Musings on Faith and Psychology

October 17, 2011

Monday morning dawns bright and beautiful. By 9 am we are traveling the one mile to the border with Rwanda. At the border we have DRC officials stamp our passports with exit stamps and walk the thirty yards or so to the Rwandan border guard stations. There, they look in our bags for contraband and plastic bags (banned from the country). Once through the border, we board a private bus and begin the 3 hour trip to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. The drive is beautiful. Immediately, you notice that the roads are paved, smooth, and the properties neat and tidy. We climb steeply among verdant hills covered with terraced gardens. Low hanging clouds sweep by and leave a misty residue. We see waterfalls as we climb higher. As I look at the beauty I keep imagining what it must have been like for nearly 2 million Rwandans fleeing to Goma to escape the violence back in 1994 and then again in 1996 when many were repatriated under pressure.

As always, Rwanda travel gives you many vistas as we make switchback turns. Around lunchtime we stop in Musanze area to eat at the Ishema Anglican hotel. This area is near where tourists come to plunk down $500 to go see silverback gorillas in the wild. This picture is off their website and is pretty much like the view we had in the restaurant, looking into a quiet interior garden. No windows or doors marking the room from the garden. Beautiful.

We traveled the rest of the way to the capitol without problems, said goodbye to the other members of the DRC trip (Bagu, Harriet, Margaret, and John), and moved on to Solace Ministries, a guesthouse and conference center in Kigali and our home for the next 5 days. As we traversed the city, familiar sights of places came into view. However, changes are quite obvious too. Several locations that held shanty towns in 2009 were green spaces now. I wonder what has become of those who lived there in abject poverty.

Entering the main building of Solace, we were greeted by our Rwanda trip partners, Josh Straub (AACC) and Carol King (Langberg & Associates colleague). They had arrived the previous Saturday and were in a meeting with some other trauma recovery counselors. We sat down and commenced 3 hours of meetings without hardly a breath. Later, our friends told us we looked rather haggard. I guess the DRC will do that to you. I remember having a hard time putting my thoughts together for Bishop Alexis in talking about possible next steps in our counselor training efforts. We ended the evening with a wonderful, 3 course meal. The cook at Solace provided incredible meals for us. We never ate better. Simple, delicate foods with an African touch. If you ever want to stay somewhere in Rwanda, I highly recommend Solace.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Today is our last full day in the DRC. I woke up feeling quite refreshed, thanks to Ambien. I hadn’t slept well yet on the trip so I took one. Found out that if you stay up reading after taking an Ambien, you can have some interesting hallucinations. When the bed started moving, I decided it was time to go to sleep! Woke up several hours later and realized it would be good to turn of the light.

After breakfast, we traveled to a church Bagudekia had helped plant some years ago. We arrived ten minutes late. The church was filled with children and young adults. Very few older folks. We were ushered to the seats on the platform next to a window. The hymns were all sung in Swahili and were recognizable (e.g., Onward Christian Soldiers). There were at least 5 or 6 different choirs who sang beautiful scripture songs. 2 hours later, Bagu was able to get up to preach. Most memorable to me were the children looking in the church from the side door just a few feet from us. After the service we were invited to the pastor’s home “to rest.” We made our way over the broken lava to his home. It was approximately 20x 8 with a partition between the living room and kitchen and sleeping rooms. Doubt there was any bathroom or electricity. Several women then produced “something little.” We ate rice, a local donut, greens, beef, and peeled lemons. During this time I was praying fervently as I had been struggling with gastric problems. I was praying NOT to need a bathroom.

Finally returned to our hotel  where I was immediately sick. Answer to prayer for sure that I was sick where I could be sick. While resting we had our usual downpour.

For dinner we returned to the Catholic retreat house where the trauma healing group was completing their training. There I had the most amazing experience. I got to interview two pastors from the Kobo tribe. These pastors are displaced from their village (now living in Goma) due to the ongoing violence. Until recently, they were an unofficial tribe–meaning no government had recognized their unique language. They told of terrible traumas and the opportunity to teach the Healing Wounds of Trauma using story based learning so that their people could hear about what God says about trauma, forgiveness, and healing in their own mother tongue. They were able to help there people learn to treat others well (e.g., a child born of rape who looked like an enemy ethnic group was no longer being abused for their looks), to learn to forgive, to learn that it is okay to cry, and to learn that it is okay to plan for future militia attacks (some thought that preparing for an attack was not trusting in God’s care). At the end of the interview, the pastors sang a couple of scripture songs in their own language. What a treat to hear. Turns out the story-based material does two things at once: introduces scripture/trauma material AND helps the support of the mother tongue (as displaced families are seeing their language die out due to use of French and Swahili).

