Loss

I went running tonight. Ed goes running in the mornings. Probably a better idea. I guess I wasn't a mood to entertain good ideas. So I went running in rural Africa at 10pm. At first I stuck to the main roads, but after a while, I decided to head down the darker, unpaved alleyways, looking for trouble. I sprinted for 100 or 150 yards to test and see if I could evade any assailants. I'm still pretty fast. But I'm not sure I would have run from them tonight, and I'm pretty sure that I'm in good enough shape to have a fighting chance against two of them. After all, the likelihood of them being well-fed isn't very high. I didn't really expect to be attacked, but then again, white people do carry money. I carried only my room key. If anyone could best me in hand-to-hand combat (or weapon-to-hand combat), and could figure out the hotel and the room to which the key belonged, great riches would be theirs. I walked past several of the places where I remember seeing armed guards, but they weren't there. If I was interested in robbing a bank in Ruhengeri, Rwanda, I'd definitely do it at night. I didn't trespass on any property that I know of (I'm dumb, but not that dumb), but in a way, I am trespassing. Certainly they'd rather I didn't take so many pictures. There was also the risk of coming across some sort of wild animal, but that good fortune evaded me as well. Much to my dismay, the moon was full enough to provide decent light all the time, and many still-lit storefronts provided a bit of extra light once in a while. Still, all I saw were silhouettes. I heard much more. Of course, the natives have better natural camouflage for the night than I, so I was bound to hear them before I saw them anyway. A cough. A grunt. Footsteps. Countless motorcycles passed me on the road (most of their taxis are motorcycles). Headlights - as ominous as predators when approaching from behind, as indistinguishable as the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel when approaching from ahead. Only one person spoke to me - a boy who couldn't have been older than 12, judging only by his relatively small silhouette. "Hello." "Hello," I replied. "How are you?" "Good, thank you, how are you?" "I am good." I know that the brevity of our conversation was due to the lateness of the hour, the calling of our destinations, and the language barrier. Still I couldn't help but feel as though this familiar superficial exchange of lies is true even in Africa - at least as long as a white person is present. I ran past what must have been a full deck of playing cards all torn in two. I didn't stop to see if there were 104 pieces, but I suspect that if I had, I may have only been able to find 102, minus the ace of spades. Perhaps someone had lost more than the poker game.

And I ran past people sleeping on the streets. In the US, I might chalk this up to mental illness, physical illness, or poor work ethic. I know that in Rwanda, it is because everyone here has lost much more than a few hands of cards. It's amazing that the entire country isn't sleeping in the streets. In Rwanda, loss has a name. Genocide.

Perhaps I've been remiss in not mentioning the genocide earlier, but they don't. This is probably due to a mixture of having moved on, and not having moved on. On the one hand, they are anxious to forget that part of their history and forge ahead towards a better future. On the other hand, something that horrid cannot be forgotten (nor should it be), and the painful memory still unearths caskets of bitterness. At least among the Rwandans that I have been associating with, the attitude and the focus is redemption. Faustin and Salome are not afraid of talking about it with Ed and I, but never in mixed company. If you aren't familiar, a brief history is in order (hopefully my facts will be straight). In 1994, for about 100 days after the April 6 assassination of president Juvenal Habyharimana, hundreds of thousands of people were brutally and systematically killed. Habyharimana was a member of the Hutu ethnic group. When he was killed, the Hutus banded together and staged a political revolution against the opposing ethnic group, the Tutsis. Traditionally, Tutsis were of higher economic status than the Hutus, and when Rwanda was a kingdom, the king was typically Tutsi. A Hutu could marry into Tutsi status, or he could find it through success. When the genocide began in 1994, radicals among the Hutus began murdering Tutsis and, in some cases, more moderate Hutus. When the bloodshed had concluded, nearly a million people had been killed. At the time, Rwanda was only 5 or 6 million strong - so the dead amounted to a huge percentage of the population. Today, Faustin tells us that the estimates are somewhere around 8 million people. All of them have been affected. The loss is so monumental that no one speaks about it 15 years later.

I too, have lost. Of course, my loss does not amount nearly to the magnitude of the loss people have experienced in Rwanda, but neither is it miniscule. Suffice it to say that I am not completely unable to connect with them. Two things are remarkable to me about the people of Rwanda. The first is their joy. That is something I have more trouble connecting to, perhaps because I am American, and we seem to be in the business of killing joy in the pursuit of happiness. The second is their perseverance. Yes, moving on is part of this, but there's something deeper. Rwandans fight. They fight for what has been lost. Perhaps that's where the joy comes from. C.S. Lewis says in Surprised by Joy, "the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting." In other words, having Joy is accomplished only by seeking Joy. The road is the destination. The fight is the victory. Of course, Lewis is referring to the pursuit of God, but as he also remarks, "all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth." So the fervent pursuit of reconciliation and redemption is, I would argue, a primary source of Joy for the people of Rwanda. At least it is for the Rwandans I've met, in whom I have witnessed abundant joy. I've already been surprised by joy here, but the joy that has surprised me has been their joy, not my own. I know I have much more to learn from them than they have to learn from me. Can I learn to move on? Can I learn to fight for what has been lost? What does that even look like?

As I neared the hotel, another risk occurred to me that I hadn't thought of. They may have locked up for the night. Yep. The front gate of the outer fence, and the front door were both locked. Another welcome adventure. I found a secluded place to hop the fence, ensuring that I wasn't seen. I was beginning to savor the notion of scaling the wall to my third story balcony when I happened upon an open side door. Not very reassuring for one staying in the building, but welcome enough for one trying to get in. Hey, it's Africa. At least I didn't get lost.