The Rwandan Genocide

Sunday, November 10, 2019
Yesterday, after a short day in the hospital, I was lent the book Left to Tell by Dr. Green's wife.

In Rwanda, "missionary midnight" is nine o'clock.

I stayed up to actual midnight and finished it.

The book tells the story of the Rwandan genocide through the eyes of Immaculée, a Tutsi woman who spent the genocide hidden in a bathroom, hardly larger than a glorified closet, with seven other women.

The first chapter ends like this: after painting a picture of her family, who were well respected and hard-working members of their community, composed of three wonderful older brothers (one who seemed to me to be a better version of myself), a mother who woke up each day before them, tended the fields, cooked them breakfast, and then headed off to her full-time teaching job; and a father who people traveled for miles to obtain counsel from, Immaculée proceeded to explain the meaning behind the title:

At the end of the genocide, she was the only person left to tell her family's story.

I felt chills creep down my vertebrae at that point. As I continued to read the description of her listening in terror to drunken killers stumbling and tearing through the room next to her, concealed in a bathroom behind a wardrobe that didn't even fully cover the door, praying fervently to God to blind the eyes of the killers, a sense of dread crept over me.

I'd admittedly had an idealized vision of Rwanda in my head as a beautiful mountain-filled land with kind, very sociable, people and only a vague notion of a genocide tucked safely away in the pages of history.

But this book felt as if duct tape covering my eyes had been torn off.

Yes, Rwanda is a country that looks like paradise, but its recent history is undeniably stained by blood, littered with buried corpses, and polluted by memories of a senseless slaughter.

I wonder just how much tension seethes below a tranquil and peaceful surface waiting for a trigger, like the demise of the prime minister Paul Kagame, to be unleashed.

What horrified me most was learning that pastors of churches encouraged the government-dictated killings--Immaculée's own brother died thanks to the urging of a pastor.

After being dragged outside in nothing but his underpants, beat in the face with the handles of machetes, her brother Damascene struggled to his feet and smiled at his killers:

"Go ahead," he said, "today is my day to go to God. I can feel Him all around us. He is watching, waiting to take me home ... But I am praying for you ... I pray that you see the evil you're doing and ask God's forgiveness before it's too late."

These were his last words.

As his killers stood confused, a Protestant pastor mocked him: "Does this boy think he is a pastor? I am the pastor here, and I bless this killing. I bless you for ridding this country of another cockroach ... What are you waiting for? ... Kill him!"

At this, they hacked him to death with machetes, slicing open his skull, and bragged about how they had seen the brain of someone with a master's degree.

This incident, this book, was a shocking reminder of how dark and twisted a road can lead ordinary people down when we separate and judge based on the shape of a person's nose, the size of their wallet, or the color of their skin, rather than on the construction of their character; when we simplify and stereotype an entire group of humans rather than listening to people's individual stories; when we skip over the respect due to a person--each person; when our religion becomes a political stance rather than a way of life built on worship and virtue; when we become known for outspoken hate towards certain people groups rather than sacrificial love towards the impoverished.

But so too this book is a reminder of the healing power of forgiveness, a reminder of the nurturing, healing power of a God of Love, and a reminder that everyone, no matter how far gone, can be redeemed.

Perhaps the story of Rwanda is not so foreign from us as it seems.