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Kigali, Rwanda
To Rwanda with love


Rhythmic dancing; stunning green hills; teeming humanity lining the sides of the highway; racks of human skulls; the pallor of death in the faces of those with AIDS – these are images of Rwanda.

I was one of a group of 44 Christians who visited Rwanda in late February and March; 42 were Canadian, one American and one British. We represented a broad range of churches in Canada. Eleven of us were from Mennonite Brethren churches (Northview Community Church and The Meeting Place in Abbotsford, B.C. and Panorama and Cornerstone Community Churches in Surrey, B.C.). We went at the invitation of the churches of Rwanda which had been severely impacted by the genocide of 1994. Their request was for Christian love, understanding, compassion and help as they sought comfort and worked at unity. The team was lead by Justyn Rees and Russ Rosen.

A pastors’ conference at Giterama

The background

Beginning in April 1994 and continuing for 100 days, genocide spread its red hand over this small African country as Hutu extremists attempted to eradicate the Tutsis. Within a short time, upwards of 800,000 people were bludgeoned, killed with machetes and shot by roving bands of young militants sponsored by a demonic government creating a “racial war”.

Canadians became aware of Rwanda when the United Nations peacekeeping force was under the leadership of Canadian General Romeo Dallaire. He knew that the government was about to launch this genocide, but when he sought permission to intervene from his superior, Koffi Annan, at UN headquarters in New York, he was refused approval, and the bloodbath began. Still there was time to intervene, but the UN Security Council, led by the United States, dithered. According to the UN Charter, if what was happening in Rwanda had been declared a genocide, the United States and other UN countries would have had to commit troops to intervene in this impoverished Third World country. Some have suggested that since there were no oil and no rare mineral resources in Rwanda, there was no international interest in intervention. Since the genocide, both US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and US President Clinton have apologized for their inaction.

To try to understand the roots of this genocide, one has to step back into a mystery. Who were the Tutsis, the victims of the holocaust, and the Hutus, the perpetrators? Were they two different tribes or were they two economic classes of one tribe?

Some suggest that in the 16th century a group of herdsman from the Nile, the Tutsis, arrived and took power over the Bantu (Hutu) farmers, ruling over them until 1962. The Tutsis, consisting of only about 15% of the population, ruled the country, supplying the king, aristocracy, army and judiciary. Others, however, allege that the origins were not racial but economic. When a man saved enough money to buy three cows, he was automatically classified as a Tutsi. If his net worth dropped below three cattle, then he was reclassified as a Hutu.

Whatever the underlying cause of the division, first the German and then the Belgian colonial masters perpetrated this division. When independence came in 1962, the parting gift of the United Nations was democracy. The monarchy was overthrown, and the Hutus came to power. Thousands of Tutsis fled to surrounding countries. Periodically, the Hutus persecuted the Tutsis. If the Tutsis reached the sanctuary of a church, they were safe. All that radically changed in 1994.

World prices for coffee and cacao, Rwanda’s two staple exports, had plummeted. People criticized the government for the falling economy. The leading party decided to shift the blame to an ancient enemy – the once dominant Tutsis. All Tutsis were labelled criminals. All moderate Hutus, and there were some, who countered this logic were called “little brothers”, supporters of the Tutsis. When the Hutu president of Rwanda was blown out of the air by a rocket as his plane was landing at Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, that was a signal for the carnage to begin. A legacy of the Belgians was identification cards which marked everyone as either a Tutsi or a Hutu. Lists were prepared. Hate propaganda spilled out of government-sponsored radio stations and newspapers. Then the government sent out killing teams of young people. If you were handed a machete, you might be asked to kill your wife if she was a Tutsi or to kill all her family. If you did not participate, then you were killed because it meant you were in sympathy with the Tutsis.

When the killing began, people fled to the churches in droves, but this time the churches were not refuges. Several church genocide sites are still intact. One we saw had everything left in place just as it was on the day of the slaughter: toys, beans, bowls, blankets, mattresses, bones, hair and the unforgettable stench of blood. Men, women and children – no one was spared. At another genocide site, a large Roman Catholic Church was the killing field for over 3000 people. One of the last to be caught and killed was the Rwandan priest, who hid in the rafters of the dispensary for three days. His last words before he was hacked to death were, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” We met the Irish priest who arrived four months after the massacre and helped bury over a 1000 people in plastic bags in a mass grave.

In this country where 85% of the people claim to be Christian, even church leaders have been implicated in the killings. Our team stayed at a Roman Catholic convent near Butare. There the mother superior supplied gasoline to the killing gangs. They incinerated nine nuns who had taken refuge in a nearby building. That mother superior is today in prison awaiting trial, explaining that all she did was to supply gasoline to those who requested it for their cars. Those who indict her ask how she survived if she did not support the murders. Protestant pastors also have been fingered for their part in equally horrific atrocities. One Rwandan church leader said the church had sacramentalized the Rwandan people, not converted them.

There were also many people who laid down their lives for others. For instance, when the killing teams came to a Roman Catholic girls’ high school, militias demanded that the Hutu girls separate from the Tutsis. The Hutus refused, and they were all massacred.

Lawyers, teachers, judges, engineers and pastors were exterminated. Seven years later, the country is still writhing in its pain. One out of every two Rwandans were killed, driven into exile or internally displaced.

