Kabuye, Kivu

Saturday July 11, 2009

So, we decided to go to Kabuye. A little out of our way – off the main highway so the roads are not paved. It’s all – the hills – the green hills – the valleys with fields soaked in water. Banana trees. Clay houses. There is mist. Thin lines of trees. Eucalyptus trees.

Kabuye is a modest church on the top of a hill. We can find a priest who will tell us the story. In 1981, the site was a school. A young girl at the school had a vision that she saw the Virgin Mary. Or she kept seeing her. Over a year. And the people thought she was crazy. Of course they did. She wasn’t a particularly prayerful girl and she came from a part of the country known for magic. So, maybe she was seeing things but it was not a true vision. Only then another girl started having the same vision. She saw the virgin mary too. A girl who prayed all the time. And people started to believe. And then there was another girl who organized disbelievers and she started to have visions too. And then the community was convinced. It just so happened the girls shared a room and that three of the beds broke in this room. These beds were taken out and people started coming into that space where the beds used to be and they would pray. Until the room became a chapel or the room was torn down and a chapel built in its place. It’s where we sat to hear the story.

The Virgin Mary says things like repent. She says things like love. She says the people are flowers and that she loves them all distinctly. The blooming ones, the half dead ones, the ones that have all dried up. She also shows pictures of rivers or blood. Of hills covered with bodies. Images reminiscent of the genocide that happened 12 years later.

I am not sure what to make of this.

Some things that stay with me… I like as a narrative around genocide that – it’s not about pointing fingers – but this attempt to lay the narrative of genocide in a story that is larger than blaming – it is our purpose to be loved and still we can allow ourselves to be loved after learning we are capable of acts of hate. And yet… what do school girls have to do with the mechanisms of genocide? What does god have to do with the mechanisms of genocide? Where was god during the genocide? As in, where was our humanity?

Erik reminds us of Elie Wiesel’s image of god in the holocaust located in the young boy hanging from a noose in the concentration camp yard. God is in the suffering. And this is within my experience – only it’s hard for me to reconcile with witnessing the suffering of others. Witnessing this suffering so beyond my own experience. Why am I looking? I will never see. Why am I looking?

We spend the night at Lake Kivu. In a hotel overlooking the lake. The lake is grey and endless with waves. With the sound of waves. The sun sets over the water and the world is dark blue with the sound of waves. We drink passion fruit juice. It tingles on the sides of our tongues.

Today is made possible by the generous and gracious support of Barbara and Vimal Duggal. Thanks my friends!