Our team ate out at our regular restaurant Friday night, and by the next day most of us were very sick. Throughout the rainy weekend we lay around watching videos and making trips to the latrine.
Since it was daytime, I was willing to choose a movie I’d been avoiding for years: Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) about the Rwandan genocide. It was filmed in Rwanda, relatively near the area I once lived. The look of the town, the clothes of the people, the roots of the local dialect were all too familiar to me.
This movie focused on the 2,500 people that had sought refuge within the gates of a Technical School where UN peacekeepers were camped. Once the peacekeepers were ordered to withdraw, it was no longer a place of refuge.
The UN’s mandate was to monitor, or observe, the “peace”. They couldn’t intervene in the struggle.
Conversations throughout the film struck me. One journalist spoke of how deep down-our hearts are so murky. The priest shared that because of the impending doom, the presence of God was most evident, rather than absent. He also spoke love to the one that would kill him.
The movie doesn’t give answers. It does hope to resound the motto, “Never Again”.
There is truth in the observation that OUR hearts are murky and GOD’s heart is pure, present and full of love for all, even the murky-hearted.
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