Broken

I have been in Rwanda now for only two days though it feels like it has been weeks. There is much to take in as we undergo orientation for the first week to prepare us for the work ahead. Having been to Africa before it is a task for me not to simply presume that it will be the same here as elsewhere. Rwanda has a unique people, history, culture, language and nuance that no other country has. I am hoping to gain a fuller knowledge of what it means to be Rwandan in my time here. Not only that but Tearfund is a unique organisation, again having done work with other organisations that are similar it is important for me not to assume that it will be in any way similar to work here.

First impressions:

The instant I stepped off the plane the all too familiar  smell of a warm humid country hit me. It was a much needed welcome and put a big smile on my face straight away. As we waited for our baggage from an old and sorry looking conveyer belt I couldn't help myself letting slip ... 'TIA'. It wasn't long (by African standards) before we were on a delightfully cramped bus on the way to the guest house.

In the first few days we have settled in to the relatively comfortable accommodation (running water and consistent  electricity). I am also making friends with the Uk and Rwandan volunteers alike, it is such a privilege to get to meet people like this and serve together with a common goal. I also found a gecko in my room on the first night but I am holding out for seeing a Chameleon because apparently they are relatively common here and I've never seen one in the wild so that is one to hope for...

I have also managed to get a sim with some data on it enabling me to update you all! :) We have also done a tiny bit of language learning and other standard orientation type briefings around security, cultural sensitivity etc.

Today we had our somewhat ruthless baptism into Rwandan culture with a visit to a genocide memorial centre. The history of the atrocities is gruellingly detailed, with the assistance of artefacts, photos and video. It is certainly not an experience for the faint of heart as you pass through a room filled with pictures of victims. As harrowing as the experience might be of walking around such a place it barely scratches the surface of what it must have been to see around 1/7 of the population of your country massacred in just one year. There is just no escaping the fact that this has shaped every person in this country and everyone who is 20 or older lived through it themselves and would have been witness to the most heinous of crimes. The centre that we went to is the burial place of some 250000 genocide victims, under 1/4 of the total.

This is still a very broken country with the sheer number of people who are still struggling to process all that they have seen and that has happened to them. Leaving the memorial centre the question that I was left with was how?

How can anyone be turned to such extreme action against their own people?

How can a person who has seen such horrors ever find healing?

How can Rwanda recover?

How can I even begin to help?

These are questions that may or may not ever be answered but I believe they are still important to ask and mull over.

So while the work that I will be doing day to day may not directly relate to this, it is absolutely the background of every national that I will be working alongside and for and therefore must be taken into consideration in all that we do here.

Theodicy

One day, when I was a child, I lent my relatively new bike to a friend, the friend promptly broke my prized bicycle attempting to go over a jump. In a whirlwind of tears, burning anger and shame at the fact that  I was responsible for a broken bike I ran my it back home. I discarded it on the drive and ran into the house and flung myself on the sofa, barely noticing my fathers presence on the sofa opposite. My dad asked me what was wrong ... To my shame I think I told him to piss off, or at least words to the same effect.

So pretty much a run of the mill tantrum right? Why would I be talking about this now? Because some things about the human condition don't actually change. They change their outfit, sure, but the issue itself remains the same. You, I and every child in the world still have tantrums it's just that most of us dress them up differently now that we have 'grown up'.

When you think about it we have a great number of things to have tantrums over - certainly better reasons than when we were children. We discover poverty, injustice, chronic health conditions, relationship break downs and any other form of suffering that you can think of. There is an in-built trigger of rage and sadness in each of us when we are party to and particularly when we are the target of said suffering.

Of course being grown up we now realise that there is absolutely nothing that our earthly parents can do about these problems, indeed in many cases they are in fact the source of many of these problems. So what do we do? Well all too often we perpetuate the problem, we either internalise and end up imploding turning to self loathing which in turn sabotages all of our closest relationships or we externalise and end up exploding which respectively sabotages all of our closest relationships. Not good.

So this is why I started with this story - because my bike fiasco did not end this way. In response to being told where to go my dad could have taken offence and left me to cry it out on the sofa. Fortunately for me however, I have a good father. He told me that I could tell him what happened and that he could try and help. In my infinite wisdom  I had already concluded that the damage to my bike was beyond repair and as a result there was really nothing that my dad could offer me as consolation in this situation, hence I felt the need to rebuff him. I articulated the conundrum quite effectively - 'my bike is broken'. Of course my dads knowledge of bikes was far superior to mine and so he decided that rather than solving the small problem of my bike he would fix the bigger issue of my attitude. He came over to my sofa and wrapped his arms around me.

