Hair

Recently, Esther asked me to bring back a specific hair product from Uganda.

Esther said, "Look, I'm wearing my hair like
a khawaja today!" OK, yes, I do wear my
hair like that nearly every day, point taken.

We had this conversation in the rain while saying goodbye before I hopped in the car to drive to Maridi to catch a plane to Entebbe:

Esther: “When you go to Uganda, please bring me back something for my hair.”

Me: “Something? What do you mean?”

Esther: “You know, the treatment that you put in your hair, leave for some time, then wash out and your hair is soft.”

Me: “No, I have no idea what that means and I don’t think you’re actually talking about ‘conditioner’ because I can only find ‘conditioner’ at special khawaja shops, imported at excessive prices for stupid white foreign women who can afford it and know that their hair will fall out and/or poof into frizz if they don’t use it.” (That is a paraphrased merging of what I said and what I thought. Poetic license.)

Esther: “Treatment-you put it on your hair to make it soft.”

Me: “But what is it called? What is the brand name?”

Esther: “It’s called ‘treatment,’ and any brand name is OK.”

Me: “Um…OK, I’ll try…”

Esther braiding Vaida's hair
at the Kayanga house

And because I love Esther and I know that Mundri isn’t exactly a happening place for all your beauty-product needs, I spent a significant amount of my time in Uganda trying to figure out what she meant. And because I am a white girl, it wasn’t self-explanatory. True, I am fascinated by braids, and twisty hairstyles, and weaving black yarn into short hair to make lots of long braids that can then be braided again into one thick and amazing braid, and also I wish I could be a part of the community that is shared between women doing each other’s hair, but I have no understanding of the products that my friends here put in their hair. I’m pretty sure they have no understanding of mine either—after a long motorcycle ride with Repent that started out sunny and ended in a torrential downpour, I came home and sat down with my detangling hair spray stuff and slowly and painfully combed knots out of my hair for an hour, while people looked on with curiosity and amusement. That is not something my friends here usually have to deal with.

So fast-forward to Uganda, I asked all the women working at the hotel what I should get. Our conversations inevitably went something like this:

Me: “So my friend in South Sudan asked me to get some stuff for her hair called ‘treatment’ that is supposed to make her hair soft. Where could I get something that that and what actually is it?”

Helpful Lady (H. L.): “OK. So is your friend’s hair hard or soft? Is it relaxed? Is it natural? Does she want it to be relaxed or natural?”

Long pause. Long blank stare.

Me: “Um…her hair is in braids?”

H.L.: “You probably want to get her a relaxing chemical and then some cream that you put on after the chemicals.”

Me: “She didn’t say anything about chemicals. Is there anything that you put on and then wait for an hour and then wash out?”

H.L. “Yes, that is the relaxing treatment that you put on and then you wash it out. Then you put on the treatment after that.”

Me: “But I heard something like if you put on the wrong kind of chemical then your hair will fall out?”

H. L.: “Yes, but there is one main type of chemical that most people use. I think you will be OK.” She did not make me confident that it would be OK, but she then told me several places I could go to buy them.

Esther trying to braid my hair

Of course, when I actually went, I went with one of the guys from the hotel, and he was not helpful at all. I asked him if he ever did anything with his hair, and he said he just buys the cheap shampoo and is done with it because he is a man. I’m not a man, but I used to do that. But now I get kind of excited when I see all the varieties of shampoos and conditioners for white girl hair when I’m in the States, and now I spend more time than I care to admit staring at it all and then choosing the cheapest of all the things that I want and am sure will make my hair impossibly beautiful, and buying that one. It’s not as cheap than the cheapest thing available, but it is cheaper than most of the things, because I’m cheap and I like cheap things. But for Esther, I was prepared to be not cheap. So I dragged Graham all over the store until we found the aisle of hair products, of which maybe 4 things could possibly be used on my hair without dire consequences. While this doesn’t bother me because I am in Africa and I’m a visitor here, I can see how it might bother non-white-people in the US to go to the shampoo aisle there, because they ARE from the US and there are a lot more non-white people in the US than the shampoo aisle may lead a casual outside observer to suspect.

So Graham and I are in the hair product aisle, he is bored out of his mind but being very patient, and I am reading labels of everything and feeling overwhelmed. So I turn to the other ladies in the aisle who are confidently choosing what they want. I’m beyond shame at this point, so I launch into a long explanation with excessive details of what I’m looking for and why and who it’s for and where I live and why I need to get whatever it is that I’m looking for.

