The second key moment my project looks at is the Genocide against the Tutsi, which took place in Rwanda from April to July of 1994. Each year in Rwanda, April 7th begins a national week of mourning, the start of 100 days given over to ‘Kwibuka’ (which means remember in Kinyarwanda). The remembrance period provides opportunities for public commemoration, private reflection, and honouring the victims of the genocide. You learn more about Kwibuka from the Ishami Foundation.
Before my next post on the latest work I’ve been doing on post-genocide writing, I would like to introduce a volume I edited that was published in 2019. As we move towards this year’s remembrance period, it is one way people can learn more about Rwanda, as well as remembering together one of the most horrific events of the twentieth century.
After the Genocide in Rwanda: Testimonies of Violence, Change and Reconciliation gathers together previously unpublished testimonies from individuals who lived through the Genocide against the Tutsi. Their stories do not simply paint a picture of lives left destroyed and damaged: they also demonstrate healing relationships, personal growth, forgiveness and reconciliation. The book presents a range of perspectives on what happened in Rwanda in 1994, and shows how people have been changed by their experience of genocide. The book includes a Foreword by Esther Mujawayo-Keiner and an Afterword by Malaika Uwamahoro: two outstanding Rwandan women I’ve had the privilege of working with.
The book is a result of a three-year collaborative project between UK scholars in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and archivists and translators in Rwanda. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the research approached memory work through the lens of positive psychology, interrogating the concept of post-traumatic growth and its potential relevance for the life stories of Rwandans after the genocide. The interdisciplinary and intercultural exchanges throughout the project gave rise to fascinating insights, not least at the level of language. I worked with a team of Rwandan transcribers and translators to render, in English, Kinyarwanda testimonies originally recorded by Aegis Trust staff, survivors of the genocide themselves. Multiple discussions were had about how best to translate both specific terms in Kinyarwanda, and the emotions expressed in the original interviews. The long process of meticulous translation and editing is demonstrative of an ethics of care so central to work on the genocide.
In terms of archives, the project contributed Kinyarwanda transcriptions, as well as written English translations, to be accessible alongside the original interview testimonies in the Genocide Archive of Rwanda. This increases both the accessibility and circulation of these testimonies, and contributes to the increasing digitisation of the archive, hosted at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi. Whereas the archive organises testimonies according to its own categorisation, as an editorial team, we chose to organise the book’s testimonies thematically. We also wanted the collection of Rwandan voices to reflect, in some way, the present reality in Rwanda of living alongside people who had vastly different experiences during the genocide.
Read an extract from the book or purchase it here.