A strange way to spend a birthday

A strange way to spend a birthday.

Woke up from a very good nights sleep feeling much refreshed from the previous day and a halfs journey. I was reminded by a big stack of cards that it was my birthday, thank you the all who sent them particularly from the one with the amafranga in which bought four of us a lovely lunch. At breakfast more cards and lovely presents.  Breakfast consisted of beautiful fruit the most juicy pineapple and african fruit salad dumped over a weetabix .

Rob and Jan and the Griffiths had various meetings concerning the water filter trial project. We dropped in to the lawyers of hope office which is now situated at Solace Guest house to drop off a letter and someone gave us a little presentation of their work. Basically they a Christian group of lawyers who provide their services free for the poor and young people, Rwandan lawyers cost over £500 to hire which is beyond the means of all but the privileged few. They also educated local leaders to report to them episodes where young people were abused or taken advantage of; also they work in the prisons with offenders to stop young people re-offending.

We then walked over to the genocide memorial site, situated on side of one of the hills next to the one where the guest house is situated. We walked up past many government offices then through a more commercial section with many little shop workshops where they manufactured for example coils for motors with great reels of copper wire seen through the door. The site is set in beautiful garden and is very peaceful. It consists of large mass graves and an educational exhibition and museum. It remains a very painful place to visit but we were able to take a large part of the day walking around the exhibits and reflecting on that very recent past. Looking over to the hill on which the rising commercial tall buildings going up it becomes more difficult to imagine a city total consumed by carnage and filled with mutilated bodies.

 New auditorium at Kigali Genocide Memorial site.

 Mary at new peace sculpture at Genocide memorial site Kigali

So how is it that this beautiful peaceloving people turned into killers? Why did Cain murder Abel?

The process probably started back in colonial days before there were many tribes living in relative easy co-existance then the colonist catagarised them into two ethnic groups and gave them identity cards. So they were labeled. Slowly, percieved inequalities and injustice led to escalating violence.

I have been reading a book by Miroslav Volf on the origins of Genocide called Exclusion or Embrace.

How do you kill your brother? It is not easy but if your brother becomes the other, the outsider, excluded from your presence it is easy to denegrate him and rename him. Once he becomes a “cockroach” he is easily stamped out. We have a choice either we exclude the other, the enemy or we embrace him. Embrace is typified in the Christian bible by the story of the prodigal son, the command to love your enemy; basically it is the message of the cross.

On our way home to the guest house we visited an art project, it was a riot of jubilant colour, full of very joyful young artists expressing themselves in very vibrant African colours and themes but in very new and creative ways.  It made a wonderful counterpoint to see these young Rwandans expressing just the joy of being alive.

We arrived back to a much needed rest and reflection. Yet another little incident before our evening meal I had poped out to buy a packet of Rwandan teabags (the best in the world) when I came across a little orphan chap on the pavement begging he was someone called Oscar we had met on a previous visit as usual he was hungry he lives with his grandma has one eye but even he goes to school. So he went off happily with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter to feed his mum.

Finally a lovely beef stew as my birthday meal , plus a wonderful cake which Jean Marie our cook just rustled up at the end of our meal.