Mission Update 8: How I Was Violated by a Mentally Handicapped African Man or Adios Machakos!

Now before I tell the story that has given the name to this update, I must give some back story. A few days after returning from Rwanda, I was headed to Scott Theological College in the town of Machakos to film the Africa Based Orientation (ABO). Andy was producing a video on the entire orientation process for full term missionaries. We also drove a man named Henry, who used to come beg at the door, because he said he needed to go to Machakos.

On the drive there, the road eventually smoothed out after a long stretch of rough, uneven, and practically nonexistent road. When we hit the nice part of the road, Andy picked up speed since there was no traffic to slow us down, and it is a treat to drive at normal highways speeds, without getting your brain rattled to a pulp, in Kenya. As we were cruising along, and I was looking at the pretty mountains ahead of us, the Land Rover suddenly lurched. Everything, including ourselves, became airborne in the cabin for half a second, then crashed back into the seats. I looked at Andy, “sorry about that guys, it was an unpainted speed bump.” We hit about 4 or 5 more unpainted speed bumps every 200 yards. None of them had an kind of sign or marking for them. We imagined that the people from around that area must have done that on purpose so that they could sit out next to their shops and watch the cars crashing into them at breakneck speed. We called it a bad idea, but they called it free entertainment.

After arriving in Machakos, Henry told us that he needed some money for the return journey, unfortunately we didn’t have any bills small enough, so we sent him to go get change. While waiting for Henry to return, a man wearing a bright purple sweater came up to the car and started looking in, then he came to both sides and shook our hands. I noticed that his face didn’t look entirely normal and the way he walked around seemed odd too then I realized that it was because he was somehow mentally handicapped. He stared in the car some more, and then walked across the street. I watched him try to shake the hand of a Kenyan man, wearing an expensive suit, but the man shoved him away with an angry grimace and a few unkind words. Andy went and found Henry, and then we left for the college.

We filmed some of the ABO sessions, and then caught up with Loren* and his wife Donna who run ABO. Later we also met up with Mike*, who teaches at Scott, and his wife Kim. He invited all of us to eat dinner at his place, which was much appreciated since homemade pizza is much more exciting than Kenyan cafeteria food. Besides, we got to see some of his old home videos he made as a teenager, which was thoroughly entertaining.

The group went to town for a mosque visit and a chance to see some Kenyan city culture. We took boda boda, which are bicycles with padded rear seats, to town. Andy wanted to film in town, so I carried the camera, and even took some shots from the bike. Since we didn’t have permission to film in the mosque, we split up with the rest of the group after arriving.

While walking through town, we ran into the man in the purple sweater again. Andy managed to step around him and continue walking, but I was less nimble with the large camera and monopod. I had to maneuver around him while shaking his hand, which I managed to do, but before I could turn around and keep walking, he took a long step forward and grabbed me in a big bear hug. A group of men hanging out in a barber shop had been watching the whole scene and started giggling and making cooing sounds usually reserved for babies. I gave him a little pat on the back to be kind and then started to try and push away without dropping the camera or leaving it exposed for someone to take it. While I was still pulling away, as my head was in mid-turn, I felt the wettest, sloppiest, most disgusting, saliva and snot filled kiss that I have ever received, straight on my neck. At this point, the peanut gallery sitting in the barber shop erupted into laughter, I managed to pry myself from the guy’s arms then catch up with Andy, who was looking across the street completely oblivious of the whole situation, “Did you see any of that?” I asked. “See what?” he replied. “Never mind, I’ll tell you when your older**. Let’s get out of here!”

