Hope Amid Horrors

APRIL 16, 1994. The New York Times reports the deaths of 1,200 men, women and children in a church in Musha. The massacre at Ntarama claimed more than 10,000 lives. By April 19, the death toll is 100,000 and Gen. Dallaire is down to 2,100 troops. A week later, the Belgian troops pull out and only 450 ill-equipped soldiers are left. The death count is estimated at 144,000.

The church at Ntarama, 18 miles south of Kigali, is a small brick building with 20 rows of low, wooden benches bisected by an aisle. Set off the side of a dirt road in the midst of a meadow of banana trees, the tranquility of the surroundings makes the impact of what you see there even greater. Government officials decided the most effective anti-genocide memorial they could create was to leave the massacre site pretty much as they found it.

Bloodstains remain on the altar cloth and daylight trickles through the bullet holes in the tin roof. The back of the church is lined with bins containing countless skulls and other human bones. The walls are lined with the clothing of the dead, colored by dried blood. Bone fragments can be seen in the dirt of the tiny classroom next door, and the blood of children killed there cover the walls. "Look," says Cori Inkster, poking at the shell of a bullet wedged in the mortar between the bricks. Of all the places the group has visited, this is the one greeted with the most silence.

APRIL 28, 1994. Asked if genocide is occurring in Rwanda, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman says, "We have to undertake a very careful study before we can make a final determination." On May 17 the U.N. agrees to send 5,000 troops and the U.S. to send 50 armored personnel carriers. Neither arrives before the killing stops. The estimated death toll is 328,000.

One of the reasons the genocide was so efficiently carried out is because the Interahamwe militia tapped into the traditional tribal structure. Every 10 huts has a captain and every 100 huts has a captain of the captains. When it came time for the killing, the message swept swiftly through the Hutu community.

World Vision uses that same tribal structure for good. Orphans, widows or others considered vulnerable are trained to be AIDS caregivers. Often, the caregivers are HIV positive. A caregiver gets a job and a person with AIDS gets someone to help him get to clinic visits, have food and get medicine, if it is available.

At a caregiver center in Kigali, women are asked how many of them have children, and all 23 hands go up. When asked how many are raising children who are not their own all 23 hands remain in the air. Christine Mukankusi is a caregiver. She is a 38-year-old widow whose husband was a soldier killed in fighting along the Congo border in 2001. She is raising five children, four of whom are hers. One of her clients is Jeannette Niyitegeka, a 24-year-old woman with AIDS who has a 3-year-old son of her own and a 12-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl who are AIDS orphans.

Niyitegeka lives in a two-room mud hut illuminated by one fluorescent light. A couch, three chairs and a table fill one room, and behind a hanging cloth functioning as a door, mattresses on the floor serve as the bedroom. Niyitegeka is not having a good day, perhaps a reaction to medicine, perhaps hunger. On one wall is a framed Bible passage in Kinyarwanda from Romans 12:21: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." That seems to be the inspiring sentiment for all of Rwanda.

JULY 4, 1994. Kigali falls to the RPF. On July 17 the government flees and Kagame does what the U.N. refused to do -- he stops the genocide. Disease and killing in refugee camps after the war pushes the death toll to 1,071,000, according to the RPF.

The airport in Kigali has three gates. The security guard at the metal detector asks the most common question posed to visitors. "Are you coming back?" he says with a smile that grows even brighter when told there would be a return visit. In Golf Fore Africa, King has found a passion for her post-professional life. The project is nascent and the problems in Rwanda have no end in sight. Still, the business model employed by World Vision brings with it not just short-term hope but long-term potential.

"The idea is sustainable community development," says Floth. "Every investment we make requires an investment from the community as well. We don't just give handouts. Our goal is to make ourselves obsolete by teaching them how to become self-sufficient communities." The magnitude of the problems in Rwanda and the innate obstacles built into the culture make much of the work frustrating. In the movie "Blood Diamond" whenever something went wrong the Leonardo DiCaprio character would say simply: "TIA -- This is Africa." It was a phrase uttered often on this trip. Or, as one veteran aid worker would say when a plan went awry: "Africa wins again."

Sitting at breakfast on the last day of the trip, King acknowledges the enormity of the task and is well aware that Golf Fore Africa is one extremely small piece in a massive puzzle. Still, she says, all pieces, however tiny, are important.

"Get involved, do something," King says when asked what she would tell people about Rwanda. In the land of a thousand hills, there are a million dreams.