Healing the wounds of genocide ... one village at a time

It is difficult to imagine how they could ever be friends. But today Didanciene and Dativa are both taking part in a project by charity Tearfund Scotland, funded by the Scottish Government, which is bringing such families together as part of the long process of reconciliation.

“Some people we used to see them coming to kill us, but today we are sharing a meal round the same table,” Didanciene explains. “Before they were part of the hunters who were hunting us – but today we are part of the same group.”

It is still impossible to grasp the full scale and brutality of the Rwandan genocide, when an estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were massacred in less than 100 days by predominantly Hutu killers.

At the country’s main genocide memorial and museum in the capital Kigali, more than 250,000 victims are buried. A series of rooms describe horrific details of the massacre - murders using everything from kitchen knives to machetes; husband and wives chained together and buried alive; and victims being stoned to death in pits. One room contains only rows and rows of the faces of victims frozen in passport photos, family snapshots and wedding pictures; another has glass display cases containing dozens of skulls and a mass of unidentified bones.

Most haunting of all is the children’s room, where pictures of some of the youngest victims of the genocide are displayed along the walls with a summary of their short lives and brutal deaths: Aurore, aged two and very talkative, burnt alive at Gikondo chapel; Thierry, aged nine months, macheted to death in his mother’s arms; Fillette, aged two, whose best friend was her dad, smashed against a wall.

More than two decades after the genocide, Rwanda still remembers the horrors of that time: the national annual mourning period, which begins on April 7 every year, will conclude next month on July 4.

It is a country which is trying to move on. It has one of the fastest growing economies in central Africa and Kigali’s business district has stylish buildings that would look at home in any modern city.

Thousands of tourists visit the country each year, with a chance to trek into the country’s highlands to see rare mountain gorillas one of the biggest attractions.

But the tiny landlocked country, only slightly bigger than Wales, has few natural resources to support more than 11 million people and around 40% of the population are living below the poverty line.

Around two hours from Kigali, including half an hour along a rutted dirt track, is the village of Ryakirenzi II, where Didanciene and Dativa live. It is a rural community of 1,600 people, where most families try to scrape a living out of growing crops such as bananas and sweet potatoes, or from raising a few pigs, goats and cows in their backyard.

In her home, which has walls made of cow dung and is simply furnished with wooden chairs and benches, Didanciene explains how she finds it difficult to forget the past, particularly during the official mourning time for the genocide. Speaking through a translator in the native Kinyarwanda language, she says: “That is a period when I remember my dad, and what he used to do for me. I get sick because of the emotion and I fail to do my chores.”

She recounts how her family had to flee their home when the killing started, and they joined thousands of others who tried to seek sanctuary in a church. Few managed to survive during the journey after being attacked by militia, backed by the then Hutu-led government, who were massacring the Tutsis.

“They were cutting everyone in pieces. I saw a lot, I remember a lot,” Didanciene says. “It is not really easy to tell unless you were here to see it.

“But some people reached a point where they preferred even to be shot as everyone was dead. I survived with my mum as everyone thought she was dead and I stayed with her.”

Didanciene, 44, spent the next 18 years caring for her mother, who was left housebound by her injuries. It meant she never got married, or had children – which in the community she lives in she says is “not really normal”.

As a result, she used to spend much of her time alone, only getting out of her house on Sunday to go to church and to tend her small banana plantation.

But her life has changed since she joined one of the village’s self-help groups - set up by Tearfund Scotland as part of the reconciliation process. Each self-help groups has around 20 members - all of whom are living in extreme poverty. The group saves together – with each member contributing a small amount such as 500 Rwandan Francs (less than 50p) - and then meets each week to decide what to spend the collective funds on.

The money might be used to buy a goat or health insurance for each member or help improve the toilet facilities - building a roof over a basic pit latrine - for a home which is particularly in need. The group’s members can also access loans, which they can use to support businesses such as growing and selling crops or buy essential school materials for their children.

At a meeting of the self-help group, members gather under a tree and sit in a circle to discuss their latest project, buying vital health insurance for each member. Didanciene takes on the role of leader, leading the discussion and encouraging others to contribute their ideas.

“When I am in the group, when I stand up as the leader, I feel so supported,” she says. “When they mention about the genocide and my name, I feel like I am their leader – not an orphan.”

