Wednesday March 18. The Flight Aware map says this KLM Airbus passed over the Aswan Dam an hour ago. I was asleep and missed my favorite part of the trip—the moment when a keen eye can spot the outline of the African continent through the curtain of clouds. It is late afternoon at this longitude. We are hurtling at almost 600 miles per hour toward the equator and the coordinates of the Kigali airport. In anticipation of this journey, I worried it would be difficult both physically and mentally. Upgraded business seating on the previous Delta flight got me though an hour of severe turbulence on the leg from JFK to Amsterdam. Even some of the flight attendants fell ill, and the situation was so bad in coach that the crew had to break out the biohazard bags to deal with the sickness. No one was ever in any real danger, but it was a violent flight through a stationary front that was stretched across the North Atlantic. I was lucky that my seat folded flat and somehow that position offered both physical and mental comfort. I thought about taking video of the rocking and rolling, but my camera was not accessible. I am stronger mentally and physically than I gave myself credit for.
So, there is no harrowing story to tell about the journey. In some ways I wanted it to be more of a pilgrimage—a test of my moral fiber, but all it represents is my fortunate ability to pay for better seating!
Most of the window shades are closed so that passengers can sleep and reset biological clocks, so I am typing by the lighted keyboard on my Mac. As I tell this story, we have just now hit more turbulence, but this is of the milder variety. The attendant has offered me another hot towel. Hot towels appear out of nowhere at several hour intervals. I used it to wipe the keyboard clean.
We are flying west of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Hard to tell for sure, but we are somewhere over Sudan with Uganda on the southern horizon.
There are no hot towels in Ethiopia and Sudan. There is famine, civil war and the attending evils of dysentery, starvation, typhoid, malaria, high infant mortality, and the greatest evil of all—hopelessness.
We are passing over what we cannot see or experience and I wonder if this new physical turbulence affecting our massive flying machine is a manifestation of the spiritual turbulence that lies below. We are all connected, and perhaps my guardians from the Bird Nation are directing my sense of empathy to the world beneath.
The Airbus is aptly named. Its sole job is to move people physically through time and space. The individual faces the journey alone, and does with it what he or she will.
We will be landing in Kigali soon. I hope the setting equatorial sun will offer enough daylight to illuminate the Mountains of the Moon and the purple-peaked Virungas as we pass over the Great African Rift Valley.
Friends are waiting at the airport and my two sons Egide and Joyeaux texted me that they will be waiting at the Gorilla Hotel. They are men now. No longer the helpless orphans of the genocide I met over ten years ago when their older sister, my daughter, Clotilde, approached me and said she and her brothers needed a mother, since their extended family was killed in the Tutsi genocide of 1994.
Have I been a good mother? Perhaps I have been enough of a mother, living ten thousand miles away from my children. It has been enough for them to know that someone older has their backs and will offer an “I love you” from time to time. I harbor no illusions that I have been more than “enough.” Perhaps less. These children had the true loves of their lives stolen from them, as they watched, while hidden in trees, as their entire extended family was murdered in 1994.
Tomorrow, it is cast in stone that I will visit the genocide churches and pay my respects in the villages. The United States could have stopped what happened. We journalists and writers have taken thousands of photos of the skulls and bones piled in the churches. I am looking for something else. Will it be possible to capture hope and resilience on digital film? I am tired of the skulls and bones. But then I am told that people need the reminder.
Maybe I do, also.
Time now to tidy up and organize possessions that seem to have multiplied in this seating area.
I am anxious to step off the pane into the night air and smell the charcoal and see what has changed in the four years since my last visit to Rwanda. I passed through a few years ago on my way to Congo, but Rwanda will have my undivided attention now.
My mind, heart, and soul are in tune.
The flight attendant just approached me. She and some of her friends are spending five days in Rwanda. All of them for the first time. Could we help them navigate? Of course. The unexpected. All part of the journey.
.........
11:30 PM Kigali time.
It has been 4 hours since the metal stairway was rolled out to the Airbus. Yes, I smelled the charcoal in the air and it was all at once exotic and comfortable. Trees and flowers I cannot name added a floral scent that lingered as I entered the terminal.
As I shifted a backpack to my right shoulder, I felt a hand stop me, and was thrilled to see my old friend Liz Williamson standing there. A warm embrace and lots of questions. We got the who what where when and why quickly out of the way. Liz is here for a conference. She was hoping our paths would cross, left it up to fate, and fate arranged for us both to be on the same plane. Liz can tell you everything you want to know about gorillas and more. She managed Karisoke in some of the years after Dian Fossey's death. We share much about Dian. We share a huge love for Rwanda.
I am settled now, in my room at the Gorilla Hotel. The young men on the street below my open window have taken their boisterous talk elsewhere. Motorbikes hum in the distance, trucks bump over rough tarmac, and cars honk and rumble on the boulevards around the neighborhood. I don't think Kigali ever sleeps. But I must.
Tomorrow it is on to the countryside and villages to bear witness to the genocide. People here are able to talk openly about it. People in the US are faced with a lecture circuit rife with genocide denial.
I discussed this with my friends. I don't want to go to the places where the worst of it happened and focus my camera on nothing but skulls and bones. Bones are necessary remnants of humanity, but I will be looking for stories of hope, maybe just one.
We will see if tomorrow can offer more than wading in sunder.
Comments