Healing Through Stories

 _{My name is Jeanvier Nkurunziza, I was thrilled to be one of the 2024 Rwanda Delegation that traveled to go and experience the beauty of Rwanda while explorations and learning the means to be a Good Samaritan, as well as a unique individual that take a huge a part in making the world a better place. I traveled 7,192 mileage to Rwanda in the hopes to reconnect with my roots, because i have a lot of families in Rwanda , but also to learn more about Identify exploration, reconciliation and conflict Management with the help of Anne Frank Project staff, while assisting them with story based learning at Urukundo Foundation Center. The world “Urukundo” translates to Love. The school is full of vibrant feelings and kids are always happy and they are so full of positivity. It made me want to stay and i was fortunate because it opened my eyes to the possibility of being a teacher, because I believe i have what it takes to inspire and change lives through Education.} 

“There is a saying in Chinese, There are three truths: my truth, your truth and the truth”.

There are three truth because after the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda happened, the second form of Genocide was the denial, because of a lot of people were ignorant because they believed that the Genocide in Rwanda didn’t happen at all and for my Project, I wanted to focus on the works the Rwandan government and with the collaboration with it’s citizens have done to promote peace in the country because even after the atrocities, people still lived in fear, some still wanted to carry on the mission and kill, some families wanted to retaliate and those who flee the country didn’t want to return. The whole country was in a constant state of fear.

I have decided to pursue this opportunity because I grew up hearing all the stories about Rwanda whether they were encouraging, inspiring, or even threatening. I felt this feeling of wanting to go and see the country with my own eyes but also because I want to explore more on this country because it is deep rooted in who I am.  This experience will be one for the ages because it’ll help me understand who I am as a  person and also find ways to make mends for the past of my grandparents who perished during the genocide. Lastly I am looking forward to understanding my culture in a deeply meaningful level and finding more ways to incorporate forgiveness into my daily cadences and using Story Based Learning in any space that I am in because it has made me realize that using my body to express m emotions is crucial because I am constantly stressing and not remembering to breathe in and release, because a lot of times we underestimate how much weight we carry on our shoulders , and it can be overwhelming not having a platform or a structure to maintain a sense of balance, peace or sane in our lives. So this experience will elevate a lot of aspects of my life. 

I think it’s important for people who like to think that the atrocities committed against humanity here in Rwanda were likely to be just rumors, people need to come and find the truth for themselves out of denial. Because to deny a crime is to deny what is owed those harmed by the crime, and this response involves accountability and some people don’t want to be held accountable or responsible for their crimes and Conventional understandings of denial are rooted in the analysis of language used to negate the claims of the Genocide. 

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels was my Sustainable Development goal. My focus was learning about the steps and methods the country used to ensure that everyone’s story was heard, because after the Genocide people didn’t have a platform to vent or talk about their trauma, because it felt like everyone was coming after them, so people suffered in silence, but ultimately the government launches many campaigns to help people deal with grief, guilt and trauma, while seeking justice for families that loved their loved ones in the genocide, this step and many others have opened many doors to personal and vulnerable conversations that have helped million of families able to get the help they need, the communication among the Rwanda have helped the country move forward in educating youth and new generation about the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda . The government have invested interest in the future of it’s country and it is important for people who are remotely learning about the history here in Rwanda to seek understanding and actively find ways to speak out and share their insights regarding the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda while advocating for what they heard and learned for the betterment of the world to shape a better tomorrow, because this process it has showed the western countries that it is possible for people to work together after coming to face was seemed like a lie in the face of people outside of Rwanda and taught many people the important of forgiveness and the steps towards forgiveness.

Rwanda has 8 reconciliation villages that were built after the Genocide in 1994. Prison fellowship Rwanda in 2003 started to foster a peacemaking but also peace building and reconciliation. These villages now accommodate 4,080 people from families of released Genocide perpetrators, the survivors, returnees and vulnerable families in the communities.

