A Farm and Forgiveness

Several weeks ago, as I was traveling back to Kalisizo from Kampala on a coaster bus, the man sitting next to me decided to start up a conversation.  Although slightly annoyed at being interrupted from reading a book on the pros and cons of development assistance, I soon began to enjoy talking to this young man, named Henry, and finding out a little bit about what he does.  As it turned out, he manages a farm not too far from Kalisizo, and he invited me to come and see it.  So, I gave him my phone number and didn’t think too much about it after getting off of the bus in Masaka.

Less than a week later, Henry was calling me, asking when I might be able to come and visit.  For a while, I couldn’t find the time to get away from work for a little bit, but Henry was quite persistent and kept reminding me that I should come out sometime.  Finally, last weekend, I felt that I could take the time to go and check out the farm.  So I went, and I ended up spending the whole weekend there.  The farm itself was fairly large and interesting.  They grow all sorts of crops, including oranges, pumpkins, maize, groundnuts, and bananas, and they even have a coffee plant nursery.  They also raise cattle, goats, and chickens.  As with every other experience I’ve had being a guest in a Ugandan’s home, we ate lots of food, and I assume that most or all of what we ate came straight from the farm.  I was not able to bring the camera along, because Max was using it over the weekend to take pictures at the site of Brick by Brick’s current construction project, which will eventually become a three-room building at Lwamaya Primary School.  So, most of the pictures this time are were taken there.

Max with a new signpost in front of the office

Being on the farm also provided a great opportunity for thinking and reflection.  Obviously, we toured the whole place, and I spent a lot of time with Henry, but there was also plenty of time to sit in my room and read, think, or listen to music.  (Lots of Ugandan homes seem to have big stereos, and there was one in my room.  The CD player didn’t work, but the tape player did, and, in the pile of tapes next to it, I was able to find a recording of a Beethoven violin concerto, amazingly enough.  I could spend a couple of paragraphs writing about the musical qualities of this particular piece, but that might be less interesting for you than it would be for me, so I’ll just say that it was a very beautiful and interesting work.)

Most of my thoughts, though, were focused on the books that I was reading.  Over the course of a few days, I shot through two books of about 200 pages each (this speed is almost unprecedented for me).  The two books, Left to Tell and Led by Faith, were both written by Immaculee Ilibagiza, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.  As a child, she grew up in what seems to be a very happy family, with loving parents and three brothers.  Her family lived in a village along the western border of the country, near what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Tutsis and Hutus lived next door to one another, with little or no evidence of the buried tensions that existed between the two ethnic groups.

Brick by Brick masons (in orange) digging the foundation trench

In fact, very little difference, if any, exists between Tutsis and Hutus.  After years and years of intermarriage between the two groups, the only thing that really determined the group that you belonged to was what it said on your father’s identity card.  Your mother could have been a Hutu, but if your father was Tutsi, then so were you.  Some physical stereotypes did exist.  For example, Tutsis were supposed to be taller, but, with all of the mixing, these stereotypes didn’t really have a truth to them.  Tutsis and Hutus were basically the same, but that didn’t dispel the hatred brewing beneath the surface.

In 1994, Immaculee was attending university in Kigali (Rwanda’s capital city), and her father had asked her to come home for Easter.  She and two of her brothers, Damascene and Vianney, were able to make it back to the village, but her other brother, Aimable, was studying abroad in Senegal.  Just before this, the Rwandan president, who was Hutu, had signed a treaty with a group of Tutsi exiles who had been living in Uganda.  Within one day of the family’s gathering, the president’s plane was shot down, and Hutu extremists began a planned campaign to completely wipe out the Tutsi population in the country.  Rwandan radio stations aired nothing but hate-filled propaganda, trying to dehumanize the Tutsi population by calling them “cockroaches” and encouraging every Hutu to join in the extermination.  Machetes, guns, and grenades were freely distributed to Hutus all over the country, and moderate Hutus who did not take part in the killing, or who helped Tutsis to survive, would take the weapons for fear of being killed themselves.  Any Tutsi or Tutsi sympathizer was a target, and the members of Immaculee’s family were Tutsis.

The masons have made lots of bricks...

