Mother Teresa travelled the world. Her outreach arrived in over 120 countries. Dedication to the poor composed her life.
A group of us went to see her. I know her first in Cairo. She arrived in Baghdad after First Gulf War to open a new orphanage. We were a ragtag group of military observers, NGO workers and UN staff. She stayed only a few blocks from our hotel. We jumped into our Landcruisers.
Mother Teresa was bestowing her advice and offering prayers to a few people who knew she arrived in Iraq. She was giving out her plastic rosary beads and plastic Mother Mary statues. In the war aftermath, the communications infrastructure was damaged from bombing. You would just show up for meetings since phone calls were almost impossible to connect.
We joked with Mother Teresa telling her about the hotel bar the night before. We had drunk a bunch of beers. Mother laughed at the Irish Army Colonial who gave her the description. We thought she would give us a homily chastising our beer drinking exploits.
In her sing song English,
you can drink beer. Beer is good. I can cure you of beer.
You drink one beer;
I give one beer to the poor.
Each beer you drink;
you give one for the poor.
With a wide smile and nodding her head sideways, she exclaimed proudly,
I give beer to the poor.
We enjoyed beer at the end of long harrowing days. Rwanda tested us. We needed escape to relax. Beer was one avenue.
Curfew in genocide Rwanda was from 1800-0600 nightly. It was enforced strictly. Once it hit sunset at 1 degree 36 South of the equator, it pitched night. Darkness in Rwanda running on generators then was deadly.
We would hear gun battles. There would be screams. We might be deafened by a humanitarian cargo plane doing a go around. Soldiers shouting. An AK-47 rattling.
We ran out of beer. There was no local supply except for a journey across town to a small store near the National Stadium. This was far, dark and dangerous.
Two African project officers were planning to make this curfew breaking crossing for beer. Being the big brother, I put my foot down and said no way. A stupid and dangerous idea.
One colleague was from Somalia. The other officer was Miguel, a mixed Angolan. They asked me to come along for the ride.
I was blunt and voiced to them I was not going to risk this adventure across conflicted Kigali to get beer. I said no again.
They pleaded with me to come. They exclaimed;
We need a white man.
I quickly retorted that was a racist statement and not appreciated.
Their response came quickly,
F*ck you.
So off we went into the darkness and unknown. They put me in the front seat of the WFP double cab pick-up.
Slowly we crept in dark streets. At each checkpoint, I told them, we had a late meeting at the UN Building. At some checkpoints, they asked for IDs. Others were casual and waved us through seeing me in the front seat. Occasionally an officer would lecture us about the curfew,
but I’ll let you go through.
It was stop and go through checkpoints.
Kigali was quiet. Little traffic passed. We moved slowly. To calm our tension, we laughed with a few jokes or quipped about checkpoints.
We finally reached the beer store. Jacqueline who ran the store greeted me under a kerosine lantern. She said,
what are you doing here, there’s a curfew you shouldn’t be here, and I am not supposed to sell beer now.
She was our friend; tall, gorgeous and beautiful. I exclaimed;
We came to see you.
She cracked up saying,
give me a break
while slapping me on the back.
We grabbed beer. Her choices were numerous. With no refrigerator, she sold beer at room temperature. Bottles of many brands stood on top of wood counters.
She gave me a hug and said,
Be careful home.
Slowly we exited and crept down the road. Night turned darker; checkpoints became more aggressive; streetlights didn’t light. I used the same line of a late UN meeting. We carried UN IDs and drove in our white UN marked vehicle. However, curfew remained for all.
Some officers were not happy and gave us a stiff reprimand. Slowly, we edged towards home. I was tired of talking at checkpoints with the same meeting story.
Coming up the hill, at the next checkpoint, they confronted us, and I said the truth,
we went out to get beer.
The heavy armed officers laughed loudly and waved us through.
From then on, I just told checkpoint soldiers,
we went out to get beer.
They laughed and waved us through.
We arrived home. Colleagues welcomed us. They were concerned. The gang were trying to reach us on the radio, but we kept radio silence.
Everyone turned happy. They appreciated our efforts to sacrifice life for beer. The party to forget the horrors moved ahead.