Spirit in Action
Ellen Seagren Goes to Rwanda
Ellen Seagren called on her community, Twin Cities Friends Meeting, for clearness and to support her in her leading to travel to Rwanda in connections with Friends Peace House. Ellen spent a month in Rwanda and returned with glimpses of life there and a sense of changes she wanted to bring back with her, for herself and for our nation.
- Broadcast on:
- 12 Jul 2009
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeak. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we will again be dealing with a tiny African nation of Rwanda. And we'll be talking with Ellen Seagren, who spent a month in Rwanda recently. I've already brought you guests who've been concerned with welfare of this genocide ravaged but powerfully recovering country. We've talked to David Zeremka, a founder of the African Great Lakes Initiative, A-G-L-I, or Agley, which has done work in that area. I've spoken with Anna Sandich, who went to Rwanda as part of Agley, and I've spoken with David and Debbie Thomas, who have spent more than ten years in Rwanda as missionaries with the Evangelical Friends Church. Most recently, I brought you interviews with staff and workers connected with the Friends Peace House. Interviews dating from my own trip to Rwanda last year. There are a number of remarkable stories to be shared, some of hardship, but even more of them, of courage and devotion to peace and reconciliation. I think it would be hard to visit Rwanda, meet the people, and not be changed deeply by the experience. Of course, Rwanda evokes terrible images because of the horrible genocide that took place there in 1994, with the death of some 800,000 people. It seems unimaginable to most of us that neighbors could kill one another that way, but history and our lore are all too filled with stories of neighbors slaughtering each other out of fear, greed, lust, or hate. Listen children to a story that was written long ago, about to kingdom on a mountain, and the valley fought below. On the mountain was a treasure buried deep beneath the stone, and the valley people swore they'd have it for their very own. Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend, they'll leave the name of heaven, just a fight in the end. Well, pretty trumpet's going, come the judgment day, on the bloody morning after. Once in soldier rides away. So the people of the valley sent a message up the hill, asking for the very treasure, tons of gold for which they'd kill, came an answer from the kingdom, with our brothers we will share all the secrets of our mountain, all the riches buried in. Now the valley thrived the lander, mount your horses, draw your sword, and they killed the mountain people. So they won their just reward, now they stole it beside the treasure, on the mountain the dark and red. To work the stone in your tunics, whose honor was on its end. Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend, tell it in the name of heaven, you can just a fight in the end. Well, pretty trumpet's going, come the judgment day, on the bloody morning after. Once in soldier rides away. Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend, tell it in the name of heaven, you can just a fight in the end. Well, pretty trumpet's going, come the judgment day, on the bloody morning after. One to soldier rides away. That was one tin soldier from the soundtrack for the movie Billy Jack. It was originally thought of as an anti-war song back when it came out, but it speaks equally of the passions that led to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. My spirit and action guest today is Ellen Seekerin, and she journeyed this past year to Rwanda to learn about peace and reconciliation efforts there and to add her own hands into the balance. Ellen, thanks so much for joining me for spirit and action. Thanks for the invitation Mark, it's really good to be here. You went last year to Rwanda, and I'm wondering what on earth motivated you to decide to go to Rwanda. Actually, it's a friend that I met by the name of Cecile Miramana. She works with friends at Peace House and was here in the United States talking to a group of Quakers about her experiences during the genocide and her current work as a peace-breaker. And I had the honor of meeting her and translating for her was very impacted by what I saw. I have a lot of respect for her. And so she invited me to go, and then when I met her again in 2007, translating for her, I began to take the idea really seriously and look for a way that I could make that happen with the support of my community. Now I have to say Ellen, of course I've been to Rwanda, and I had my own fears going there because having heard about the genocide, weren't you afraid of going to a place that seems so volatile, seems so dangerous, seems so lethal? Well, this was my first time going to Africa, and obviously there for my first time going to Rwanda. I have traveled quite a bit before that, mostly in developing countries, for example, up into Haiti, which also is not entirely the safest and most stable. But it was funny to me when I was leaving for Rwanda how many people equate Rwanda today with the genocide of 14 years ago, and also how many people would make statements like, "Well, sure, you've traveled, but you've never gone to Africa." Like, Africa was in its own league and much more dangerous, volatile, you know, some kind of yummy and dangerous area. So it was, and as I went by myself, it was something that I spent some time thinking about. I think two areas of the world that we hear only know, through times of violence, sort of get frozen or paused in popular memory that way. I went to Vietnam, for example, and a number of people said, you know, "Don't trust the children, they'll stab you in your sleep," et cetera, et cetera, although that war also took place actually before it was born. So what was your experience? Did you arrive there and