BY KIMBERLY LUSTE MARAN
UCKED IN THE PICTURESQUE HILLS OF southern Oregon, Carl Wilkens' home today is vastly different from the place he occupied a little more than 10 years ago.1 The peaceful, loping landscape with rich vegetation is in stark contrast to the bloody backdrop Wilkens lived in and endured in 1994, during 100 days of genocide in Rwanda. An Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) worker in Africa, with 12 years of experience under his belt, nothing had quite prepared him for the brutal murders of 800,000 Rwandans, 90 percent of them Tutsis,2 that began on April 7, 1994, after President Habyarimana was killed when a missile shot down his plane.
Soon after the killing began, Wilkens, an American Adventist, put his wife and three young children on a U.S. convoy out of Rwanda. His family, including his mother and father, escaped in a homemade camper along with Germans, Americans, and Canadians who drove out of the country to Burundi. Carl decided to stay behind in Kigali with Rwandans who had sought refuge in his home.
After a soul-searching, prayerful Sabbath, his family left on Sunday morning—rumbling down the street with white T-shirts tied to each vehicle of the ragtag convoy. Says Wilkens, "We would pray, and I'd ask [my wife], 'Does this still seem right?' and she'd say, 'Yes it does.' To my mom and dad, it didn't seem right, and to people on the outside we [were] communicating with, it didn't seem right."
Embassy consulate officer Laura Lane was also shocked when Wilkens told her he wasn't leaving. He was asked to write down that he was refusing the help of the U.S. government to evacuate; and so Wilkens grabbed a sheet of notebook paper, wrote that he was staying on his own accord, and handed the folded paper to his departing wife.
After watching the caravan disappear, Wilkens went home. He locked the gate, knelt in the dining room with the two Rwandans he had stayed to protect, and prayed for his family. Wilkens remembers how he felt: "This sadness just came over me. . . . If people in Rwanda ever needed help, now was the time. And everybody's leaving."
By the night of April 10 Wilkens was the only American left in Rwanda.
A Prisoner at Home
For the first three weeks, the violence forced Wilkens to stay in his house. He and two Rwandans who worked for him, a "house girl" and a young watchman, prayed and waited for the brutality to abate. Wilkens initially decided to stay in order to help his two Tutsi colleagues, who would surely have been slaughtered as the militia roamed the neighborhoods of the city. Later, Wilkens ventured out each day to help save lives by bringing supplies to orphanages and negotiating with the extremists.
During those three weeks Wilkens read books3 and prayed as bombs and mortars exploded around him. He could hear the firing of assault weapons and the screams of neighbors as they were shot, cut, or clubbed to death. He slept in the hallway, using a mattress as a shield from bombs. Wilkens credits some of his neighbors with saving him from a potentially deadly confrontation with the militia. They defended him to the killers, saying, "Don't kill them; they are missionaries. . . . These people aren't part of this. Their kids play with our kids, and when we're sick, they take us to the hospital."4
Wilkens videotaped what he was seeing and hearing, describing the events as he recorded them. Each day he managed to communicate with his wife via radio.5 He remained in Rwanda throughout the genocide, venturing out once the old Rwandan government lifted the three-week curfew for heads of organizations and business owners to be able to check their businesses.
Getting ready to go check on the ADRA offices and warehouses with a Rwandan pastor, Wilkens remembers sitting in his living room, lacing his shoes, and thinking, I haven't had my shoes on for three weeks. He says, "I'd been just like a prisoner in [my own] house. It was a pretty scary thought to leave. There were all kinds of killing going on around, and you'd see the bombs fall and you'd hear the gunfire constantly. Somehow you felt almost safe in this little cocoon. So when I went out with the Rwandan pastor . . . it was wild. Not even a block from my house I'm stopped by militia. . . . [We'd] go through different barriers, and we finally go to our ADRA place in the industrial park."6
Taking Stock, Saving Lives
The scene that met Wilkens was dismal. Once-full warehouses were looted and burned. Trucks had been stolen. None of the supplies were salvageable, and Wilkens had to leave the area in a hail of sniper fire.
