The Road to Reconciliation - 260 km for a cow

They say reconciliation is a journey. For those of you who have been following my life at any point in the last decade, you know my journey has been to understand this.

This April marks the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Many will remember the horrific events of the genocide in 1994. But I hope people also take a moment to be in awe of the stories of healing, transformation, and reconciliation that Rwanda has since brought to the world. 

It seems fitting that I make this metaphorical journey a reality. So this week, in honor of my 26th birthday (on April 26!) I will be walking 260 kilometers over 12 days on the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage that travelers have journeyed for over a thousand years to the burial site of St. James. It has many routes, mine will start in Porto, Portugal and end with all the other pilgrims in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

But my journey isn't just a metaphor. I want this to mean something - I want to see reconciliation made a reality for another family. 

So I'll be raising funds to give one cow to a perpetrator and direct survivor of the genocide and their families. I've seen the difference 1 cow makes for families in Rwanda. Through a local organization called CARSA, this cow is shared by both families and becomes a source of economic stability and a shared goal that helps to repair their relationship. I've interviewed dozens of participants of this program and know that it truly transformative, not just for the survivor and perpetrator, but for their children to see their parents' relationship restored.

Please join me in this journey! Your support will go directly to Rwanda to purchase the cow, build the cowshed, and provide follow up support and training, a total of $800. 

If you'd like to be part of this, you can give online at www.carsaministry.org and click the green donate button. Please add in the comment section "Kayla's cow" so it is designated accordingly.

Whether you give online, share this with friends, or just send me happy thoughts from afar, thank you! Your support and encouragement mean the world.

This is a photo I took in 2014 with the first survivor/perpetrator pair I interviewed in the Cow for Peace program. I didn't know at the time when I saw them holding hands that one man had killed the family member of the other. Yet since then, he has forgiven him and now they both proclaim they are 'free from the burdens of the past.'

These are the children of a survivor and perpetrator pair who received a cow in the Cow for Peace program. Unfortunately, the relationship between their fathers is not good - reconciliation is so difficult. However, since sharing the cow, the children have started to play together and now they are friends, even if their parents cannot be. 

Is forgiveness possible? (and other terrifying thoughts courtesy of Nietzsche)

Well, as my flatmate pointed out, I have a blog in which I haven't posted anything since arriving in Scotland. My days have been spent exploring the alleyways of Aberdeen, the coastal paths of the sea, drinking massive amounts of coffee, endless hours of reading, and an "occasional" binge of a new BBC show.

Took the bus to get here, and when the bus driver found out my friend and I
were trying to get to this castle, he dropped us off not at an official bus stop,
but on the side of a road in the middle of a field, pointed to the distant
outline of ruins, and said "walk there."

I have thought about blogging, but I have remained paralyzed by the paradox of always learning in pursuit of questions, and yet never arriving at an answer.

And so my blog has remained silent.

But I must remind myself that this blog isn't about answers. It's about my journey within the questions (there's a beautiful quote by Rainer Maria Rilke about this). And no one wants to listen to a twenty-something American who thinks they have the answers to life anyways.

And so with not a small amount of trepidation (throwback to my SAT flashcards), I'll start off with one of "the biggies," a potentially a heretical question considering my degree:

Is forgiveness possible?

If you asked me this a year ago, I would've replied with a resounding "yes." Because any other answer would have been too terrible to consider.

Forget how forgiveness might be possible - through what context/situation/intervention is forgiveness possible, or even through which ideology, religion, spiritually, or combination of is forgiveness possible…

Just, is forgiveness possible?

I knew people doubted forgiveness, I saw it on their faces when I talked about Rwanda. I saw the doubt and skepticism visibly wash over them. I never minded it - my stories wouldn't make sense if I hadn't seen it for myself. I even had doubts in the midst of being served tea in the home of a genocide perpetrator by his survivor who was almost buried alive in a mass grave of bodies. I understood wondering about the "unfair burden of forgiveness" that the whole situation places on the female survivor.

And then this week, I met Nietzsche.

Nietzsche - the man who deconstructs everything a Christian is raised to know as "truth." And because he stands in such opposition of the mindset I was raised with, I dove into his "Genealogy of Morals" eager to know if what I believed would stack up. Because as I was recently advised, "if truth is worth following, it better hold up to everything else."

So Nietzsche, a highly misunderstood, often misquoted and definitely misused philosopher…Nietzsche feels very dangerous because I am no expert (as only reading one book of his does not qualify you as such), and yet I believe he poses very valid and challenging questions to this topic.

His main argument, as I understand it to be, is that there is no inherit "good," but that every moral we collectively hold today is actually the product of an evolution of morals. Specifically, our morals today were shaped by the conflict between noble and slave morals, where the religious in power (notably "the cruelest of all, the Christian") dictated what is "good."

