Lessons from an Unlikely Nation

There’s something about Rwanda.  Rick Warren popularized it within Christian consciousness and since then, many of us have read about, prayed for, visited, or imbibed the coffee of this tiny East African country. In fact, some claim that Rwanda is becoming a bit of a trend, but for good reason!  I don’t think any of us have ever seen a country like it in the history of the world.
 
15 years ago Rwanda was an utterly failed state.  Piles of rotting corpses lined its dusty streets in the wake of a genocide that eliminated nearly 1 million human beings in just 100 days.  And this in a nation the size of Vermont.  
 
Fast forward to 2010. In less than one generation, Rwanda is one of the least corrupt, most environmentally conscious and economically progressive countries in Africa.  Some even declare it’s the safest place on the continent.  At the same time, the government has released from prison upwards of 60,000 genocide perpetrators, embarking on an unprecedented national social experiment.
 
On my first trip to Rwanda I heard rumors of genocide survivors choosing to forgive their family’s murderers.  Forgiveness after genocide?  Is there anything more unforgivable than genocide?  The senseless killing of innocent people because of their ethnicity?  If anyone had a right to harbor hatred, it was these survivors.
 
The murmurings of forgiveness after genocide haunted me for months until I decided to take a closer look at the issue through the lens of my video camera.  Was it actually possible to forgive someone who brutally hacked to death your mother, father or sister?  Would God even ask us to do such a thing?  And if the Rwandans could do it, could I? With so many questions needing answers, there was only one way to find out.
 
In 2006, I took a motley crew of film students to Rwanda to shoot As We Forgive, a movie about Rwandans on the path to reconciliation after genocide.  We discovered survivors who not only were forgiving, but who decided to repair the relationship and even befriend the killer.  After all, the killer had been their neighbor, perhaps an old family friend who lived just down the road.  The interconnectedness of these relationships made the genocide all the more difficult to comprehend—and the reality of reconciliation all the more profound.
 
We came across a village that had been built by the hands of repentant genocide perpetrators wanting to give the gift of a new home to their victims’ families.  In this village, run by Prison Fellowship Rwanda, we witnessed survivors and killers living side-by-side in community through reconciliation.  One former prisoner remarked, “These hands I once used to kill, now I’m using them to rebuild.”   
 
The audiences of As We Forgive responded so positively to this village that we decided to launch a campaign called “Living Bricks” to help more and more repentant killers build homes for their victims.  The result is a burgeoning community founded on forgiveness called the Living Bricks Village. The Rwandans also decided to use the film to help spark greater public dialogue about the reconciliation process, and now the film is being presented and discussed in schools, churches, and prisons across the country.  Rosaria and Saveri, a survivor and killer featured in the film, have even asked if they can accompany the film everywhere it goes so that people know their testimony of reconciliation is real and not just actors on the screen.  All along I thought the film was meant to change hearts and minds of those of us in the West, but the Rwandans are using it to help the most skeptical and wounded among them.
 
Today, Rwanda is far from being restored.  Traces of the genocide still sketch the countryside in the form of ghostly memorial sites filled with human bones and in machete scars etched across the faces of so many survivors.  Thousands of killers remain imprisoned and tens of thousands more avoid prosecution by hiding in surrounding countries.  Mourning and sorrow follow close behind nearly everyone you meet.
 
Yet there’s something Biblically epic about the past 15 years of Rwanda’s history. Emerging from the burden of international shame, some Rwandans are choosing to live out the hope of the Gospel in a way that confounds the human mind.  I am reminded of God’s paradoxical penchant for using the weak to shame the strong.  Could it be that this most brutal and depraved of African nations is becoming a light to the world?  If so, there’s no wonder we’re all captivated.

To host a screening of As We Forgive in your community or to purchase the DVD, please visit www.AsWeForgiveMovie.com.
 
To get involved in the Living Bricks Campaign, please visit: www.LivingBricksCampaign.org

1 Comment »

1. I am proud to be hosting a movie screening about the phenomenal circumstances in Rwanda in February.  The hope the people of Rwanda have given to me is indescribable.  I have expressed to many of my friends how this knowledge has affected me personally and I hope will do the same for them.

   Rwanda is a light and I am proud to be a part of shining this light in America.

   Comment by Jennifer - Jan 08, 2010 @ 06:35 PM

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