Here's the thing: coming back to the US from Rwanda is difficult.

Task One: Adjusting to the fact that I live in a mainly white community, and most of us don't have a clue that we are, by skin color, extremely privileged. Rob and I sat in the living room of a prominent Rwandan businessman, discussing why American don't differentiate much among Africa's 53 nations. For most US citizens, people in Africa are just 'Africans.'


Task Two: Making work just part of my life, not my whole life. With a many-faceted mission in Rwanda, Stories For Hope work became my only activity. No exercise, little reading, scant time relaxing in nature. Now, I am drifting about the house, feeling lost, almost useless.

Task Three: Not talking endlessly about Rwanda. Thank God Rob came on my third week there. We can talk together. While my many beloved good friends and family members really want to hear about my work in Rwanda, how do I summarize, without drawing up too much detail that has no context for their own lives?

Like the story about the janitor who cleans our Rwanda office, and gets us Fanta Citron from the local mart, or MTN minutes for my phone. Most of the time, he said very little to me or the Rwandan staff, just waved and smiled hi, and got to work. He 'just' cleaned the toilets, often plugged, took out the trash, and wiped the floors of Rwanda's red dirt every morning with a rag stuck to a stick. Shame on me. I never even knew his name, because Evas, our in-country manager, dealt with him.

On our last day of recording in the office, he asked, could he bring his own brother to the project, to tell him some stories? I agreed at once.



His name is Emmanuel Niyigaba. When he showed up for his storytelling session, with his younger brother, Jean Rene Rugira, he was suddenly transformed: alert, energized, taking in every translated word I said, slightly nervous, but eager--a young man with stories to tell, and undoubtedly, like everyone here, a family story of sorrow, and survival.

His will not be the last story I want to see transcribed, but the first. Who so wisely said, the last shall be first?

My body and baggage have returned from Rwanda. Too passive? Hey, all I had to do was show up at various airport gates with my conspicuous camera bag, steel-gray pull briefcase, and Ghanian purse. Then several massive airplanes took me out of Africa, dipped briefly into Europe, then flew against East-bound air currents across the Atlantic. Suddenly--clunk--like Dorothy, my body is home.

In about a week, the rest of me will arrive. I still hear the rooster that crowed every morning at six, still smell the cooking fires, still taste the freshest scrambled eggs I've ever eaten, and feel my fingers wander automatically over my Nokia cell phone in search of Hassan, our driver, or our friend Celestin, or Benon, the young man so involved with our program.

I see the verdant hillsides speckled with banana trees, woven through with earthen red footpaths. I see thousands of kids and young people striding to school on Kigali's neat sidewalks, and motorbikes taking adults to work each morning, helmeted women in business suits. I feel the warm handshakes and cheeks of so many Rwandan men and women thanking us over and over for the chance to tell their stories.

One of my suitcases is packed with consent forms, contact sheets, and evaluations from 50 pairs of storytellers who came bravely to talk about the past. My computer is heavy with the weight of their audiotapes, and video testimonies. In the able hands of Never Again Rwanda, the largest youth organization in Rwanda, and the Episcopal Church of Byumba, I leave behind 16 trained Rwandan facilitators, over $1000 in equipment, plus an agreements to do more training and recordings in Kigali, Byumba, and Nyamata.

We are a small project, mainly a spark for more talking between the generations. We will not impact poverty, or disease, or the political process. We won't create jobs. But we hope to catalyze change in a couple hundred of families who just may keep talking, or tell others about why it's worth sharing between the generations. We wish to be mainly perturb the silence that has fallen upon this incredible nation, and insert some positive stories among the many horrific ones.

By next week, I'll be more present in Ann Arbor, but for now, I'm still in a commercial district of Rwanda, threading myself between a local phone kiosk and a plumber's store gleaming with shiny new toilets, walking through a passageway to the back of a three-story building, stepping carefully across an abandoned lot, heading up the stairway, and turning left, to find Stories For Hope.

The US Embassy in Kigali looks like every other building in Washington: squat,and imposing, and grey. It seems void of any architecturally interesting detail. Maybe someone decided that, since it will need a huge, tall fence around it, why waste the money on art?

Fences, and security pods. There are several of those, all alike. Heave open a hugely heavy clear door, sidle up to a high counter manned by security guards, surrender your passport and cell phone, get phone clearance from the person awaiting you, pass through a metal detector, and you're in. America the Beautiful.

