On the eve of my departure for Rwanda I went to Kalk Bay with my housemates for dinner. The wind was blowing fiercely so it was too cold to walk in the harbor after we ate. But we had to stop on the drive back to Cape Town, the scene was to beautiful to simply drive past. The light from the full moon burst bright upon the turbulent surf of the Atlantic. Large boulders scattered the beach and I stood atop one absorbing the moonlight, reflecting on reflections. The whipped my hair and my scarf about, wrapping and unwrapping me, pushing me and pulling me. I had wished I had my camera, but the image lingers with me nonetheless and somehow evokes the journey I now embark upon. The fierce wind, the crashing surf, even the power of the moon over the earth--sometimes gracing it with glowing light, sometimes hovering above imbued in darkness--it all calls to mind the struggle, the hardship, the anger, the fear, and the pain I expect to encounter; all the remnants of a society so violently mangled that the world around them can never be perceived in the same way again. And yet . . .
And yet there was beauty and peace in this night. The wind was violent and stripped me of the the warmth of my scarf, and yet at times it also wrapped my scarf about me, the pushing and pulling both forceful and a kind of gentle prodding. The surf was rough, foreboding, icy, and yet beyond the breakwaters it was calm, reflecting the moonlight in such a way that provokes the imagination and a sense of peace. I was compelled to exclaim the beauty of the world before me (repeatedly).
I am often asked how it is I feel capable of doing work with, shall we say, communities experiencing trauma. All too often it seems hopeless, and it is disturbingly easy to be overwhelmed by the horrors of this world. And yet, piercing through the most hideous of evils there is always the purest love. If the atrocities that people are capable of inflicting can throw you into despair, then the selfless, generous compassion and simple determination for life rooted deep in humanity can restore your hope for this world and the future.
And so it is, this turbulent beautiful night sent me into Rwanda. As I listen to people's stories I know I will find glimmers (or bursts!) of hope: like a lotus blooming in a murky stinking swamp. Not necessarily dramatic stories of rising above or overcoming that Hollywood thrives on, but rather stories of survival, of life, of the everyday. After all, that lotus flower did not float away out of that swamp, it exists within it. So in Rwanda, perhaps more dramatically than in some other places, I expect to find both extremes of humanity: despair and hope, atrocity and beauty, violence and peace. The question for me now is where does reconciliation fall in the negotiation of these extremes?
