The Color Purple

This past summer I read the book “The Color Purple.” In the book the color purple represents God’s way of show people that he loves them. While I was in Rwanda I toured a church where 45,000 people were massacred in. Wrapped around various posts around the church grounds were purple ribbons that represented mourning. In fact, because of the genocide purple has become the national symbol of mourning. I’m still debating if what I read about the color purple and what I saw in Rwanda is ironic or not.

When I entered Rwanda I entered into beauty. I did my best to capture it with pictures. I am trying to do my best to describe it with words, but the beauty of Rwanda is better seen in person. Yet in my effort in trying to describe the beauty that is Rwanda I default to Ansel Adams who said, “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” Here are my inadequate images of Rwanda’s landscape.

As soon as you enter Rwanda you come across this amazing landscape. Rwanda truly is the land of a thousand hills. Besides the beauty of the country, one can see how developed and orderly the country is. It is illegal to bring in or possess plastic bags (like the ones we have in grocery stores) since they litter the streets and harm the environment. Every car has to pass a safety and smog check each year in order to be on the road (something definitely not found in Uganda). The roads are nicely paved with clean streets. Boda-boda (motorcycles) drivers can only hold one passenger and they are both required to wear helmets (in Uganda helmets are rare and boda-bodas sometimes hold up to 5 people). Another order that has been put into place is mandatory community workday for all Rwandans once a month on Saturday. This is an old tradition that has been made law after the genocide in order to build community. Basically community workday consists of helping a neighbor, church, organization, etc with a task they cannot do on their own. With my staff and students we got to participate in this day.  We moved rocks into a room to create a floor foundation in a newly developed building at the Anglican guesthouse we were staying at. I liked this ideal of a mandatory community workday. It gets everyone mixing and mingling with one another. I also enjoy the ideal of coming together for a common goal.

A group shot after moving rocks for 2+ hours. American and Ugandan university students along with a few of my staff members.

This time around going to Rwanda was very different for me. My eyes and ears were open more to the surroundings. As written earlier, I visited a church in Nyamata where 45,000 people were killed and buried. The Kigali Genocide Memorial museum is also the burial site to 250,000 people which I also visited. What made going through these sites extremely hard was that one of the Ugandan students is a Rwandan and most of her family was killed during the genocide. She is probably 5-7 years younger than me and has already experience more death in her life than I will ever have. Yet Rwanda didn’t end on a sad note for me. We were able to learn about the reconciliation that is happening in Rwanda. In a complicated way it is now illegal to identify as Hutu or Tutsi. Everyone is Rwandan. Back to reconciliation, perpetrators now live next to, work, and help out those they victimized. It’s interesting, many of the victims have found a way to forgive those who have destroyed their families and have learned to cling to God in a way that I don’t. In a documentary I watched about Rwandans forgiving one another one lady said if God forgave the perpetrators she needs to forgive the perpetrators also. Another lady said that she still needs God even though His people are the ones who killed her family. There is a sense of resilience there that I’ll never fully grasp.  

In the end the color purple can represent both God’s love and mourning. They are two things that are being reconciled. I still respect the color purple no matter what it represents. My time in Rwanda was great. Even though it is a quiet country (I think it is quiet because the genocide was only 18 years ago and many people are trying to move past 1994 and find their joy again), a small country and still trying to find its way in the world, I found that I did not want to leave Rwanda. You know when you just want to be part of something good you just want to stay put to see it all unfold? Yeah, that’s how I felt. So that is all I have to write about Rwanda. I could have written more about working with American university students, but they are still developing an understanding for what it means to be an American in an African context. Maybe I’ll write about that experience at a later time. I’ll let this post remain dedicated to Rwanda. BUT here are some random pictures of my time heading in and out of Rwanda.   

On the Equator, literally. 

Some of the American students and I just hanging out 

One of the Ugandan students and I

Students pushing our coaster (bigger than a van, smaller than a bus) after it got stuck in the mud. Many Rwandans came out to help.

On our way to Bushara Island on Lake Bunyonyi near the Rwandan border

It took us 4 boats to get us to Bushara Island

Sunrise on Lake Bunyonyi 

Brendah and I (again). She leaves this Saturday for New Jersey.

Eddie (co-worker's husband) and I looking tough... or something like that.