The song

I was invited by Ibuka, the umbrella association for genocide survivor groups, to attend a five day narrative therapy training delivered by folks from the Dulwich Centre in Australia that has developed this therapeutic and community approach to healing. Present were about twenty-five were Rwandan counsellors/survivors employed by Ibuka to work with genocide survivors around the country, and perhaps twenty foreigners with a liking for this approach.

I missed the first day but it didn’t matter because of what happened on the morning of the second day. This French guy, Pierre, got out his guitar and sang a song to a quiet attentive smiling group. Then a wild applause. Here’s why.

The day before the Rwandans had wanted to discuss ‘how do we live side by side with perpetrators?’ The facilitators collected their words, knowledge, and understandings of what they already knew about this with the intention of creating a document for them.

In the narrative approach the story of the desire to live, resilience, hope, in short the story of life, sits beside the story of suffering and loss to create a braided double story. The story of intelligent resilience is so often less familiar than the story of sorrow and to have that drawn out and mirrored back has a healing power.

The Rwandan's words became the basis of the song. Pierre sang their words back to them and were visibly moved and strengthened.

Later I asked a Rwandan man how the day was going for him. “Great,” he said. “What in particular?” I asked. “Everything was great,” he said. “But the very best part?” I said. “The song,” he said, “the song was the very best part.” I agreed.

Pierre got out his guitar a couple more times during the workshop and the group sang along more enthusiastically each time. But at the very end, at the closing of the training, the song was transformed. There was no guitar and Pierre stood back in the group. There was an electric piano played by a Rwandan man and the lead vocal was the young man who had organized the training and who had invited me. The song was theirs now.

There were lots of things I didn’t like about this training, lots of moments that I would have facilitated very differently, lots of lost opportunities for a deeper engagement. I didn’t feel the question ‘how do we live together’ was addressed in a meaningful way after the initial harvesting of knowledge and the reflecting back.

There was too much talking to rather than with, too much trainer ego disconnected from the group, too much self-importance about the approach. Too much agenda drift. I was sometimes bored, sometimes frustrated. But that’s not what has stayed with me.

What I hold now is the process of reflection, which happened several times. The moments of careful attending to what is said, to witnessing at multiple levels, to honouring the speaker with your full presence, to taking the time to craft the words to communicate how you have heard, what you have heard. The carefully written and heart-felt closing words, written and read ritualistically by the internationalists were received generously and warmly. The song.

These moments are a rare and precious gift and they touch in a healing way the deep survivor wound of the impossibility of ever telling what really happened, how it really was, how you manage to go on every day. I was glad to be there.