On a side note, I don’t know if this is a girl thing, but my sisters and I are prone to giving excessive information when asking people we don’t know for things. My brother-in-law makes fun of my sister for asking for a refill of water at a restaurant to be put into a to-go cup, “It’s just because we are on a long trip, and I want to make sure to have the water because my son might need it, but we forgot his sippy cup at home, because you know, his sister was crying about not wanting to leave without her sparkle purse, and then when we finally got on the road, we realized that we had forgotten the bag with the sippy cup, so that’s why I need this to-go cup with a straw, if you can help me out with that it would be so great!” Of course, she would only need to say, “Please give me a to-go cup” to get what she wanted, and no one would be annoyed with her neediness, it’s just customer service, but we are a detail family. But after watching Benji laugh at Joanna for this (he doesn’t believe in excessively verbalizing his thoughts unless he is teaching theology), I realized that I don’t need to share extra information with strangers who are probably trying to steal my identity, so I’ve started to share as little as possible, so as to remain mysterious. Once while on the phone with Expedia to try to change a flight (this happens to me a lot), I was trying to change the flight so that the outgoing flight to be after the in-coming flight, which was making it look like I was returning before I left. When the person on the other end of the phone finally understood what I was asking, she said, “Why would you want to do this?” Probably out of curiosity and not a desire to steal my identity, but I just said, “It’s a long story and you don’t need to know in order to change the ticket-just tell me if you can do it or not, please.” And it worked and they DID do it—for a small exorbitant fee.  But sometimes details are necessary, and when a white girl is buying hair stuff for an African lady, that is one of those times.

Still trying.

We went through another conversation about relaxed or hard or soft hair, and I decided that I was not going to buy any chemicals that might make anyone’s hair fall out, so we settled on some stuff that you put in the hair and wait for a few minutes and then wash it out and it’s soft. It seemed as close as possible to what Esther asked me for anyway.

When I gave it to Esther, she seemed grateful and she said that she used it, but then she said later, “Next time before you go to Uganda, I’ll take you to the salon in the market and show you the exact products that I need. Then you will be able to choose the right thing.” And that made me suspect that maybe I didn’t get the right thing, but Esther said that what I got was a good quality ‘something’ that she will use anyway.

We had this conversation outside while waiting for the bread to bake. My own hair was down and mostly dry from my shower. I was about to scrunch it up into a hair tie (my classy hairstyle of choice) while Esther and I were hanging out watching bread bake, but I know that Esther is a champion braider (everyone in the neighborhood gets her to braid their hair—but whatever, Esther is one of those people who is really good at EVERYTHING. Seriously—cooking, baking, gardening, braiding, everything. She’s amazing), so I said, “Want to braid my hair? Just make one braid because I only have one hair tie.”

She laughed about the hair tie and said she’d try. She grabbed my hair and started scooping it and pushing at it while it fell around everywhere.

Eventually she let go of all of it, and said, “I can’t do it. Your hair is too soft. It won’t work. You have hair like Jesus.”

At least some part of me is like Jesus.

Yunis braided this.

But I would like to finish off by saying that two days later I was hanging out with my friend Yunis. She likes to talk about the day that she is going to braid all of my hair up so that it will go into a ponytail of small braids behind my head. I am torn between wanting to see how it would look (OK, I know it will look bad because, like I said before, I have a really lumpy skull, but how bad? Is there a small possibility that it will make me look cool and African? OK, I know it won’t, but maybe…) and wondering how I will sleep if all of my hair is poking out of the back of my head. She said she will find the small hair ties that they sell for children in the market (Do I have hair like Jesus or like a tiny child?) and make me awesome. Or at least provide me with a way of more accurately applying sunscreen to my scalp.  To demonstrate, she grabbed a tiny section of my hair and braided the tightest, tiniest braid with a piece of my bangs, tying it in a knot at the end. I could have made a braid that tiny and tight maybe after an hour of cramping hands and tangled fingers, but the probability of me ever trying to do that to myself is quite small.  Of course, in seconds the knot had popped out and the braid had unraveled, “But next time, we’ll make bigger braids and tie them.” And I promise to provide photographic evidence, should that ever actually happen. And I’m sure I’ll look just like African Jesus.

