Wartime Rape in Rwanda - What if this had happened to you …

Updated: Nov 2, 2020

I’ve been moved and paralyzed since I stumbled upon “Intended Consequences“, a multi-media presentation by Jonathan Torgovnik.

The world has a way of intruding into my writing. I’d planned to write a sequel to my novel As the Heart Bones Break. I’d intended to focus on a female character in the first novel and set the story in the refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border. But, a young pregnant refugee woman walked into the plot and demanded that her story be told.

I had to do research.

I googled ‘rape and forced pregnancies’. What I got was Jonathan Torgovnik and his retrospective on the babies born of the Rwandan genocide.

Click to watch it here – INTENDED CONSEQUENCES

And here is the meditation I wrote about keeping faith even in the face of this tragedy and all other tragedies like this.

Meditation on Psalm 23

You have done this

My shepherd

My Lord

You have set a table for me in the sight of my foes

Oh God!

You have led me here

To partake of this meal in the middle of a battlefield

In the midst of a fight I did not choose

Thiss

This is the fullness of life

Beyond the safety of a hillside pasture

Here

Through the high mountains and the bloodied valleys

You have led me

Here

Through the dry days and the desert

To flowing water and this meal

This is the last supper

In the sight of my foes

I am anointed

Sweet and sour

Salt tears and bitter

Honey and oil

I am sheep — led to the slaughter

I am sheep — no more

What lies beyond the gate?

I do not know

You whisper my name

You say

Enter – here is the house of my father

I close my eyes

I surrender

I tell myself

I will survive

I will live

Here

Today

Beyond the safety of a hillside pasture

In these high mountains and bloodied valleys

Through the dry days and the desert

I tell myself

I will survive

I will live

——————–

What if this had happened to you? Would you be as strong?

#Rapeandforcedpregnancy #RwandanGenocide #Survivinggenocide #war