A glass would be
anything but half empty if you left it outside these days. The rainy season has
arrived and everyone knows it, each of the last 7 days has had it's share of
precipitation, deluge even, and it looks to continue that way.
Recently it has
become more obvious to me how deep the wounds are here. The British are famed
for their stiff upper lip. That ability to grin and bear it and avoid conflict,
emotions or generally anything sensitive at all costs. Yet I find here
something that goes far beyond that but it is very hard to place. Perhaps it is
just a complete de-sensitisation because the people here have seen so much that
they have become numb. Maybe it is the ostrich move of sticking ones head in
the sand and pretending that it never happened. Or somehow they have just
learned to live with the loss of so much, knowing that all is not lost. For
they still have their lives, if not their family, if not their dignity, if not
their limbs, if not their pride, if not their happiness, they yet have life in
them.
Who knows, perhaps
no one, but all the same Rwanda still lives in the ashes of its past, limps on
with the scars of yesteryear.
For our team to get
anywhere in town we have to get a bus. 20p will get you anywhere in the city.
This process involves a 15 minute walk down our local high street to the local
bus station which consist of a dirt courtyard packed with people and various buses.
You wait on the bus until its full and then hop off at your destination. Simple
enough.
However, in the 15
minutes it takes to walk to the station you will pass people who are simply
lying in the street in 30 degree heat, sometimes half on the pavement half in
the road with a hand stretched out.
When you get to the
bus station you have to push through the swarm of street vendors who flock to
the white people. You learn the word for 'no' pretty quickly. Occasionally you
will actually be grabbed (it is quite a tactile culture) by someone begging for
money, though it is closer to demanding than begging really.
Once you have
figured out which bus you need and get on the blind man will have managed to
find his way on to the bus and will do the rounds as the bus fills up. If you
turn your face from him to look out the window you will likely see more vendors
trying to sell you anything from bread to USB sticks through the window.
Occasionally they will disperse as though someone just started shooting at
them. They don't pay taxes because none of their sales are recorded so their
practice is illegal and they would rather not be caught by the heavily armed
police. In their place you will find at your window a woman waving the stump of
an arm that used to have a hand on the end of it gently thudding against your
window, demanding your attention, your pity, your money. Eventually the bus
fills and you pull away, the conductor will at some point ask for your 20p and
you will place it into a scarred hand full of tattered cash. Then you arrive at
your destination and start your day. There were many survivors of the genocide
but none got through unscathed.
Despite all of this
life goes on. They press on and most seem unaffected by what they see. In
fairness most have seen far worse and the fact that the country is at peace is
a blessing that outshines the scars of the past.
My Grandmother had a
heart attack this week. She is several thousand miles away and I am at least 6
weeks away from being able to see her again. I am a very long way from home.
The longest Saturday
of all time was probably the Saturday between good Friday and Easter Sunday.
The one in whom the disciples had placed all of their hope, whom they had lived
with for the past 3 years and who they believed to be the one who would win the
victory of victories was brutally and publicly tortured and executed.
But Sunday came.
When all hope was
lost and everything was at its darkest. After all the commotion and chaos and
fireworks the ashes rested and there was the cold bitter taste of grief without
a mote of hope to carry them.
Yet the tomb was
empty. The resurrection, so far beyond expectation that even its evidence was
met with scepticism but slowly it dawned. There was not just some hope
remaining. There was the most secure, the most unwaveringly sure hope ever to
have graced the face of this earth.
There is a
resurrection.
There is hope like
African rain that will fill your glass to overflowing. A hope in the new life,
a new, unbroken body, a new heavens and a new earth. A hope that we go on
beyond the veil.
Not an empty star
gazing hope but a living, active and life changing hope that the glass is not
half empty but filled to capacity.