But also, I've decided that I need to learn a marketable skill for next time I'm out of a job. I've decided to learn hair-braiding African-style. The ladies at the salon near my house said, "Come on over!" And Esther is already letting me practice. No, I can't use a curling iron, but I have been good at braiding since the friendship-bracelet era of second grade. And the good thing is that Esther is not tender-headed, unlike SOME people (Marian).

Yes, I'm wrapped in a blanket I stole from
Ethiopian Airlines because it was really cold that day.

The finished product. 

Our hair is identical.

Back in South Sudan…for a week...

If you are doing a study of my blogging habits, you may have noticed a correlation between lack of blogging and me being in the US with family. If so, it is likely that you have ascertained that I have been in the US for the past 2.5 months-ish. It’s not that my life is less interesting there—I have plenty of great stories about my nieces and nephews, but I have people to share my stories with there who appreciate them on the same level that I do. For example, if I talk with Lexon about the time when Repent and I got lost in a jungle full of hyena footprints and had to ask a nearby Dinka for help getting out, he might not acknowledge what a significant event that was….or wait, he did laugh loudly at that story when we told it yesterday…I guess that was just an epic story that crosses cultural boundaries. OK, fine. The truth is that when I don’t have to spend some of my time responsibly for work or school or whatever, then I don’t usually spend any of it in any manner that might be viewed by others as responsible. And clearly, writing this blog is the definition of spending my time responsibly. Thus, I don’t blog while in the US with my family. Now that THAT has been explained…

See how cute they are? Of course I miss them!

After scraping off layers of dirt and sweat from walking up and down dusty paths to and from water sources, carrying snotty children or muddy puppies, I thought I might have enough fodder for a blog post. I’m back in South Sudan for a week, filming in villages for a promotional video on our projects here that we are working on. I have to say, it’s not usually my favorite thing to do. I mean, I do think it’s important to have visual aids when talking about our work because it shows the outside world what it’s like to live here, and it helps us raise money to do what we do, which I think is pretty important. The guy who does our video stuff is really good at what he does, but I still sometimes feel a bit rude telling people to smile at the camera while drinking from their hand pump or stopping the car in the middle of the road to get footage of women carrying jerry-cans of water on their heads (though that is pretty impressive, and I’ve taken plenty of those photos myself). I do like attaching the Go-Pro camera to the front of the car to see what these crazy roads look like from the front of our poor brutalized vehicle, and I find it interesting to interview people we work with and hear their opinions and stories.

With baby Avwa

So we’ve been visiting villages, and God must know that I’m missing my nieces and nephews, because I’ve gotten to hold and cuddle lots of cute, similarly aged kids, none of whom were put off by my weird newly-sunburnt skin. Kids in South Sudan are different from kids I knew in other places I’ve lived. I don’t want to lump all Asian kids together, but in my experience, it usually takes them a while to warm up to foreigners they don’t know. Many times there is screaming and hysterical crying the first time they come in contact with someone with creepy white skin. I experienced this in all regions of Asia where I have lived and traveled (so basically, almost all of the regions of Asia—I have a pretty good research base for my generalization). In South Sudan we have some children inclined towards screaming hysterics when they see odd-looking strangers. I’ve been on the back of a motorcycle with Repent, riding through a jungle village while children scattered in all directions yelling at the top of their lungs and crying. But really, the screamers are only about 30% of the kids I’ve seen. Compare this to Asia, where approximately 60% of all children are likely to scream, cry and/or run away as fast as possible, and it is amazing. In South Sudan 60% of the kids will chase after your car, motorcycle, bike waving and yelling greetings (Disclaimer: none of these statistics are based on Math or any principles that may have been derived from or associated in any way with Math). My favorite local greeting is the little poem composed by Moru children and recited with great enthusiasm over and over whenever a foreigner happens by their general vicinity (forgive the spelling, I haven’t officially studied Moru yet, this is my own transliteration. I know that all of you reading this blog are proficient in Moru and this will be really distracting, but try to bear with me):

            “Ombonje keneesa ya…Ombonje keneesa ya…Ombonje keneseesa ya.”

            Translation: the foreigner is going to church.

            Note: it does not matter if the foreigner is not, in fact, going to church. Poetic             license, I guess.

            Proper method of declaiming the poem: 3 times in a sing-song voice

            Optional ending: How are YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUU?!!!

            Non-Morus don’t have a poem, but yelling “Kawaja, kawaja” seems to work    fine for them.

