The first reunion took place on the morning of 29 February with Godelieve Mukasarasi, the founder of Sevota, an organization that provides psychological, financial, social and educational support to women survivors and children born of rape.
It is thanks to her that we are going to meet about fifteen women and children with the aim of publishing this book by March 2021.

And her home is also the office of the association we are hosting. We are going to live at the rhythm of this woman who is nicknamed “the just” because of the role she played during the genocide.

His career path, however, illustrates his determination. A good student at school, her Hutu farming parents eventually agreed to allow her to continue her education. She becomes a social worker. It was in the commune of Taba that she met her Tutsi husband. They marry and have six children. They own the Ama Moro “Peace” bar, a business and farmland. They live happily until April 7, 1994. From that day on, the owners of an identity card bearing the mention “Tutsi” are shot on the spot. It is a real manhunt, a “game” hunt, followed by the killing of the victims, shot cruelly and like cattle. Godelieve’s husband and children are hiding in the hills. Godelieve is considered a traitor herself because she is married to a Tutsi. Her daughter is raped, but miraculously all survive. Godelieve keeps her promise and decides to help the surviving women and children. She then creates the Sevota association. With her husband, she also commits herself to ask for justice for the survivors of the genocide. They agree to testify before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In 1996, a few weeks before she was due to appear, her husband was brutally murdered along with his daughter Angélique and nine other people. Godelieve gets up and continues her mission of support for the survivors. As she says so well, these women give her dignity and she helps them regain their dignity.

For 25 years, it has been entirely dedicated to Sevota, which has 80 associations and more than 2,000 members. Her phone has been ringing day and night: calls from women and invitations to attend meetings.

This Sunday, March 1, a meeting is taking place in Kigali that invites couples from mixed marriages (of different ethnicity), young people born of rape and women survivors to meet and share their stories.

Godelieve is like their “mother”. When she takes the stage, she is applauded for long minutes before delivering a moving and hopeful testimony, then she gives us the floor to present our project and especially to remind us that this book of testimonies is their book so that they can reappropriate their memories, their lives?

At the end of the meeting, a dozen women and young people are waiting for us to make an appointment. We leave with the conviction that we are only “transmitters”, “voice bearers”. A voice so long kills…

It was the first reunion in Kigali.

In the next episode, the reunion with the women we met in July 2019.

Anne Pastor