The Duke Pilgrimage

One thing I have learned this week is that if someone invites you to go on a pilgrimage, don’t imagine you can go as a tourist! The opportunity was presented by a Ugandan priest named Emmanuel Katongole, who chairs the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation. He has been leading pilgrimages and peace initiatives in this region for several years. This year he came to Burundi. Among the invitees were 3 bishops from Uganda and Burundi, as well as several other pastors from local churches and representatives from NGOs who work around here, as well as other interested individuals. It was quite an auspicious group.

I wanted to make connections in my role as MCC rep. and agreed to join. It meant leaving Rebecca and Oren for 2 days and an overnight to travel up-country to visit several memorials of genocide, as well as some peace and reconciliation efforts that were happening at various places. Emmanuel prepared us to go by giving us a meditation on Moses at the burning bush. He said that when Moses approached the bush out of curiosity he was commanded to remove his shoes because he was standing on holy ground. Like Moses, Emmanuel described the pilgrimage as an opportunity to ‘take off our shoes and feel the heat.’

As we journeyed, I became aware of the truth of that in several experiences: First, as we visited several memorials to those who died in the genocide effort, I was profoundly aware of the politics of monuments. Who is memorialized is very much a political decision. We visited an official memorial at Kibimba. Here a huge number of Tutsi students were rounded up and burned alive in a gas station. There, however, no one was willing to give an exact number and even an inquiry into the details remains highly suspect. Who wants to know and why? Retribution remains a vague anxiety. We also visited an ‘unsanctioned’ Hutu memorial where many Hutus on a hillside were killed by the army. This is not a government-recognized memorial.

The most significant memorial we visited though was one in which 40 young students (high school) were murdered at a catholic school. What was profound about this memorial however was that it happened in the only school in the country in 1997 where Tutsis and Hutus were being educated together, not segregated. When they were attacked, 40 students in the dorm were asked to separate. In this case, Hutu rebels were attacking. It was typical to demand that a group separate by ethnicity and then to kill all of those from one group. To the amazement of all, the students refused to separate! They were all martyred, Tutsis and Hutus together. But their courageous decision to stand together remains a tribute to a better future. The rector who was there at the time told us the testimony of one of the dying students. His face was beatific as he said, “Victory, we have won! They asked us to separate and we refused.”

Besides visiting memorials, we did meet some individuals involved in peace and reconciliation. Among the testimonies, we heard of a family in which a man killed the husband and sons of a Tutsi woman. After being reconciled many years later, her granddaughter married the guilty man’s son. We visited them on our journey as they had just been married the week before.

We heard many such stories of forgiveness and reconciliation as well as the courageous work of several foreigners, especially a young female, MCCer, who brought enemy groups face to face to negotiate peace with each other. Often she acted almost purely as a human shield and witness to prevent violence from breaking out between these groups. It is an amazing testimony to the power of a peace witness in this place. I have come to really appreciate the power of the Anabaptist pacifist theology MCC espouses.

The real trial of the journey was the driving. I can’t describe how uncomfortable it is to drive through the Burundian hill country on barely passable unpaved roads in a crowded Landcruiser for 12 hours at a time. We also had some uncomfortable encounters with military road blocks and driving later than we had planned in complete darkness through areas that had only recently agreed to a cease fire. Ambushes by FLN rebels and bandits remain a concern at night. But we did make it back on the second evening and I was very happy to back in Bujumbura with Rebecca and Oren.

One thing that gave me great hope in the midst of seeing unspeakable evil was also seeing the incredible courage of many individuals committed to counter it. There is a prophetic voice for peace that I am hearing at the grass roots level, as well as in the church and even in the government now.

It was interesting going on this trip with many church leaders. It was a time to take ownership of both the power of the gospel to transform minds and bring unity, as we saw in the Catholic school I mentioned above in Buta. But we also heard appalling stories about families who worshipped in the same church on Sunday, murdering each other later in the week. It gave me a new perspective on the great failure of churches that build a congregation of ‘nominal Christians’--those whose lives have not been transformed by the love and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. I say this as a warning to all of us in our churches in the west as well. The church can be the agent of change and the bulwark of peace and transforming love…OR it can simply maintain the status quo, and be complicit in the evil that is perpetrated by fear and prejudice. The contradictions are not as dire in our churches at home…YET. But the tribulation will come, on us or our children, and I worry that we may not be preparing their hearts and minds for it.

Here is a picture of the memorial to the 40 Tutsi and Hutu students who refused to separate at the Catholic school in Buta we visited. The man standing in the picture, who recounted the story, was a Benedictine monk who lives there. He knew it well because he was the teacher of these students and had educated them in the importance of unity in Christ and insisted on keeping the school open to both ethnic groups. At the time of the massacre, he was barricaded in his room unable to get out, but he heard it as it was happening. Among the last words the dying student who had told him about their ‘victory’ said, was that the students who were killed had prayed “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.”