The genocide stopped when a Uganda-based army called the Rwandan Patriotic Front, consisting mainly of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, entered the country and gained power. Even this was not easy because the French, fearing this was an attempt of English-speaking countries to extend their influence over another French-speaking African nation, fought alongside those guilty of genocide. Eventually the French left. The routed Rwandan killing gangs fled across the border into Congo. There, contrary to its own rules, the United Nations permitted them to set up refugee camps within 5 kilometres of the Rwandan border. The killers were treated as refugees and given all kinds of international assistance. The chief arms suppliers of these “refugees” were permitted to land airplane loads of arms supplied by the French, sponsored by the son of the former President of France, François Mitterand. From these bases, they launched attacks back into Rwanda, further worsening conditions in an already devastated country. The Rwandans launched counter-attacks into Congo. The UN has since ceased its indirect support of the Hutu militias, but the region remains destabilized.

Corky Neufeld and Michael Brown with the staff of Food for the Hungry

Our mission

We landed in Kigali airport to be greeted by our Rwandan tour leader, Louis, and a welcoming committee. The greeting not only included the customary handshake but also a three-fold cheek-to-cheek kiss and embrace. Our luggage was loaded onto trucks, the team boarded buses, and we were off to our home for two weeks, a Presbyterian retreat centre called Kisigo, perched two-thirds of the way up one of the many hills in Kigali. The main road to the base of the hill was good, but after that we found ourselves winding up a track that was a miniaturized version of the Grand Canyon, causing everyone inside the vehicles to lurch relentlessly from side to side. The hillside was covered with a shantytown consisting of wattle-and-mud-brick houses, open ditches for sewage, communal water sources and grassless red earth. When the gated Kisigo entrance opened, we entered a little paradise with immaculate gardens, blooming flowers, hovering sunbirds and fluttering butterflies. Three feet outside that gate was the grinding poverty and teeming population of one of Africa’s poorest and most densely populated countries.

After unpacking and setting up the ever-important mosquito netting over our bunk beds, we clambered back onto the bus to head to downtown Kigali and lead a noonday praise service at the Restoration Church. Every noon hour, they have an open air service in a roofed and partially walled annex of the main church building.

The physical risks in visiting Rwanda are significant. Mosquito netting is vital because the anopheles mosquitoes that carry malaria are active only at night. Every 20 seconds, a child dies in Africa from malaria. It is the second biggest killer of humans after tuberculosis. At night, we always covered exposed skin with insect repellant and slept beneath mosquito netting. We only trusted bottled water, never brushing our teeth with tap water, never eating a salad and never opening our mouths when we showered. The team carried its own water purifier.

At the beginning, we were a team in name only. Although most of the team had met several times prior to going to Rwanda, the work of uniting the team continued. One evening, we realized that before we could help the Rwandans to bring unity to their country, we as Canadians had some reconciliation work to do. On our team were people of Native and Metis descent, and others who were French-Canadian. This led to the examination of attitudes we individually held towards minorities in our own country. It led to tears, repentance, apologies and the receiving of forgiveness. Other tensions surfaced among the pastors when some saw themselves as Spirit-led and others as Word-directed. These issues were worked through.

We faced issues of misunderstanding with the Rwandans. During one pastors’ meeting, one Rwandan denominational group was upset when a woman wearing earrings stood at the front, when one of our leaders publicly kissed his wife, when we washed each other’s feet without permission from the host church and when we partially observed, by the breaking of bread, the Lord’s Supper. Over half the audience left before the meeting concluded. Apologies were subsequently made and accepted, but it demonstrated that things could go wrong with dizzying speed.

On the other hand, at another pastors’ meeting, much good was accomplished. We had broken into small groups to listen to the key issues pastors faced. One leader from each group shared a key issue that he or she was facing. In turn, we asked for any prophetic insight into the issue, first from Scripture, then as the Spirit of God gave wisdom; then we prayed. One Canadian pastor shared that his adult daughter was in a recovery centre for cocaine addiction. He asked the Rwandan pastors to pray for her and the family. When this was done, it was as if permission had been given to share personal issues. Rwandans asked for prayer for forgiveness for the feelings that they had against the French. A Quebecois shared how God had replaced his dislike of English Canadians with a genuine love for them. That day, the kingdom advanced.

The kingdom advanced in other ways. Youth meetings were held in the three major sites we visited – Kigali, Butare and Gisenyi. The women on our team were central to the mission as they ministered with great emotional investment to the widows and victims of AIDS. Usually three evenings a week, we held public rallies, which featured both our own musical team and local African worship leaders. We were asked to provide speakers for these evangelistic outreaches; Morris McKenzie, pastor of evangelism and mission at Northview Community Church, and Greg Schroeder, pastor of Pacific Community Church, an Alliance congregation, did very effective work. In addition, we did a lot of listening to Rwandan leaders as they voiced their needs and to Rwandan Christians who told their stories of grace in the midst of great fear and tribulation.

It was good to see a Mennonite presence in the capital of Kigali, in a peacemaking role. However, there are no Mennonite Brethren churches in the country. Some might argue that the last thing Rwanda needs is another Western church presence. It is not a Western church presence the country needs but an evangelical, evangelistic church that has an anabaptist tradition of peacemaking and nonviolence.

The requests of the Rwandan churches are simple – help with the training of pastors, funds for corrugated tin roofing for church buildings, and funds to allow a Rwandan worship team to tour North America and raise support and funds for the churches of Rwanda.

 – Michael Brown

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Last modified June 7, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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