Where this comes to a true crisis of reality (in my mind) is that he asserts that compassion and forgiveness are actually just weaknesses.

Pause.

This is where all my past conversations about peace and reconciliation come flashing to mind. In each of these conversations, I jump in headfirst with the assumption that all humans agree forgiveness and reconciliation is the "good and right" way to go.

But according to Nietzsche, I believe and assume this to be true only because I am socialized to value these morals (which is definitely correct), not because they are instinctively good (which is up for debate). He would say these morals are actually weaknesses, and furthermore, religion has used them as tools to dominate power (unfortunately true in some historical and modern day cases).

So is forgiveness and reconciliation "good"? Are they strengths? Because if you don't believe in Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, or in any religious figure's sacrifice of power, or in any movement's leader in nonviolent resistance…then what does valuing these morals actually accomplish except placing an added burden on the oppressed?

Oof. For me, these are terrifying but necessary questions.

I cannot rationally explain forgiveness. I, like Nietzche, believe people are born as inherently not great people (I'm pretty sure I am in agreement with Nietzsche about this but I could be wrong, please let me know if I am). It is in our nature to hurt, lie, steal, cheat.

Therefore when we find examples where people manage to go against their natural instinct - to show compassion, to forgive, to pursue healing…even when it comes at a cost to themselves - this to me is strength. 

And so where we find these examples of strength, the world must pay attention. In Rwanda, I saw this both in the life of the survivor, but also in other unexpected places - in the wife of a perpetrator, who dealt daily with the stigma of being a perpetrator's wife while caring alone for their family as he remains in prison. Furthermore, she had to work to pay the reparations for her husband's crimes…all the while reaching out to reconcile with his survivor. When I met her, she was hugging his survivor and they were calling each other "friend."

So Nietzsche, with all due respect (and truly I have respect for you because you continue to force people throughout the world and throughout generations to think through their belief system), I have to say that forgiveness is not weakness. Weakness is giving into our nature. And because forgivness is counter to our nature, it is strength.

Is forgiveness possible? Yes, I believe that it is. But how is it possible? Is it through - or outside of - religion, spirituality, or level of power within the context? Maybe we'll tackle that another day...

The Next Chapter

Depending on how long you've known me, this next chapter either makes total sense or no sense at all.

So let's get the basics out of the way:

Where? "Aberdeen, Scotland!"

For what? "Grad school."

Degree? "Post Conflict Justice and Peacebuilding."

....*silence*... "Kinda like what I did in Rwanda." 

Ah. How long? "12 months."

Only 12 months?! "I know...the UK has it figured out."

How? "Because of the generosity of people all around the world who proudly serve as Rotarians. Because of this community - most of whom I will never meet - I have this honor and privilege as a Global Grant Scholar." 

What will you do after? ...*silence*....

This next chapter makes sense if you met me in 7th grade when my English teacher assigned a persuasive essay, and I wrote about why we should care about the genocide in Darfur.

This makes sense if you met me in high school when I started asking questions about reconciliation...what does that even mean? 

This makes sense if you met me in college and I wouldn't stop talking about the most beautiful representation of multicultural worship and community in Little Rock, Arkansas.

This makes sense if you stopped by my desk in the last 3 years and made a comment about the picture of Rwandan children playing, not knowing you'd be stuck there while I told you it was the children of a genocide perpetrator and their direct survivor who has now reconciled because they shared a cow (shout out to my unsuspecting coworkers). 

It all makes sense. And yet I can't stop asking "Why me?"

This is the question that won't let me stay in DC, as transformative as every aspect of my life in DC has been (shout out to the best family, friends, roommates, mentors, mentees, church leaders, and coworkers I could ask for).

I still don't know why I was welcomed into the home of a genocide perpetrator who now dedicates his life to the work of reconciliation because of what he did 25 years ago. I don't know why I - already steeped in privilege - reaped the blessings of others' emotional toil in racial reconciliation as I was welcomed into their communities in Little Rock and DC.

But I accept all of it as a gift. And with all gifts, I can only hope to be a good steward of it.

So with this gift, I will continue to ask even more questions. Because this story is pointless if it's just about me. 

Let this next year transform this question "why me?" to "for whom?"

One year ago, I wrote in my journal during the most spectacular trip to Scandinavia,
"...could I really pick up my life and move to another country?"
12 months later and I still don't know...but I can't wait to try. 

When familiar is strange.

Wise friends told me that even though I’m going back to Rwanda, I will never really go back because it will never be the same. And they’re right. It’s not the same. Everything that was once strange, is now familiar. I used to be familiar with strange, and now it’s strange to feel familiar.

Some things have changed in Kigali. The skyline is longer and taller with new buildings and hotels. The Marriot moved in. New roads are built, confusing this already out of place muzungu. 