We went to a nearby market and bought some bows and arrows for the boys. As we walked back to meet up with the group, I noticed people were staring at us more than usual. After a quick self examination, the reason was obvious. A couple of white men walking around, carrying 2 bows with arrows, and a huge movie camera propped on a monopod. A little girl was sitting on the curb and her eyes were like 2 special order party platters of wonder and disbelief as she stared. As soon as our backs were turned to her she yelled something about the wazungu and a “picha”*** to her laughing mother. We met back up with the group and crammed into little 3 wheeled public transportation vehicles called tuk-tuks, which got passed by a couple bikes going uphill, and returned to the campus. I ran to the bathroom and washed my neck off with as much soap as I could use with out burning a hole in my throat.****

As we were leaving, I thought about all the wonderful experiences I had in Machakos; getting stared at, carrying heavy equipment around, filming a lot of interviews, getting crammed in a tiny vehicle, and ,of course, being violated by a man. “You know, Andy, I don’t think I am going to really miss this place”, “really?”, “and on that thought...”, I paused and looked back at the town getting farther away, “Adios Machakos!”

The trip back involved carefully looking for the invisible speed bumps, passing huge trucks that were sandblasting us on the rough road, and finally making it to a calm, smooth road, where there was a sign saying “WARNING: Rough Road Ahead!” At that point I couldn’t help myself, “Hey Andy, watch out! There is a rough road ahead!”, he responded in the most animated of voices, “Oh no! not a rough road!”, “I think they misplaced that sign by about 10 miles back there.” It was smooth sailing all the way home.*****


*Both Loren and Mike had been at the Men’s Retreat.
**He was older about 3 minutes later when I had come to terms with the fact that I had just been violated by a homeless mentally handicapped African man wearing a purple sweater, which is as awkward as it sounds.
***Translates into “picture” or “camera”.
****It is important that I mention the un-ceremonial washing because my future wife may read this someday and I don’t want to her to be too grossed out.
*****Just in case you couldn’t tell already, I really like footnotes!

New Rwanda Video

Check out the recent video that I worked on..

http://aim-ofm.org/2008/11/14/so-we-do-not-lose-heart/

Alternate site: http://ofm.blip.tv/#1513536

Mission Update 7: The Land of 1,000 Hills and the Shadow of 1,000,000 Deaths

After a week of preparation, we were finally leaving for Rwanda. James picked us up early in the morning to beat the Nairobi traffic. We arrived at Jomo Kenyatta Airport and waited in the endless line to get into the airport terminal. After passing through the security check, we stood in another line to get our bags weighed. Surprisingly, the pastor of Nairobi Chapel was waiting in the same line. We spoke to him for a few seconds (he was headed for Michigan to speak at a leadership conference) before getting in another line to get our boarding tickets. Unknown to us, a man had come outside to the line and called everyone for our flight. Naturally, when someone calls a flight that isn’t going to “Kigali, Rwanda” on a non-stop flight, when that is your destination, one tends not to take notice. Fortunately, there were still seats left on the plane. They apologized thoroughly for their mistake, but they had to bump us to first class.

After passing through two more security checks, we reached the boarding area, where we descended straight onto the tarmac, walked through busy airport traffic, past two airplanes, then reached the plane we hoped was the correct flight. They seated us in the front row of first class, with the most leg room, and gave us complimentary juices before the flight even took off. Ted told me that this was a fluke and that they usually don’t get this kind of treatment. I agreed, “I know, I’m sure you two usually are in business class with your high paying missionary salaries. How dare they downgrade you to first. It’s simply an outrage.” Then they served us more juice and peanuts. “Maybe we should try coming late for our flights more often”, I suggested. The flight was only an hour long, but we were still served a first class breakfast. They even provided real silverware and a complimentary bottle of Tabasco sauce. Obviously, the airlines assumed that terrorists do not fly first class; a metal silverware knife and a bottle of Tabasco are serious security risks if you ask me.

The landscape changed drastically beneath us as we flew over the barren desert and mountains of the rift valley, the glistening surface of Lake Victoria, and finally our long awaited destination. Rwanda is known as the “Land of 1,000 Hills”, which I had believed to be an overstatement to entice tourists into visiting, but I was soon corrected as we broke through the clouds during the landing cycle. The hills continued as far as my eyes could see, one after the other, as though a sea of endless green waves. As we descended I saw small huts with rusted metal roofs scattered across every hill and valley, surrounded by fields filled with a variety of different crops, including banana, mango, and avocado trees. It was beautiful, but I had a different word in my mind; genocide.