Those groups lives in these villages because they have accepted to come and live together as the result of a long propose of community building, community development, peace building and practical reconciliation. The community leaders have also addressed both psychological and socio- economic needs of individuals and communities is essential for their overall recovery and resilience so now now PFR is monitoring more than 600 self-help groups that are conducting different socioeconomic activities. These groups are composed of people who graduated from community healing spaces and people who are still healing from the genocide, because you have people who participated in the Genocide, there are women who got raped, there are children or youth who got traumatized from hearing what their families went through, there are people who are now returning after 20 plus years from their refuge and there are survivors who stayed and survived. So there is a have a large of people that are the byproduct of the Genocide, and everyone’s needs a different kind of therapy, whether it is physiological, emotionally and mentally. The Nation has entered a new age of embracing it’s tragedy and has established many programs to help people seek the help they need. I think other countries needs to see this kind of work and implement it in their nation building plans, because each country faced some sort of issues whether it is in the past or it is currently happening. Because the decision made today, will impact everyone today and the years to come and i think it is important for every country to show interest in the investment of a better future, and the best time to start is today.

I was also able to sit and listen to two testimonies, one from the perpetrator and one from the survivors, it was important to understand both stories because in the end, they are all Rwandans, because one was manipulated into believing in the destructive ideology and how Genocide against Tutsi was necessary for sake of the country and the one was stuck in trying to survive in a warfare but also trying to preserve the history of her existence. They live in Nyamata’s mbyo reconciliation village, they have forgiven each other and they are neighbors. Her house is facing his house, they eat together and they are like a family now, they both said that

“ Forgiveness is a long journey that requires motion rather than words”.

“ The leaders of this country taught us about the genocide plan around 1950s, it took 30 years of us learning and them planning this cruel and inhumane work, we were led to believe that getting rid of Tutsi would make our country a better country for us and our kids, because if you were Tutsi , you owned a lot of cattle, If , you are a cultivator, you don’t own much cattle, you are a Hutu. And after we gained our independence in 1962, although the Tutsi maintained their authority over us, we killed over 100,000 Tutsi and some fled to Uganda and Tanzania and the killing continue until the 1994 which ultimately resulted in Genocide we know today. But now i have served my sentence and I live in this reconciliation village, people were first scared of me but now after many years, I have helped this community you see today and I have made good friends with people you see today.

Perpetrators: “I was born and raised to believe that what I was doing was right ensuring the safety of this country, I had to annihilate the opposite side and due to years and decades of learning the lie of the ideology. I took a part in the mass murder of people that were once my neighbors and after years of understanding my actions, here I am today living among the survivors ,the victims and the generation of people who had left due to the fear of being killed”

The day the Genocide started, I was in my farm and I heard gun shooting and when i got home, I saw bodies on the street, so I rushed to my house, and I saw horror, my mom, father and siblings, all dead. Our house was robbed and everything was trashed around, I ran to hide in the church, but it was full, they squeezed me in, we heard shooting outside, so me and other people ran out and went to hide in the forest, and I spent the next 100 days raining and hiding until the killing stopped, I came back and gave my family a proper burial. I had to start from scratch because i was left with nothing. It was hard butI prayed and prayed and God answered, here I am living with other survivors and perpetrator. We have forgiven each other, but it took of praying and forgiving on my part, because they killed my family, but now we are neighbors and we do everything together

Survivor:

“After countless attempts by the perpetrators, I survived but at what cost, if it meant, losing my family and my faith, because during those dark days. God had abandoned its people and the country had become a ghost town. There I was fighting for the sake of my life. It wasn’t easy but here I am sitting next to the person who participated in the genocide. Our houses faces each other, and it has been an ongoing process of forgiving him and other perpetrators. Satan took a form and did his bidding in my country and create a 100 day period of screams, torture, abuse, absolute silence, excruciating suffering and pain, and death. But here we are rebuilding what was destroyed.”

