Called to Work for Justice and Amahoro

CALL TO MINISTRY STORY
by Mukarabe Makinto-Inandava

The story of my vocation begins in my childhood. I was just three years old when my father died. All I know of him comes through my mother’s stories—how he was a community organizer and an advocate for justice, and how he dreamed of building a school where every child, especially girls, could learn for free.

I was the youngest of seven siblings. After my father’s death, one of my brothers and two sisters were forced to drop out of school, and I was expected to stay home too. But my mother sent me to school anyway. I faced bullying and hardship, but I was living a dream my father once had.

My mother was a woman of few words but modeled community care. She raised not only us, but many children from the village—especially those born out of marriage or abandoned. Everything we had, we shared with others.

My heart was constantly angry. I grew up physically fighting for justice for me and other orphans, longing for my father’s protection. I saw how some of my siblings had to marry terrible people. I couldn’t understand why God was allowing this misery.

With mama’s encouragement, I went to university and got a job with USAID. But the 1993 genocide against the Tutsis broke out in Burundi and everything changed. Working at USAID gave me shelter and a chance to help others, but it also exposed me to deep divisions and hatred I hadn’t fully understood. A senior colleague yelled at me: “you, evil Tutsis, you killed our president!” My mother had never told me I was a Tutsi.

Then I understood how deep was the division and hate that colonizers had sowed and I was angry. A senior colleague who was a mother had just called me and all Tutsis murderers. That was not right; that was not the compassion my mother modeled; it was not the vision my father had to educate all the children in my community.

I realized I couldn’t stay. If I did, I might have to join the army and die. The country I wanted to build had betrayed me. I fled to Kenya with a friend, without papers and a little money in my pocket. I saw a job ad for the UN. I barely knew how to use a computer, but God made a way. I got the job, and suddenly I was organizing humanitarian aid for Hutu refugees—many who had planned or participated in the massacre of one million Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. My heart revolted, but I heard my mother’s voice: Justice is for everyone. Remember your father’s vision. Help when you can.

From then on, I found myself in one space after another working for justice—from Madagascar to the U.S., working for the UN and advocating for girls orphaned by conflict and HIV. But I carried my anger like a shield until God led me and my husband to a small Nigerian church in New York. I came just to worship and sing. But little by little, I started hearing the Word, and it began to change me. Eventually my husband and I both accepted Christ.

One day I received a phone call saying that my mother had died. My infant son was peacefully sleeping upstairs and my husband was away. I felt completely alone. A helpless orphan.

But then I felt a presence—gentle but firm hands holding me from behind—and I heard a voice: You believed a lie. “I am your Father”. Say the word “Father.” I had never said that word in any language. After three attempts, I said it louder. In that moment, the Father of the fatherless began healing me. God opened doors so I could attend mama’s funeral with a message of God’s love for hundreds who came to say goodbye to a mother who exited as quietly as she had lived, yet whose legacy still impacts many.

I yearned for more opportunities to study, and that desire was answered as I moved to Harrisonburg, VA and joined Eastern Mennonite University as a Master in Conflict Transformation at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

God’s calling in Micah 6:8, the same as EMU’s mission, is getting me closer to my parents’ legacy. Today the vision is clearer than ever; and as the Holy Spirit guides, I want to decolonize our minds exposing the ideology of genocide so we can rebuild our communities based on our values of Amahoro, Ubuntu, and justice starting in East Africa, especially in the Great Lake Region (Burundi, Congo, and Rwanda).

My parents’ dreams shaped my ministry. Though I am still on this journey, I walk with purpose, knowing that the Holy Spirit is guiding me every step of the way.