Since we had an ideal seating location, we emerged from the airplane first, and walked to the small airport building. Getting through customs took less than 20 seconds because of our American passports. All of our luggage, including the large amount of film and lighting equipment, came during the first 3 minutes of the belt turning on. We were all surprised at the complete ease of the check-out process. While pushing the cart of equipment I turned to the others saying, “boy, that was easy”, only to be stopped by a security guard who wanted to check our bags. I suppose that just when you think you’re done, you think again. We were surprised to discover that they were not checking for the usual suspects of airport smuggling, but something far more dangerous and detrimental to their country. They were looking to confiscate our plastic grocery bags.
We soon found the reason behind the absurdity, after being picked up by Bruce, a British AIM missionary juggling teaching and serving as director at the college. Unlike Nairobi, Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, was well developed. The country’s recent development was due to the large amount of guilt money from western nations after the genocide, accounting for half of Rwanda’s government budget. The streets were nicely paved and men were laying fiber optics beside rain drainage ditches. There was also absolutely no trash on the streets or sidewalks. Bruce told us that the government, in attempt to redevelop the country, had outlawed all plastic bags and most non-recyclable items. Since Rwanda was originally a french colony, the roads were driven on the right, unlike Kenya, although there were many british style cars that awkwardly drove around, attempting to stay on the right side of the road. Bruce pointed out men, wearing pink pajama like clothing, working on building a wall. They were convicted felons. Rwanda does not need too much security for the prisoners since the country is so small, there is really no where to hide, especially not in the pink pajamas. The threat of escaping prisoners causing trouble was also nonexistent since even the private security guards for restaurants and malls carried AK-47s and tactical shotguns. After seeing the pink pajamas, I wanted to revise the US prison system. For some reason, many in my generation think that it is somehow “cool” to have been in prison because it somehow means you are tough. If criminals had to wear ridiculously ugly pink pajamas, then they really wouldn’t look very tough; thus killing the juvenile desire to be a “thug”.

Speaking of juveniles, we found that he Rwandan children also enjoy yelling, “wazungu! wazungu!”, and, “howaru?” We started to pretend that we were celebrity music stars in a hit rock band called Wazungu and our greatest hit song was “Howaru”. Then we heard something that we did not expect, “Wazungu! Give give me my money!” We turned to Bruce for the answer. “Yes, that is a little something that the children have picked up. I don’t even notice anymore.” He responded casually. Throughout the week, the children continued to yell, “give me my money”, and a variation, “where’s my money?” By the end of the week, we were responding, “give me MY money”, and, “where’s MY money?!” Once, I told them I didn’t have any money for them in German, just so that I could say that I did.

For most of my life I have been at odds with British people I have known. For some reason, I just never had very many good memories. But for the 2 weeks before and during the Rwanda trip, after spending a short amount of time with David, Bruce, and his family I have grown to love the British. I enjoyed Bruce’s children’s politeness during meal and David’s intelligently dry humor. OFM thoroughly enjoyed spending time with both of them. I remember one day when we were driving in the car and Bruce began to sing “God Bless America”. I just about died when he sang “my home sweet home!” After that we decided it was only fair to sing “God Save the Queen”, although we had a little more difficulty remembering the lyrics than Bruce, but the rest of us chimed in with gusto at the conclusion, “God Save the Queen!” Just for clarification, there are no hard feelings from the Revolutionary War.