I never got over my cynicism for American government, and so I smirk as pry open another thick door, and walk into the next grey building. Inside it's all high ceilings, and tasteful burnt sienna furniture grouped around a glass coffee table. On the walls are quilts from American artists, nothing really grabby. I'm like so disdainful. Why not art work from Rwandans? I'm like where were you America, in 1994? I'm aware that I have grown Rwandan skin over my own.

Until a photo catches me. It's a very large photo of Barack Obama, just staring at me. He is not America's President. He is my President, and I suddenly feel tears rising. I take a deep breath, inhaling this moment, and holding it as long as I can, like a joint. My own newly minted patriotism sends a tingle over me. I am just so proud. And I am now, once again, proud to be from a country that would dare elect him.

A Rwandese man in blue jeans appears to my left. It's Gilbert, from USAID. Okay, Gilbert, let's do some good for Rwanda. Let's talk.

We arrived this morning for our first day of story-recordings in the hill-top town of Byumba. I was nervous. Weaving north, as the night mists lifted themselves over Rwanda's bigger and greener hills, had been a stunningly beautiful journey. But as soon the stark white tents of the Gihembe refugee camp came into view, I felt worried.

Two weeks ago, we had made a bad, first impression in Byumba by arriving almost two hours late. The car had overheated, twice, taking us up steep roads to this most northern province. We rushed flustered into the meeting.

Local leaders had been polite, of course. But by now, after six trips to Rwanda, I could sense undertones of distrust. Since I had been in Africa for less than 24 hours, I was still adjusting. There was little time to get used to translation, and I knew I had talked too slow, and too loud. No one approached me afterwards, over our sambosa, Fanta and Citron.

The car eased around groups of uniformed children heading to school.Byumba is a busy, bustling, and very orderly town. Storytelling among 3-4 pairs of local people was planned. As we called Emmanuel and Elissam to find the recording site, I wondered if we would have to start all over again to build relationships up here. Had word spread among the citizens that the Americans were unorganized, and brash?

Emmanuel and his staff had found a wonderful place for us to work, an solid, empty thick-walled building in a compound, with lots of small rooms adjoining a larger one. The low ceilings, and curtained windows made it cozy for people coming to share their stories.The front and back areas of the structure were softened by neat gardens. It was quiet, except for a low bellow of a cow next door, which the archivists would hate. But the cow made it feel homier. This whole set-up would feel safe for people, and familiar, better than our modern office building in Kigali, on a street screeching with motor bike noises.

People arrived almost immediately: a man and his son, both dressed in their Sunday clothes, another father in a crisp white shirt who awaited his daughter's arrival, and a old woman in a beautiful green panga and headwrap, who came with her daughter.

I wanted to start right away to bestow my reputation as an American who respected that they had left fields, pastures, jobs, stores, and schools to come, that it was costing them precious time.

But the participants had come early, the daughter was still closing her storefront, and the facilitators were a bit late, so we ordered tea and coffee and snacks, and tried to make small talk, with Emmanuel translating.

Rob, Laurette, and Elissam had quickly and efficiently organized the interview and debriefing rooms, and the recording and photo equipment. We were ready.

But in Rwanda, care is always taken to include others, and be social. So when facilitators Canisius, Veronique, and Agnes arrived, they too joined in the small coffee klatch outside. The morning sun grew bright and hot, and small boys peeked around the gate. We were two hours behind schedule.

Schedule: that ugly American word driven by goals, timelines, and the drive to get things done, no matter the cost to human wear and tear. I took a deep breath, and reminded myself that this long preamble to our work day would only make people feel comfortable.

If we had to drive back to Kigali in the dark, so be it. Even though there were many accidents on the this steep, twisting road, the only one coming from Uganda, Hassan was our driver, and I trusted him explicitly.

Before I had a chance to gulp down a second cup of coffee, the servers cleared everything away. It was time to begin.

In 15 minutes, I leave for my sixth trip to Rwanda. Going there has overwhelmed at times, like today. Will we really accomplish our goals of training facilitators, and collecting 50 stories? I'll be spending every penny of money from the government that isn't even in the bank yet. What about the future?

When I was a teenager, I used to feel the slow creep of truth.

