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Letters from the FieldJuly 4, 2006 Dear Friends, When Antoinette picked me up at the Kigali airport she kept saying: “This is a dream: Capacitar in Rwanda! I know God’s blessing is with this work.” And indeed the days unfolded with great grace and deep healing for many, supported by the prayer of Capacitar friends around the world. I truly know that our work cannot be done without prayer, so I am very grateful to you and the many friends who held us in heart and Spirit during our time here. We remembered you during Tai Chi and in our healing circles during the workshops. And many Rwandans in turn prayed for blessings on you and the people of Capacitar. During the past three weeks we have offered 15 workshops and some shorter presentations to over 1000 people from all parts of the country. Workshops in Butare and Cyangugu were coordinated and hosted by Sr. Genevieve van Waesberghe, MMM (Medical Missionaries of Mary), a wonderful Dutch doctor who has been using Capacitar methods for the past year (since Costancia Mbogoma of Capacitar Tanzania offered the first workshops in Rwanda). Workshops in Kigali were coordinated by psychologist Mary Fabri, Ph.D., Director of the Marjorie Kovlar Center that works in Chicago with survivors of torture from over 40 countries. Mary is working with an AIDS project for children in Rwanda. And our workshop in Kibuye, Mushubati Parish, was hosted by Fr. Eugene Murenzi, who heads Komera (meaning, be strong), an inspiring center for deaf, mentally disabled, autistic and traumatized children. We worked (in English, French and Kinyarwandan) with a broad cross-section of people representing over 40 organizations: religious, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, priests, students, community leaders, widows of the genocide, people working with orphans and orphans who head households, HIV counselors, trauma counselors, teachers working with the deaf and disabled, school children, youth, along with some grassroots leaders from the Congo, Burundi and Uganda, and religious sisters and volunteers from Holland, Spain, Germany and the U.S.. Thanks to the generosity and work of Anne-Pascale Brault, Ph.D., head of the foreign languages department at De Paul University, Chicago, our Living in Wellness: Trauma Healing Manual was translated into French to make this available to the people. Our days were intense and at the same time joyful as people arrived exhausted and depressed, and left the workshops hopeful, often feeling better, with practical healing skills to care for themselves and their communities. During the workshop evaluations it was often said that everyone in Rwanda is traumatized and everyone needs Capacitar--from the youngest children and orphans, to the Tutsi survivors and returnees living in the same community with their perpetrators, to the Hutus who have returned from refugee camps, and to the many now struggling with trauma, poverty and HIV. Rwanda is a country with a complex history leading up to the genocide. The recent film Hotel Rwanda, captured in popular form some of the reality and stories of the survivors. (I will list a few films and books at the end of this letter in case you are interested in learning more.) During the last century German and Belgian colonialism led to growing racism and animosities between Tutsis (a cattle-herding people) and Hutus (a farming people). After the Hutu majority gained control and independence in 1959, Tutsis were persecuted and massacred every few years. In the early 1990s a radical group within the Hutu government planned the genocide and systematically collected names of Tutsis throughout the country, arming local Hutus with weapons, mostly machetes and clubs. On the evening of April 6, 2004, after President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, the signal was broadcast to Hutu masses to let the extermination of Tutsis begin. Hutus mobilized to slaughter their Tutsi neighbors, friends, and relations, along with Hutu sympathizers. Over the 100 days of carnage bodies were strewn everywhere, along roadsides, at checkpoints, and dumped in rivers and mass graves. Often the slaughter took place in schools and churches where thousands gathered to seek refuge. The UN peacekeeping troops stood by helpless without a mandate to use force to stop the massacres. And as U.S., European and world officials quibbled over the use of the word “genocide”, the bodies mounted to many hundreds of thousands. The slaughter was stopped in July when rebel Tutsi forces, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by current president Paul Kagame, gained control of the country and drove out the HUTU forces and the “genocidaires”, who fled in massive numbers to UN refugee camps in Zaire (Congo), Burundi and Tanzania. In the years following many of these Hutus were repatriated, and a number of the leadership were