The Genius of the RV

No, not the Recreational Vehicle. The Reconciliation Village. And this won’t be the last time I talk about this. The first time I went to one of these villages, places where genocide perpetrators and victims live and work in harmony together, I was overwhelmed – completely in awe. After taking it all in, I wanted to write about it, but every time I sat down to do so, no words seemed right. There was too much to write about, too much to try to understand. “This is what it’s all about,” I thought. “It all boils down to this.” Here’s my first attempt to describe what’s going on in the RV.

There are 5 of these villages in Rwanda, and I’ve now been to 4 of them. They are clusters of homes (one village has 95 houses, another has 45 - it varies) built in the rural countryside beside huge expanses of chocolate brown farm plots, banana trees, sorghum and cassava fields, hills. There’s a reason why Rwanda is called “The Land of a Thousand Hills.” This country is beautiful. A few pictures can’t capture it all. I’m spellbound every time I venture outside of the capital city of Kigali.

Prison Fellowship Rwanda, together with several other International Organizations, makes these villages run, grow, and flourish. Every organizational member plays a part – one builds the homes, another is responsible for providing solar power, another for clean drinking water, another for attending to villagers’ suggestions and concerns, another for providing training in efficient and effective farming methods, another for providing goats and cows as loans for sustainable business, another for ensuring that these villages are peaceful and reflect what their name suggests: reconciliation. This last responsibility is PFR’s. I’m still wrapping my head around the idea of reconciliation. I thought I understood it – but slap in the face, no I don’t. It’s going to take some time to explore everything that’s behind it. It’s the driving force behind what PFR does, and it’s the driving force for restoring Rwanda. It’s really an amazing thing.

So a couple of times now, I’ve taken anywhere from a 4 to 10 hour daytrip in the PFR white jeep/truck thing out to middle-of-nowhere boondocks Rwandan countryside. We bump and screech and wobble along, enveloped by bright green expanses of hills covered by grid-like cultivation, sometimes through raging monsoons (it’s the rainy season in Rwanda). There are these vibrant red dirt roads (dirt might not be the best word – “rock” or “boulder” is more like it) that remind me of Mars. These roads (sort of) direct our course; otherwise it’s pretty much impossible to tell if you’re going in the right direction.

Once you get to a village, goats (Rwandans love goat meat) and cows (milk is a delicacy and a great source of profit, but those cows have some intense horns) are everywhere.

First village. Leanard. I’ll never forget that man. Have you ever been immediately drawn to someone you don’t know well, and you’re not really sure why? Yeah, that was Leanard for me. He had these glassy, hazel eyes, a smile that emitted a sort of warm glow, a peaceful demeanor. Every time he laughed or smiled, his eyes watered a little. Reminds me of one of my closest friends from home, Kristina. Every time she smiles or laughs, she cries. Yep, that’s been going on since 3^rd grade. It’s awesome. I loved talking to that guy, making eye contact with him.

Leanard was a perpetrator in the genocide, a war criminal, a loyal member of the ruthless militias for years before the genocide even took place. He killed 4 people with his bare hands and he can’t count the number of people he killed as a member of the genocide militias. He has no idea – it’s just a blur of people in his memory.

In this second picture, Leanard stands beside Louis, a victim. Facts: Leanard participated in killing Louis’s family members – she lost 16. Leanard and Louis are now neighbors in the reconciliation village. Leanard has asked Louis to forgive him. Louis has forgiven Leanard, and they’ve gone a step further: they have reconciled with one another. That means they’ve committed to living a different life together, to changing the way they view each other. They raise livestock and crops together and take care of each other. They share their income. They are good friends.

All this might sound like some kind of mushy, implausible fairytale, but so be it. Those are the facts. I could spend another 3 hours reflecting on those facts, but I’ll leave that up to you.

If Leanard and Louis don’t demonstrate the resilience of the human spirit, then I don’t know what does. If they don’t show man’s capacity to mend what was torn, to somehow piece together what was broken, to move on – not just forward, but along a different path altogether, then I don’t know what does.

Leanard is a changed man – he has been transformed. Transformed by something inside of him. To me, genius is not smarts, per se. It’s not what you do; it’s not your resume; it’s not your accomplishments. It’s who you are. Genius is finding a way to overcome something that is capable of overcoming you. It’s transcending human limitations.

As countless Rwandans who’ve survived the genocide have told me, something unimaginably evil can be turned inside out to reveal something unimaginably good. That’s what has happened on many different fronts in Rwanda.

I don’t tell you these things to hang a black cloud over your head, to make you imagine brutal killing. I’m telling you because it was very evident that day in the village that good can triumph over bad, that reconciliation can beat retaliation. It can be done. The reconciliation village tells us this, and if we look even closer, it shows us how.