Of course he assured me that he would do his best to fix my bike but he was far more interested in letting me know that a much healthier way for me to resolve my issues was to come to him and explain my problem rather than believing the lie that all hope was lost. I had tried to fix my bike myself and couldn't - that doesn't mean my bike is beyond repair. But more important than any of that, my relationship with my dad was of far greater value than any bike I could own. The refrain that shaped my childhood came out once again. 'I might not always like what you do but I will always love you, no matter what.'

After some time on the sofa I calmed down a bit and apologised to my dad, we went out together to get my bike and of course my dad showed me how it could be fixed easily without even needing any tools.

Ok, time to bring this back to us adults. We experience the 'broken bike' in our lives and it hurts, we don't really have any human relationships that are able to fix those hurts but we certainly try. We marry people who 'complete' us, we drink, gamble, sleep around, advance our career, work harder, get stronger be better all in an attempt to fix our broken bike. The issue is that at best we only break our bike further. We divorce, become alcoholics, get into debt, traffick modern day salves, get addicted to porn and cheat to get ahead in the game. Sooner or later we come to the end of our self destructive resources and we have to face the fact that our bike is broken and there is nothing we can do to fix it.

Now comes the equivalent of telling your dad to piss off... We blame God, we say that he cannot exist because of all this mess. We become frustrated with him and run away from him, we throw one heck of a tantrum.

Now here religion can do some seriously weird things, as Christians we often feel the need to cover up our problems. We can't possibly throw a tantrum that is beneath us. God is good and we know it but this situation makes it feel like God is not good. Both cannot be right so I will just bury the feelings and say God is great, YAY, praise the lord! We sell God short and don't actually take our frustration and anger and pain and anxiety to him we just say he is good and busily try and figure out how to patch ourselves up so we can look pretty on Sunday. We even create whole schools of theology to explain why there can be suffering  and a good God (we call it a theodicy) instead of facing our problems. Well this is a Faberge egg. We can do great at making it look pretty on the outside for a bit but it is paper thin and has absolutely no substance to it and just ends up propagating the problem. What's more this is not what the God of the bible tells us to do at all. It is some weird twisted, dismembered, decaffeinated version of what Christ has given us.

 Fortunately for all of us as good as my dad is he is not even a touch on how good God is. While we are far off trying to sort ourselves out and failing miserably he asks 'what is wrong?' it's not that he doesn't know the answer. He is giving you the opportunity to cry out and admit to him and to yourself 'my bike is BROKEN!'.

I can assure you when you make that admission to God, as painful and messy as it can be there is release. For some reason western Christianity has completely forgotten the place of lament, of unashamedly calling it like you see it. Life sucks some times and God is absolutely big enough to handle us screaming at him every now and again. When you are honest with God you give him the opportunity to wrap his arms around you and be enough for you. Now despite the fact that your bike is still in pieces on the drive things are looking better. Why? Because the far more important issue of your relationship with God is improving and that will set you free! The fact that God is also able to put your bike back together (and improve it too) becomes a small side issue by comparison to the fact that you have discovered something better than life itself. The love of God.

Texture#8

In this part of the world war is not something that is merely written about in text books, studied in history or something that is taking place far from home without threat of it reaching your own borders.War is written in the streets and on the walls, penned with bullets from yesteryear.

Conflict is in the very fabric of this place, with most countries in the region having experienced some kind of war within the last 50 years, if not with each other then civil. This is not to mention the fact that the Syrian civil war still rages on. 

Car bombs are a common method of attack, usually targeting politicians. 

I recently stayed 3 days at a respiratory hospital for the Bedouin people, interviewing the workers there and some of the patients. Annoyingly I actually forgot to take my camera with me for the trip but it was a stunning savanna in the middle of the desert. While I did not experience it myself I was told that just a few days previous the bombs falling over the border in Syria could be heard from the ward.

Note the coffins graffitied on the floor 

Numerous military personal punctuate the streets in each of the nations that I have visited here in the Near East. While these countries generally feel safe from day to day the governments would rather not take the risk. They know how quickly a situation can change from tension to conflict and so would rather keep a tight reign on the situation.

Thousands of crusaders crosses line the walls

Not only is war a thing of the near past but also the ancient past and the scars still remain; etched into the walls but also into the psyche of the people groups that were targeted.

Abandoned military bunker 

While some military installations serve as a reminder that certain wars have ended there are plenty of signs to remind you that more is expected to come...

I think it speaks for itself...

Title font used: 'weekend warrior'