Monday and Tuesday

Since Sunday afternoon I have been living with a Rwandese family--the Ntares. They are wonderful. They live in a neigborhood that is about a 15-minute drive from where I have been living. It is a neighborhood under-construction, but they live in a very nice home and have really great neighbors. Simon and Joy (the parents) are so nice and smart. I know I keep saying how nice everyone is…but everyone I meet really has been so kind! So Simon is the administrator of WE-ACTx and his wife, Joy, is a hotshot at the National Bank. They have four children--the oldest is Sonia (18) and she is studying in the United States, the next are Sandra and Cynthia--they are 11 and 9 years old, the youngest is Steve, a five year old. All of their kids are so bright. They each speak at least three languages--Kinyarwanda, French, and English. The girls are so smart! They play texttwist this stupid but addicting game and they are really good at it...sometimes better than me, which is just scary. Steve is probably the most adorable kid I have ever seen. He is like a little ball of energy. He slammed his right thumb in a door and it required surgery, so he has a cast on his right hand. But it's so funny because he can't use it at all! So his mom, Joy, has to feed him. She uses this huge spoon to scoop up all of the food and put it in his tiny mouth.... probably hard to describe but so fun to watch. Steve loves playing with my computer and putting stickers all over it. He also likes to wake me up early in the morning when he is on his way to school (they leave for school at 5:45 AM by the way).

Monday after work I returned to the Ntares, where I met this Priest named Jean Gakirage. He is a long-time friend of Joy and was back in Kigali visiting. He has a remarkable story. When the killing began in 1994, he was on his way home to Rwanda to be ordained to be a priest in his childhood church. He had been studying out of the country and had a stopover in Rome before heading home. When he was in Rome, he received a message from a parish priest from his hometown telling him not to return home. He told him that his parents, family, and the whole congregation had been murdered in the sanctuary. Defying church leaders, he traveled to the Uganda- Rwanda border and found a bishop willing to ordain him on June 26, eight days before the genocide ceased. From there he sneaked into Rwanda and made it to his parents' church in the town of Musha just outside of Kigali. The building was sealed and filled with parishioners' corpses inside. There he found a girl, the only family friend he could find alive, and with her help was reunited with the remaining survivors. It was then, at his childhood church, just feet from his family's corpses that he gave his first service as a Priest. When the war ended, he was reunited with the only survivors of his family--about 20 children. He lost six siblings, his parents, uncles, and aunts. He decided then that he would adopt all twenty of the children. There were so many orphans that the number grew to 37 children--as he took in the children of friends who had died. The story is even more incredible--a friend of his from Uganda who did not have a family of her own told Father Gakirage that she would come and take care of the kids with him, as he travels around the world often. Since 1994, she has taken care of the 37 kids, many who are college-aged now. All of the kids are doing remarkably well--the four eldest are going to college in the US this year. The rest of the kids are away at prestigious boarding schools. Jean Gakirage said he was overwhelmed with all the support he has received--money, food, and clothes—all for the kids

After hearing that story--I think I really realized how generous are so many of the Rwandese people that I have met or heard about. It seems as if everyone here has taken in at least one orphan to raise. Joy's mother who is an old woman took in seven orphans after the genocide. Even the people without any money take in orphans. It really is the nature of this culture. Family is everything here. Here is a sad story with a happy ending—a four year old girl with HIV and her mother were patients at WE-ACTx. Just recently her mother died and so the little girl became an orphan. Her stepmother who is also a prostitute was supposed to raise her—but one day left the girl in the forest to die. The girl had been in the forest alone for four days when this woman walking nearby heard crying. She found the little girl and saved her! She brought her to the hospital where the little girl stayed for two months—she was in very bad shape. WE-ACTx tried to find her stepmother but she refused to take care of the girl—so the woman who saved her—a very poor single-mother herself, decided to adopt the girl and raise her herself! Really incredible story.

Tuesday I worked with the kids at the WE-ACTx office. For a while I talked with a woman named Alice who works in the Family Program. She told me her horrific story about living through the genocide. The things she saw and experienced are too horrendous to repeat. But the remarkable thing is how she can talk about it openly and to some extent move on from it.

I come home for a late lunch every day and Seraphine the woman who works at the house is always here. She is such a sweet woman; she must be young, not even forty years old. But seeing her makes me so sad. For one, it is difficult for me to get used to the culture here--where pretty much everyone has a cook, a security guard, and someone else who works at the house full-time. So I always feel bad when she makes me food or cleans my room--it just doesn't seem normal to me and I feel bad because it's like having a servant or something...but I do think it is a cultural difference because everyone here has hired help...i will discuss this in another post....second, she is so sad all of the time. It's so hard to see her and I wish so much I could communicate with her more. She speaks very little English. I feel so helpless. I have heard from Simon that she has had a very sad history. She is HIV positive and has four kids--one who is adopted. They are such sweet kids. The oldest is a teenager and he came to the house for the first time on Monday. He was kicked out of school for misbehaving. Seraphine already has it so hard and now this just makes it harder for her. Yesterday she was trying to explain it to me in English and she started crying. It made me want to cry so badly--I feel so bad for her and her son. Of course he is going to have emotional problems after everything he has been through. I tried to explain in French (which she understands) that I could teach him in the meantime--English, math, all of that. I hope she understood me because I really would like to do that--honestly, anything to make her life a little bit easier. It's so hard seeing her so sad and not being able to console her or do anything about it. I just wish I knew French so I could try to help her in any way.

Something that I imagine is very hard for survivors is that they may see on the streets people that murdered their families. There is a court system in Rwanda to deal with the massive amounts of people in jail because of genocide-related crimes. The "masterminds" of the genocide are heard in the Tribunal Courts headed by the UN. But the local courts deal with the other criminals—those individuals that killed or helped the killers. The courts are set up locally--where they took place. There is testimony given by witnesses who survived. If the defendant admits he is guilty to the allegations he is given a much lesser sentence and is set free soon after. In exchange he tells the survivors where are located the remains of their families. I was reading in this article I found online (http://survivors-fund.org.uk/exhibition/testimonies.php---you should really check it out and if you can download the pdf--it gives a very accurate history and an account of what it is like today in Rwanda as well as survivors' stories) that many survivors see their freed killers on the street.

I found this quotation on the website given above-- it was written by a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. "The survivors are usually deeply traumatized. They are witnesses of horror scenes that cannot quit their minds. Many women who survived have been raped and infected with HIV/AIDS. A mother becomes childless; a child becomes a sole survivor, an orphan. Children live on their own, and in this way they have no rights to be children at all. They must live as responsible adults. Survivors of the genocide in Rwanda are alone, suffering feelings of rejection. They live in continual fear with great mistrust, although they are usually not afraid to die. Survivors have visible and invisible scars, and permanent infirmity. They have deep wounds in their hearts and may also develop psychosomatic problems. Despair, disgust of life, suicidal feelings, lack of interest in material things are common. If no one approaches them with love and understanding, many end up committing suicide. Numerous cases have been recorded. Survivors never had time to mourn for their loved ones, let alone to bury them. I am reminded here of a child who kept going to the marketplace looking in the eyes of every man, asking him if he is her father."

Again I am sorry this post is so very long--I have a lot on my mind and not many people to talk to!