 _{The most word that i heard when i was hearing the survivors and the perpetrator talk about the most was forgiving. I was encouraged to reflect back to my own personal experience whether they happened when i was still in Africa or here in United States. I realized that nobody really taught me how to forgive, but I also realized that i didn’t do a lot of forgiving when i was growing up because i didn’t grow up with people who were constantly reminding me that i was black or i didn’t belong, until i got to United States, although things are different now but there are moments in my life that i remember vivantly that made me feel like i didn’t want to live in a country that view me as less. So I wanted to connect with worlds Rwanda and United States in a form of a poem} 

I didn’t learn how to forgive at a early age, so I allowed the old pain of mine grow, and there I was begging for my soul to heal, and the wounds were soaking out stained water, so I watched as the worms crawled in my skin and I’ve stitched my wounds with more pain, That opening up felt was like pitching needles in my body, and being vulnerable felt like selling my soul because I was never good with words, So I lingered in the air as I attempted to continue to find ways to feed the hole, With pain and alcohol, as I wait for it to finally swallow me whole because it left me in a pile of regrets as everything else is laid to rest while, I’m stuck with one foot inside of the door and the other is willing to let me tore my heart out and throw it at the feet of others. I’ve suffered for so long that the pain is embedded into me and this story of mine holds me in a place of hostage as I battle to find a way to escape it. But it is good now that I’m not the only victim of the generation trauma that lays in my blood. My first step is finding peace in the same place that broke me while I embrace the consequences of the genocide.

Today we had the opportunity to go to the memorial and get the full history of the genocide. This country has become a symbol of peace, stability, prosperity, unity and forgiveness because of the history that has embedded within the nation. There’s yet more to accomplish in this country, and I am confident to say that this country will continue to grow, inspire, empower its citizens expand beyond the horizon 

The Kigali Genocide memorial was opened on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide in April of 2004 on a site where over 250,000 people are buried. These graves are a clear reminder of the cost of ignorance. It is also a permanent memorial to those who fell victim to the genocide and serves as a place for people to grieve those they lost.

My heart shattered and my mind couldn’t find peace, so I wanted to share my experience as well as my pain in a poem, because words weren’t enough. This piece is called I Visited A Garden Full of Flowers

I visited a garden full of flowers Beneath the flowers, I saw a stack of relics so I stood there as my heart bled tears, and the bones starting crumbling within I stood there as my mind started searching for my name, as sadness linger in my form as I suffocated myself trying to melt happiness in each part of my soul but my soul tore my comfort to shreds, as my skin attempted to grow a limb So that it could fit every bit of my pain In the palm of my hands and there I was collecting all the trauma from the flowers that held onto the earth for so long that I felt fear creeping through my finger tips and there was an empty nest inside my mouth that I couldn’t fill with words So, I stood there silently as I begged for my soul to return So, I could amend the pain in an exchange to get back on my feet i was in so much hurt, and my soul started to rot because of the roots of the garden But none of these flowers were meant to bloom but not eulogize nightmares because my body was installed with fear that I can’t escape apart of me don’t want to return to this part of history but I knew there were scattered pieces of me that were waiting for me to return them back home So, I layered them to rest and mourned in the garden cherishing their memories that they left behind

The Kigali Memorial site has a exhibition of children’s memorial with their names, their favorite toys, their last words and the manners of how they were killed and i was able to write a piece about their dreams

If I ever get a chanceI hope to place all the unfulfilled dreams and insert them all in the pages of my childhood book, So that their stories can get passed on Perhaps, i will decorate my room with their dreams, and I’ll plant their dream in my garden, and let them bloom into beautiful plants I will demand light to pour and overfill every inch of this world and scare away any shade of darkness, I will allow life to guide me back to the trail of their dreams so that I can remind their souls how good they were as I carry their kindness and selflessness with me around the world, I’ll create memories and hang them in my room so that they can live inside my heart and my heart will shout “ encore “ encore” “ encore”As I remember how beautiful it is to be alive