My favorite things have not. Hearing church drums on a Thursday morning for hours building in intensity and repetition. Friends being so busy with work, and still they let me distract them when the power goes out in the office and I want to hear their thoughts on reconciliation. Radio mixing music of Rwandan pop, Whitney Houston, Justin Bieber, and African rap.  Greetings of every person who walks in a room—regardless if you know them, you greet them.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever change. Mixing Kinyarwanda with broken French and awkward English. Slipping on steep hills. Always wanting more coffee.

But then, I wonder how could I feel so different from the last time? Feeling free to be myself, laughing so loud a friend lovingly told me I “shout laugh,” sleeping in and eating fruit and avocado till I think I’m going to burst, talking for hours when it feels like minutes. Sharing my fears, my hurts, my questions, my needs, my wants, my passions with friends who will sometimes never fully understand, and other times are right there with me. 

It took going back to move forward.

I have even less clarity of why I came back. Personal vacation, internal determination, communal affirmation, it’s really everything and nothing all at once.

I think that’s what I love most. Here, I’m free to live the contradictions. I’m free to do nothing and to be tired, to have needs and to satisfy my wants, to question doubts and to live in faith, to be insufficient and to feel whole.

In other words, without “doing,” I’m free to just be. 

When a picture is more than a thousand words

"Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity." - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think a lot about stories. I think about assumptions that we hold within them. I think about the way we tell our stories, and sometimes more importantly, how we tell the stories for others. 

This week, I went to a conference where the key note speaker used art history to train people (most notably the NYPD, Navy Seals, doctors and now...non-profit fundraisers?) to learn the skill of observation and the power of perception. It boils down to this: training how you see the world allows you to reconsider how you perceive the world. 

You maybe be thinking, ...what? Cause I was too. Let's try an example:

What do you see here? I'll give you a hint: it's a four legged animal.  

See it? I didn't. I thought maybe a kitten in the top right. Now look at this version:

I still didn't see it, although a few people will. Now here's the outline:

It's a cow. Now I see it. And now I can't UN-see it. I needed someone to help me guide my eyes, direct my focus and give me context to see what is really going on in this picture. While my brain was desperately trying to make sense of it, I still needed someone else outside of my gaze to point out what was staring me in the face. 

Let's try another one:

What do you see?

When I took this photo, I saw a photogenic moment of a Rwandan man inspecting a random tree while he led a group of people on a meaningless path. 

But thankfully, a friend helped me see beyond that, a friend who actually understood the language, knew the context, and was familiar with this man's story. My friend redirected my focus and told me what I had actually just captured in one photo: 

Twenty years prior, this man was a genocide perpetrator and participated in the killings of his neighbors, friends, and fellow church members. One of those survivors was the woman whose land we were standing on, and who stood behind my right shoulder as I took the photo.

As I slowly processed the story of these two individuals, the weight of their journey hit me. I thought of the shame, guilt, trauma, and sleepless nights that both the man and the woman had felt for years. I thought of the anxiety of the first time they were under the same roof in a trauma-healing workshop, and the fear they had to approach each other again. I thought of the power of the moment he asked for her forgiveness and the emotions that must have evoked for her. I thought of the continued battle of mistrust, doubt, and trepidation both parties felt as they began to build a relationship that once was defined by death. 

And then, in that moment, I saw the freedom, the joy and the friendship standing before me; he with the dignity of a reconciled leader taking us to the home of the woman he once persecuted, she with the dependency of a friend as he took care of her land. 

Stories have power, and because of that, I have held these stories close for the past 2 years. But each story was shared with me with the expressed desire to be told to the world. They knew that the world needs a different story to change our framework of understanding. A story of hope and reconciliation. They knew that we (the rest of the world) need someone to point out the dang cow staring us in the face. (Is it a coincidence that the example was a cow and I studied a program revolving around cows? I think not.) 

They knew that once the world sees hope in the midst of evil and reconciliation in the midst of brokenness, we would never un-see it again. 

In 10 days, I'm going back to the breathtaking country of a thousand hills. Two years ago I went with only one goal - to learn from these stories. And now, I'm going back for an already-too-short visit. But it is so worth it, because now my only plan in Rwanda is to be with the people who daily live and teach me these stories. 

And I cannot wait.

"So...how Was Rwanda?"

In the months since returning from Rwanda, I've been asked this question a hundred times. My response? Rwanda as an experience was everything at once: hard, challenging, joyful, transforming, radical, simple, mundane, crazy, new, routine. But mostly beautiful.

But the real question is not so much what Rwanda was like in the past, but how my life has changed because of it now.

My experience in Rwanda during the months I lived there means very little if it didn't transform how I live my life in the US today. A friend reminded me of this the other day over coffee. After sharing the story of a perpetrator I had met in Rwanda who reconciled with his survivor, my friend looked at me and asked with a simple sincerity, "What does that look like in my life here?"

