I Saw What I Saw

Your pain has changed me;

Your dream inspires;

Your face a memory;

Your hope a fire;

Your courage asks me what I'm afraid of;

Your courage asks me what I am made of;

And what I know of love.

~Sara Groves

I can't think of finer words to describe the Rwandan people.

Bob

Bob Arnold, the name, is about as ordinary as they come. Bob Arnold sounds like the name of your local dentist, or maybe your neighborhood grocer. Bob Arnold could be your city councilman, your travel agent, maybe your veterinarian. But Bob Arnold of the Bungokho Rural Development Center, is about as abnormal as human beings come.

We visited Bungokho on my last day in Uganda. By then I had already said the name out loud maybe 30 times for the fun of it. Boon kuh koo. Boon KUH koo. BOON kuh koo. Boon kuh KOO.

When we pulled up, a medium-built British man came flailing around the corner. He was a bit wild-eyed and grabbed each of our hands with both of his hands and shook them vigorously. His clothes were dusty and wisps of his thin grey hair were floating in the breeze. He launched right into talking a million miles per minute.

He told us his story of coming to Uganda to do short-term mission work through the Church Army project of the Anglican Church. His wife Rosalind, equally energetic and quixotic, piped in that she very begrudgingly came along. They returned to London for awhile, but eventually found themselves permanently in Mbale, Uganda.

They took us around the center. We were practically jogging to keep up. The center is like a small, self-sustaining town. The center seeks to "spread the love of God by helping people help themselves." He showed us gardens where coffee, pineapples, passion fruit, maize, matoke, and more are grown. He took us down to an area where livestock such as goats, rabbits, bees, hens, ducks, and fish are kept. One enormous goat in heat was slamming itself against it's wooden cage as he spoke in front of it. He didn't bat an eye while the rest of us exchanged cautious glances and slowly backed away. He then scooped up goat feces with his bare hands and described how they use it as a fertilizer for their crops.

He took us to rooms where young men and women are trained in vocational skills. One group of teenage men were learning to be carpenters. They quietly blinked at us, momentarily pausing from their quiet labors to proudly display their work. A group of young women were bustling about before their class began, fiddling with each others hair and clothes, gossiping and giggling like typical young women. They would be learning how to teach AIDS awareness in their communities.

Some were at work on a building in the center of the little community. Some were washing clothes. Others were plucking coffee beans.

Bob touched everything. When describing the process by which some of their members made bricks, he reached over and grabbed a pile of the red earth used for the bricks. He tasted plants, petted the animals, scooped poop, all the while talking with great fervor and passion. I have never seen anyone get more excited about animal dung or rabbit cages.

I was remiss to leave Bungokho so quickly. It had a quiet peaceful feel. I had the sensation that I could actually live there and get used to getting my hands dirty. Bob's wild-eyed passion for his work brought a bright smile to everyone he greeted as he gave us his tour.

Bob Arnold and Boon Kuh Koo are anything but normal. The young men proudly showing us their tables, the squealing, healthy looking children reading in unison in class, and the smiling women chatting while plucking coffee are a testament to Bob Arnold, the oddest Brit in Mbale, and his passion for helping people help themselves to have a better life.

Moses

Moses was as no-nonsense as the above photo exudes. We had all had a goofy afternoon and evening, singing silly songs in the long car-ride to Kirongi, watching steam blow out from underneath the front passenger seat, joking around with the locals as we fixed our car alongside the hilly, Rwandan countryside, boating with the man from monkey island and swimming with the tsi-tsi eels. By the time we rolled around to dinner that evening, we were a laughing, silly bunch.

But we snapped to attention when Moses stood up to begin his presentation. He was serious and professional, with a laptop and power point cued up and ready to go. He spoke to us about Rick Warren's peace plan in Rwanda, explaining to us the many tiers and prongs that comprise it. P.E.A.C.E., he explained, stands for "Promote reconciliation - Equip servant leaders - Assist the poor - Care for the sick - Educate the next generation."

As I sat there quietly chomping my samosa, I thought this plan seemed a bit grandiose. Moses told us about the origins of the peace plan, and what Rick Warren initially identified as "the five global goliaths:" 1) Spiritual Emptiness, 2) Egocentric Leadership, 3) Extreme Poverty, 4) Pandemic Diseases, and 5) Illiteracy and Lack of Education. Again I thought, that's a wide swath of issues to be confronting.