brought to trial for their crimes. The lower ranks of the thousands of “genocidaires” are being tried in traditional community courts, called “gacacas”, based on Rwandan custom where villagers gathered on a patch of grass to resolve conflicts between families with heads of households acting as judges. Sporadic violence still continues, but the presence of military and police everywhere acts as a deterrent. And everywhere people continue to live in the shadow of the genocide as life tries to go on as “normal”. There is no way to understand Rwanda, its struggle, its recent history and hopes for the future, except through the stories of some of the people we met along the way. Traveling and sharing special moments with Sr. Antoinette Gasibirege (meaning Welcome!) opened my heart to the pain and greatness of her people. Before the genocide Antoinette had been a nurse, a director of formation of young religious, and then worked at St. Francis Clinic for HIV in Kigali. During the first days of the genocide when the Hutu military was firing mortars in Kigali, Antoinette, a tall woman with Tutsi bearing, hid in the convent shower covered by a mattress to avoid the shrapnel. One of the other sisters hid under a shelf in a small pantry closet. For a number of days the Hutu guard, who still works for the sisters, hid the women telling the militia that everyone had left the convent. As the slaughter continued Antoinette and two sisters were smuggled out to a Red Cross center where she worked in the emergency room helping to treat some of the thousands of victims. One of the wounded she treated turned out to be her niece whose neck had been brutally severed. On April 27 Antoinette and the sisters were rescued by UN commander Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, who quickly loaded them onto a cargo plane headed for Nairobi. There Antoinette was given a visa to enter Canada where she lived in exile for three years. Antoinette later learned of the killing of her parents and 8 siblings, in all 21 members of her family. Antoinette’s family home no longer exists. It was destroyed and dismantled, and local Hutus took doors and roof tiles to build their own homes. As we walked down the path leading to the place where Antoinette’s home once stood, local Hutu women who had been neighbors and friends, looked away, unable to greet her. We also visited the site where Antoinette’s parents and other family members had been taken on April 25. Along with 25,000 local Tutsis, they were herded to an area called Kabuye, where they were slaughtered and buried in a mass grave. As we approached the site, some local women were respectfully sweeping the road and the path leading to the memorial. Antoinette described how she came to the site at the time of the exhumation and it was very difficult. The bones and remains of thousands were piled in a room to be honored and reburied in the current memorial. Some years ago a friend taught me how to pray outside of time and place in support of those of the past and those to come. At the simple Kabuye memorial we prayed for Antoinette’s family and the many thousands of men, women and children buried there, holding them with love and prayer as they faced their agonizing death on this site. And we prayed for the future of Rwanda. Later on in our trip we visited Murambi, one of the many genocide memorials that stand around the countryside in nearly every town. Murambi was a secondary school where Tutsis fled for refuge. About 50,000 people were crowded into 64 classrooms, when the power and water supply were cut off. It took several days for the crazed, drunken and drugged “interahamwe” militias to strip and slaughter their victims with clubs and machetes. About 1,800 bodies have been exhumed and the skeleton remains of adults and children lie resting on tables in the former classrooms. What touched us most were the children, some still with fragments of clothing and tufts of hair, reclining in agonizing positions, as if awaiting their death. A man with deep machete scars on his face and neck led us through the memorial. He had survived the massacre and managed to escape. He lost his wife and 5 children who rest in the mass grave at this site. As Antoinette was leaving Rwanda, another woman Sr. Genevieve van Waesberghe, MMM, was preparing to come to Rwanda. When the genocide escalated in May of 2004, the Medical Missionaries of Mary made the decision to send two sisters to be of service to the countless Rwandans trying to survive in the midst of the carnage. Genevieve had many years of experience as a doctor and medical director in Africa working in such places as Angola, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Masai Land. In early June as she struggled to find a way into the country through the many roadblocks and fierce militias, she met one priest who told her she was going the wrong way. Everyone wanted to get out