Part of the group at the cooperative. Children were to the right.

10/9/10: Today was to be our holiday—seeing the country. We went to the genocide museums at Nyamata & at Ntrama in the southeast part of the country. I cannot find words for the experience. At both museums I felt after about 10 minutes there that I could not breathe. I will not go into details about all the atrocities, but only say that the thing I find hardest to comprehend is the practice of taking children, even the fetuses they removed from pregnant women, & smashing their heads against walls. The perspective that in order to kill, one must make the victim into an animal does not explain it. The only explanation I can come up with is that not only were they animals, they were deadly, life-threatening animals like boa constrictors or black widow spiders, & all must be destroyed in order to remain safe. That is exactly the brainwashing that the government conducted, but what happened to the President’s wife & brothers that led them to that perspective?

After the museums we pulled into the driveway of a Christian Care Cooperative. It became immediately apparent that people were assembled there specifically to see us (we were not told that was going to happen). We were told of their compelling problems (HIV infected people, genocide widows, the extremely poor & orphan or HIV infected children). We were shown the crafts they made & told their prices. We were being put on display & paraded as money bags (my initial reaction—I understood how gorillas in zoos must feel & felt betrayed by our hosts from the orphanage). After a few minutes I found my greater wisdom & remembered that I was in Africa to bring as much love as I could into whatever situation I found myself in. As soon as I began to do that, I could feel the level of pain that led our hosts to try to help whomever they could, & that they knew us as compassionate people who did really want to help, so they likely assumed we would be happy to know about this group of people. I could also begin to feel the humanity of each person there. When they started singing & dancing & came up to get us to join, I experienced that instant heart connection that dissolves differences & causes love to flow. Had I stayed in my initial victim, used reaction I would have missed a beautiful experience & the opportunity to enhance that for others.

In the evening we were invited to the home of a family with 5 children. The oldest (High School) is away at a boarding school. The other four range from age 8 to 16. As soon as we arrived, they came rushing out to hug each one of us—they had met Lori before, but none of the rest of us. That’s another example of the open-hearted connection that is just part of their culture. We had a feast of avocados, raw vegetables with sauce, rice with cheese, beef with sauce, seasoned fried potatoes, & their plums, papaya, & passion fruit. Dessert was a delicate almond pound cake. In a twist from the West, the children sat at the table, & we adults sat in a circle in the living room. Our after-dinner conversation could have been happening in my living room at home except the husband occasionally had to interpret for the wife who’s English is not as good.

Tomorrow is a welcome day to sleep in, & we will take a friend (one of the interpreters) to dinner for her birthday.