That's beginning to happen. The truth is, this is too much for one person to do, even as I have able assistants along. This may be my last trip for a while. I need to rest, rebalance my life, write about what I've experienced, and consider what place Rwanda will have in my life.

I've already faced THAT truth. It happened on a patio one evening, as I dined alone. I love this country, and I am overtaken by admiration for what the people living here have survived. Rwanda will always be with me, and the friends I've made there will have a permanent place in my life.

I will not have the chance today to attend one of Rwanda's 10,000 gacaca courts. The friend who invited me was someone who has, since 2006, been telling me his story. In Rwanda, where 'story' is mainly code for 'genocide story,' there are millions of these stories. Nonetheless, each one is excruciating, and uniquely horrific, and totally unfathomable. "You think your story is the worst, and then you hear another one that seems more horrible than yours."

This man's parents, and several others in their household, were killed as the genocide exploded in the South in 1994. He now knows who the genocidaires were. Were? Are? Aren't they still murderers? What tense do we use when the events of the past are so immediately telescoped in the present? The grammar of genocide is still being invented.

So is the issue of 'forgiveness.' The man accused of killing is now asking for forgiveness, even though he continues to deny he was the actual murderer. My friend doubts he is telling the truth because the perpetrator did not correctly name the weapons of murder. At the first hearing, my friend said to him, "You are saying they died by machete, yet two children survivors who crawled out of the killing field say they heard gunshots ."

The other shattering fact is that 11 young men came to the compound to kill, and only now, since he has seen them, he knows that several were this man's childhood playmates. We sit in his office to chat, me about to start a project, he about to play a tennis match. "One of these guys taught me how to drive a car! Several years later, he allows that my parents be killed??"

I cannot offer to shed light on his rightful question. In Rwanda, particularly as an outsider whose own nation turned its back on this tiny nation in its desperate time of need, I have learned that to bear witness to a story, human to human, is sometimes the most important thing I can do. All I can do today, wondering about how my friend might feel not being able to attend the gacaca (frustrated? relieved?)is pass on his story, and keep wondering what being human is all about.

"The arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

This hopeful idea comes from Theodore Parker, a US abolitionist against slavery, from the 1850's. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to repeat it.

It showed up again in the media swirl around the Democratic National Convention, and because the idea is essentially about hope, I passed it on to Joseph. He and spoke today while he awaited the deliberations of the local court council in Kimirama, a very small rural village in Rwanda.

But can it really be a comfort to those, like Joseph, who lost beloved family members to genocide?? He and I speak while the court, trying suspects in his sister's murder, deliberates on their innocence or guilt. The arc is indeed, very long.

"When I arrived here, they had nine people in custody. They lived or worked at the house where Immaculee was killed. Unfortunately, the four brothers escaped, the ones who are said to have enslaved and raped Immaculee, then dumped her body in a pit toilet. They fled just as the authorities were about to hold them over, for this hearing. The others now in custody say they saw her at the house, but will not offer anything else.

...So its' very, very tough. I am maintaining myself emotionally strong, but I am very discouraged."

I can hear this in his voice. Even though his strength endures, I hear strain, fatigue, sadness, and outrage. But, Joseph, soon to be a leader in Rwanda, has a way of rising above almost any situation. He knows he is not the only one to be suffering.

"There are many families like mine, survivors who only wish to know where the remains of their loved ones are buries, who just want to know some little detail of their relatives' last days. We do not wish justice in order to hurt the perpetrators, but justice that might pressure them to tell more."

At the end of the day, we speak again. His voice has lifted. "They are all guilty but one, including the mother of the four escapees! This gives me some satisfaction in knowing that some justice has been served. They will appeal, of course, but perhaps in the meantime they will think twice about being silent."

I offer that the arc must be bending toward justice, since the local justices must have included Hutus, since the villages in the Southern Province are peopled largely by people of this background. If they had to come to judgment by consensus, there is hope that justice in Rwanda will prevail.

In any event, Rwanda is ahead of the world curve on justice. In this country, not telling what you know about genocide crimes, is a crime in itself. The people in Kimirama being sent to jail today apparently committed more than silence. They have been accused of Category 1 genocide, the worst offenses, bringing life imprisonment. They are feeling the pinch of the arc right now, an arc that has suddenly bent into their souls. May God help them find some inner peace, and if they are guilty, come forward to help Joseph and his family.