Saturday - living on $80/year

The last few days have been so busy, it’s now late and I have to be up in 5hrs for a presentation so this blog post will be a very quick update of what we did on Saturday…more to come soon.

On Saturday we drove about an hour out of Kigali to Vista which is a small village near Nymata – south west of the city.

The day was filled with mixed emotions as we met Genocide survivors and Genocidaires who live together and are taking part in 15 weeks of social therapy classes as part of the healing process in Rwanda. We met a man whose entire family was murdered during the genocide (63 people) including his wife and children and who is now friends with a man that spent 10 years in jail for murder. Now, because of their social therapy sessions the two men are leaders in their community and one is helping the other build a home. They’ve been able to move past their hurt and pain to rebuild their community, and as someone who has had a family member murdered I struggled to listen to these two friends tell their stories and share their experiences of forgiveness. The level of and capacity for forgiveness in Rwanda is incredible and continues to amaze me and as I sat listening to them I struggled with my own reconciliation process. Not just for the hurt that was caused to me and my family, but to look into the eyes and shake hands with a convicted murder without judgement is still something that I try to overcome.

In addition to the social therapy that is taking place, co-ops are being set up in communities so they can grow crops and sell their produce in local markets. There is a strong surge to get out of poverty and have a better life and although everyone knows this will take time they also know that there is a better future ahead. Interestingly, the government is pushing for this in rural communities so that their capital city does not become the sole place of trade in the country, and the reason this is important is to prevent animosity and ultimately fear and hate amongst the people of Rwanda, which is what happened years ago and lead to genocide.

We spent time with children that are being sponsored so they can attend school. I had the privilege of interviewing the children and their families for one of the projects we are working on that pays for their education because they are orphaned or come from families that are extremely poor. Danny, an 11yr old who has 3 siblings has been attending school for a few years and loves going because 3 times a month he gets to eat rice. His parents are in their 60’s, which is equivalent to about 80 in developed countries, and they make approx. $80/yr. A typical meal plan for Danny’s family (and most families in the area) is cassava and bananas and they eat 2 times a day. Danny is very patriotic and loves his country. He wants to get an education so he can support his family and his country and get out of poverty which he says is “very, very bad.”