In the weeks that followed, Wilkens traveled the city, assisting whenever and wherever he could. Each morning he'd hear the mortars and hesitate, praying about the day before him. Says Wilkens, "So many times there was just an ugly knot in [my] stomach. You didn't know what would happen when you went out. I'd pray about it. . . . God [then] says 'OK, you have the peace; go out now.'"7 Wilkens' days would consist of carrying food, water, and medical supplies to the orphanages, carting people to the Red Cross hospital, and generally trying to help wherever he saw the need.
During one occasion Wilkens was following an old government-owned dump truck he had wheedled from a friendly colonel in Kigali. It was carrying 44-gallon drums of water to an orphanage. One of the drums fell off the truck. It was in an area where there was heavy fire. Wilkens pulled his Toyota Corolla over to a place where he thought he'd be out of the reach of snipers, intent upon getting the drum into his trunk. As he crept around the car to unlock the passenger door of the vehicle—not even sure why he was unlocking it—the back window exploded. A sniper's bullet had passed though the headrest of the driver's seat. Wilkens was able to climb into his car through the passenger's side and flee. God had spared Wilkens' life—and continued to do so every time the ADRA worker left his home.
Venturing out each day was hard. But seeing the violence, the confusion, the suffering as neighbors clashed was even more difficult and heartrending.
"There were times of real hopelessness," says Wilkens. "I basically had to say to myself, 'There's nothing I can do about that.' I could spend a lot of time in anger about why other people weren't making a difference, weren't doing it, but that wasn't going to help anything."
"We all think there's a line we would never cross, and the people in Rwanda all thought the same thing," adds Wilkens. "If you would have said to them three months earlier, 'Even with a baby tied on your back, you'd be hacking your neighbor to death,' they would have said, 'That's ridiculous. You're insane.' The common moral compass of a society 'is a lot more fragile than any of us would ever want to know.'"8
But even in the fragile environment Wilkens found himself in, he also saw glimpses of Christianity as Rwandan citizens began to help one another. As the small team of Red Cross workers who stayed started to make a difference. As a pastor hid church members in his home for two months. As a nurse named Triphine gave her life helping patients on both sides of the conflict. "It was a time of darkness," recalls Wilkens, "but still there were patches of light."
Divine Intervention
Two experiences stand out prominently for Wilkens. The first was when he was stopped by a young soldier who thrust a bayonet toward his chest. Wilkens prayed, and after trying to explain to the young man that he was helping people, he pushed the bayonet away. Gun aimed at his back, Wilkens wasn't sure what was going to happen. Just then an elderly man came up and asked Wilkens how his grandson was. Wilkens had taken the man's grandchild, a gunshot victim, to the hospital the day before. Upon realizing that the younger man was hassling Wilkens, the grandfather rebuked him, and Wilkens went away free and unharmed.
The second was when Carl enlisted Rwanda's Hutu prime minister's assistance to stop a massacre of children in an orphanage.
A Little More About Carl and His Journey
Graduated high school from Upper Columbia Academy in Spangle, Washington.
Graduated from Walla Walla College in Washington in 1981.
Married school sweetheart Teresa in 1981.
Went to Africa in 1981 as an ADRA worker.
Welcomed first two children in Zimbabwe.
Received an M.B.A. from the University of Baltimore in 1989; welcomed third child.
Moved to Rwanda, during a peaceful time, in 1990.
Stayed in Rwanda during 1994 genocide.
Left Rwanda, returning in March 1995 for one and a half years.
Returned to U.S. and began work at Milo Academy in Oregon in late 1996.
Continues to work at Milo Academy.
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The colonel, a surprise ally who had told militia checkpoints to "lay off" ADRA, put Wilkens in touch with some of the groups of orphans around the city that needed help. "The Gisimba orphanage was a really desperate case, because they were in the heart of the nastiest part of the city," explains Wilkens. "The most belligerent killers were there in that part of Nyamirambo, and the U.N. couldn't get through [easily]. . . . These guys [at the orphanage] were starving. They [had] no water, kids were being killed [and] were dying from dysentery. So I started working with that orphanage."
