Page 34 - Archangel

is ticking on half a million innocents, and Moses has no future if we fail.”
Raised together in the social justice – oriented United Methodist Church,
the lifelong friends and new colleagues sometimes worked solo, other
times in tandem, or as mission leaders of larger teams.
They tried desperately to convince everyone they encountered of the
scope and scale of the international massacre. They prayed for a different
outcome than the Holocaust-driven four decades earlier on different
continents, by different fascists who would be gods. Many Rwandans,
Zaireans and Tanzanians remained skeptical of the breadth and depth too
long for the survival of their families. Jack Lozi, Sean Collins, and Skye
MacIain needed no convincing as both their Goma and Bukavu camp staff
had been treating and torching the remains of thousands of doubters for
many weeks.
Before Jack met Keezie and later her friend Layla, there was already a
bounty on Tinyuka’s head. She had been vilified ‘on air’ via militia radio
stations for “aiding the Tutsi vermin to escape.” Posters bearing Keezie’s
face were nailed up around most villages. Working with her pastor
husband, Tinyuka started a multi-village rescue and health council to aid
the exodus of refugees and internally displaced people.
Keezie and her husband had agreed that even the death of one should
not, and could not, dissuade the other from continuing to serve Christ in
rescuing the innocent. While Keezie had escaped militia manhunts for
over two months, Interanhabwe eventually learned of their location and
actions and captured her husband. They tried him in a village mock trial
‘for aiding the enemy.’ Reverend Tinyuka was ceremoniously hacked to
death with machetes, one of the murderers a former member of his own
congregation who fell prey to hatred and evil. If Operation Moses saved
and evacuated children from a village during the night, Interanhabwe
returned the next day to execute the parents of those spared and any others
who aided their escape.
Far from killing Tinyuka’s mission with the pastor’s murder, his death
unleashed a femme fatale hero with righteous passion and faith which
became known even to General Paul Gakame, Rwanda’s eventual President
liberator who would erect a statue commemorating Keezie’s bravery.
Tinyuka and Marayika begged Lozi to speed up ‘Moses’ expansion before
an entire generation disappeared under the machetes of the Interanhabwe.
The sheer volume of refugees caught in the balance of genocide and
multinational theft and greed was staggering. Keezie administered rescue
efforts near the Goma refugee camp which swelled to over a million souls.

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