Day of Mourning

This morning the sun rose as usual. The birds are singing. There is a thin fog hovering over the city in the valley just below us. Overhead the sky is gray. Mornings like this could bring rain or it could clear up in an hour or two. The day has begun like any other day in Rwanda.

Except it isn’t.

There is a silence outside. No crews working on the house across the street. No voices of neighbors greeting one another on the road. Not even the wheelbarrows full of plastic bidons of water rattling up on down the road. Today is a national “holiday”: Genocide Memorial Day or some have called it the “National Day of Mourning”. 15 years ago today 100 days of hell broke loose in this small country. During that time over 800,000 people were horrifically and systemically killed. Hundreds of thousands more were maimed, tortured, left for dead. Yet they survived.

We have heard snippets of stories from real people:
“My aunts and uncles were killed and buried in a mass grave.”
“My family had to identify the bodies of our relatives who were thrown into a shallow grave after being killed with a machete.”
“I hid in the bush with my baby on my back. We only had the clothes we were wearing. It was pouring down rain everyday. We were soaked, no food, no water, no shelter.”
“I saw my relatives being hit in the head and slashed with machetes.”
“My father had his eye poked out and his leg slashed.”

These are what people who we know have said. We know only a handful people. There are thousands of stories which are being remembered today.

In one book I read these statistics about children survivors (1995 National Trauma Survey by UNICEF):
99.9% witnessed violence
79.6% experienced death in the family
69.5% witnessed someone being killed or injured
61.5% were threatened with death
90.6% believed they would die
57.7% witnessed killings or injuries with machete
31.4% witnessed rape or sexual assault
87.5% saw dead bodies or parts of bodies

This is just the children. It does not specify how old these children were who were surveyed but assuming they were up to 18 years of age, now these children are from 15 – 33 years old. Maybe the young ones have forgotten the images but none of them can forget the struggles they have had to live with; many without a family support system, without education because there were no funds, without … well, the list goes on and you can fill in the blanks.

Today there will be “commemorations” throughout the country. The main one will be just up the road from us at a Memorial site called “Nyanza”. The president will come there and “officially” open the site. There has been work going on for weeks along the main stretch of road near us – cleaning up, tree planting, new signs, fresh paint – all in anticipation of the president’s visit. The BBC radio has said that 1,000s of Rwandans will go there today to pay their respects and to see the president. What the president says today will be very important to the healing of the country.

We have questions which are very difficult for us to ask and even more difficult to get answers for:

15 years ago 15% of the population was targeted by the majority of the population. Someone on the radio today said that while it was neighbors attacking neighbors, she sees the event as a mass hatred. The killers were in essence brainwashed through propaganda until a mob mentality was established. The mind set was not “I’m going to go kill my neighbor today.” It was “Those people belong to a group of people who we’ve been told are bad/evil/oppressive. We need to eliminate that group of people for the good of the country.” But my question is: How are those who killed, those in the majority of the population, how are they spending today? Many have repented and asked forgiveness. Many are still in jail. Many may be living in our neighborhood or attending our church – but we don’t know. But what images do they have? What do they tell their children? Did their children witness their father killing their neighbor’s children – the friend they walked to school with and played with on Saturdays? Are those people still brainwashed? Do they still believe the demons in their head that those other people are evil?

What about those who refused to be brainwashed? Instead of joining the mob, they reached out to save and rescue – many of them being killed because of their kindness and courage. What became of their orphans? What are their families commemorating today?

The country will never forget and the motto is “Never Again”. But, how does a country move on? How does a country heal? All of this is too overwhelming for me. It is too big for my mind.

Unfortunately, it is not only Rwandans who live with horror in their memories. Congo has millions dead in the last 10 – 12 years because of conflict, lack of medicines, lack of food and water and proper hygiene. Uganda has been plagued by the Lord’s Resistance Army for years and years. The children live in fear of being abducted into the army and those who are will have R-rated images in their heads forever. Then there is Chad and Sudan and Somalia and …

Sunday is Easter.

We pray that the HOPE of Salvation and Forgiveness and Reconciliation will be preached throughout this land of Rwanda and beyond.

2 Corinthians 5:17 - 6:2 (NIV)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For he says,
"In the time of my favor I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you."

I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.