Hotel Rwanda: Room 205

Hopefully you’ve read the first post since I’ve been back (if not read below, to understand why Benya is in no longer in a rhyming country). I actually write this blog at the same time I wrote the previous one. It had far too much content and information, and not quite the usual amateur attempt at poeticism and description, so I just had to even the blog out.
Hopefully you’ve seen the movie Hotel Rwanda. For me it may have been the first time I actually consciously heard of the genocide that took place here in 1994 (a terribly embarrassing and unacceptable thing since the movie just came out a few years ago.) The movie is about a Hotel Manager who housed and protected over 1200 Tutsis, as the rival tribe, the Hutu’s massacred over 800,000 people, many on the streets just right outside the hotel. It’s a true story, similar to Schindler’s List.
Things were probably very similar 15 years ago in this very spot, as I sit and pound these keys on my MacBook, in the Hotel Des Mille Collines lobby. Frank Sinatra plays over the speakers. The sweet smell of sunscreen mixed with Pina Colidas still lingers after the day’s traffic. The final empty glasses clink at the bar as they are collected. Most of the guests are Mzungus (white people).

Yet this hotel is much different than other four-star hotels, though it hard to tell the difference from a Ritz or a Four Seasons in the States. This Hotel was a sanctuary. This Hotel was the empty tomb when it proclaimed resurrection for over 1000 lives. This Hotel is Holy Ground.

I just finished watching the movie in my room. Many thoughts swirl in my head. One blog post cannot contain, nor can I formulate how I actually feel sitting in a place that was Holy Ground that is surrounded by a place where the Ghosts are still lurking. I do feel and do see the story of resurrection here, and see the angels here that embody many pastors, NGO workers, and a Micro-Finance Bank Director (a Baylor grad too). But the evil still lurks. It continues to ravage this great lakes region as we saw in Kenya and continue to see pockets of all around Africa. Eerie doesn’t even begin to explain it.
Yet Sinatra is still playing right now, I don’t feel like I’m in Africa as my feet rest on the velvet carpet, and most of the guest still remain W(hite)sterners. Much has changed in Rwanda for the better. But there is still a definite disconnect with the rich and the poor, just as in America. I experience time travel faster than ever before when I leave the state of the art luxurious French hotel of the 21st century and roll past the guard shack and enter the Middle Ages that is Africa today.
The U.S., the French, the Belgium, i.e. the West didn’t respond in 1994 and almost 1 million died. Its fresh on my mind as I just watched the movie and am reading numerous books. How would we respond today if the same thing happened…or happens(savedarfur.org)

For true change and true life to actually happen, then perhaps that guard shack should no longer exist. There no longer can be this literal/imaginagy wall. I shouldn’t be able to now order a 20 dollar glass of wine, while less than 200 meters away a widow of 5 makes 20 dollars a month. The disconnect must stop. How can we respond to genocide, how can we act, how can we love, if we do not know our brother, our sister, our neighbor: the poor? (Mt 25, sheep/goats)


Below is a exert from the Movie, a conversation from Nick Nolte’s character, a UN worker and Don Cheadle, as Paul:
Colonel Oliver: You should spit in my face.

Paul: Excuse me, Colonel?

Colonel Oliver: You’re dirt. We think you’re dirt, Paul.

Paul: Who is we?

Colonel Oliver: The West. All the super powers. Everything you believe in, Paul. They think you’re dirt. They think you’re dumb. You’re worthless.

Paul: I am afraid I don't understand what you are saying, sir.

Colonel Oliver: Oh, come on, Paul, you're the smartest man here. You got 'em all eating out of your hands. You could own this frigging hotel, except for one thing. You're black. You're not even a nigger. You're an African. They’re not going to stay, Paul. They’re not going to stop this slaughter.

So there it is. Just the second blog post in and I already maybe have crossed the line.
-bc