But the last 10% of kids in South Sudan are the real shockers. They are the ones who don’t care about my creepy white skin or my weird hair. They just want to love me. They’ll run up and give me hug, having no idea who I am. They’ll slip their little hands in mine and look up at me and smile and melt my heart. And only sometimes to they follow that up with, “Give me money” or “give me ball.” That does tend to kill the moment for me, but it also makes me wonder how the heck all white people here got the reputation for handing out money and toys to children here who learned how to ask for it in English. I totally blame us because that had to have come from somewhere. I     mean, your average suburban American kid isn’t going to walk up to, say, a Chinese guy and ask him for money or presents or whatever because there really is no precedent for that. They do stand in line for hours to sit on Santa’s lap at tell him what they want (at least according to movies I’ve seen), and precedent has told them that this pays off. I can only imagine that South Sudanese children have some reason to expect a payoff for using their hard-earned English phrases.

I carried Abouk home

These last two days I’ve had a few from the last 10% that have been the melt-your-heart kind. Baby Avwa fell asleep in my arms and baby Shamsul let me pick him up and cuddle him with no visible signs of displeasure.  This afternoon while trekking back from the local water source, little Abouk (one of the little kids in our entourage) tripped and fell. She started crying, and I went back to see if I could help. She rejected her brothers’ help and reached up her arms to me. So I carried her the last mile. Even though she got a tiny bit heavy by the end of the walk, it was great. Also, Repent told me that last week that his five year old Gadi kept asking, "Ombonje maro miteen rejaa?" That's Arabic and Moru for, "When is my foreigner coming back?" I'm pretty OK with being Gadi's foreigner.

So that’s life—for the next week anyway before I head off to Spain, Morocco, maybe/probably not Kenya, definitely at some point Sudan, possibly some other place after that. Oh yeah—I almost got a puppy! It was cute and chubby and we loved each other deeply for a moment…until Lexon and Repent talked me out of getting it now since I’m leaving on Thursday and they don’t want to take care of it while I’m gone. I was sad, but at least now I’m sure that Mark will let me get a puppy and I’ll get one when I’m back for longer and I can make sure that it loves me the most of anyone.

And there you have it—between a puppy and cuddly children, I’m satisfying my almost-30 maternal instincts here in South Sudan.

Killing Time in Uganda and Rwanda

This doesn't have anything to do with anything,
but I like how Ugandan shopkeepers don't feel a
garment is properly advertised until you can see how far
it is capable of going over the hips. And this guy was so happy
thinking I was taking his photo.

I was always taught by my very organized family to plan ahead when buying plane tickets. So far, in the past few months, when I’ve sort of put that advice into action (sort of—they plan several months in advance for plane tickets, and I was only managing weeks, but still—for me, that’s good), it has backfired on me. I don’t think there is one plane ticket that I have bought recently that I haven’t had to change, sometimes more than once. For my tickets to the US tomorrow night, I’m on “third time’s a charm!” change.  Naturally, this has added up in airline fees, but fortunately, my wonderful company is taking on those charges since the changes are a direct result of me working for them in an environment that hasn’t yet reached the stage of development when one can begin to make educated guesses about the future.  Another result of that result is that I’m going to help my poor pregnant little (age-wise) sister who just got put on bed-rest last week (she’s having twins) and is maybe needing a tiny bit of help, seeing as she also has an almost-four year old and an almost-two year old and her husband is deployed. Some people don’t plan well, and these are the US military and my sister. Though, my sister is actually usually a genius planner, but some things are (mostly) beyond her control. And even though I didn't make it on her blog list of things she’s happy about in spite of the stress of being on bed rest (yellow flowers and helpful friends and such), I’m giving her a shout-out here (I don’t hold grudges because I’m so much more mature than she is—2.5 years will do that to you), and you should read her blog for deep and insightful posts (which you will NOT find here) and cute pictures of her babies. And for me, I think bed rest could be super-fun, especially since I discovered Amazon.com’s return policy allows you to return a book for a full refund in less than 7 days. And since it never takes me that long to read a book, if I have decent internet connections, Amazon is like my personal library.  But before you get all huffy at me for finding loopholes in systems (Yes, I'm talking to you--my stuffy, rule-following sisters whom I love and adore), I spend PLENTY of money on Amazon that I don’t get back, and they are still making quite a bit of profit off me.

You can see why I
got tired of this, right?