Then Moses mentioned Peter Drucker. He definitely had my attention. Drucker, a former mentor of Warren, knows a thing or two about executing large scale projects. Moses talked to us about the influence of Drucker's "3 Legged Stool" concept in executing the peace plan. Drucker argued that the only way to affect change in society was to engage the public, private, and social sectors together in accomplishing a common mission. Those three legs must be:

• a public sector of effective governments
• a private sector of effective businesses
• a social sector of effective community organizations, including faith-based organizations.

Now I was starting to see. The peace plan Moses was describing for us was broad and all-encompassing on purpose. Moses was basically arguing that disjointed, narrow causes in Africa weren't effective because they were only engaging one nub of one leg of the stool. In order to keep the stool from toppling, cohesion was needed.

I sat there thinking to myself that it was a little ironic that I was hearing about this enormous project that seemed almost comical due to its scale from a man named Moses. I wonder what the Israelites thought about Moses' big plan to just walk out of Egypt, leave everything behind, cross the Red Sea, and start a whole new life. If I recall from my Bible history, they thought he was a little nuts. I think their particular criticism was the scale of the endeavor. Uproot an entire people that had been living there for generations. Walk away from a tyrant. Do the impossible.

Remembering the story of Moses of the Bible caused me to think twice about my incredulosity towards this Rwandan Moses and his vision for a new Rwanda. I reminded myself that there are no limits to what God can do for His people. I think it's no accident that God has a determined man named Moses as the face of the P.E.A.C.E. plan, hell-bent on freeing his people from the vicious cycles of poverty and violence.

Miriam

When we walked into CURE's morning devotionals before the workday began, we were blasted by song. This was not your typical, American-style coffee, dough nuts, and scripture in the a.m. No, this was a class-A jam session for the Lord.

We were running late, I had not had enough caffeine, I had not slept well in four nights. I was feeling slow and a little worn down. I wouldn't have minded that extra hour of sleep or that second cup of coffee before the day began.

As we approached the beautiful stone gates of CURE, we heard a melodious sound drifting over the traffic noise. The whole hospital seemed to be thumping with song. Walking into the room where "devotions" were being held was like walking out of the office after a long day into a blast of sunshine. Everyone was smiling, swaying, clapping, belting out tunes. A grinning young man pounded on a rather dated keyboard. Two women up front were belting out intermittent lyrics and scripture, a little bit off-tune. No one was sitting and no one was frowning.

Little did I know that one of the women leading the praise and worship had just lost a family member. She had literally just returned from burying him. Miriam, the spiritual leader of CURE is the sassiest soul searcher I have ever met. Over the course of our time with CURE, she told us about running away from home and an abusive father. She told us about life with approximately seventy siblings (her parents practice polygamy). She told us about literally battling demons in her quest to overcome the practice of witchcraft. She told us about her marriage that nearly dissolved due to her conversion to Christianity. She told us about soothing mothers who watch their infants die and soothing doctors who try every day to save children from illnesses we would never see in the United States.

CURE is an incredible ministry. Walking in off the streets of Mbale, you are bombarded by smiles. The doctors there are some of the best and most specialized in the continent. The site is an oasis of excellence and joy in the midst of a desert of suffering. It was like a family. "Uncle Zeph" told us that he took pride in mentoring the young men who work in his laboratory. When I asked to take a picture of him, because he had the best smile I have ever seen, he insisted that it be taken with "his boys." Before the primary surgeon began his endoscopic brain procedure, all the doctors and nurses bowed their heads in prayer.

On the day that we left Mbale, we dropped off Miriam to go to another funeral for a family member. This time it was a sister who had succumbed to AIDS. I never saw Miriam shed a tear. I only heard her give thanks. Miriam, like her namesake of the Bible, embodied CURE in her joy and courage in the midst of great battles.

Eugene

Pity the soul that faces Eugene in a court of law. A native Rwandan, Eugene is a member of the Rwandan bar as well as a crusader for justice for the "least of these" in his country. Eugene is the kind of guy who comes off as soft-spoken and gentle, but has a stealthy strength that would dominate in a courtroom.

