I think the best way to share my experience in northern Uganda is through pictures:
These huts are home to the women who participate in FH's New Life Centre in Kitgum. This program offers protection, counseling and education to vulnerable single mothers and their children. I stayed on the compound with these women for the three days I was in the area. There are currently 28 women enrolled in the program, half of whom were formerly abducted child soldiers. These women suffered from unimaginable emotional and physical trauma, but also exhibited hope and joy in their song and dance they often did on the compound.
Downtown Kitgum. This was my first time really spending time in an Africa village, although Kitgum is bigger than most village centers. There were a few shops that all seemed to sell the few same products that they were able to get ahold of.
One of my favorite things about northern Uganda was seeing the Acholi children out playing in their yards at dusk, no longer having to worry about being abducted by rebels. Innocence has returned to childhood for these kids. As we passed by they would run out to shake our hands and curtsy or yell "muno bye" to us from their homes. Muno is the Acholi word for white person and bye can mean hello or goodbye.
NGO's were everywhere you looked in Kitgum. This road to our compound shows signs for 4 different organizations whose offices were on this road.
Though war has been absent from this region for about three years, and people have now been allowed to move out of displacement camps, devastating poverty remains in northern Uganda. Despite this, there is a simple beauty in African skies and landscape as you also see here.
I feel so fortunate to have finally been given the opportunity to see the region and people God has given me such a passion for. This journey was one of emotional ups and downs, but as I saw the women at the Centre begin to smile and open up despite all they've been through, it gave me hope that northern Uganda can overcome the great devastation it has suffered for the last 25 years. It makes the last four years of volunteering for Invisible Children so worth it.
A little over 4 years ago I saw Invisible Children for the first time. I could never have known that night that God would use that documentary to change my life forever. Today, I bought a plane ticket to northern Uganda. I am going. Finally. I am going to see what I have only seen in pictures and films. I am going to meet the people whose children have been taken and whose lives have been forever altered by this terrible war. I am going to see the IDP camps they were forced to live in. I am going to see the situation that God has called me to be passionately committed to for the last 4 years. More importantly, I am going to see what God has done. I am going to see the New Life Center where girls who were once sex slaves in the LRA are now experiencing the healing power of the Gospel and hope through education, training and the opportunity for a new life. I am going to see, but I do not wish to simply see. I wish to be changed. I wish to wrestle through seeing the evil that man is capable of, and yet knowing that our God is still sovereign. I wish to be even the smallest spark of hope and love to these people who have suffered so much. I wish for them to know that though I have yet to meet them, I love them, and even more, God loves them.
I will be leaving early next Thursday morning on a 10 hour bus ride from Kigali to Kampala. I will spend Thursday night at the FH compound in Kampala and then early Friday morning I will fly from Kampala up north to Kitgum. I will be meeting Kate, another FH staff member, in Kitgum and we will be visiting the office there and also in Pader. Both Pader and Kitgum were home to large IDP camps during the war. We will be in the north through Sunday and then Monday morning I will fly back to Kampala and spend a few days there before heading back to Kigali.
Please pray for health and safety for me as I travel, as well as God's grace as I see and take in all that I will experience in northern Uganda. I anticipate it being a very emotionally draining experience. Please pray also that I would be able to be an encouragement to the FH staff working in northern Uganda, as well as the people there that I come into contact with.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite verses:
Micah 6:8 "He has shown you O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God."
For the past two weeks my parents have been periodically sending me links to aricles on the Des Moines Register's website by Perry Beeman, an environmental writer for the paper who also just arrived in Rwanda. For those of you who get the register, or visit the register's website, I'd invite you to follow his writings from Rwanda as well. This is his article from yesterday. It gave me chills to read it, both because of it's descriptions of the genocide memorials he visited, and because I quickly realized that out of hundreds of memorials in Rwanda, he visited the same two memorials I did.
Rwanda's genocide frozen in time at church memorials by PERRY BEEMAN pbeeman@dmreg.com
Kigali, Rwanda - Tuesday was my firstborn son's 26th birthday.
I spent it visiting spots in Rwanda where men and women and children of all ages were killed, some of them pregnant, simply because they were Tutsi. The ruling Hutu majority had issued the sickening order to "cut down the tall trees," a reference to many Tutsis' thin frames. Hutus wanted to end decades of conflict with Tutsis in an ethnic cleansing largely unrivaled outside of Nazi Germany.
I'm reporting in Rwanda through a fellowship with the International Reporting Project. I'm working on stories about the work Rwanda is doing to build an eco-friendly economy, 15 years after the genocide. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is heavily involved.
I've been here a couple of weeks, but this was my first chance to take in a genocide memorial.
There is a formal memorial in Kigali, the capital, which I also plan to see. But there are several other places, mostly churches, where the skulls, bones, and clothing of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in the 1994 genocide are on display at the spot the people perished.
When I first saw the piles of clothes that were removed from 10,000 people killed in a Catholic church in Nyamata, southeast of Kigali, I thought I might wretch. I've seen gruesome things, and I had read plenty about the 1994 genocide before arriving in Rwanda, but nothing prepares one for this.
My second thought: How fortunate that my son, Scott, is alive and well and celebrating a birthday with his wonderful wife, Sheryl. How blessed I am to have another son, Joel, also alive and thriving. And a beautiful and loving wife, Jane, back home, safe. And my faithful dog, Carly. And my large, extended family. Events like this make you take stock. In a hurry.