I think this is the question we forget to ask. We want to talk about the differences in food and lifestyle, the funny language miscommunications (of which I experienced many), and the crazy stories that inspire a fleeting moment of hope. But what do these experiences mean in light of our everyday, ordinary life? The stories Rwandans shared with me in moments of trust, vulnerability, and blessing were not unusual; they were just life. So what do I do with the weight of these stories now?

This is my main takeaway, what I answer as the thing I wish all people knew: We like to think that the stories of the genocide are so distant and far from our lives, but really the sin in the hearts of people who committed genocide is the same sin that is in our hearts everywhere. But it doesn't stop there: the power of the Holy Spirit that is at work in Rwanda and throughout the world is the same power that is active in our lives here.

My friends and family did not initially see drastic changes in me in my "reentry" culture shock. Instead, it is in the small life changes that I have tried to honor the relationships and stories of my Rwandan community. I am more wary to limit people to a single identity, and instead choose to see all as equally deserving of dignity. I have learned that there is wisdom and truth found in the experiences of others, and choosing to listen is an act of love.

Where does that leave me now? I've officially finished my last semester of college (yayyy!) and am returning to DC to live with friends and spend time with family. I can't wait to build my life around the people I love the most (currently in that exciting/terrifying job search phase of life). One day, I hope to pursue further education in peace studies, specifically looking at program development that supports the grassroots approaches I have learned to love and believe in. Mostly, I am so excited to see how God will continue to use my time in Rwanda to further teach and mold me to love others in the image of God.

The Story of Pellina and Malakia

I’ve realized there is no better way to convey the stories and lessons I’ve learned than to let them speak for themselves. The following blog post is a direct transcript of our interview that was recorded with permission to share. For the people who radically transform everything I thought I understood of forgiveness, reconciliation and love, I pray this honors them as they continue to teach the world through their words. 

Meet Pellina, a survivor who was orphaned during the genocide

“When the genocide took place, I was a Christian. And when the genocide took place, people were killed and I didn’t die—I was saved. So I said to myself, “What God has done for me, it’s so, so huge, its so big. I survived in the genocide.” I realized that those who have been killed in the genocide are the creation of God, and I am also the creation of God, and even those who have killed are the creation of God…I used to read the Bible and the Bible told me that God hates sin but He loves the sinners. I said, “Even though these people have done all these messes, God has always loved them.” So I said to myself that I am going to forgive them as a sign of thanking God that I survived. And it was very difficult for me to give them forgiveness because they were in prison. In my church, we had a program for the choir where we sang and visited prisoners. So I would go with the choir and meet the perpetrators, and always I would tell them I have forgiven them.

I started telling this story of forgiving perpetrators to my relatives, those who survived. My siblings were still young, one was 7 and another was 10. I told them, “Please come and forgive those men who killed our parents.” I told them, “Our parents, relatives and siblings have died. But these perpetrators are the ones we’re remaining with, so we must forgive them so we can remain together.”

I have forgiven Malakia to the point that every good act I do on the offender’s behalf so he can feel free to come here—I have tried my best so that he can feel free. When you forgive, everything is possible. Not only for Malakia,  but also [the other people who offended us] come to our home and we drink and eat without any fear. People in the community used to tell me, “[These men] will bewitch you, why do you visit those families?” And I told those people, “I have forgiven them, we have reconciled so they will not do any harm to me. If God protected me in the genocide, He will protect me now.”

We are not supposed to continue in sorrow and pain because of what happened in the genocide. There are people who don’t have parents for reasons other than the genocide. You can live without parents and siblings because we have God. That’s why we should not continue to live in sorrow—because there are still other orphans.”

Meet Malakia, one of her offenders

I offended Pellina during the genocide. I was the leader in this small neighborhood. At the time of the genocide, which was very terrible period, this woman was not yet married. Some of the young people in the group I was leading wanted to come here to kill this lady. And they asked me, “We can’t go anywhere without you.” So we came and Pellina was hiding here—in this house—and we came searching for her. Good enough, we didn’t find her. She was around here, but we couldn’t find her, so we went. But if we could have seen her, she was supposed to die.

After genocide, I realized she didn’t die and that she was still alive. When she saw me, she was very angry. Imagine seeing someone who was going to kill you! At that time I went to prison in May 1996. I spent 6 years there. The time I went in prison, she came to the prison where I was. She was a Christian at that time. She asked the leadership of the jail to release me. They called me and when I saw her, I was afraid. And I thought, “Why is she calling me? Maybe they are going to beat me!” But she said, “Please come!” I came very afraid.

When we approached each other, she immediately hugged me. And she told me, “I have called you just to greet you and to tell you that I have forgiven you. In the name of Jesus I forgive you.” And when I received that news, my body automatically changed. I felt electricity current go through my body and the burden was released. Then, they prayed for me…Now, we have a good relationship.