say, "Yeah, that person looks like a killer. That one person looks like I have to be worried about my life." Did you live in constant fear while you were there? No, I didn't. Actually, it's a funny mix because on one hand, Rwanda was the most pro-American place I have ever been, including this country. I felt personally safe as female traveling alone. I felt personally safe really at all times. There was much less even, like, people haceling even the street than what I've experienced in other countries. It felt very safe. On the other hand, I remember, for example, going to the marketplace with a friend and watching the butcher chop up the cow, the meat, with a machete. And then I was suddenly staring at the machete and thinking, "Holy shit." I was watching somebody chop up meat with a machete in Rwanda, and how often was that in previous times a person that was being chopped up. And I think that because so much of the violence in Rwanda happened by everyday people against everyday people, it wasn't the sort of pseudoscientific genocide of, for example, the Holocaust, that it was startling to me how many of the implements of, in my opinion, evil were just day-to-day implements that then you see used all the time. What was, in your opinion, the purpose of your going to Rwanda? You said you called on community. I'm assuming Twin Cities friends meeting and other folks to support your trip. What was the avowed purpose of your trip? And do you think you actually were able to live out that purpose? When I decided that I was going to be trying to go, I spoke with Cecile, and also with David Zorumpka of Agli, an African Great Lakes initiative, about whether it was a good idea for me to go, about what, if any, contribution I could make, they both said, "Oh no, definitely come, we'll find something for you to do." And to be totally honest, it was never completely clear to me. There was never, for example, an itinerary of what I would be doing when, et cetera. But a loose conglomeration of teaching English to some folks, participating in, possibly co-facilitating some workshops, and then a big part of my purpose in going, and I believe in the community's purpose of supporting me, was to look and see and to experience what I could of what was going on there and to come home and bear witness here. Being in Rwanda for a month, there's nothing amazing and wonderful that I could do that Ben is going to change the course of history for the Rwandans there. I didn't even build a building or anything like that. But to build bonds of community to be present, to help in the day-to-day ways that I could while I was there, and then to come home and continue that dialogue here, was sort of the vision of the trip. Can you tell me, Ellen, about some of your experiences there, vignettes that capture for you the essence of Rwanda, the essence of your experience with Rwanda? Now, I'm assuming, by the way, most of the time you were amongst Quakers there, as opposed to just out in public. My own experience was that the Quakers there are so heavily oriented towards peace and reconciliation, trauma-healing, all of that, that it was almost impossible for me to imagine that these are people who could have participated in the genocide. So, what did you experience? It's funny that you should use the word vignette because, actually, when I travel, I try to journal. I know I should probably journal always because that's what deep and grounded people do. However, when I travel, I do try to journal. When I was in Rwanda, I was journaling, and usually I have a very kind of free-form style of journaling, and it really wasn't working, and I kept trying, and it wasn't working. And then I started writing vignettes instead of stories or thoughts, and all of a sudden it started clicking again. So, a lot of my memories of Rwanda are in the form of vignettes. Most of my time was spent with Quakers, certainly not all of it. Not everybody who participates in the workshops is a Quaker. They are open to other faiths as well. And I also had an opportunity to talk with some folks in the neighborhood, in the community, on the buses, what have you. So, that was a very good opportunity for me. Certainly the most part of my time was spent with Quakers. In terms of vignettes, I spent the first couple days there trying to have deep Kodak moments at all times, always. I really wanted to talk with people about, you know, the essence of their faith, how the crucible of the genocide had forged. And that didn't work out very clearly. I didn't run around asking people to talk to me about it, but I kept coming home thinking, "Ah, we didn't have, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah." When I was able to let go of that agenda, I found that things really opened up a lot more. I remember, for example, I was staying with the family of a friend. My friend was Quaker, and this was her brother-in-law who was not Quaker. We were chatting, he spoke English and French fluently. We were talking, I think, in French about soccer, some match of soccer that he had seen. And then we started talking about the job situation. He was a merchant, but he wanted to go to Congo to work in reconciliation work there. And I said, "Nang, that sounds pretty dangerous. You've got a two-year-old kid or something along those lines." And he kind of laughed at me, and then he licks at me out of the corner of his eyes, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, well, if there's one thing that living through a genocide teaches you, it's not to be afraid of death." Like, he thought I was making a joke, and then he was like, "Oh, yeah, she doesn't get it." Like, "Oh, yeah, she hasn't lived through a genocide." I said, "Oh." Or something equally impressive. And then he said, "Yeah, you don't know what it's like." Again, as if he was remembering, like, "Oh, wait, that's right." And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, you