Labels

One of my final days in Nairobi I met a pastor from a Christian church in Texas. He was a really nice guy that was leading a missions trip to do work in Kenyan villages. Eventually our conversation turned to Keza and I relayed the shortened version of our adoption story. After he heard that she was from Rwanda, he immediately responded by asking, "So, is she Hutu or Tutsi?" I answered him by saying that in Rwanda people are trying to move past those labels and don't refer to themselves that way anymore. In fact, it's illegal. He thought about this one moment and said, "Well, OK, but I can tell just by looking at her face what she is."

Anger. Frustration. Annoyance. Rage. Disappointment. Just a few of the emotions that washed over me as I heard this man speak. He was careless with his thoughts, with his words, and it showed.

I expect people to be naive and ignorant about this. Even just a few years ago I was next to clueless about what happened in 1994 to a small country called Rwanda. I get that people have a hard time understanding genocide and the horror it holds. What I don't understand is how a pastor, a man that has given his life to sharing the freeing love of Christ, a man who is familiar and well acquainted with the Rwanda genocide, could be so narrow minded and wrong.

Those labels, Hutu and Tutsi, defined a genocide that caused almost a million people to die bloody, horrible, unimaginable deaths. Those names caused evil and division and nothing profitable. And this child, this sweet little baby girl that is sitting on my lap, is neither Hutu nor Tutsi. The lines of her face, the color of her skin, the build of her bones do not reveal what she is and who she is.

I've thought about that conversation daily since having it and many times I have wandered to a verse in Galatians that says: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, ( no Hutu or Tutsi),  for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The whole point of Christ coming and dieing was for us to be free, to love God and to be loved by Him and that love is what defines us.

Who is Keza? She is loved. That's who she is.