Never Happen Again
Sometimes there really isn't much to say. And sometimes there is so much that words simply will not suffice.Weary... drained...exhausted.
What do you do with a genocide?
Guilt...anger...resentment...fear.
What answers are you willing to accept?
Kigali seems so very unlike Kampala; I had not realised how great the difference might be. People here do not have the exuberance of life which bubbles endlessly out of the Ugandans I have met; I like the relative quiet of this city and yet it simultaneously disturbs me.
I enjoy a nice morning run through the streets. But I am loathe to think what this same street may have looked like 12 years ago. My view overlooks the city; what am I really looking at when I watch the world move around?
These stories...."my brother was 17. we never knew where he is buried." "I watched my parents arms cut off." And we walk through the memorials, pass flower baskets with signs which read "never happen again."
I love peace. I want peace for the world--that is one of the reasons I now find myself here, contemplating all of these things. But I don't know... I think it probably will happen again. Somehow it always does. Did they not say the same thing after the holocaust? I have seen the concentration camps of WWII, and I have walked through bombed out cities and been told where not to walk because of mine fields. I have passed through the museums and stood before the memorials. Read the names. Stared at the piles of hair and the piles of eyeglasses; at the addresses on mountains of luggage that never went home. I have cried with those who have never forgotten; listened to the stories of those who had nothing else left. Read the histories and the commentaries. Seen the tanks roll past and the planes fly overhead. Played with the orphans. Seen the faces of the dead.
And I think...it always happens again.
It makes a person feel so little and so helpless. What can one person do? Why even bother to struggle against such evil? When will it ever truly end? Not in my lifetime, sure.
Will it?
Will it?
posted by Lada @ 2:47 PM
2 Comments:
While I was at Bryan a man from Rwanda came and spoke, and I had lunch with him another two other guys after lunch. I mentioned you, and he gave me his contact info to pass along, and said he'd try to look you up, take you out, talk to you, show you around, something like that. If you're interested, I can email you the info.
Sounds like you are having to cope with some tough emotions and feelings while you are there. I can only begin to imagine what you are seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling. May God accomplish in you what He desires to with all that you are experiencing. Dad
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