Monday 24 January 2011

I walked on mass graves in Kigali

I walked on mass graves in Kigali - and I cried. Two million people brutally murdered in three years in Rwanda. What for? Because of class distinction - between the rich and the poor. If you owned ten cows you became a Tutsi and if you had less you were considered a Hutu. The Hutu's exiled the Tutsis and many of them joined rebel forces to get back into their country. And then the genocide began...and the United Nations and the rest of the International Community would not believe the reports about the atrocities until it was too late. Koffi Anan's repentance as General Secretary of the UN came when the war was over: 'I should have done something about Rwanda ten years ago.'
The hills of Kigali are covered in houses, nice looking houses, and the roads in are in good condition. The taxi driver said to me,'do you like our city? Look how clean it is!'
But the red colour in the dark faces of the people in Rwanda reminds you of the slaughterhouse that Rwanda once was. The people are still weary of trusting anyone too quickly.
Yet Rwanda is one of the most fruitful and fertile lands in East Africa and could become the bread basked of Africa.
The Virungu volcanoes are still active and erupt every few years causing much damage and even deaths. Rain forests harbour 150 000 gorillas that Diane Fossey described in her books until she exposed the poachers and was murdered by them.
I walked in silence on the mass graves and shed tears for a nation that went through ethnic cleansing of atrocious proportions...and I was reminded of Hitler, Stalin, Yomo Kenyatta, Idi Amin and all the other dictators who brainwashed people into accepting their evil causes as if it were natural.
Then I remembered the words of Jesus: 'The thief comes not but to steal, kill and destroy; but I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.' The Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for the world today, and yet the modern society speaks of the 'post-christian-era' as if Christianity is outdated! What a lie from the pit of hell! The Gospel is just as relevant today as it has always been! It is fresh - like the dew on Mt. Hermon!
The Prophet cried out: 'Who will hear our report? And to whom will the arm of the Lord be revealed?'
That is the cry in my heart today, as missionary, perhaps one of the least, but at least I keep going to other lands to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ. We can do all the humanitarian work that we wish, but unless people have a change in heart the atrocities of genocide and the killing of wars will continue.
There can be no peace without the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ the Lord of lords and the King of Kings. At His Name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.
There is no other way!

Tuesday 11 January 2011

The Quiller Memorandum

Wednesday's Child, the theme song of The Quiller Memorandum, a thriller starring George Segal and Senta Berger in the 1966's, is an exquisitely beautiful, sad tune. The opening line being, Wednesday's Child is a child of woe... Max von Sydow with his eerie, mysterious, oblong face and some other great actors like Alec Guinnes also play their roles in memorable performances, but it is the theme music that I remember the most, more than the names of the actors or the titles of the cast.
What makes one remember something for so long? What makes something find a lodging space in your memory bank for 50 years? Goodness gracious, already that long? And still the haunting tone of that melody seems to ruffle my feathers every time I hear it played or play it on the piano late at night when everyone's gone to bed.
When a violin plays the tune it tends to tug at one's heart strings even more...
I don't want to dwell on the performance, just the memory, the Quiller Memory, the face of George Segal, tilting his head to pay attention to what someone has to say. He also played in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. I remember how he cheerfully greeted his mother on that fatefull day before he got massacred with his other mobster friends in a garage on the 14th of February. Although George Segal is known as a comedy actor as well, it is that serious face, that wry smile and the frowning and questioning eyes that seem to be imprinted indelibly on my mind. But more than my memory of his spy role in Quiller Memorandum, I wonder about the beauty of that tune...it calms the soul and stirs the spirit and carries one away to another world of beauty and peace and joy...there must be a heaven after all if there is such heavenly music!
Beethoven confessed that he heard music from another realm, from the centre of the Universe somewhere...perhaps we can hear it too... if we listen!
Funny thing, strange and eerie just as the John Barry score of The Quiller Memorandum, he sadly passed away in January on the 30th at the age of 77. Hans Zimmer who won an Oscar for the score for Inception (De Capprio starred and Ridley Scott directed)wrote an article for Time's Milestones on p.13 of the February 14 issue, 2011 in which he describes how he too remembers The Quiller Memorandum score. 'Sometimes the reason we have such deep and lasting emotional connections to movies is the music and everything that made the mood of those movies...' He was a Yorkshire man and even in his brightest work, you could always see the moors and the fog, even his cheeky stuff had an underlying darkness.
John Barry also wrote the scores for Zulu (which launched a young Michael Caine), Born Free, Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Bond), and Hammet. What he had learned from Barry is that mood is good, according to Zimmer.
Amazing that the Quiller tune drifted passed me at that time, so strongly that I could not ignore it, I had to write about it and remember it. And like Zimmer I cannot recall all the details of the Quiller Story, but the tune stayed in my memory bank. And it was in the same month that the composer passed away. Are we all in touch with the Infinite? Do we feel what is to come before it does? When will we wake up to this reality?
Astonishing...but true.