As dusk gathered this is the view we had of the local volcano. After dark, we could see the reddish glow against the clouds over the center of the volcano. Pretty cool!

Kobo Pastors

Mt. Nyiragongo

Saturday, October 15, 2011.

Awoke in the night with what is likely travel bug “sickness.” It is never fun being sick when away from home and doubly so when in as far away as another continent. Thankful for things like Cipro that can treat the symptoms quite quickly. While awaiting for my system to calm itself down I was reading in John. I’m struck by how skeptical many were of Jesus. The tendency to skepticism is quite profound and alluring even. It makes me feel intelligent and wise when I am skeptical of whatever everyone else is enamored with. However good it is to be skeptical of human promises and motivations, when we apply that to God’s activity we are dangerously wrong. Our problem is that we are not that good in discerning God’s vs. human activities on first blush. We often mis-attribute human behavior to God and vice versa. And we learn over and over that God uses the foolish to teach the wise.

The Shining School Complex

This day started out with a glorious sun.  We traveled to the “Shining School Complex” where they teach 193 children, mostly orphans. This school, at the very edge of the airport, is a set of dingy buildings with a dirt/lava rock play area. There we gave out illustrated bibles in French to the children. These children live in abject poverty and for most this was their first very own book. At one point I got down on my haunches and began looking at the pages with one child. Pretty soon I was mobbed and had to get up so as not to be trampled. They crave the attention. After standing outside for well over an hour, I’m reminded how pasty I am and realize I will be having a sunburn later.

We then moved on to “Mama Jeans”, an orphanage and place for raped women to live. As we entered the compound we were met with singing and dancing. The feelings I had were quite mixed. I was in near tears by the sounds and the image of these impoverished people singing for us but also uncomfortable. Something didn’t feel right about the singing. Their bodies looked joyous but their eyes were dead. We saw the clothing that the widows and single mothers were making–men’s and women’s shirts, baby clothes and baskets. While there we heard the stories of several rape victims. A young mother who was a sexual slave of some soldiers from the ages of 6 to 15. She escaped, while pregnant, after seeing what happened to a friend of hers who was also pregnant. Later, after giving birth, she went back to her village only to be raped again and impregnated. Another told us of giving birth to triplets after rape. She had the

Mama Jean's

children with her. Another was dying of AIDS.

Late in the afternoon, we made our way across the city to see the conclusion of ABS’ trauma healing training. They use Healing Wounds of Trauma and spend the week training a small group of facilitators. Leading the training is Harriet Hill (ABS) and Margaret Hill (SIL), two of the authors of the book and seasoned trainers. This group of trainees was actually only half of the group. The other half was still in distant Isiro. The story of why the group was split up gives you a sense of Congolese life. Here it is. The entire group was in Isiro (some hours by flight away). The trainers learned that their tickets out were no longer valid and that the next flight would be 1 week later. Why were they not valid? Like Jerry Seinfeld’s show, sometimes a reservation isn’t a reservation. The seats had been sold to someone else. But, they could leave the next day if they wanted to get out early. So, instead of waiting a week, they brought half the class to the airport and were going to finish up the training in Goma. The group arrives at the airport and waits. And waits. The plane never comes. Something to do with the fact that the Congolese army comandeered the flight to send either soldiers or supplies elsewhere. Thankfully, the next they were able to fly out to Goma and finish the training.

We ended the day by having a late dinner of brochettes and some sort of cheese sticks. As I left the restaurant and headed up the stairs to my room, a young Congolese woman grabbed my hand and began to introduce herself to me. Seems she wished to make my acquaintance. Didn’t take me much time to size up the situation. Skin tight jeans and significant cleavage, something not seen in the Congo to this point. I retrieved my hand from hers and excused myself. This may be a common event as there are many UN contractors in our hotel and my room came with a supply of condoms. Rather uncomfortable feeling.