The college met at night since they were renting a school premises that was being used during the day, which meant that we had to try to film in badly lit classrooms, but it also meant that we had the rest of the day to film other places around Kigali. We went to a market, full rows upon rows of fly covered vegetables, merchants asking us to pay either pay for filming them or for their goods, and buckets of mush of which I had no desire to discover the taste. After buying a few souvenirs in town, and giving Bruce a few hours with his family, we took the most popular form of public transportation home. There were still matatus driving around, although they were not covered in obscure decorations or playing rap music, but we employed 3 motorcycles, called motos, instead. We brought our own ball caps to cover our head under the communal helmet that each driver carried with him. The visors on the helmets were cracked, held together by probably a whole roll of clear masking tape, and slightly tinted brown, but probably not originally. I flipped mine up when I had the chance. The motos weaved through traffic, overtaking each other in a race to get to the destination to prove themselves, either to the Wazungu or just to their friends, as the best moto. Mine had taken the lead and reached the destination first, although he didn’t get any extra money since Ted was the only one with enough cash left to pay for the transit. Another day, we went to the Kigali genocide museum, which gave us more insight into the history of Rwanda. We headed north to get out of the city and see the countryside.

Our destination was an area called Ruhengeri, but we frequently stopped along the way to film the amazing mountainous landscape. Everything we saw was either on one of the endless hills, or in between in a valley. Every inch of arable land was divided into farms; the rest of the land was too heavily forested or rocky. The road curved around the hills, creating mystery for what was beyond the next turn. We anticipated every corner, wondering what the landscape would bring next. Once we would take another curve that revealed a spectacular view of more overlapping hills or a river valley ,meandering into the distant fog, we expected that it had become as grand as it could. We couldn’t imagine the sight to be any more beautiful, but after each turn the scene surpassed the last. Eventually, we turned off the main road onto a rocky path that led into the forest. Sometimes the trees would break revealing a small waterfall, or drop away into another breathtaking valley. Our destination was revealed as we came up to a gate which was opened as soon as we arrived. We parked next to a brick building, a Catholic retreat center, set on the top of a hill point. The landscape before us immediately created a feeling of reverence. The hill dropped away and 3 volcanic mountains stood together, stretching into the clouds. Other hills plunged into a lake below that had small islands in the middle, inhabited by small thatched huts. A town on the bank was sandwiched between the foot of the first volcano and a hill which marked the border of Uganda. The sun broke through the clouds above. I wanted to stay to see the sunset there, but we had to return to Kigali to film the college. Bruce told us that people had taken refuge there during the genocide. The sun set as we travelled back, casting shadows and colors across the land. We were going to see genocide memorials the next day. I was filled with both dread and anticipation for what I expected to see.
As we walked up to the church, I noticed the smell of human waste and decay. It was the smell of death. I felt like I was choking on it and I wanted to cough, but I could not bring myself to even open my mouth. Then we saw the skulls on metal racks, stacked neatly, although many were cracked and split. One skull had the shard of a broken spear sticking out of it, another was completely in half; broken as if it had been crushed with a blunt object. The clothing of the victims were hanging on the walls and ceiling, creating the image of a dark gateway to the other end of the building. I turned on the camera to try and capture the emotion and darkness of the room, but it felt like a lost attempt; there was no substitute or recreation of a place where death and tragedy lived so openly. I was in Rwanda. The church was a genocide memorial of 5,000 people. The room looked as though it would be cramped to try and fit more than 100 people there, but 5,000 had been brutally locked in that room and then subjected to the mercy of grenades and machine gun fire, then finished off with spears, clubs, and machetes. Left as a pile of human bodies to rot away. We finished filming then headed back to the car. I realized how disturbing it was that I stopped noticing the smell so quickly. I was disgusted how swiftly a human, such as myself, can so easily and quickly become calloused and unaffected by the pain of others.

