Music: Mbahoze Nte
WS Countryside/hills/activity in roads/normality
Shot of water being drawn, poured into basin --> washing skulls
NARRATION
In Rwanda in 1994, over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a genocide that lasted one hundred days. The killing was carefully planned and orchestrated by Hutus then in power. Daphrose Mukarutamu was one of the survivors.
Images:photos of dead children / memorial/ putting photos on memorial
MUSIC
Daphrose: Where we are is where my house used to be from 1963 until 1994 when they demolished it. 16:33:51
Daphrose: There were 13 people in this home...11 children, me and their father..nine were killed and we are 3 remaining. 16:34:15
NARRATION
Hutu neigbours hid Daphrose in the ceiling space of their house. Eventually two of her surviving children were also smuggled into the ceiling space with her.
Daphrose has only recovered the bodies of three of her children. Five
are still missing.
Daphrose: (to camera) So many bad things happened and when I think of the life we led...I couldn’t come back to live at this place. 16:35:10
NARRATION
In July 1994, when the genocide ended, the countryside was devastated. Traumatised orphan children, who had witnessed the massacre of their families, came out of hiding.
Daphrose: I let all the children who had lost their parents come to me. Their parents were dead and I was alive. I had survived. So I said: “ Every child who does not have a family, a mother and father -- I will take care of them." 12:36:00
NARRATION
At first Daphrose took in about 25 orphans, eventually adopting thirteen of them.
Daphrose: At that time, I would come across different people-- widows who. would tell me about how they had lost their children. Some had lost one child, some two, some had lost all their children....Some would tell me how their arm had been slashed, or their back. I would hear different stories from different women.
NARRATION
Julianne lost everything in the genocide.
Julianne: People came and burnt our house. They killed my husband. I don’t know how he died. I’ve never found his body. I was carrying one of the children on my back and they killed him.
I tried to flee thinking they would kill me, but they refused to kill me. They would rape me the whole day. They forced my legs apart, different men all the time.
They took me to a valley where they killed people...One man told me to lie on top of the dead bodies.
One of the killers forced my head under bodies, as if to make me eat them. He pushed my head into the bodies.
NARRATION
Other women suffered from different forms of violence and humiliation.
Rangwida: A man came and said...Rangwida...Everywhere there is a Tutsi woman, we should do with her what we want. He removed his shorts and threw them away...he exposed his private parts and told me to kiss them...when I refused,he beat me with a machete on my back...it hurt so much. Then I kissed his private parts.
Daphrose: I decided that the best thing to do, as I couldn’t go and and call all the widows in the whole district to come and join me - I went to see the local leaders and asked them to gather all the the widows together in one place. (13:07:15)
NARRATION
Daphrose was determined that, against the weight of tradition, the women should take control of their lives.
Julianne: She was like a husband to us. She wasn’t in a position to give us back the children we had lost, but she gave us good heart.
Speciose: Our husbands had died. All our property was destroyed. Our houses were burned down. No one was there to take care of us. So we decided to set up an association and see how we can go forward. 17:30:4)
Daphrose: The first meeting was in September, but nothing much took place because people were crying, crying and crying. I told to them to stop crying, but they couldn’t stop and we ended the meeting without saying anything. 13:08:54
Daphrose: I said to everyone -- each time we come together, we all cry and and cry and when we cry we try to console one another. We should name our association “Duhozanye”, which means ‘consoling one another’ 13:16:35
NARRATION
The main problem was accomodation so the women decided to build houses for themselves.
Daphrose: Traditionally, women were not supposed to climb and build houses. But what could do we do? There were no men. No money. A problem was that it was taboo for women to wear trousers and there were none. So we advised women to build at night when the children were asleep...During the day we would make the mud bricks and keep them until evening. 13:20:43
Daphrose: None of us were builders so some of the houses were bent, some of them ramshackle. So all the time we had to repair them but they were very useful to us. We only had so many in each sector but because we had love for one another, we shared them. Among the original 60 there are very few that are still standing. 13:25:22
Images: house building/mud bricks/hut/photos houses ribbon ceremony/ of early meetings Julianne outside of her house
Daphrose: We started other activities...one of our objectives was to live happily... the second was to find some way of making money. By 1999 we had completed the house building project. The government knew us. We decided to start looking for funds to build our own offices. 13:28:25
Speciose: Daphrose and I would go the Ministries. She would bring up the idea and we would build on the idea. Everywhere we got a positive response. 18:07:58
...The good thing about Daphrose and I -- we feared nobody. So we didn’t let things bother us. We went for it. 18:10:54
NARRATION
They did get their office building, and with Daphrose and Speciose guiding the association, plans were made and projects were set up. The association led the way, rebuilding the lives of widows and orphans. It played an increasingly important role in the community and gained recognition both within and outside of Rwanda.
.
Daphrose: We bought this land. We raised some money as a group and we also got some donations.
We hired an expert to build it. But the women were involved in mixing the cement and making the bricks . The women played a part both physically and financially in building this centre.
NARRATION
Alongside their successes, the women take care to remember the loved ones they have lost, whose bodies continue to be recovered.
