WHILE GOD WAS SLEEPING
WHILE GOD WAS SLEEPING
By John Thomas Tuft
In the erstwhile township of North Versailles (Ver-SALES, if you please) in western Pennsylvania, with its vital lifeline of an artery known as the Lincoln Highway, US30 for the uninitiated, 1971 was not a particularly remarkable year. Out in the world, cigarette advertising disappeared from American radio and television, the first email was sent — largely unnoticed, the Eagles were formed, the Ed Sullivan Show ended, Evel Knievel jumped over 19 cars, the very first Starbucks opened, Jim Morrison died, Disney World opened, and Idi Amin became dictator of Uganda (see the film The Last King of Scotland). I was beginning my senior year at East Allegheny High School and sixty percent of Americans disapproved of the war in Vietnam. I had a girlfriend who was Greek Orthodox, and I danced at a Greek wedding reception in Oakland. And fair warning: this is not a Christmas story for the faint of heart, weak of will, or stomach easily turned. I don’t want to write it. I really don’t… because Christmas can be dangerous…
At one point in that year, I sat across the dining room table in our home at 801 Pittsburgh Street from Festo Kivengere, sometimes called the Billy Graham of Africa. An Anglican bishop in southeast Uganda, he was a fascinating man, full of stories, enthusiastic, a gifted speaker who ate his peas with a knife and fork, British style. He spoke tenderly of life in Uganda, wondering if the new leader would see the spiritual hunger of his people and respond appropriately, as a Christian revival was starting to sweep through the area Festo served. He told a story in British accented English that I later learned he told often. “A little girl was watching her mother preparing dinner one day. She asked her mummy, ‘What does God do all day?’ The mother was stumped at first and thought about it. Finally, she told her daughter, ‘I will tell you what God does all day. He spends the day mending broken things.’” Simple, direct faith in the power of Jesus’ words about God’s love and forgiveness came through in every word and action.
In Uganda, Idi Amin’s reign was blood-soaked and driven by terror. He expelled the entire Indian and Pakistani population and the economy collapsed. He was responsible for ordering the deaths of 300,000 of his own citizens. In 1972 he summoned all the bishops to his palace. That night, all but one are released. When word came about that bishop’s death, Festo Kivengere and his wife fled. They drove until the car ran out of gas. Then, with the help of fellow believers, they walked over the mountains into Rwanda. Amin plundered the wealth of Uganda and harbored the terrorists who hijacked an Air France flight to Israel in 1976. After Israeli commandos rescued the hostages in the Ugandan airport, Amin ordered the slaughter of hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda that he suspected of helping Israel, along with an elderly woman from the flight who’d been hospitalized.
Flash forward to the end of the 1990s and I am immersed in the story of Rwanda. I am commissioned to write a screenplay about the people of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I’ve been to London to speak directly with a source. It is grueling and grisly research. It is spending 18 months becoming intimately familiar with gruesome details. It is being emotionally overcome, time after time, with trying to cope with the immense evil of over 800,000 human beings senselessly slaughtered, day after day. While the world watched. Seeking refuge in churches and being betrayed by the leaders of those churches. Learning about those perpetrating this atrocity.
Writing a screenplay is telling a story in words that can be replicated on the screen. I titled it WHILE GOD WAS SLEEPING, after an old Rwandan legend about the country being so beautiful that it was where the creator came to rest after his labors. This land of beauty, paying the terrible price for being tortured by colonialism’s need to extract and dominate, divide and exploit. Family against family, tribe against tribe, neighbor against neighbor, the genocide unfolded. While the most powerful nation ever seen on the face of the earth warned its political heads and diplomats to not utter the word “genocide” for we would then be obligated to intervene. Forcefully stop the killing. So, I crafted characters whom I grew to love, gave them families and community, lovers and believers, hopes and dreams, knowing that I was creating them only to be slaughtered. For no reason other than someone decided that they were the problem and needed to die.
The land where Festo Kivengere sought to escape the horrors of his home was now a cesspool of worse horror. Unspeakable horror. Unimaginable grief. Evil writ large across the universe of life. The depravity painting a bleak landscape of unrelenting betrayal and rivers of blood. Overwhelmed, I found myself wondering about Festo Kivengere. I searched for him. He had died in 1988 but he had written a book. The title of the book: I LOVE IDI AMIN. In it he says that you cannot say that you believe in a God of love. Believe in forgiveness. For those who wrong you. For your enemies. And then not do it…when it’s hard…
Silent night. Holy night. In the manger, while God is sleeping. We carry on like we mean it. Or we don’t. It’s about broken things…
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