One day Wilkens' group brought a load of water to the orphanage and discovered that the militia had been there the night before and were coming back to kill the rest of the children and adults. He went to the headquarters office, and a young secretary he'd become friends with told him the colonel wasn't in but that the prime minister was there. To say it was a long shot was an understatement, but Wilkens mustered up the courage and approached the prime minister.9
Wilkens relates the experience: "I put my hand out and I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister, I'm Carl Wilkens, the director of ADRA.' He stops, and he looks at me, and then he takes my hand and shakes it and said, 'Yes, I've heard about you and your work. How is it?'
"I said, 'Well, honestly, sir, it's not very good right now. The orphans at Gisimba are surrounded, and I think there's going to be a massacre, if there hasn't been already.' He turns around, talks to some of his aides [and] says, 'We're aware of the situation, and those orphans are going to be safe. I'll see to it.'"10
Wilkens wasn't sure what that meant, but he chose to go home and trust in God. A couple of days later all the children and hidden adults were moved and saved.
A Bridge for God
Wilkens is quick to add that what happened in Rwanda wasn't about one person. "It's a story about people, human nature, and God.
"This is not about heroism. It is about submitting and committing to what is right. . . . If you focus on yourself and your problems and your fears, you will be paralyzed and never get through. . . . Focusing on the needs, safety, and security of others keeps us going."11
Wilkens balks at being called a hero. His courage coming from God, Wilkens is just happy that God was able to use him for good and hopes his life and actions can be a witness to others. Serving as a bridge of compassion and hope, Wilkens is philosophical about his role—and what he learned in Rwanda.12 "I think we need to remember—recognize—the potential that each of us has for evil, and the potential that each of us has for good. . . . That's the bottom line—the battle between good and evil, and whose side I'm going to take. . . .
"One person can make a difference, and it reminds us to look outside of ourselves and to reach outside. What can you do to help? I'm thankful that people remember [Rwanda] 10 years later, because there [are] people [there] who will never forget it, and we need to have a connection.13
"The challenge in a crisis is looking for an ally; we don't often find the good in people because we've written them off as bad or evil. [But] we need to live for each other. We need to help each other."
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1 Wilkens has been the pastor at Milo Academy in Days Creek, Oregon, for the past eight years.
2 From www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/etc/cron.html.
3 Some of the books Wilkens read include the Bible, The Desire of Ages, Hiding Place, and Men in Blue.
4 From PBS Frontline 2004 documentary Ghosts of Rwanda; and May 1, 2004, Issues & Interviews recording with Jere Patzer, North Pacific Union Conference.
5 Teresa Wilkens stayed in Nairobi, Kenya, with the children until her husband was able to join them at the end of the genocide. In less than ideal conditions, she managed to take care of the children and herself in a tiny apartment; initially traveling some distance to the embassy to make her daily radio contact with Carl.
6 PBS Frontline Interview, Nov. 19, 2003: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/wilkens.html.
7 Issues & Interviews, aired Sept. 3, 1994, Upper Columbia Conference.
8 Nicole Montesano, "Witness Recalls Horror of Rwandan Genocide." Published July 15, 2004: News Register, McMinnville, Oregon: www.newsregister.com/news/results.cfm?story_no=182473.
9 The prime minister was later convicted of genocide.
10 PBS Frontline Interview, Nov. 19, 2003: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/wilkens.html.
11 Robert Landauer, "'I Got My Training in Hell': Oregon Pastor Has Given Salvation a Personal Meaning," The Oregonian, pp. C1, 2, Apr. 11, 2004.
12 After coming to the U.S. in July 1994, Wilkens and family went back to Rwanda in March 1995. They stayed for a year and a half, with Wilkens helping to rebuild churches and lives as an Adventist Church field secretary.
13 PBS Frontline Interview, Nov. 19, 2003: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/wilkens.html
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Kimberly Luste Maran is an assistant editor for the Adventist Review.
