So proud to be a woman.

This experience deserves a separate entry.

During our week in Butare, we heard from two different women’s cooperatives—a women’s farming cooperative of genocide survivors and a women’s association of survivors and wives of perpetrators.  We visited the first group of women on their farm, where they grow maize and bananas, until it started raining and we moved our conversation inside.  The group formed in 2008 when the women joined together to give testimonies in the local court system called Gacaca.  (A note on Gacaca—pronounced like Gah-cha-cha: this was a traditional judicial system used by earlier groups in Rwanda to deal with crimes committed within a community.  Local authorities and community members met together in a common space to hear testimonies and pass judgment on perpetrators.  It was revived to deal with the massive numbers of participants in the 1994 genocide, a totally grassroots movement to deal with the crimes on a local level.)  The women shared their stories, received therapy from a counselor, and started this communal farm in order to support themselves and their children post-genocide.

What these women asked of us was to share their stories.  They were brutally raped in 1994, sometimes by hundreds of men.  Over the years, they’ve struggled with the unwanted children and cases of AIDS that were thrust upon them during that year.  After experiencing the immediate trauma a single case of rape can cause, these women held within in them constant reminders of that horror; they called them “children of the Interhamwe” (the Interhamwe was the main rebel group during genocide) and the soon-to-be mothers separated themselves from the rest of their community out of shame.  Some attempted abortions, in a country where abortions are illegal.  Most struggled with the hate they felt for these products of rape.  They gave birth to these children and tried to raise them within a country devastated.  The government provided no program to help these children of rape victims, yet so many programs sprang up to help with the massive numbers of orphans, their parents killed in genocide. 

So amid all of this trauma, this anger, this sadness, what did these women do?  They started a farm—and EMPLOYED FORMER PERPETRATORS.  They have unbelievably forgiven.  They treat their kids like their own and live side-by-side with those who raped them and killed their families.  They say, “Forgiveness is necessary.  We have to move on.  What else can we do?”  These incredible women have a strength, a courage, a bravery, that is unmatched anywhere.  I mean, they could laugh.  How incredible is that?

That day made me feel so proud to be a woman.  If these women can go through all that they have gone through and come out of it with that much love and forgiveness in their hearts, then there’s hope. 

The second women’s group met us in a dark, crumbling building across from the local school.  To reach the building, we had to cross a field full of rambunctious children on their recess.  The second our “muzungu bus” drove up, every single one of those hundred kids started waving and yelling “Hello!  Komera!” which is a version of “Muraho”/Hello that literally translates into “Strength!”  We left the bus and all the kids came running, a whole hoard of screaming, smiling kids!  Each wanted to touch or shake our hands and they followed us, hands outstretched, all the way across the field.  But if one of us suddenly turned, the whole group of energetic school kids scattered, momentarily terrified of the crazy muzungus!

The women in that group met us with arms outstretched.  We greeted each woman with the little Kinyarwanda we know and they grinned hugely at our attempts and gave us big bear hugs, as if we’d known them for years. Their stories rang of the same perseverance, the same resilience, that permeates Rwanda in so many different ways—the reconciliation that has taken place here is a lesson to all.  This particular group has 1,768 members and bridges the gap between women survivors/widows (mainly Tutsi) and wives of perpetrators (mainly Hutu).  For obvious reasons, these two groups got along horribly at first and there was so much fear.  But now they live together as friends—true reconciliation.