Nyamata Memorial Site

“ _{This is one of Rwanda’s six national Genocide memorial that was desacralized by the Roman Catholic Church on the 11th April of 1997” which was transformed into a memorial site of the victims of the Genocide, it holds the victim’s clothes and their belongings. It has a vault underneath that is the houses the skulls of victims and other human remains. Female is buried in this Church memorial site. Behind this site, there is a mass grave containing over 50,000 genocide victims. In Addition, it is where Antoinette Locatelli is buried. She was murdered way back in 1992 on march 9th because she was reaching out in regard to let the government know that they should stop killing Tutsi. There’s a placard explaining her life and work in Rwanda.} ”

“President Paul Kagame posthumously bestowed upon Locatelli a medal of honor on the 4th July 2010, during the ceremonies of the 15th anniversary of Liberation Day”

These programs have helped people and shape the Rwanda country we now know. There have been countless testimonies from people that were in involved in the mass killing, the survivors but also the returnees because now people who confessed their crimes, were able to get their years reduced and have helped rebuild the country, and they placed them in reconciliation villages so that they could amend their sins but also seek forgiveness from the survivor’s families and neighbors. The prison fellowship program Rwanda promotes and advocates for this program, so that these people can serve and build their communities but also take the long journey of forgiveness.

 _{The government collaborated with Aegis and other partnership to ensure the safety and well being of people were being met. They established a lot of programs to help the survivors and returners to cope with their trauma and pain, in doing so, a lot of people were able to open more and seek the emotional, and mental help. A lot of people in these programs realized that it would also benefit this generation and upcoming one, so that nobody could manipulate people into practicing another genocide but also allow the young adults to take part in rebuilding the country so that everyone in the country know and understand the history, in way to promote peace and education through the country} 

After this launch, The Aegis Trust launched Peace and Values education at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in 2008. With the help of Rwanda's Ministry of Education and in 2013 the program expanded to 22 districts. The numbers showed success in changing attitudes and behaviors among students and their communities. In 2014, the Rwanda Education Board included Peace and Values education in Rwanda's new schools curriculum. So that the Education can reach to every student, as well as the resources need to access any kind of help to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself . Today, what began as a pilot in the Memorial has made an huge impact in education of 2.5 million Rwandan students every year and the success grows rapidly each year. With this success, Rwanda receives a lot of attention and people across the world goes to Rwanda to gather enough informations in attempt to try and find the best strategy to improve their countries. This particular decision has made a huge impact on Rwandan people because it align with the core values of promoting peace, not just among the parents, perpetrator, survivors, returnees, but importantly the students. Because like what Malcolm X, influential African American human rights activist (1925-1965) said “.“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” It is essential to create bridges like these to directly focus on the wellbeing and peace of the whole nation. Rwanda have prioritized their decisions to ensure that no person is left behind, whether it is a parent, a visitor, student, perpetrator, survivors, and returnees. This also presents personal growth and civic engagement in a way to actively understand the issues and concerns of the civilians in a way that shows understanding what the nation needs while promoting opportunities for people to have access to resources such as education, healthcare, economic and adequate shelter.

Testimonies from people who’ve went through Peace Value and Education through Aegis Trust at Kigali Genocide Memorial

“Peace and Values Education reaches every student in Rwanda today. It’s changing the country. “ Ntore Teacher

“I went home with two duties; to forgive the killers of my family, and to teach my students critical thinking.” Albert Rutikang aTeacher and survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi

“We failed in Rwanda. We failed in Srebrenica. But you are writing a different future. “ Ban Ki Moon UN Secretary General, 2007-2016

“Peace Education and Trauma Healing are two pillars supporting upstream prevention of violence. They provide a path to reconciliation and community resilience against dangers of division. However, economic crises and hunger can still leave young people vulnerable to radicalization, recruitment to armed militia, and sexual exploitation. Aegis is therefore starting a resilence initiative, adding economic investment in sustainable livelihoods as a third pillar. This will target communities at risk or recovering from mass atrocities, including refugees fleeing conflict.”  https://www.aegistrust.org  for more information

The country is doing everything it can to support everyone’s needs and they are hoping that peace education and Trauma healing not only will it help the survivors and the new returnees share their stories, but also it will encourages people to reach out for help, because they know that they are people who are still hesitated to reach out because they are afraid that their families turn away from, other families will try and retaliate and their families will disown them. There is still fear among some community individuals but they are established many programs to help people cope with their guilt, shame and traumas.

