Letters from Kigali

From April until July 1994, nearly one million tribal Tutsi men, women, and children were ethnically cleansed from the tiny African nation of Rwanda by tribal Hutus, many of whom were their friends, relatives, and neighbors. Letters from Kigali is an accounting of that genocide told through a series of letters sent by a naive young American priest, Father Patrick Murphy, to his friend Sister Pauline, a nun back home.Father Patrick Murphy, a member of the Physician Fathers of the Sacred Confraternity, an order of priests who are doctors, was never supposed to be in Rwanda. In fact, he was only sent in place of another priest who suddenly turned up missing. With no one else available to him his superior, Father Edward Gonzalez, is forced to send the young Patrick. Somewhat innocent to the world around him the young priest, with some reservations, heads to Kigali to do the duty he is called to. Upon his arrival to the tiny African nation, the young priest meets Annjeanette, the Tutsi head nurse of the clinic he has been sent to manage. She will play a pivotal role in the story as she gives an accounting of the facts of the genocide while she is hiding and fleeing from Hutu murderers that are endlessly pursuing her. One of those murderers, Raul, the clinic's Hutu postman and Patrick's friend, goes from a bookish daydreamer to a merciless machete-wielding killer who eventually holds Patrick hostage. Though fiction, Letters from Kigali is a factual accounting of the ghastly events that took place in a tiny African nation in the spring of 1994. It was recently selected for a non-equity public reading at the Villagers Theatre's New Playwright series.