Bugesera, Rwanda—

Anastasie Nyirabasyati and Jeanette Mukabyagaju consider each other close friends.

The two women’s friendship was cemented one day in 2007 when Mukabyagaju left a child in Nyirabashyitsi’s care when he went somewhere.

This expression of trust came as a shock to Nyrabashiyizi, as Mukabyagaju, a Tutsi survivor who lost most of his family in the Rwandan genocide, handed over his child for the first time since they met. In the hands of a Hutu woman.

“If she could ask me to keep her child, it’s because she trusted me,” Nyrabashyizi said recently, describing her feelings at the time. “A woman, when it comes to her children, when someone trusts you to take care of her children, it’s because she really does.”

This is not always the case.

Both Nyirabashyitsi and Mukabyagaju were eyewitnesses to horrific crimes. But in the 19 years they have lived in a government-approved reconciliation village, they have come from opposite experiences to peaceful coexistence.

Nyirabashyitsi, 54, recalled the helpless Tutsis she saw at a roadblock not far from what is now the Reconciliation Village, when Hutu soldiers and militiamen began systematically killing them on the night of April 6, 1994. As Tutsi neighbors, people she knew faced imminent death.

The massacre was ignited when a plane carrying then-president Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was shot down over Kigali. Tutsis were blamed for shooting down the plane and killing the president. In 1994, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis were killed by extremist Hutus in a massacre that lasted more than 100 days. Some moderate Hutus who tried to protect members of the Tutsi minority were also targeted.

One of the victims, a woman who had been the godmother of her child, was later seen thrown into a ditch, Nirabashiits recalled. “It’s terrible, even shameful [to] Seeing this,” she said. “There was no doubt that we had no hope of survival. We thought we would be killed too. How can you see this and think you’re going to survive it at some point? “

As for Mukabyagaju, she is a 16-year-old girl temporarily living in the southern province of Muhanga while her parents live in Kigali. When she was unable to find refuge in the nearest Catholic parish, she hid in a toilet for two months without anything to eat or drink from the trenches until she was rescued by Tutsi rebels who were trying to stop the genocide.

“I hated Hutu so much that I couldn’t agree to meet them,” she said, adding that it took a long time “for me to even think that I could interact with a Hutu.”

The women are neighbors of a community of genocide perpetrators and survivors 40 kilometers outside Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. At least 382 people live in the Mbio Reconciliation Village, which some Rwandans use as an example of how people can coexist peacefully 30 years after the genocide.

More than half of the residents of this reconciliation village are women, and their projects—including a basket-weaving cooperative and a money-saving project—have united so many people that asking who is Hutu and who is Hutu seems like an outlandish task. kind of offensive. They are Tutsi.

An official from the Rwanda Prison Fellowship, a Kigali-based civil society group responsible for the village, said. An official of the organization said the women were regularly involved in the practice, thus creating an atmosphere of tolerance.

“We have a model here that we call practical reconciliation,” said Christian Bizimana, program coordinator at Rwanda Prison Fellowship. “Every time they weave a basket, they can engage more, talk more, go into detail. We believe that by doing this…forgiveness will deepen and unity will deepen.”

Women leaders in Rwanda, a small East African country of 14 million people, have long been seen as pillars of reconciliation, and Rwandans can now “see the benefits” of empowering women and confronting the ideology behind the genocide, prominent women leader Yolande Mukagasana said. Writer and genocide survivor.

Two of the three members of the Mbio Settlement Village Dispute Resolution Committee are women and have helped resolve conflicts ranging from family disputes to community disagreements, residents said.

Village leader Frederick Kazigwemo, who was jailed for nine years for genocide-related crimes, said the women’s activities set an example for children and “raised awareness of what the village was doing on the ground.” understanding of the real situation in terms of solidarity and reconciliation”. .

He said of the friendship between Nyirabashyitsi and Mukabyagaju: “It makes me happy. It’s something I never imagined… It gives me hope for what will happen in the future.”

Eighteen women are actively involved in basket weaving and meet as a group at least once a week. On a recent morning, Nyirabashyitsi and Mukabyagaju sat together making new baskets. A collection of their works is displayed on a nearby mat.

“When we came here, there was a lot of suspicion around us. It’s not easy to trust each other,” said Nyrabashjets. “For example, it wasn’t easy for me to go to Janet’s house because I didn’t know what she was thinking about me. But over time, and the more time we lived together, that feeling of harmony and intimacy came ”

Nyirabashyitsi and Mukabyagaju were the first to arrive in the village, which was founded in 2005 as part of the Rwandan Prison Fellowship’s broader reconciliation efforts. The group, part of the Washington-based International Prison Fellowship, hopes to create healing opportunities for genocide survivors so they can speak regularly with their perpetrators. There are at least eight other reconciliation villages across Rwanda.

President Paul Kagame’s rebel group, the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front, halted the genocide 100 days later, seized power and has ruled Rwanda unchallenged ever since.

Rwandan authorities have vigorously promoted ethnic unity between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi and Twa minorities, creating a separate government department dedicated to reconciliation efforts. The government implemented harsh criminal laws to prosecute those suspected of denying the genocide or promoting “genocidal ideology.” Some observers say the law is used to silence critics who question the government.

The Rwandan ID card no longer identifies a person by ethnicity. Lessons on genocide are part of the school curriculum.