But the Peace and reconciliation have seen tremendous results and their hope is that is achievable anywhere. Today the leaders in communities out of Rwanda are calling on the Kigali tailored Memorial to partner in development of locals tailored peace building to South Sudan, Kenya and beyond in hopes that this such work can save countless lives, but there is so much remains to be done. So the important part is addressing any issues could be a direct response to a Genocide which is why there is a way to distinguish or prevent it from happening and the first step is teaching about it and educating people to identity the steps for instance, there is a continuum of violence.

1. poor living conditions: Basic physical, psychological and spiritual needs of whole groups of people are not being met.

1. Refuge in a group: Individuals turn to an existing group support and protection.

1. scapegoat: The group tends to blame some other group for their life problems.

1. Marginalization: The group is being continually devalued and marginalized.

1. Destructive Ideology: The group turns to leaders who promote negative ideas and destructive ideology.

1. Absence of active bystanders: The passivity of witnesses or bystanders allow the evolution of increasing violence.

1. Past history of victimization: Certain societal/ cultural characteristics facilitate this continued violence, including extreme respect for authority and a past history of victimization.

1. Manipulation of people: Through their unhealed psychological wounds and manipulation people are more inclined to accept to take part in violence against groups they see as threatening.

1. Dehumanization: Increasing violence gets justified through increasing demonization and not see the other group as human anymore.

1. Genocide: A failing state and the presence of war make it more likely that these conditions lead to extreme violence such as genocide.

 ^{Continuum of Benevolence Constructed by Thomas Vincent Flores inspired by the work of Ervin Staub} 

• Indifference: Having no interest, concern, or sympathy for others. Also Fear, Mistrust, Anger and Resentment at this stage

• Opening up: Being open to other ideas, other stories, other explanations, other people

• Acceptance: Agreeing to receive something that's offered

• Respect: A positive feeling of esteem for another person; to be able to listen and learn from other points of view without prejudice; dignity

• Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another

• Caring: (service towards others): displaying kindness and concern for others

• Connection: When a person feels a positive relationship with someone else

• Community: A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals

• Love: (outward, towards others):a deep feeling of compassion. trust, caring, giving towards others

• Peace: Harmonious relations, free from disturbance, conflict, anxiety, or tension

Here are more Testimony from people in Peace value and Education

 ^{You can’t learn peace on empty stomach’. “Peace and Value Education reaches everything in Rwanda today. It’s changing the country”.}  

 ^{The steps have been achieved in Rwanda, so they can replicated elsewhere.”}  

 ^{The experience of Aegis in Rwanda, if well utilized, well bring peace to the entire continent”.}  

 ^{I was still planning to kill when i joined the peace training programme, “ Thank you for saving and the lives of the people i was going to kill in revenge.”} 

 _{This experience has made me a better version of myself, It has taught how to appreciate my life, as well as people in it. A lot of times, we are prone to our first world problems that gets embedded in our lifestyle for so long that we don’t see how good our lives are despite the microgressions we face. This experience has supported my academic goal because it has showed me that i can still move forwards even if there are challenges and obstacles in my way, i just have to believe and I have people who are willing to help me with anything that i need. I am happy that I was able to experience Rwanda and to have a platform to share my knowledge and experience, I give a huge thanks to everyone was involved with this experience with me, Professor Drew Kahn, Jonise Hall} 

The tour guides, 2024 delegation students and a huge thanks to Christina Heath

 clgiunta@buffalo.edu 

 https://www.buffalo.edu/eln/about-us/who-we-are/our-staff.html