of Rwanda, while Genevieve and her companion where trying to get in! We visited the area that had been the refugee camp where Genevieve served as doctor and medical director. In her six months there the camp grew from several thousand people exposed to the elements, hiding and barely surviving on the hillsides, to a more formal camp of over 120,000 internally displaced refugees and survivors under UN blue plastic sheeting. Genevieve coordinated medical services for four different refugee camps in the area. She told of one camp where she tried to get the water tanks to work. Supposedly the tanks were full of water. But after several attempts she found out that the tanks had been stuffed with the bodies of the slaughtered. She described the one time she really wept. Officials torched one of the camps under her charge to force the refugees out of the area and they told her that no one was left in the camp. But when Genevieve and her staff returned to the smoldering ruins, they found five small children who had been abandoned, and an old man who was close to death. She found homes for these small victims and gave comfort to the old man in his last hours. As we visited the area along the way Genevieve met people who remembered her. They greeted her with great affection as a true friend and woman of compassion. Genevieve currently directs a wonderful center in Butare, Igiti cy’Ubugingo, (Tree of Life Center), which works with trauma counseling, HIV/AIDS counseling, and several health and development projects focused on outreach to widows, orphans, and survivors in the region. Genevieve and her staff are now enthusiastically teaching Capacitar to many different groups in the area. Along with Sr. Antoinette, Sr. Genevieve is the co-founder of Capacitar Rwanda. Bernadette was another young woman we met during our workshop for the school of psychology at the Rwanda National University in Butare. Fifty-seven students and faculty crammed into a small classroom to attend our workshop, and many were themselves in great need of trauma counseling. They were learning to be psychologists, but very few resources were available for their own therapy and healing. While doing the Pal Dan Gum exercise that includes punching with fists and roaring like a lion, a student named Bernadette, became very upset and angry. Antoinette immediately noticed her and approached her after the class. It turned out that this was the first time that Bernadette had ever talked with anyone about what had happened to her. As a child of 11 during the genocide, the militia stripped her family naked in preparation for their slaughter. When her brother refused to be stripped, the militia brutally punched and beat him and threw him into the river. The Pal Dan Gum exercise brought back all of her feelings of rage and helplessness. When her family was killed Bernadette tried also to die by jumping into the river among with the dead. For a week she floated along the river amid the corpses, until she finally escaped. With loving care Antoinette listened to Bernadette and gave her the simple healing tools to care for herself. Many, like Bernadette and Violette, are orphans because of the genocide, and most recently because of AIDS. As these orphans grow to be young adults their lives and possibilities are deeply affected by unhealed trauma. Many children head households, working for meager earnings so they can rear their younger siblings. Some of these children are forced into prostitution, their only means of earning a living. Several women in our Cyangugu workshop worked with young homeless girls to give them education and skills to keep them out of prostitution. Some of the orphans who live on the streets have also been threatened or imprisoned by authorities wanting to clean up “the problem”. During our time in Butare one street child was beaten by the police and later died. Education is vital to empowering these children. We worked with a number of teachers and principals who wanted to introduce Capacitar into their schools. We also offered a short presentation to 500 secondary students and teachers in Butare. They loved the flying Tai Chi exercise, the Shower of Light and the fingerholds for emotions. Their principal planned to train student leaders and teachers so that the Capacitar practices could be part of their daily routine at school. In Rwanda the life of women, especially the widows, is most challenging. Women without a husband traditionally have not had property rights. When a man dies the property goes to other members of his family, rather than to his wife. And the widow must often become the wife of another male in his family. The laws have officially been changed but in many cases the old traditions are still followed in the villages. In several of our groups we worked with widows connected with AVEGA, a national widow’s association giving legal, economic and personal support. At our