can you help?

It’s about money of course, that’s what I’m going to ask for your help with, but it’s about so much more than that. It’s about bringing stories from rural Rwandan villages to the nation to inspire and encourage. It’s about young people choosing a new way; about older people struggling to make peace after committing and suffering through the most horrific of crimes. It’s about two boys becoming friends across an ethnic divide (the power of friendship, Jan2012), about perpetrators of genocide and the survivors of the families they killed joining hands to commemorate the genocide (tell the world it’s possible, Dec2011), about a man’s journey to make peace with a woman after killing seven members of her family (reconciliation, April2011), about a community of perpetrators approaching survivors, this time using their farm tools to cultivate and help rather than to kill (musekeweya June2010).

It’s about a feisty group of women in a dusty place called Nyagatare up near the north-east border who took a peacemaking training some years ago. Before, they mistrusted each other; those who lived through the genocide could not talk to each other. Now, they say, “The first thing here is urukundo, love, and the second thing here is working together.” Now they accept each other, speak up in community meetings, analyze community conflicts, act as peacemakers when new refugees come to the community, and raise goats together so successfully that they gave 60 away to the new refugees. “Can you imagine,” one woman said, “women in a village in Rwanda doing this?”

Mary, chairlady of the group

Members of the group in front of their grain mill

It’s about an association of beekeepers on the road west to Kibuye and Lake Kivu, an association of ex-prisoners and survivors who strengthen their commitment to unity by climbing steep hillsides together to tend their bees. Therese, a survivor, invites the visitors and the group into her house to sit and talk. She wants to show us that perpetrators of the genocide are welcome here. Therese is not well, and the ex-prisoners take her to hospital and cultivate her fields as they try to learn how to live with what they have done.

survivors on the hillside

together with ex-prisoners

and the bees

Moses and Therese

It’s about a child during the genocide, a small but extraordinary child of eleven years, a Hutu girl, who rescued a baby that was lying across the body of her dying mother, a child who then carried that baby on the long flight of Hutu to the Congo and back, who became sister and mother and friends to that baby against tremendous adversity and impossible odds. It’s about the 18 year old student that baby has become, who wants to tell the nation that she likes living with her sister/mother and that Hutu and Tutsi can live in peace.

These are just some of the stories we’ve been collecting for an exhibition on peace making after genocide. There’s more - like the community of ex-prisoners, genocide survivors and ex-combatants on both sides of the war who have come together to farm in peace, and like the child of a deceased perpetrator who participated in a dialogue process and took it upon himself to provide recompense to the survivors.

This exhibition is important, if it is properly crafted. It will show peacemaking from below, not imposed from above; it will show the green shoots around the country that can encourage others to make different choices. It will not show one journey to reconciliation but a range of stories at different levels, so that everyone can find themselves portrayed, somewhere. It will ask, what is peace, what is citizenship? It will be a traveling exhibition that will eventually be used for teacher training, student workshop and community visits.

The problem is that the Aegis Trust that manages the Kigali Genocide Memorial (and for whom we work) is struggling to find the funding to keep the education program going and to develop this exhibition and outreach project. We are only here until the end of April, and want to take this exhibition to be fabrication ready. So that brings me back to the question, can you help?

It will cost $3,000 to get ready to fabricate. This includes finishing the field research (car rentals, translation, token donations to participating organizations, etc.), paying a fantastic graphic artist who will be doing illustrations for the genocide stories, and having the final text translated into Kinyarwanda. Funding is being sought for fabrication and delivery, but it is not immediate and does not include development. This funding will not arrive before we leave.

There’s one more thing. An extra $500 would make real the dream of one of the associations of ex-prisoners and survivors that we met with. They want to come to Kigali, to the memorial centre to visit the mass graves and the exhibitions. $500 would pay for a bus for 25 group members to come for the day (a 3 hour trip each way), offer them lunch and refreshments and a mini workshop. To see these people at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, killers and survivors together, to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the genocide…well, we could come home happy.

So we’ll set a target of $3,500, and if you are generous and we meet the target, then the community association can realize their dream.

If you want to make a donation, email me at ziegler.maggie@gmail.com