know how we're sitting here and we're talking." "It's like we're sitting here when we're talking and then see that screen door." The neighbor comes in and hacks me to pieces. That's what it's like. And he said it in such a, such a really trying to communicate way. Like, I tried this new fruit today. I really liked it. How can I explain the flavor to you? He wanted me not to understand in a deep way, but he just wanted to illustrate it for me so that I could follow along. And the conversation went on for some time. We talked about how in April, which is the month of the genocide, there's a month long remembering ceremony, a period of official mourning every April. And he talked about how that can be a time of division because there's so many folks in Rwanda who didn't live through the genocide. They weren't born then, perhaps they had fled and then returned after the genocide, but don't necessarily understand why so many seemed to be fixated on the genocide, why people can't move past it. So we talked about that a lot, and that was the first time that I really talked with somebody outside of a peace worker about the genocide, past and also present. But it was funny because on the one hand, I don't always like traveling as an American. I don't like feeling responsible for American foreign policy, and I am occasionally tempted to call myself Canadian. It's so much more so with Rwandans. That Rwanda is synonymous with genocide. People would say with the kind of self-deprecating air, oh, they started killing in the Congo after the Rwandans fled to the Congo in the aftermath of the genocide. A lot of the Hutu forces fled over the border to the Congo, which is when they escalated the violence in the Congo. And people would say, well, genocide, that's Rwanda's most famous export. Well, if there's something that we do well, it's killing. It's just these macabre statements, these self-deprecating macabre statements. And at the same time, I'm sure you saw there are bumper stickers all over the place, proud to be Rwandan. The sense of people that would come up and say, well, some of the things you've seen here have been good, right? You didn't dislike this country, right? This sort of determination to find pride, to look beyond that past while still so many people's psyches will forever remain touched by, and the children currently being brought up that were never alive during the genocide are still touched by it because every April is this morning period, yet to try to find a presence as well. And you're talking and visiting? Did you ever speak with someone who self-identified as having participated in the genocide, not as a victim, but as having killed someone else? I remember mainly talking to people who were on the receiving end or the threatened end. I don't, actually, and it's funny because there is a layer of not speaking that happens in Rwanda that I think is partly cultural. It's an extremely stoic culture. I think that it's also partly state-encouraged. There's a lot of strictures on genocidal ideation or genocidal speech, and I think it's also just part of living through a genocide. I know that there weren't very many public occasions at all that people even mentioned the word Hutu and Tutsi. I went to a woman's conference when I was there, and one woman who was a legislature said, "We never talk about Hutu and Tutsis. I went to class the other day, and the Tutsi children were saying about how they don't like Hutu children because their noses are big, or vice versa." And the whole room was like, "I'm sure I'm the only one in the room who was not aware of the situation with the noses, but having it said in a public setting was such a taboo." So that's one aspect of it. I know that I talked with a friend who is a peace worker at the friend's peace house, lost almost all of her very large, extended, and nuclear family to the genocide. We were talking about secondary stress, and she was listing off various factors that could add to her secondary stress. She said that a man from her community had come up to her talking about how he hasn't been able to sleep in 14 years, how he's been in pain for 14 years because he killed two people during the genocide in the woods and left their bodies hidden in the woods. And the bodies were never found or never identified. The family of those victims don't know what happened. The man himself, who professes to have killed them, was not imprisoned or charged with anything nothing. He's touring now. He's been on this moral jigsaw puzzle for however long. For the whole 14 years, do I tell? Do I not tell? I don't want to go to jail. I need to help support my family. This family doesn't know. Should I leave them in anonymous? No, what should I do? And the person that he chose to confide in to help him through the process was somebody whose own family had been killed during that same period. And yet that person continues to wake up every day and try to find ways for not just the victims to heal, but also the perpetrators and to acknowledge that trauma is often a human condition. Do you have any other vignettes of your time there in Rwanda that you care to share with people, Ellen? You know, Mark, there's one story that, to a large extent, I tend to think about when I think about this trip, partly because it was so important to me that day and partly because it feels like such a parable of so many of the things that I saw. When I was there, I went to one of the genocide memorial sites. I went to several, actually. This particular one was about a 45 minute bus ride out of Kigali. I took the bus there. I got off in this tiny town. It was hot because it was gone out of the mountains, unlike the lovely temperatures that we had been enjoying in Kigali. It was dusty. It was flat. There weren't that many people there. It wasn't very well demarcated where the museum was. I kind of wandered around, expecting to be lost. Then I saw what