Anyway, circumstances being what they were, I was in Uganda for a week+ with no definite plans.  So, after a few days of hanging out, getting sunburnt by Lake Victoria and spending way too much Neverthirst money in expensive hotels, I decided I would save the organization some dough and instead use my own hard-earned money, which I have diligently saved thanks to Amazon.com and the fact that there is mostly nothing to buy in South Sudan, to go to Rwanda. Why? Because I could. So I did. Why not?

First day in Kigali! Note the flesh-colored band-aids
that don't match my flesh. I'm clearly a freak here.
Also, those band-aids were as terrible as American ones.
Hansaplast are the only goodband-aids!

I landed in Rwanda without much of a plan, but I had found a hotel on Trip Advisor, which gave free airport pick-up, and that is the main kind of planning that I do.  Some day if I ever write about my solo-backpacking trip through SEAsia, you can see that planning a hotel ahead of time is a really big deal for me (OK, let’s be honest, that’s probably not going to happen, so just go ahead and believe that I deserve a pat on the back for planning ahead that much). At said hotel, I posted on Facebook about being in Rwanda and waited for suggestions to come in. They did. Especially one very useful one from a friend of my other currently non-pregnant sister (yes, she’s also my friend too) who hooked me up with one of her friends in Kigali. In spite of being sick, Julie picked me up and brought me to her house for tea and planning my Rwanda tourism strategy. She gave me advice and information about Kigali and convinced a friend in Musanze (town up in the mountains outside of Kigali) to take me in for a night up there. Then her lovely roommate, Jamie, took me to the doctor to look at some weird festering sores on my leg that they agreed looked creepy. I’m pretty sure they started in South Sudan, got worse in Uganda, and apparently they would have gotten even worse if I hadn’t gone to the doctor, so thank those ladies that I am still alive. And that’s how I spent my first hours in Kigali. Adventist (I can’t get away from these guys! Good thing I like them) Doc said, “You have a bacterial staph infection. If it gets more into your bloodstream, you could get very sick.” Or he said something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention to the details. He then got one lucky nurse to clean out all the sores. I’m pretty sure she loved it because she was very diligent and thorough and used much hydrogen peroxide with great force. Then he added another pound to my baggage weight by prescribing two kinds of pills and an antibiotic cream. I’m like a grandma with all the medication I’m taking. I need to get one of those SMTWTFS pill boxes for all my meds. I’m really not good at remembering to take them at the right time. Hopefully that is not crucial to my complete recovery. I took Jamie out to lunch afterwards to thank her for her graciousness in coming with me (making me go) to the doctor. I mean, how many people that you’ve never met in your life would you take to the doctor to get their weird skin disease treated? But that is what you do for fellow expats in need of medical attention. Then you spend a good part of your lunchtime conversation talking of other health issues you’ve had that most people wouldn’t consider proper for mealtime discussion, but these are ways you bond with others here.

Kigali

                                 

On the road to Musanze

                                 

The next day I went up to Musanze, a beautiful town up in a ring of several dormant volcanoes, where rich tourists will pay $750/day to see famous silver-back gorillas. I’m not that rich, and while Neverthirst has been more than generous with me, I didn’t feel that was something I could charge to the company anyway. So I hung out with a lovely family there who took me up one of the volcanoes and sat in a little restaurant while I went for a rainy hike up to the gorilla fence. I didn’t see any gorillas, but I did see some beautiful scenery and a eucalyptus tree that a gorilla had been gnawing on. It was a nice excursion, and a good excuse to see a different part of the country.

Musanze volcanos

Even their farms are beautiful--these red flowers are beans.

TCKs are cool! So are fake gorillas.

                                   

                                         

This is me sucking beauty
in through my giant eyeballs

This country is really extremely beautiful—yes, I say that about everywhere from rolling green tea gardens of Indonesia to endless sandy deserts of Yemen, but I really mean it. Riding the bus up to Musanze, I noticed I was opening my eyes as wide as possible as if I could suck all the beauty into my soul through my eyeballs. I realized I did this years ago while on that solo backpacking trip through SEAsia. It’s weird, and I look like one of those strange monkey-things with huge staring eyes. One thing that really stands out is the lack of trash anywhere. This is amazing to me, having grown up in Indonesia and spent time in India and other places where the road=acceptable place to throw trash. I remarked on this, but the ladies taking me around the country sighed about it as almost symbolic of a nation that is keeping up appearances with a pristine environment, while behind that beauty is a country still struggling to deal with the after-effects of the genocide of 1994.