As a mob advanced toward her family’s house, where a number of Tutsis in the village had gathered, Immaculee was sent to a nearby Hutu pastor’s house by her father, and the pastor agreed to hide her, along with seven other women, in a tiny bathroom.  The women ended up spending 91 days practically sitting on top of one another in that bathroom, barely able to speak or move for fear of being heard by people outside.  The pastor provided them with a small amount of food, but it was barely enough to sustain them.  On several instances, Hutu extremists entered the house and searched many of the rooms, terrifying the women every single time, but, miraculously, the little bathroom next to the pastor’s bedroom was never found.

Finally, as the group of Tutsi exiles slowly fought their way into the country and took control of the capital, a small number of French troops also entered Rwanda to help protect Tutsis (by the way, this was the only response from the international community during the genocide, and these troops were recalled before it was over).  After three months, the women left their hiding place and made a run for a nearby French camp, which they reached safely.  However, when the French were pulling out after the Tutsi army had taken control of much of the country, they were not allowed to transport the Tutsis they were protecting the whole way to a Tutsi encampment.  Instead, the women and others with them were dropped off in the middle of Hutu extremists fleeing the country, still hoping to kill a few remaining Tutsis as they left.  Miraculously, though, the group of Tutsi survivors were able to reach the camp safely on their own.

Immaculee soon learned that, while she was in hiding, all of the other members of her family, with the exception of Aimable, who was still far away from Rwanda, had been killed (if you don’t want to know details, you might want to skip down several paragraphs).  She first learned about her father.  After she had gone into hiding, a number of Tutsis took refuge in a stadium, but there wasn’t enough food for everyone.  From a friend, Immaculee learned that her father had “gone to the government office to ask the prefect to send food to the stadium because there were thousands of refuges there who hadn’t eaten for days.  That was a big mistake…The prefect called your father a fool and had his soldiers drag him outside.  They shot him on the steps of the government office and left his body in the street.”

A few days before that incident, her mother thought she heard one of her sons being killed and ran out to try and stop it.  It turned out that it was not her son, and the killers told her that, if she would bring them money, they would not kill her too.  She ran to a Hutu friend’s house to ask for some money, but her friend said, “Get away from my house – we don’t help cockroaches here!”  She then told the killers to take Immaculee’s mother “into the street to kill her because she didn’t want them messing up her yard.”

Her youngest brother, Vianney, “was killed at the Kibuye stadium with his friend Augustine [who was a Hutu].  There were thousands of people there – and they were all annihilated.  First the killers shot them with machine guns, and then they threw grenades at them.  I don’t think anybody survived.”

Starting to lay the bricks that will be part of the foundation

Finally, she learned about Damascene, who had been able to hide with a friend for some time.  When the friend’s family found out, he decided to try to get across the border to Zaire.  He almost made it but was betrayed by another friend’s brother, who turned him over to a group of extremists looking for victims.  The killers taunted him and beat him with the handles of their machetes, but Damascene remained composed and told them that he was praying for them.  A pastor with the group said, “Does this boy think that he’s a preacher?  I am the pastor around here, and I bless this killing.  I bless you for ridding this country of another cockroach.”  The killing was terrifyingly brutal (one more warning to skip down a bit).  One of them “swung his blade down into my brother’s head, and he fell to his knees.  Another killer stepped forward and, with a double swing of his machete, chopped off both of his arms.  The first killer took another turn with his machete, this time slicing Damascene’s skull open and peering inside.”

It is sometimes hard to believe the depths to which our actions can sink.  People betray their friends, have more concern with their lawns than with another’s life, bless killing, and take some sort of twisted pleasure from completely mutilating a victim’s body.  And yet, the people who commit these atrocities are not complete monsters, devoid of any emotion or remorse.  Shortly after Damascene’s murder, one of the killers (who actually went to school with the victim), “broke down and cried for days…He talked incessantly about all the things he and Damascene had done together, such as playing soccer, singing in the choir, and being altar boys.  He was haunted by the kindness my brother had shown him and all the other boys they’d known…’I will never kill again…I will never get Damascene’s face out of my head.  His words will burn in my heart forever.  It was a sin to kill such a boy – it was a sin.’”