looked like a church with a bunch of purple cree paper, purple bean, the color of morning in Rwanda. I figured that was the place. I went to go inside. The woman who is the curator might be a glamorous word for it, but the woman who typically guides folks was not there. Instead, there was just the woman who was responsible for cleaning up. So she came and was concerned and we kind of communicated through my two words of Kenya Rwanda and her 30 words of French, what the situation was. Then she offered to show me around. I walked into the church and the church had a bunch of small pews, sort of benches, that felt piled, piled with something. I had read somewhere or heard from someone that it was the clothes of the people that had been killed there. But when I first walked in from the light and saw it, I thought somehow that it was the bodies of the people who had been killed there. I don't frighten that easily, especially when I'm traveling, because you have a responsibility to look after your well-being, and I just said that I could not move. I could not, which is so completely unlike me. And I just said that they're praying, "Oh my God, don't let that be true." And it wasn't. It wasn't. I mean they were clothes and not bodies, but of course it genuinely was the site of a massacre. A woman whose name I never got, she felt very honorable to do her best to give me a tour. And she tried, and because we had such a limited amount of shared language, she ended up playing charades for a lot of the tour, which is a really graphic way to see a massacre site, particularly as she lived in town and almost inevitably had loved some of the people who were killed there. So she showed me the various broken windows and the marks where the babies had been killed. And the instruments that were used, the weapons that were used were on the, what do we call it, the table where the mass was celebrated. I don't think I could have opened a can with them. I mean they were not impressive weapons. And it took a lot of determination to kill somebody with it, a lot. And she was pantomiming for me how you would kill someone with this. She was just standing there pretending and 14 years didn't feel like a long time, all of a sudden. So we kept going through the tour, and when we wrapped back around to the front, she showed me the door to the church, which was a metal open grate so that there was a metal rectangle and then several bars across it, which formed a barrier to people walking in, although of course air could get through. And there was also a wooden door, which was in splinters. And she pointed out to me the part of the iron or the metal door where the middle bar had been pried out and the two neighboring bars had been bent so that people could get inside the church to kill their neighbors inside. And I remember thinking how on purpose it was, how completely purposeful it must have been to stand there and to think this door is between me and my intended purpose. I can't get it open so I will go and get these tools from this place. My friends, my community will stay here and guard the church for me. I will come back, I will open it. I mean that's not the work of a senseless mob. I guess I don't know I've never been in a mob, but it seems so purposeful, so purposeful. So after this tour, I was upset, I was very upset, and I asked her if I could sit down and she looked at me with so much concern, like oh dear, I'm so sorry honey, like oh, of course you can sit down, patted my shoulder because I had to survive the viewing of what she and her community had survived. And I sat there and prayed for maybe an hour. And then another woman came, a French woman who appeared to have quite a bit of money and who hired a French speaking guide, which apparently is very common. And they pulled up in an air conditioned car and she got the full tour and I asked if I could tag along because there were some things that didn't make sense to me. So I got the tour twice and I was really struck by how much more sense they had made the first time without the comfortable words, without the, at any rate during the second tour I noticed that there had been a shirt that had fallen to the ground, a shirt of one of the victims that had fallen onto the walkway. So I picked it up and I put it back onto the pew and the woman who was following us pretty shy because suddenly she was a cleaning woman again, she saw what I had done and she stepped forward and put her hand in my arm and said thank you. And it was as if I had done something, it was as if I needed to be thanked. Then she, my earring, the back of my earring had been coming loose and she fixed the back of my earring and put her hand on my hair for a second and we just stood there. It was such a mixture of, of everything, just the sense of sitting there and thinking who are we that we can do this to another as humans, you know, God have mercy how, how can we do this to each other? In the midst of this sense of being overwhelmed, of being inadequate, of being disgusted by the times in my life when I've bitched a moan because the video that I wanted wasn't at the video store, all of the things that made me not good enough to be there. And then all of a sudden just the fact of reaching out, being something, just the fact of trying being something was so humbling and such a call to keep being there, you know, to try to be there. And that's something that I've thought a lot about coming home and facing pain that I can't heal, that it's really tempted to go to that place of why is this happening and what did NPR say and that, and there is a responsibility for us to look at how our privileges pay out in terms of other people suffering. I'm not saying that that should be ignored, but the idea of being able to sit with that pain and just be present with it. And my sudden belief that maybe that also is a call. 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