Rwanda lost 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a few months in early 1994, when the Hutu majority launched a genocide after the plane carrying one of their own, President Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down near the airport in Kigali.
You can watch "Sometimes in April" or "Hotel Rwanda," or read one of the many genocide books, but it's hard to imagine this event fully without seeing one of the rural churches where sanctuaries turned into mass graves.
Fresh from a couple of days of viewing some spectacular scenery and wildlife in Akagera National Park, I asked driver Jamada Muberuka about these church memorials. He offered to drive me to a couple.
First stop, Nyamata. The spot is quiet. Ribbons and flags of purple and white blow in the wind, the traditional colors used to mark observances of the genocide anniversaries. In 1990, Tutsis began moving here to escape threats elsewhere, said a memorial staffer, Martin Kalisa, through an interpreter. In 1992, two years before the genocide, 680 people were killed in this village, he said. Roadblocks ruled the day. The roaming Tutsis began dying of starvation. "There was no food. The soil was dry," Kalisa said. "Many starved."
Italian humanitarian Tonia Locatelli, who lived in a house next to the Catholic church, took to the international airwaves to tell the world of the starvation and suffering. "We must save these people. We must protect them," she pleaded. "It's the government itself which is doing this." It was 1992. On March 9, a soldier in a nearby tree shot Locatelli to death as she stood outside her home. She is buried outside the church.
In 1993, Tutsis were told that it was safe to return home, and they did. But as the war heated up and 1994 unfolded, they returned to the church, knowing they had survived there before. Kalisa isn't sure what day, but the Hutu forces showed up to find the church locked. They set off bombs that left holes in the concrete that are still there. They stormed in and killed 10,000 people hiding inside, with ponga knives (machetes), clubs and guns.
The clothes those people wore that day are stacked on the pews throughout the sanctuary. The altar stands clean and unblemished. Underground are the remains of 40,000 people, including many killed in the surrounding area. Above ground, the burial area is marked by a peaceful white tile with blue-tile crosses on top.
In one underground area is a display that includes the coffin of a pregnant woman who was raped, then stabbed to death. "This way, she is alone with her baby," Kalisa said.
Also on display are identification cards - left over from a system installed by Belgians that fanned the Tutsi and Hutu tensions - and jewelry. Rows of skulls, some missing pieces on top, are in a lit display surrounded by white tile.
We took steps down to an underground vault where neat rows of skulls and stacks of arm and leg bones were stacked on shelves. "Let us get out of here," said driver Jamada Muberuka. "Every time I come here, I get ..." He couldn't finish the sentence. "Those were tough times."
The tensions between Hutus and Tutsis went back decades, with several large outbreaks of violence from 1959 on. After 1990, tensions turned into rebel forces looking to throw the Hutus out of power. On July 4, 1994, current President Paul Kagame and his rebel forces took control and started building what they hoped would be a coalition government serving Rwandans, not Hutus and Tutsis. Much of the fighting shifted westward to the Democratic Republic of Congo next door, but Rwanda has kept peace.
We left this memorial and drove past the government-issue houses of genocide victims on our way to a second memorial, at Ntarama. The holes in the brick walls that were blown open with grenades are still there. The forces killed 5,000 here. The victims' clothes line the walls and hang from the rafters. The pongas and clubs used to kill those in the church are on display toward the front of the church, where a message, roughly translated, read, "If you had known about me and about yourself, you would not have killed me." It is a message still ringing with the disbelief that a human, a neighbor, a fellow villager, would kill another.
"People thought they would be safe here," driver Jamada said. "In our culture, our belief is that no one can do something wrong in a church."
The "wrong" here included storming into the kitchen-turned-mass-bedroom in a back building and setting mattresses on fire. The room still has cupboards and clothing scattered around.
A concrete wall sports an incomplete list of the dead. On this day, a breeze blew through, and the wide valley and hills presented a serene setting for such a disturbing place.
"It will not happen again," Jamada said. "Even those who were involved are regretting it."
It's an event that has consumed many people's vision of this country and its warm, friendly people. It's a beautiful, safe place with a lot to offer and, 15 years on, a growing economy and a sound government. Read the other items in my blog to get an idea of what this country is like now, with recovery well under way.
You might want to tell your family members something first. I'll go first: "I love you!"
This week was one of transition. Thursday morning 12 of the 15 Go ed students left for Uganda, and the remaining students left today for Giterama, about an hour outside of Kigali. Aryn and I are now the only ones living in our house. This will be quite an adjustment but I am looking forward to it. It will give me a chance to know Aryn better, as well as forcing me to to take more initiative in getting to know people at church and at the office better.
This week Aryn's new assistant also began work with FH. Her name is Vestine and she is truly a blessing to both of us. Her sweet spirit and incredible dependence on God are such an encouragement. I am so glad that I am getting a chance to spend a couple months working with her while I'm here. I will be helping Aryn to train her on simple accounting procedures and microsoft excel.
Rainy season is finally here. It has teased us for the last couple weeks but it is now consistently raining everyday. I enjoy the rain thus far, even though I have already gotten caught walking in it twice.
Even from Africa I am trying my best to follow the sports world. Glad to see the Hawkeyes, Cyclones and Vikings all doing pretty well! and only 3 weeks until the Spurs season starts!
Please pray for continued health for myself and the Go ed students. We had one student tested for parasites and one tested for malaria this week and both came back negative, but they are not feeling well nonetheless. Aryn has also been feeling sick and is going to the doctor tomorrow.
Thank you all for your continued support! I miss you all!
