Discuss: Healing Rwanda

if there’s one thing that terry’s article shows us, it’s that railing against the injustice doesn’t heal anything.  there has to be another way, and that way has to involve many, add dignity, and include beauty.

From the NPR website this evening:

Women Likely To Win Majority In Rwanda Parliament

Rwanda is on course to become the only nation in the world with a Parliament dominated by women.

Women currently hold just under half of the 80 seats in Rwanda’s parliament, and the chairman of that nation’s elections commission is predicting an even bigger showing after Wednesday’s legislative races.

Early tallies also show a possible landslide for the ruling party of President Paul Kagame in the second parliamentary election in Rwanda since the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

Ethnic tensions persist, but the country has made important steps toward political and economical stability and is now attracting international investors.

This is beautiful and heart wrenching.  Thank you Terry for having the courage to see what needs to be seen and the courage to tell what needs to be told.

Lily - takes broken pieces and turns them into beautiful works of art.

The woman whose family was killed -took the most broken piece - her family’s killer - and enfolded his life into hers in a beautiful act of forgivness. 

Glory to those that turn the world’s cacophany into harmony, disorder into symmetry, rubble into a new foundation.

Nicely written story Terri.  I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Rwanda in 1989-90 and have been back twice since, most recently in March.  During my first return I struggled for words to describe the sadness, to reconcile the ghosts.  During my second trip, a mission to rebuild trails in the Nyungwe Forest, I rediscovered hope and resiliance flowing in every clear running stream and in the hearts of all those who find forgiveness.  It is the dignity of this forgiveness that I wish to keep close, as I struggle through many angry emotions about the state of our world. The genocide was borne of anger and blame, but there are trails that lead to peace.

Women currently hold just under half of the 80 seats in Rwanda’s parliament, and the chairman of that nation’s elections commission is predicting an even bigger showing after Wednesday’s legislative races.

I cannot imagine the suffering the people of Ruwanda have endured.  I am so saddened by mans inhumanity to man, which happened then and is happening today.  I am numbed in the face of so much suffering and though I want to do something, I am at a loss to know what it is.  I thank Paul Weiser, of the ADL for sending me the article. I will pray; I will hope; I will treat others with kindness and try to help those in my small world.  My heart and prayers are with the people of Ruwanda.  This article was hard to read; but I couldn’t stop reading it.  I am changed.