Day Two

Day 2 in Africa is our last in Kigali and we are already regretting it and pledging to return. While the city does not have the metropolitan buzz of a Nairobi or Lagos, there is a powerful sense of destiny and opportunity here. The people of Kigali make Karen and me feel as though we are long-lost family. We have three meetings with educational leaders, including Rwanda's Minister of Education, the Director of the Higher Education Commission, and a number of 'rectors' (the equivalent of a US university president) from both public and private institutions.

Sandwiched in between is a quick stop at the Rwanda Genocide Museum, built to provide a burial place for some 250,000 of the dead, and serve as a reminder of our 'hearts of darkness' ever capable of 'the horror' that Kurtz made infamous. Walking through the plain, concrete, mass graves, the stillness is almost too hard to bear. We lay roses of remembrance at the site and pray that God brings reconciliation, peace and strength to somehow replace this unspeakable devastation. The genocide is so recent that the history is still being written, and the images in the museum are too raw and painful; we are shaken. Perhaps the most devastating is a photo of countless corpses at a church; the victims fled to what they thought was a sacred haven, but it only served as their tomb. Video testimonials from survivors--many of them children who watched as their parents or siblings were clubbed to death--are wrenching; we cannot watch for long. How did this happen? Sickening phrases like 'ethnic cleansing' are hellish euphemisms that cannot mask the reality of hatred taken to its heinous end.

The meetings go remarkably well, and we have many opportunities to bless and be blessed by Rwanda, but the specter of death hangs over our hearts like a black curtain. As we fly out of Kigali on our way to Nairobi, dusk falls and even nature senses our mood. Kigali needs redemption that only our Savior can bring, and our parting prayer is for revival and restoration to transform Rwanda.