Helplessness Blues

There’s no manual for talking to people about living through the genocide. Like when I watched him get upset remembering how the UN left them—when the UN had the ability to stop the genocide—there was nothing I could do or say. I just kept praying he would see it in my eyes how much I desperately wanted to be in that pain with him. He and I both know I’m not responsible, but that doesn’t erase what Westerners represent to him.

There’s nothing I can do about the genocide. Sometimes I wonder if I actually came here to find my own peace from the guilt of what non-Rwandans did to Rwanda, people who created hierarchy and division in a previously peaceful class system and then left when decades of oppression surfaced. I’m not taking away any blame from the people who were perpetrators of the genocide, but I am pointing out that there is a history of foreign interactions that led to these tensions. Maybe I’m actually seeking my own reconciliation. There’s really nothing I can do.

But I can learn the language. Not to benefit myself for use in the future, in fact, I’ll probably never speak Kinyarwanda again. But I can try to learn it for the people here now. I can disrupt the expectation that they must learn English to speak to me, and instead I can struggle through new sounds in order to live through their words.

Thankfully, God has provided multiple ways for me to continue to learn and practice throughout the day. I’ve started walking to work, which has created an unexpected 45 minutes (each way) of Kinyarwanda lessons with strangers. Without fail, each time I walk to and from work, people will join me for at least part of my walk, speaking in Kinyarwanda with me and teaching me new phrases. Today, a man wanted me to learn how to say, “I love Rwanda and Rwandese people.” He then told me that by saying that, I am now Rwandan. I told him I don’t think that’s how it works (definitely a Michael Scott moment when he declared bankruptcy by shouting it in the office…still broke, Michael).

I’ve started to become a regular along the walk and have made friends with groups of men hanging outside restaurants, two women who are always cooking, a group of girls selling cell phone credit, and (my favorite) an incredibly large crowd of old men/teenage boys/small children who make their living washing cars in the valley between hills. They are convinced I’m fluent in Kinyarwanda, and unless they throw any new questions at me, I hope they’ll never realize the truth!

In a beautiful way, I feel caught between representing the help that never saved and the muzungu who wants to understand Rwanda. I feel the responsibility of understanding that helping without understanding is hurtful, but I also experience daily the joy of being loved and accepted with open arms (literally).

This quote by Henry Nouwen is everything I could hope to express about what my life feels like right now (thank you HNGR newsletter for your perfectly timed notes of encouragement):

“One of the most rewarding aspects of living in a strange land is the experience of being loved not for what we do, but for who we are…I am convinced that, for Christians, culture shock can be an opportunity not only for psychological healing but also for conversion.”

Cooking cassava like a champ, thanks to these women