Written by Sarah Kyle and Kylie Akins
As part of a campuswide effort to promote reconciliation, a group of Rwandan students shared their stories of pain and healing during the Rwandan genocide, speaking to a packed Cone Chapel Monday night.Prosper Majyambere, Regis Ngaboyísonga, Alex Rugema, Patríck Niyibizí and Amlam Niragíre told a story unique to their country, one of immense pain and powerful healing.Student Association President Steven Ramsey, who drafted the “Celebrate: Reconciliation” project, said he asked the Rwandans to speak because he felt their story best embodied the process of reconciliation.”[Rwanda] is a testament to that act and to what humanity is capable of,” Ramsey said. “These guys are representatives of a place that has proved so much about what we can be as people, and especially as disciples.”To help understand the journey of the Rwandan people, Ngaboyísonga began the forum by telling students about the history of his country — a history that began not with blood- shed, but with cooperation.Before European colonization in the 1800s, Ngaboyísonga said Rwanda was a place of peace, where the main tribes, the Hutus, the Tutsis and the Twas, worked together to provide for the needs of the people.”At that time, the cultural tension was fairly low because they looked at themselves as friends, as brothers,” Ngaboyísonga said.”They shared the talents they had.”When the Belgians began to colonize in Rwanda, however, they brought with them the idea of an “identity compulsory card” that would state the tribe loyalty of each Rwandan citizen. While the system helped the Belgians distinguish between the different tribes, Ngaboyísonga said that the negative effects were insurmountable.”They would classify people based on their body length. … A Tutsi was a person who was very tall and had a sharp face. A Hutu would be somebody who had big muscles with a big nose,” Ngaboyísonga said. “They started looking at themselves as different. … The mutual respect that had represented the country was almost gone. … They started to see themselves as enemies.”By the 1990s, when tensions between the Tutsis and Hutus – who were now the main governmental force in Rwanda – were at a break- ing point, the divisions led to a genocide that would kill nearly 1 million Tutsis in 100 days, Rugema said.”The Rwandans were killed by their neighbors, and neighbors killed their neighbors,” Rugema said. “Fathers killed their daughters-in-law, sons-in- law. Rwandans lost hope for their community. They lost hope for their country. They were hopeless.”Rugema said that by the end of the genocide, more than 500,000 children were orphans, more than 60,000 women were widows, and numerous homes and buildings were completely destroyed.The process of reconciliation would require more than an apology, more than rebuilding. It would require forgiveness to the extreme, he said.”It wasn’t very much to build houses. It wasn’t very much to reconstruct roads,” Rugema said. “Rwanda was left with the challenge of reuniting people who had been in war against each other, who had been enemies, who had seen their neighbor killing their child.”While the process of reconciliation may never be completely finished for the Rwandan people, Amlam said that though their greatest struggle comes from the genocide, the country is finally starting to resemble the cooperation of years past.”Our pain comes in the genocide … [but] now, people can walk through the country as brothers and sisters,” Amlam said. “That is reconciliation through the church.”
