IRIN, humanitarian news and analysis by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on Imidugudo, which translates as “reconciliation village”, in Nyamata, 30km south of the capital, Kigali, an experiment whereby genocide survivors and confessed perpetrators live in the same community, in small tin-roofed houses they built themselves. The village is the brainchild of Pastor Steven Gahigi, an Anglican clergyman who survived the genocide by fleeing to Burundi with his wife and two children. His mother, father and siblings all died and Gahigi thought he had lost his ability to forgive.
Before the Rwandan genocide, Mutiribambi Aziri and Jaqueline Mukamana were neighbours in the town of Nyamata, south of the capital Kigali. When the 100-day slaughter began in April 1994, Mukamana, a teenage Tutsi student, and Aziri, a Hutu farmer, found themselves on opposite sides as 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias, known as the Interahamwe, and ordinary Rwandans.
Mukamana went to fetch water from the community well and returned to find her entire family hacked to death by neighbours. She hid in the fields and then fled on foot to neighbouring Burundi.
Aziri was one of those whipped up into a killing spree by Rwanda’s hard-line Hutu administration. He did not murder Mukamana’s family but he admits to killing some of her neighbours with a machete.
Thirteen years later, they are neighbours again, chatting on the dusty roads and attending church services together.
Read it all here.
HT to epiScope