Fresh

Lately I've been feeling the need to remind myself of Rwanda. To keep fresh in my mind the things I saw, the people I met, the stories I heard, the sorrow I felt, the hope I encountered. I don't know why now, but for the past few weeks it's been a driving force. I've watched documentaries recounting the details of how the genocide started and was carried out, I'm re-reading Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, and just overall reliving moments from my time there.

I don't know if it's that sub-consciously I feel that my memories are slipping away. Maybe. I believe that no matter what I do (or fail to do) in regards to my memory of Rwanda, much of it will always be with me. But I don't want it to just be a part of my past; a piece of wisdom and feeling of empathy I had for a time. I want the hope I saw invade me and bring all the horrors and the miracles to my conscious thoughts throughout my life. Not because I enjoy hearing and remembering awful things, but because I never want those raw emotions to go away. I felt so many things in Rwanda. I felt angry, I felt desparate, I felt vulnerable, I felt hopeful. I saw God's hands moving across a nation. In the Rwandan people I saw despair, endurance, guilt, forgiveness, reconciliation, loss, gain.

I feel a responsibility to renew all of this over and over in my mind. To bring it up and wrestle with it continuously. I'll never fully understand the greatness of God's healing or the extent to which man can be evil, but I got a good look at both of those in the "Land of a Thousand Hills."