Eugene works in partnership with the Rwandan office of the International Justice Mission. He handles a range of issues there, and his duties include defending street children and orphans who have been victims of abuse, helping women who have been cast out by their husbands who have found new wives, defending women and girls who have been sexually abused, and helping women establish wills and gaining titles to their property.

He explained to us that in Rwanda, property rights are not nearly as solidified and ingrained into the societal structure as they are in the United States. He told us about one of his clients, a woman with four children, whose husband died with no will. She and her children were cast to the street by his greedy extended family who then divided up his property amongst themselves. In world with limited property rights, women and children often lose out. He told us about another family where the mother died, and when the father remarried, his new wife threw out the children because she wanted her children to be first in line to any inheritance. Eugene told us that this happens 80% of the time a man remarries after a first wife dies. In country like Rwanda, where the life expectancy is low and diseases like AIDS and malaria are so prevalent, it is not uncommon for a parent to die while he or she still has young children.

Eugene had to leave after our meeting to go defend in court a 12 year-old girl who was so brutally raped that she was still in the intensive care unit of the hospital. The day before, he had met with another client, a woman whose husband beat her, stole her property, and abandoned her with her children and grandchild. She had thrown away any paper evidence of the abuse and theft, because she had thought it so implausible that anyone would defend her, for free no less. He told us that in Rwanda, "domestic violence is more or less an accepted norm." He told us that last year, 2,500 instances of street children and orphans being abused had been brought to the attention of the police, and none had been investigated by the government.

Eugene depressed me. But Eugene also impressed me. Eugene thinks like a lawyer. In other words, he doesn't get totally bogged down in the how and now. He sees a bigger picture, and talked to us about the importance of setting precedents, being strategic, affecting change by slowly working the system. He told us that affecting the macro must be done through the micro. And their office must be doing something right, as they had just won an award for the best non-profit legal sector in Rwanda for their effectiveness.

The law junkie in me loved talking to Eugene. He knew the code words, "the power of legal precedent."

Marie-Jeanne

Marie-Jeanne has a hard face. When we first met her, she didn't really smile. She was like a quiet shadow behind the Archbishop, lingering in the corners of the room observing us. In fact, I don't think we ever saw her smile.

Archbishop Kollini translated her story for us. She spoke barely above a whisper. Despite her gentle manner, she was beaming with resilience. As we crunched our croissants, we were lambasted by strength.

Marie-Jeanne lived in a rural province of Rwanda when the genocide began. She was immediately widowed and faced starvation and dire poverty without her husband to support her. Prostitution presented itself as a way to feed herself and survive. But when the genocide ended, she decided to give life another go. She walked all the way to Kigali in search of a way to stay alive without killing her dignity.

She became involved in her local church, and started meeting war widows struggling to make ends meet. Some had been raped and found themselves HIV positive. Others had husbands in jail for their crimes. Some had lost their entire families. These women's husbands had literally killed each other. All of them shared only one thing in common: they were determined to stay alive. They couldn't afford to bear grudges against one other.

Marie-Jeanne brought a handful of the women together and they decided that they would form a savings group where each woman would contribute 50 francs a week. They could then use that group savings as a sort of line of credit, and would take turns withdrawing sums to fund costs ranging from emergency medical needs for their children to capital expenditures like sewing machines to grow their fledging livelihoods.

Soon, her credit-savings group had attracted 14 women. They moved to saving 550 Rwandan francs per month. They opened a bank account. They expanded to 1,500 francs/month. They made an eventual withdrawal of 1.5 million francs to buy a knitting machine. Later they withdrew 10 million to buy a truck to distribute their products.

Today, a member of her group can withdraw up to 440,000 francs as a loan. They are homeowners. Marie-Jeanne has a personal savings of 320,000 francs, in addition to a robust line of credit through her group. Each member received a 70,000 Christmas dividend last year. Their account has a balance of 24 million Rwandan francs. They are showing the world that there is such thing as the Rwandan dream, that America does not have ownership over the self-made man or woman as a societal emblem.

Marie-Jeanne and her credit-savings group are a reminder that entrepreneurship is embedded in the human spirit. It does not know race, gender or nationality. It is the wings that bring the phoenix from the ashes of human suffering. The entrepreneurial spirit is a human trait that comes to life when we have passed the fight or flight moment. Marie-Jeanne decided to fight. Now she and her female compatriots are the embodiment of the human will to overcome great adversity.