous and beautiful story of
two married couples who used to hate each other because of the genocide. One
man had helped killed the family of the other man’s wife. After he was freed
from prison a few years ago, they all said God began working on their hearts.
Today they all love each other and serve God in close, frequent ministry
together.
Dance
The emerald mountains and glassy Lake Kivu surrounding Kibuye, on
Rwanda’s western border, is one of the most beautiful sites in East Africa. But
even this was no haven of rest in 1994. Two or three survivors told me part of their
stories—revealing their machete scars as proof. Yet active churches stood
nearby, and as King David danced for the Lord, so many Rwandans dance today.
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(Originally published by Yahoo! Voices.)
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