On the occasion of this Great Jubilee Year, Pope John Paul II has among other things, called for an end to violence, injustice and oppression against women in the home, in the workplace and in society.
It is very gratifying for missionaries when they can see instances, where women have had the foresight and the courage to take up the initiative toward reconciliation. The following are seminal examples destined to “bear fruit of more abundant life.”
Rwanda: The Mothers of Ranyinya
did not know how to start living again.; I
am a Tutsi, so I should have died. But
I escaped, so I felt guilty. I
lived in anguish and fear. How to
make sense out of life? How to find
again the face of God who had closed himself to silence?
With a local priest and a social worker I went to the people of the hills
to meet with the countless widows there and with them resume living.
What hardships I saw and heard of; how many hills had become calvaries…
They had lost to tribal wars husbands, children and even whole families.
In our talks we never used words such as “forgiveness” and “reconciliation.” We all knew who had done what. Revolted, we wanted vengeance. We couldn’t bear to see a couple walking by together, a mother with her child,… We had no self-trust and needed to accept reality. So we just talked and cried together. Without moralizing or giving advice. Just one discovering, and handling gently, the wounds of the other… We felt guilty and were disgusted with ourselves, as if not deserving to live…
Time passed. The stories became more serene. The tears dried up. Some of us took in orphans. Some few remarried. The first child of these new marriages is now a year old.
With these women I began reading the Bible. I am most grateful to them for they helped me to accept the Word of God under a different light. I’m always awed at their ability to capture what the Lord says, and to tie it to our life, now. Then one day I realized that it wasn’t enough to stay with the Tutsi widows. There were Hutu women who every day visited their husbands in jail. They took the first step by looking for me and asking me to help organize them. Their tragedy and trauma, was to have a husband who was a criminal, to have know where they went and whence they came from. Some claimed their husbands were innocent, that there had been no deaths, no genocide, etc… Finally, last November, the women responsible for the two groups, up to now separated, began to meet together and to act together. So the group “The Courage to Live” became “The Mothers of Ranyinya,” headed by two women, a Tutsi widow and a wife of an imprisoned Hutu.
Yet, all is so fragile. There isn’t anything that happens anywhere in the country that is not felt in the hills and in the groups, sowing mistrust and fear again. How are these widows and these wives of imprisoned criminals going to raise their children? How to rid themselves of the fear that at any moment their life may be cut short by a neighbor? The same evil power that killed or imprisoned their husbands forbids their children go to school. We are building our society on a volcano. Yet life cannot go on as before…
Teya (C.E.I.)
Burundi: “Lumiere (Light) at the End of the Tunnel
ertrude
works at a Catholic dispensary in Gitega. She
is one of many widows in Gitega, an archdiocese in which Archbishop Simon
Ntamwana works tirelessly to reconcile Hutu and Tutsi.
The Archbishop lost many of his family in the genocide, (some 150,000 have died in that ethnic violence since 1993), and was even threatened himself when he was Bishop of Bujumbura. (The Xaverian missionaries have worked for many years in Bujumbura, and only recently have handed over their parishes to the local clergy, as they always aimed on doing). The Archbishop’s door is always open: one day, he receives the widows, the next his priests, the next his Sisters.
He also presides at Bible Study meetings open to all the people. At the present they are focusing on the story of Jacob and Esau. This Bible story of hatred between two brothers helps the men and women of Gitega to think about their own story and to reach out in reconciliation. Thanks to the Bible they are finding an answer for the future in Burundi.
People are making concrete responses, like Gertrude for example. For some time now she has opened her home to a group of orphans. One day on the way to work at the dispensary she met a young girl who had just given birth to a child. On learning that the girl was not married, she took her and the child into her own home. The little girl has been called Lumiere (Light). Gertrude says: “Lumiere and her mother are not from my ethnic group, but it makes no difference to me.”
Fides
Congo: The Cry of the Women of the Congo
n
the name of life, we women cannot stop crying out, strong in our faith in the
Creator who wants us as messengers of a hope always new.
We lift our cry as mothers of a people torn apart. We will not cease to cry out as long as life continues to die
out in this African soil of ours;
We Say
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No to war, Yes to dialog.
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No to the culture of death, Yes to non-violence.
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No to hatred and scorn, Yes to love of country.
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No to the marginalization of our countries, Yes to relationships based on equality without deceit.
We demand
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Of the Heads of our Countries: what we want is not freedom through the armies that kill us, but the courage to take up the path of the word as have done our ancestors. We want a just peace, not a peace at all costs.
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Of the Young people: as we enter the Third Millennium other peoples are organizing and uniting themselves for progress. Why do we, instead, perpetuate the logic of war on the African soil?
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Of the Heads of the African States: Where are the men and the women who resisted slavery and gave their lives to destroy colonialism and apartheid? Are you incapable of finding true solutions that put our continent back on its feet?
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Of Western rulers: More than 50 years have passed since the Declaration of the Universal Rights of the human person, and we, the people of Africa, know only the right to die… We and our children have the right to life and to peace. Stop the production and the sending of arms that destroy and kill us. Invent the weapons that promote life and peaceful progress.
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We, African Women, make our appeal to the Women of the Whole World. Our womanhood is the measure of the hope of life. Before the atrocities that destroy life, and before the inhuman structures that hold the world up, we can give life to a society founded on the values of justice and truth, of peace and brotherhood.
We declare
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To the people of the Congo and to All the Suffering Peoples of Africa: It is time we take hold of the destiny and reconstruction of our lands and of our continent. Let us awaken trust in ourselves and in the God who made us His creatures. Let us say NO to fear and cowardice. Let us engage ourselves, and with sacrifice, in building up a people which is free, united, responsible and trustworthy in the eyes of the rest of the world: Kinshasa, Congo.
For the Women’s Movement, Brigitte Iyeli, Petronille Kayaba, Rachel Nyunga, Annie Makiala. (MSM)
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)