blogs from RWANDA!

6/25

I've arrived in Africa! Flying along the sunrise into kenya just moments ago was like looking at my photos from the top of Kilimanjaro. The rising sun, with its golden layers followed by fiery red and even purple haze, appears to be the center of the world.

After 3 days of travel and three overnight flights, I am excited to leave behind the western world. I have spent the last three days in New York, and london. In NY, I took the chance to visit with some old friends. I attended church services at the church where I used to intern. Realizing how that experience was my first contact with HIV/AIDS, it seemed like a particular fitting beginning to this new journey. There I came across, Mary my old intern advisor, and several other old friends. I stayed over at Vince's who, as always, was a perfect host, even going so far as to arrange a little dinner party with Benoit. Joy and I, having met up after church, took a trip midtown to meet Fr. Aldo Tos. My second day in New York, I dropped in on the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship HQ. After updating the staff on the past year, and catching up on their doings.

Arriving in London an hour late, and taking a good hour to get my tickets for my continuing flight, I quit the airport to visit Raymond, a former jesuit and friend who I met in my earlier travels to Uganda. He had spent a year living in Rhino Refugee camp for sudanese refugees and is now working for the British equivalent of CRS, CATHOD.

Three days away from home, and i have managed to meet some very significant people from my own past. It does give me hope that theire is some sort of connection between all these epochs in my life aside from the cotinuous presence of me.

Now, beginning a new journey, connected but very different from any of my previous undertakings, facilitating others as they make the connections between their different experiences is my job. How does one reconcile the conclusions drawn encountereing poverty, and inequity, when it stands so starkly against our home experiences. While they seem like two disparate worlds, the successes of the western world have often been built on the backs of the global south. as such, these resource rich countries.

6/28

three days in and it seems like i never left africa. squeezing in and out of minibusses overloaded with people, riding on the backs of motorcycles, and sifting seamlessly from an haut culture expat world and a world where the meet of choice is nyama choma, grilled beef served on the street.

6/29

Last night I was able to see hugh maskela for free at a shi shi hotel in town. It was amazing music. That was preceded by a day filled with meetings in two different towns. It certainly left me exhausted! Our work looks fantastic though. It is amazing how different this trip will be the moment the students arrive.

Today is clean up day in Rwanda. When I was last here, I was amazed at how clean everything was. I was just coming from kampala where the only thing that kept the city clean seemed to be the maribou stork and the cows. Here, they take the morning of the last Saturday off from work, and everyone cleans. There is no transport, no businesses open. Just cleaning. Amazing.

7/5

entering into church last week, i couldn't help but experience a feeling of gloom. So many betrayals happened within the clergy that cost so many lives. It represents probably the worst of humanity. Those who had promised their lives to the service of the gospels, turned against even there own humanity, destroying that trust, betraying their faith and killing. One priest was responsible for bullldozing over there congregation. other priests were complicit by fear, aiding the interahme by picking out the people on the death lists from those sicking shelter in their churches.

Even worse, though, is to see how the racist ideology evidenced by such things as the Hutu ten commandments were propogated by the belgian catholic heirarchy in Rwanda.

It is easy for one to lose faith in his church. It is easy for one to lose faith in humanity.

there are, however, lights that shine in the darkness. their were heroes, sung and unsung, who risked their lives trying to protect neighbors, sometimes even strangers. Even as people across the country were yelling out Gatanbe son of Gataze, why are you killing me, brave souls opened there doors to even those whose names they did not know.

A light continues to shine today, as survivors make efforts to reconcile.

blog 4

our students have arrived!

They have maintained an incredible pace. after 48 hrs of travel, they rallied and were able to manage a day of physically and emotionally activities. our first day in the country, due to our contact with the honorable dora, we were able to hold a meeting with the minister of health. while students were struggling to stay awake, they managed to ask some very important questions and have maybe opened the door for us to visit the president.

following a long wait for that meeting, we had a quick lunch at the hotel, and we set off for the genocide memorial. there students encountered the harsh reality of the rwandan context, seeing how just 14 yrs ago, the majority population turned on the minority population, following an extremist racist ideology bent on carrying out the final solution: the extermination of the tutsi people. For its abrasive and stark presentation of the reality of the genocide, the museum leaves one emotionally overwhelmed. the genocide is seemingly incomprehensible, and yet the colonial ideologies and the impassivity of foreign superpowers, including our own nation, are sadly identifiable factors that aided and abetted.

Freddy, the director of the memorial, was able to join us following our visit, in describing the role the memorial plays today both as a mass grave site and as a museum. He also explained its own role in preserving memory as an effort to prevent this from every happening again, while allowing for the truth to be proclaimed, so as to enable reconciliation.

these efforts have not been without response, however, and as we entered we had to go through extensive security. there have been bombing attempts on the memorial in the past.

We returned to the hotel, where we finally had a chance to distribute keys and allow students to take showers for the first time in two days. We made our way to the mille collines, the famous hotel rwanda, for sodas where greg, our fearless guide, joined us. My students amazed me once more with their tenacity as they got up on stage and danced with the live band. This was to the amazement of the rwandans there (certainly representing the upper crust of society), who pulled out their cell phones and filmed the occasion.

We finished the evening with a fantastic buffet from the restaurant chez robert.