workshop in Cyangugu, we met Patricia who had lost her husband, five children and brother. After the genocide she became very active coordinating a widows’ organization to help others. She had remarried, had a child and was taking care of several orphans. Patricia even went to the prison to meet and talk with the men who murdered her brother. She wanted to understand what would make a person do such a thing. She now is preparing to meet the man who killed her husband. One of the Cyangugu widows bore the marks of her attackers. A huge scar rimmed her neck, yet somehow she survived after being nearly decapitated. Another widow was very happy to learn the Emotional Freedom Technique. As she tapped her acupressure points she eagerly said: “In spite of the fact I am a widow, I am OK and I accept myself!” Our last workshop took us to Kibuye, a beautiful area overlooking Lake Kivu that suffered greatly during the genocide. We drove up into the mountains on a remarkably rutted dirt road to Mushubati, a very poor parish of 7,000 people. The pastor is Fr. Eugene Murenzi, a dynamic leader who coordinates many local development projects. He also heads a school for deaf, mentally disabled, autistic and traumatized children. Life is difficult for everyone in Rwanda, but to be disabled is an overwhelming burden. So Eugene has taken on developing deaf awareness for families of children with disability. One wonderful young disabled youth Eliazar helps with sports and games for the children. With his deformed arm he did Tai Chi and acupressure better than the able-bodied adults. He had to drop out of secondary school after two years because as an orphan there is no money for his school fees. But with a few earnings from the school Eliazar hopes to continue his studies at a later date. At the end of our training at Mushubati we were honored with a wonderful Rwandan drum and dance performance. Eugene has encouraged the development of a top-notch drum team that has performed on the national level as well as in Germany. As we watched the joyful performance of the youth, it was hard to believe that they were small children at the time of the genocide. The vibrant music, dance and drums were a wonderful way to heal the pain and trauma of all present. In our closing circle at Cyangugu, one of the widows said that through the workshop she had found deep peace within herself, and that through this kind of work she could see the possibility of people being able to live together with love and compassion. In many ways the humble and wise widows of Rwanda represented for me this possibility of compassion, as they cared for the orphans of other families, and helped support each other. As I prepared for my trip to Rwanda, I had listened to a talk by Anglican priest Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault, (from Encountering the Wisdom Jesus) who spoke of the medieval concept of the “harrowing of hell.” Medieval tradition held that after his death, Jesus went into hell and with his presence of compassion and unconditional love he took on, harrowed and transformed the degrading depths of the human condition dissolving the duality. Only the presence of love can make possible the harrowing and transformation of hell. As I listened to and worked with the widows and many other remarkable people, they are indeed harrowing the hell of Rwanda, healing and transforming the pain of the past with their great love and compassion. And I see the role of Capacitar in Rwanda as encouraging and supporting this process. At the end of our time in Rwanda Antoinette had two remarkable dreams. In the first she was in a village when a family carries to her a pregnant woman in a hammock. Antoinette helps the woman give birth, but then realizes that the new mother doesn’t know how to nurse or care for her baby. Antoinette takes the child in her arms and feeds her with her own abundant milk, teaching the woman how to care for herself and care for her child. In the second dream Antoinette’s mother appears, tending some young seedlings that she had recently sowed. She takes Antoinette to the family garden and shows her that the land is now ripe and ready for planting. Some seeds have now been sown and Capacitar will return to Rwanda in 2007-2008. Through the support of Trocaire, an Irish foundation, and other donors we will offer several in depth trainings and form a national level team as Capacitar Rwanda. The trauma manual will be translated into Kinyarwandan and other training materials into French. As the Rwandan team is formed we also hope to reach out to the Great Lakes Region including the Congo (DRC), Burundi and Uganda. Thank you for your continued support of Capacitar as we walk together in solidarity and hope with the people of the world. With peace and blessings, Capacitar International Films (available in video stores): Books: |
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