More foundation bricks...that bigger section will be a column

What is the human response to such inhumanity?  In fact, the killers exterminated Tutsis with even greater “efficiency” than the Nazis murdered Jews during the Holocaust.  The genocide lasted for about 100 days, and approximately one million people were killed.  Immaculee’s response is to tell the story, and to forgive, with the hope that the forgiveness will bring healing.  After the genocide was over, she went back to her village and confronted one of the men who had killed some members of her family.  He was being held in a prison.  “His name was Felicien, and he was a successfully Hutu businessman whose children I’d played with in primary school.  He’d been a tall, handsome man who always wore expensive suits and had impeccable manners.  I shivered, remembering that it had been his voice I’d heard calling out my name when the killers searched for me at the pastor’s.  Felicien had hunted me…

“His dirty clothing hung from his emaciated frame in tatters.  His skin was sallow, bruised, and broken; and his eyes were filmed and crusted…I wept at the sight of his suffering.  Felicien had let the devil enter his heart, and the evil had ruined his life like a cancer in his soul.  He was now the victim of his victims, destined to live in torment and regret.  I was overwhelmed with pity for the man…Felicien was sobbing.  I could feel his shame.  He looked up at me for only a moment, but our eyes met.  I reached out, touched his hands lightly, and quietly said what I’d come to say.  ‘I forgive you.’”

Several years ago, I read a book called The Sunflower, written by Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor.  He told a story about a dying Nazi soldier who asked him for forgiveness (when the author was still in a concentration camp).  Understandably, Wiesenthal did not know what to do.  The second half of the book consists of letters written by a number of religious and philosophical leaders giving their opinion, and the responses were quite varied.

Christians preach forgiveness of sins.  God forgives us, and we should do likewise for others.  But, as I read Immaculee’s story and think about what happened to her family, I wonder what I would do in that situation.  Just from reading about these atrocities, I am filled with sadness, fear, and anger that we can do such things to one another.  If I were actually in her place, I honestly don’t know if I would be able to say those three words, “I forgive you,” to the one who had brutally murdered members of my family and who had hunted for me as if it were some sort of game.

And yet, it seems that the only way to achieve a true, lasting peace is forgiveness.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated, “The forgiveness of sins still remains the sole ground of all peace, even where the order of external peace remains preserved in truth and justice” (On the Theological Basis of the Work of the World Alliance).  His point, I think, is that, even if killers are brought to justice and order restored, our hearts and minds will not be at peace with each other if we do not forgive and if the killers do not feel remorse and repent.  True peace and reconciliation must come out of this combination of repentance and forgiveness.  If the perpetrators do not repent, they will continue to feel hatred for their victims and will want to kill again.  If we do not forgive, we harbor our own hatred for the killers and might even wish for the opportunity to kill them or make them suffer.  The peace is not complete…It is only external, and someone is likely to eventually break the fragile peace.

But who am I to say this?  As I said, I do not even know if I could forgive if placed in that situation.  Who am I to tell anyone else that he or she should forgive?  I feel like this is the problem that we sometimes experience.  We can say anything we want, from the security of our own comfortable situations.  But until we are actually confronted with horror and react a certain way, our words are somewhat empty.  Even after the action, words only say so much.  The action itself is our testimony.  Bonhoeffer puts it very well, I think.  “The primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed which interprets itself.  If this deed is to have become a force, then the world itself will long to confess the Word.  This is not the same as loudly shrieking out propaganda.  This Word must be preserved as the most sacred possession of the community…The deed alone is our confession of faith before the world” (The Nature of the Church).

I think we should try to forgive (while not forgetting, of course, lest we repeat our mistakes), but, since I have never found myself within one of these terrible situations (thankfully), I would quote Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow and ask that you “don’t take my word for it.”  Read Immaculee’s story, or pick up a copy of The Sunflower.  Or, find another story of forgiveness in the midst of inhumanity.  Or, I guess you could think about Jesus, who said that we should forgive “seventy-seven times” (sometimes translated as “seventy times seven,” or always, since the number seven signifies wholeness in the Bible), and who did it.  After torture and near death, the words uttered from the cross were not those of anger, hatred, vengeance, or retribution.  They were words of love, reconciliation, and peace.  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”