Didanciene believes it is important to forgive the perpetrators of the genocide. “I should have died like any other person – to me there is a reason why I lived,” she says. “If I die without forgiving it would be like a sin.”

When she was asked to help spread the word about self-help groups, one of the people she thought of was Dativa, a mother-of-four who has two sons aged 20 and 22 years old and two daughters aged 13 and 11 years old and lives nearby in the village.

Dativa explains: “Mukashyaka came to me and said we have been called to mobilise people who are living in this area to come together and work together and get out of poverty. So we formed our own group and we started saving.”

When asked how the genocide impacted her own family, Dative readily admits her husband was part of the militia who carried out killings. But she is keen to emphasise how he admitted his crimes in the local courts – known as gacaca – which required the guilty to admit their crimes and seek forgiveness, and were set up across Rwanda as part of the truth and reconciliation process.

“During the genocide, things changed,” she says. “Before people were sharing everything, but all of a sudden people started to kill each other.

“My husband was imprisoned and during the local courts, he was tried. My husband was among those who came out to speak the truth and asked for forgiveness and was given a lesser sentence.”

Dativa, 49, uses loans from the self-help group to fund her business of making and selling banana juice and to buy school materials for her daughters. For her, what is happening, is a pathway out of poverty.

Another vital aspect of the project, she points out, is that once again neighbours are working together – even though in the aftermath of the genocide it was “not easy” to think about reconciliation.

“We come together with other people, we share ideas and plan together for things which you could not do alone.” She says. “No-one is dominant over than the other, we are one group who have the same ideas, direction and vision. Just look at the person who came to mobilise us - she was a survivor.”

Most of the members of the self-help groups are women, who are less likely to move around seeking work and leave the village. But father-of-four Dushimimana Alphonse, is a secretary of one of the self-help groups in Ryakirenzi II. He is using loans from the group to help buy materials for his carpentry business and hopes to be able to establish his own workshop one day.

Alphonse, 38, never took part in the genocide as it was against his Christian beliefs – but his parents did. When they fled into exile afterwards, he stayed in Rwanda but had to drop out of education as he had no-one to support him, and later trained as a carpenter to make a living.

He says members of the self-help group are all different, but the most important thing is they share the same vision.

“When you look at what happened in this country, there are people from the perpetrators’ side, there are people from the survivors’ side,” he says. “But we are together in the self-help group and there is no mistrust among us. We sit together, there is no fear among the members.”

Lynne Paterson, director of Tearfund Scotland, says the self-help groups are an important part of the charity’s ‘Ending Poverty One Village at a Time’ project, which works to help communities identify and tackle challenges themselves – rather than relying on help.

“These have been really successful, not only in enabling people to generate the means to provide for their own families, but crucially in bringing together the entire community, united behind the purpose of overcoming poverty and bringing about a better, more hopeful future for everyone,” she says.

“This is incredibly powerful when you think of the journey Rwanda has been on. It is a very different country two decades after the genocide, and projects like this one are helping to ensure communities continue to come together and flourish in the years ahead.”

The Scottish Government has provided £1.9 million of funding since 2012 for the ‘Ending Poverty One Village at a Time’ project, which covers 175 villages and also includes work to improve access to clean water, to boost food production and tackle issues related to climate change.

Rwanda is designated as one of the seven priority countries for Scotland’s international development work.

Minister for International Development and Europe Alasdair Allan said: "The Scottish Government has helped communities in Rwanda to access clean water, farm more productively, and increase their income through new businesses start-ups.

“Our backing is helping to bring peace and reconciliation to people who were pitted against each other on opposite sides of one of the most horrific genocides of recent times.”

Nyiramana Theresa, 53, a mother-of-seven who lost her two brothers and other close relatives during the genocide, is a member of a self-help group and borrows money to help her business selling sorghum grain, which can be used to make flour and drinks.

She too believes the groups are helping to bring hope for the future.

“Before you would feel there was no reason to interact with somebody whose family had participated in the killing, who has been a perpetrator,” she says. “You would not feel like sharing anything, you would not even eat together.

“Today we have communal farming, we sell produce together, we work together and we don’t see any problem.

“History should be forgotten so our children live in peace in our country and do not experience the same hardships we went through.”

*For more information on Tearfund visit: www.tearfund.org