Beacon

Last day. Notice how the students connect & touch one another

10/15/10: Jet lag is insidious. I’ll be perking along just fine, & all of a sudden I can’t keep my eyes open. I set my alarm for a one-hour nap & just couldn’t get up for another 40 minutes.

I have been thinking about this trip. ProjectLIGHTRwanda is not just about helping people in abject poverty. It isn’t just about helping people heal from trauma. It’s about much more than that.

Imagine a family member you love dearly & is in your life daily dies. Now imagine (s)he is murdered. Now imagine you watch helplessly as it happens. Now imagine the murderer is your neighbor who you thought was a friend. Now imagine he kills the rest of your family, & tortures them as you watch, knowing he is coming for you next. Now imagine you somehow escape, & see from a distance that your house & the bodies of your family are burned to the ground. You manage to survive for months in hiding while the murderers search for you, calling your name. Then the exiled army returns & liberates your area & you go home—to nothing. No house, no family, no possessions, no family pictures or keepsakes, no friends. Now imagine you see the murderer living with his family in his house with some of your possessions. Nothing has happened to him. He denies he did anything—it was the soldiers. And nothing happens to him. You can’t sleep because you fear being killed or when you do sleep you are awakened with flashbacks to the night & days of terror. How do you cope? How do you move into the present & ultimately into forgiveness? If you live in most of Rwanda you are now safe. If you live in the far northwest, you may still be killed by Hutu Power bands crossing over from the Congo. You do not have money to go to school. You find other survivors & together you learn to survive, but never enough food & always simple carbohydrates when you do have food. As one survivor says in our video, “I cried every day. Tears were like my food.”

This is what ProjectLIGHTRwanda is about. It’s about giving hope where there is none. It’s about healing from the unthinkable, the unforgiveable & finding peace in your heart & forgiving because it is what you need. It doesn’t mean abandoning the call for accountability, but understanding that feeling shame & guilt, even though denied on the surface, is also living with trauma. When these people are able to reach this place with themselves—and they do, IT GIVES HOPE TO THE WHOLE WORLD. IF THESE PEOPLE CAN HEAL, ANYONE WHO HAS SUFFERED ANYTHING CAN HEAL. These children show the amazing power of the human spirit beyond anything I have ever experienced. They are the antidote to the virus of genocide, to the disease of war. It would take much less effort for me to work with those here who have been traumatized, but they would not be the beacon toward world peace that the children of Rwanda can be.