Break
NARRATION
Daphrose continues to care for both her own and her adopted children. They are normally away at school but they often come and stay with her. Young people are seen as the future. For them, the centre which Duhozanye has built is a focal point, as well as being the hub of many other community activities.
Montage of various activities/MUSIC.
Cut to sewing
Sewing lady - Asterie Mukakibibi: We started this activity right after the 1994 genocide. We had many orphans to look after. For those who didn’t go to school, we started this activity for them....
Those who could go back to school, they went back to school. The rest came here to learn...those who could not read and write....we taught them how to read and write and that’s why we have a blackboard. 01:38:50
Parents come and buy uniforms.
Sewing is a profession they learn as young girls and then they can go out and earn money. 02:01:25
NARRATION
In the woodworking shop, the Association also provides young men with training so that they too can have a livelihood.
Daphrose: We have bones all over the district which we are about to bury, so now they are making coffins.
We make beautiful coffins because we know the bodies that will lie in those coffins are our own people. 02:33:10
NARRATION
It is especially in the genocide anniversary months from April to July that recovered bones are cared for and given proper burial.
IV Daphrose Voice over: Most of the bodies we come across, and the bones that we see are people we know. They have been thrown in a hole, but when we dig them out and these bones have been retrieved and put in on one place...when we are handling them, washing them ... it’s as it you are washing your own child, your own husband -- a friend. You feel you are very close to them. It is really important to us. 14:18:35
NARRATION
One of the ways people find the remains of their loved ones is through the gacaca courts. These are community run courts which aim to establish the truth of what happened and to provide a route towards reconciliation. But the system is far from perfect. The Association provides support to those confronting the past.
Alegiza: Gacaca has advantages but it is a difficult experience because we meet with people who killed our families. That in itself is difficult, but sometimes they claim to have asked forgiveness but really they feel no remorse. 04:34:05
NARRATION
And the gacaca courts can fail to deliver justice leaving survivors unable to leave the past behind.
After her children were killed in the genocide, Alegiza adopted a young girl.
Alegiza: A few months ago when the girl was here at the house, a bad man came and raped the her. He made her pregnant and she got sick. She’s now in the hospital. She is sick and I’m not sure she will able to give birth to the the baby. On top that I have a problem...the person who made her pregnant is the person who killed my children. I am really worried. How am I going to take care of that child? How can I take care of the child of the person who killed my family? 04:22:
Daphrose: One of the biggest problems is the women who are HIV positive because of the genocide. They were infected when they were raped and now they are sick. And women are sick in general with the grief and pain of the past.
NARRATION
Seventy per cent of women who were raped during the genocide are now
HIV positive.
Rangwida: I have beans, millet and maize...my land is fertile but I’m not strong enough to cultivate it.. Usually Duhozanye gives me beans, seeds and then people I pray with at the Church come and help me do the cultivation.
I had a cow. I gave it up when I was sick. 08:18:05
NARRATION
Cows play an important role in the lives of the community.
Daphrose: Those cows are very precious to us. We see them as our own children, we see them as our own friend.14:04:24
Daphrose: Traditionally when someone gives you a cow you feel so great and so happy. We treasure all our cows. After the genocide we lost hope that we would ever get a cow again because we’d lost our husbands and cows were usually given to men. It was very rare that cows were given to women. 14:06:12
NARRATION
In 1999 the European Union donated money and the Assocation bought
eighty cows.
Daphrose: We had agreed that the cows would go to those who had already planted grass and had somewhere to keep the cows. But then we had a contract with everyone. The first female calf her cow would produce, would be handed onto the next person, so that eventually everyone in the group would get a cow. 13:38:20
Those cows are a poverty reduction programme, but apart from that, they provide us with our time of enjoyment because when the time comes to pass on the cows, we go and meet in one sector. They bring the cows and then we have entertainment. 13:39:26
Images: Cow ceremony
Daphrose: We used to think the role of women was to cook food, work at home, be at home. But now women are in Parliament and they are doing a good job. For example, Speciose -- she started as a coordinator for Duhozanye and after seeing how strong she was, how important, how brave she was, she was made mayor. And after being the mayor, after a short time, she stood for and was elected to Parliament. We are happy that now women are now being recognised.14:30:25
Speciose: Usually it’s the women who are leading everywhere. Not only in Parliament but in other places. They don’t chose you because they symapthise with you . They just choose you because you are capable of doing the job. 18:24:55
NARRATION
And it is not just here in Butare that women are taking on more roles. Forty eight per cent of members of parliament in Rwanda are women. This is the highest percentage in the world. 19:49:78
Speciose: It’s very important that Rwandan women be represented so we can change history...now we are going to make sure that Rwandan girls have equal rights with their brothers, that they go to school and they have the same knowledge. 19:33:06
Images: Daphrose at home with some of her children/ joking
Daphrose: The hopes I have in this country for the future are in the
teachings of peace and recociliation, and in the fight to reduce poverty. 20:02:58
It’s hard but we are ready and we feel we will be strong. That’s how we are in our life. Sometimes we are laughing, sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are crying. That’s how we live.
END
20:58:20