Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Mat 10:8
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Down a side street behind the mosque in Ruhengeri, about three hundred Rwandese gathered on a dusty, dead-grass field. Boys were playing with a home-made football, buried among stalks. A sultry sun filtered through the haze that hid the surrounding volcanoes. On a clear day they loom like mountains of doom, far too high in the sky to be real, and far too steep. I was told they are dead, but the lava-littered fields tell another tale. This is the main town of the North-West of Rwanda, set in a valley of fertile volcanic soil, where drought is unknown and the bananas grow 20 feet tall.
Shops were closed by law for this morning sitting of the Gacaca [say Ga-cha-cha] Courts. After greeting those present, mostly old men sporting an eclectic assortment of hats, I was invited to a small piece of bench beside a kindly gentleman who held his umbrella for me against the warming day. We formed a semicircle around a couple of benches under another umbrella some yards distant. The nine am start soon slipped to Africa time and the football game removed to less crowded quarters.
When I arrived in Rwanda I had the chance to visit Hope Village. Begun when we were here last year, it is being built by an Australian team for widows of the genocide. What I last saw as a field with a few bricks in it is now alive with residents, gardens and children.
A young man in tee and jeans shuffled into the centre space and apologised for the delay. He reminded them that he was their leader, and explained that the mayor was coming but had a clashing engagement. No one even sighed. This was Africa.
Gacaca is a reinvention of an ancient tribal custom of people’s courts. In Rwanda’s case, their role is to investigate and expose the remaining unsolved stories of the 1994 genocide. And astonishingly the principle is based on forgiveness. Should you have been involved in crime, even killing, and you confess before amnesty closes, you can expect to be forgiven unless you were one of the principal instigators. Confession enables the families of the victims to find closure, and many hearts have been restored through the process. Our ‘leader’ took the opportunity to urge any remaining deeds to
be brought into the light. The crowd were gentle, respectful, at peace.
At last a small procession of elected judges (also very casually dressed, but for sashes) filed to the small row of benches and the scattered crowd congealed. The first case was a dispute about a building that had been knocked down during the war, and the bricks had apparently been used by the perpetrator to build his own house. The accused was invited to explain, and anyone who wanted to chip in or ask questions was free to do so. It was orderly, honest, and remarkably effective.
Sadly we had to leave before the denouement, but a judgement would have been made and another case put to rest. Since the war, thousands of crimes have been handled this way, and the people, empowered to contribute, have deeply appreciated the healing that Gacaca has wrought.
But I was in town to speak about healing of another kind. Our first two-day School of Healing began with three people, and ended with about a hundred! The first four people we prayed for
were healed, faith rose and word got around. We sent them out into the town as usual, and many returned with testimonies of healing. Among our delegates healed was a man with a foot broken three years earlier which had never healed properly. Jesus completed the work there and then!
Two days later we twisted over the foothills of the volcanoes to Gisenyi, on the northern shore of stunning Lake Kivu. We met in the Anglican church, a small green haven in this dust-street, mud-brick town that borders Goma and the Congo.
Here the smaller crowd were a bit slow to respond until I realised that the School had been advertised as a conference on intercession! No one seemed to mind, and by the end they were so enthusiastic for more teaching, they were begging me to return! Healings started slowly, but by the end we had seen some remarkable miracles. A lady with a huge throat swelling felt it soften and reduce substantially, enabling her to turn her head freely. She was so excited that when she and her partner went out onto the street, they shared her story with the first sick