Reconciliation Conference

Here I am in a fancy new internet cafe in Kigali, called Blue Cafe, right next to the central mall. Since I was here a year ago, new developments are evident all around the city. This particular cafe is a wireless hot spot, so Kigali is keeping up with technological advancements!

This past weekend has been chaotic but also very fruitful. Sarah and I arrived Thursday at 4am and left our hosts home at 11am for the days events. We attended a celebration at a Psychiatric Day Care centre, where Shalom has been training staff in nonviolent communication. Mentally and physically disabled children sang and danced for us, the staff put on a play illustrating what they had learned and we had a tour of the surprisingly well-equipped centre. Miss Kigali was also present, along with journalists from well known radio stations and newspaprs, so it was quite an event!

From here we went on to a secondary school where I ran a training session on nonviolent discipline. Teachers told me the average class had fifty students (and we complain in South Africa when here are forty in a class!). They seemed a motivated, committed group of teachers and we talked through some of the challenges with regards to the practical implications of alternatives to authoratative discipline models.

On Friday we spend the day in Rwamagana where we held a mini conference with forty leaders of the Rwamagana district (this is a rural area about an hour from Kigali). I spoke about storytelling and reconciliation which I think was less relevant to them than the other pertinent topics of forgiveness where some passionate debate took place around how we actually forgive and what the implications are.

On Saturday we went back to Rwamagana for Shalom's major PREST (Peace and Reconciliation through Song and Theatre) event. A choir that my colleague, Basabose, has been training in reconciliation performed an entire self-produced program on reconciliation, with songs and plays all related to the process of reconciliation in Rwanda. It was really quite remarkable and I could well imagine this sixty-strong choir touring the world with their heart rendering stories from genocide related experiences, followed by songs they themselves have written about unity and forgiveness. The choir is made up of people that would have been on opposite sides of the conflict which adds to their powerfl testimony. We also showed some movie clips on reconciliation which pulled in a crowd of some thousand people!

We spent the night at a guesthouse in Rwamagana, and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast on Sunday morning, followed by a church service at a Pentecostal church, where Basabose preached on our need to be bringers of peace, bringing a gospel of reconciliation. What moved me during the service was that when the collection was taken many of these villagers brought the best of their produce (peanuts, cow grass, vegetables, sugarcane) rather than money. Rather suprisingly, these items were then auctioned off to the highest bidder at the end of the service!

On Sunday afternoon we held the Shalom Board meeting and by the end of the evening we were all tired through and through! This morning I slept in though, and enjoyed breakfast on the verandah of my hosts house, in the lovely Kigali climate with birds all around. It is truly beautiful and I am so happy to be here. Perhaps at a later stage I may have time for more than a mere run down of my activities!