I kept thinking, “here it begins again”, as we pulled into the parking lot of the next church, the site of 10,000 genocide victims. The bullet holes on the gates, brick pillars, and ceiling showed that the murderers had stood outside the locked gates in the front and unloaded onto the huge mass of people who would have been close enough to look into their eyes. I imagined the panic of those trapped inside, screaming and pushing to get out of the line of fire. There would have been no line of fire, only a spray. I didn’t see any bullet holes on the brick wall in the back of the church. It think that is because there were enough people in the way that the bullets could not travel that far. Their bloodstained and torn clothes were piled on rows of small benches. A white tile-covered crypt displayed more rows of skulls in a glass covered case. In back of the church were mass graves. At first, I assumed that they were the same flat concrete slabs that I had seen all over the country, that hid the dead bodies from sight. A woman working at the memorial walked up to them and opened a shelter-like door that had stairs underneath. The first one had coffins in two dark, underground passages. We knew that the coffins did not have single people in them, but piles of disposed bones. As I walked to the next one, I saw Andy leaning against a pillar, deep in thought, then he glanced at me. “That one has more bones” he said, as though it was traumatic to say, “I was down there by myself for a while.” After descending the dark stairway and looking into the first passage, I realized what an understatement “more bones” was. Although I had already seen stacks of skulls and the bones of many, that time it was much more. Each section of skulls extended into the dark shadows on both sides of the passage. The claustrophobia and smell seeped into my inner core being. I was past the point of tingles and discomfort. The hair on my neck did not stand up because it was paralyzed with terror. I had to force myself to walk to the end of both passageways. I could not let the fear rule me, and I had to somehow capture the images of destruction.

As I emerged, Andy was still leaning on the pillar. The second time I looked back into his eyes, I understood what was going through his head. I had the same questions and images running through mine. We sat silently in the car before leaving. The others had the look of pain and deep thought on their faces. I felt tired and fatigued, as though what I had seen had added the weight of many hard years on my shoulders. I was feeling the weight of human sin that has infected all mankind. As the car drove away, I looked at the endless mountains and striking sky of Rwanda. The sun shone through the clouds onto the trees in beams of glorious light. The hills were covered in contrasting geometric shapes created by farms. Even the simple huts of the poorest citizens were beautifully a part of the countryside. Then Ted voiced what all of us were thinking, “this is a country of extremes.” The opposing beauty of the land and horror of the past expressed the contrast of the darkest human sin and the glory of God’s creation. It was the land of 1000 hills, overshadowed by the death of 1,000,000 murdered people. How can such unspeakable evil be so close to such beauty? Later that week, I was filming at a Rwandan church. The congregation surrounded me in a sea of worship as they danced and sang. I saw old women, who had probably seen their entire families killed, with looks of tranquility on their faces as they raised their arms and eyes to heaven. Many people were weeping as they prayed. The beauty of their undignified surrender was as awe inspiring as the landscape around us. In a country that had become an empty shell after a traumatic event, many of the people within learned to give up the only thing they had left to the Lord, themselves. What I saw in Rwanda was darkness, not of one tribe or nation, but all mankind. The reality of it can leave one feeling helpless. But then I remembered what my Redeemer did for the helpless, powerless, and hopeless. If such a Man could take on all the pain and evil of this world and emerge victorious, then His magnificence must surpass and overpower all the darkness. The evil I saw only showed me how much deeper the price of redemption. If this world is filled with such unspeakable evil, then how much more unspeakable will the beauty of God be once this prologue is finished?

We returned on another flight back to Nairobi, but this time we were packed in with the other coach passengers. I looked once more at the hills, shrinking from my view. Rwanda had earned a special place in my mind as an extraordinary country. There are a few places on this earth that I will never forget; Rwanda is one of them.

We were returning. The thought had to sink in during the hour flight back. I was returning home. A home away from my family, but a good home nonetheless. I missed my old home, but I felt a deeper longing for my only true home, one that I will never find in this life. Which sounds quite morbid, but I had a great many things to accomplish and fight for before being taken to that home, one of which was life, and another of which was finishing the video for Bruce.

More than a month later, after a long process of consolidating and titling footage, editing, scoring, and fine tuning, we had finally finished the video. Bruce was in Nairobi for a leadership conference, so he stopped by to see the finished product. I do not know if it was the increased stress build up from his increasing responsibilities in an understaffed Rwandan college, possible lack of sleep, or maybe we struck an emotional cord for one of his deep passions, but we left him speechless for some time. When he finally brought himself to speak, he sounded as though he may have actually felt like crying. He said, “thank you.”