Musanze rainy volcano day

In 1994, I was in sixth grade. I remember Ben Lawson standing up in front of the class to give a report on the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. His junior-high monotone-presentation voice jumped a little with a boy’s inevitable thrill over saying the words “chopping with machetes.” Still, I remember his horror and my own at the thought of something like that happening. To me, it seemed fantastic—not fantastic/wonderful, but fantastic/impossible/unreal. I never thought that almost 20 years later I would be visiting the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. But I never forgot his presentation either. And I have no idea what current event I spoke about for my presentation.

Kigali

I remembered sixth grade-me as I walked around that museum. I didn’t want to go, but I never considered not going. It feels disrespectful to enjoy a country without remembering the reality of its history. I went to the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia when I was there for the same reason. It is not pleasant to see displays of skulls and leg bones—big and small and clean and whitened. It wrecks you in a way you can’t prepare for even though you felt like you should have tried. Seeing photos of children who were shot or bludgeoned or slashed or burned to death is not easy. Under cherished family photos of beautiful little children who would later be brutally murdered, the families shared details of their lives: their favorite foods, best friends, favorite activities. One 15 month-old’s favorite words was “auntie,” she was burned to death. Another 9 month old child was slashed by a machete while in his mother’s arms. You can’t get over these stories. Even as I loved wandering a new country, enjoying the scenery, I couldn’t get images of streets filled with bodies or mass graves out of my mind.  Seeing these things reminds me of the incredible evil that we as humans are capable of. Anyone who thinks he or she could never do something like that is arrogant or naïve.  We all hope we would be one of the few that stood up for the victims, but it’s probably more likely that we wouldn’t be. The fact that this kind of evil exists in our world in many places, not just Rwanda, shows our desperate need for a Savior. We call behavior like this animalistic, but I don’t think animals generally kill each other for fun or from deep hatred. We do. And it’s not religion or church that we need—in fact, many good church-goers participated in the massacres, including priests and parishioners. When people went to a church, believing that others who claimed to follow the God who loves the world would help them, they were murdered instead.

Coming back down the mountain

As I walked around the city and I could remember back to my sixth grade year, and I knew that people my age or older and even many younger cannot have forgotten what happened.  But walking around the picture-perfect streets of Kigali it is hard to imagine that once the streets were filled with bodies and the smell of death filled the air. It was hard for me not to wonder when looking at people on the bus, in the markets, walking around the mall what they experienced. What side were they on? Do they still think about what happened or do they push away those memories?  I was told that it is actually illegal to ask people their tribal background.  I don’t necessarily think that it’s illegal to talk about what happened, but aside from the memorial, it felt like the events of 1994 never happened. A short video clip on Rwandan Air talked about the new government and the developing nation—a land of a thousand hills and a million smiles. "The government is tough on corruption. Rwanda is developing as an example to neighboring countries." While all that is true, I don’t think it is ultimately beneficial for anyone—Rwanda or the rest of the world—to pretend that the only obstacle the Rwandan people have overcome is inefficient governance. The way to get beyond the horror of those days isn’t to refuse to talk about it. I can only see one way to true healing, both for the victims and the perpetrators, and it is not something that would come naturally to us. We need to know all the time, deep in our souls, not just when sitting in our pews at church, the God of Stephen. The one who gave him the ability to say, “Father forgive them” as he was being stoned to death by his own people.  It may seem easy for me to say that, not having watched my family members murdered, not having had to run for my life or suffer from horrible injuries inflicted on me by people I trusted. But it’s not me saying this. It’s the Man who was betrayed by His friends, condemned by people whose lives He saved, and murdered by an immoral religious establishment in collusion with a corrupt dictatorship. I think He has the right to tell humanity the way to find healing from the violence we wreak on each other. The Genocide Memorial had quotes from survivors of other genocides (the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, massacre in Bosnia), and one quote on one of the boards said, “We don’t want revenge because then they will take revenge again on our children and our children on their grandchildren and so on and it will never stop.”  Being able to restrain oneself from taking revenge is admirable, but being able to recognize the pain and agony that someone caused you and to forgive them, that is life-changing.

Kigali, mass grave, memorial flowers

May God bless the beautiful people of Rwanda in their beautiful country and bring them true peace and healing and hope for a better future. I hope I get to go back someday.