Make whole what has been smashed

“In Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus the angel’s eyes are wide open, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.
He looks as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His face is turned towards the past.
He sees catastrophe, wanting to awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed.”
Godelieve Mukasarasi is the angel caught in the past, but pushed towards the future.
In place of wings she has long tapering fingers; her gestures are decisive, harmonious, frequently touching her heart, her beautiful hand is open.
She often looks up to the sky, a habit accompanied by a smile which overwhelms the person who is looking at her; her cheeks become more rounded, her high cheekbones less pronounced.
She makes whole what has been smashed. She heals the wounds of the soul.
Reconciling with life Godelieve.
She lights up, she listens to women who have been contaminated by horror, contaminated by men who destroy, by AIDS, and by ignorance, the font of all hatred and disgust.
She holds out her tapered fingers and moves towards the future.
But the future in Rwanda is not simple. They talk about it, they spread their propaganda and they talk of reconciliation and of the thousand brilliant green hills, the clouds and the fertile fields. But what about the wounds of the past?
The bleeding wounds of the genocide?
Can they be healed? Yes, it is possible.
Reconciliation, but forgiving does not mean forgetting.
“April is approaching.
In my body I feel my aching wounds; the scars seem fresh and have never healed.
Although there are two months to go I already feel the rain falling, its sound, its smell.”
It was also raining that April of twenty years ago when the Genocide of the Tutsis started.
That is what the United Nations has decreed it will be called from now on.
Suddenly Agnes falls silent, overcome by a panic attack.
Godelieve sits down beside her and offers her some water.
Godelieve appears impassive; she listens to what Agnes is saying, she takes notes,
but she already knows her story well, just as she knows by heart the stories of thousands of women she has supported, enlightened and reconciled with life these past twenty years.
Names, dates, number of children and how many survived the genocide and how many were the result of war rape carried out methodically by whole squadrons infected with AIDS.
In those days in April, Godelieve had a dream.
She was standing in a large church and women and children were coming in crying, but leaving smiling, and she was there to welcome them.
And she a Hutu, who had rejected the aberration of the genocide, but paid a high price nonetheless.
At the end of 1994 she set up SEVOTA: Solidarité pour l’Épanouissement des Veuves et des Orphelins visant le Travail et l’Autopromotion.
Their headquarters is in Kamonyi district, about an hour from Kigali, where Godelieve had moved to some years earlier when she had just started her job as a social worker.
There are many SEVOTA women and they operate in small autonomous groups, sharing their experiences of being survivors and having suffered unspeakable violence.
Together they are free to talk about themselves, to talk about what happened without shame.
Social psychotherapy, individual and group sessions, a course of active participation accomplished together to counter post-traumatic stress disorder and encourage self-esteem and social reintegration.
Farida is the best at weaving baskets, when they meet on Tuesdays to work at Vestine’s house she is the one who checks the work of the others and adjusts any small mistakes; the others watch her and learn. Sharing.
While they work they chat about work, their daily lives, their children and, in some cases, the effort they have made to accept them.
It is not easy to love a child fathered by a man who raped you and perhaps killed your husband.
They laugh; gossip among women knows no boundaries.
One of the women asks with an embarrassed laugh if white women also have periods; I say yes, smiling at the innocence of the question. Not many white people can have been to Kamonyi.
I remember the story of a woman who did not want to wear underwear because she found the idea of washing it repulsive, the smell would remind her of what she had felt when she was raped. You can forgive but not forget.
Sabrina Bettoni, who has worked with Godelieve for years with the Italian nonprofit organization Progetto Rwanda (Rwanda Project), says, “In 1996 rape was declared a first-degree crime in the Rwandan organic law classification of acts committed during the genocide. It was recognized by the United Nations in the statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as a war crime, a crime of genocide and a crime against humanity.
The Tribunal adopted the definition of rape in 1998 on the basis of evidence of the women of SEVOTA, given during the trial against Akayesu, a local politician from the area they came from, who was the first to be accused of the crime of war rape.
Some of the witnesses, like Godlieve’s husband and daughter, were murdered as they were on their way to Arusha to give evidence.
In the same year the definition was also inserted into the statute of the International Criminal Court.
There have been many changes since then, both social and legal.
In the interests of a civil society, the Rwandan government has adopted important laws aimed at safeguarding the rights of women and encouraging their empowerment.
The approval of new inheritance laws in 1999 was groundbreaking; before that women were completely excluded.”
Not all women are aware of their rights and this is why the work of SEVOTA and other organizations such as Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe is crucial.
I met Godelieve on Urunana day, a monthly meeting with the women of SEVOTA. More than a hundred showed up, dressed in bright colours, singing and dancing while waiting for her. She emerged from the woods, and was greeted like a queen, like a Queen Mother, walking purposefully in her gold-coloured dress; her presence is pure light.
For hours the women took it in turns to talk to her, exchanging ideas, singing, sharing their daily lives, their prayers, their desires.
Concessa has the most beautiful voice; she sings even when she is alone at home or tending to her cow. Her children are dead and so are her brothers. Everyone.
It seems that her face does not want to reveal the past. Her gaze is lost in the space framed by a small window.
A small window through which she dreams of the future.
The future: the government of Rwanda is committed to Vision 2020, whose main aim is to transform Rwanda into a middle-income economy which would require an annual growth rate of at least 7%.
Agriculture is crucial to Rwanda and is the country’s main source of income.
Most who work the land are women: they are barefoot, the red living earth comes up to their ankles, their backs bent over in work that drives away the thought and the memories of death
This morning Godelieve is going to meet three women who live in Kimisagara, the poorest part of Kigali, far from the ordered cleanliness of the city centre. Godelieve is untiring and her telephone rings continuously.
Now she is talking to a woman in Ngamba, a district near Kamonyi.
The woman wants to get things off her chest, claiming that her jealous neighbours have poisoned her cows.
“The women want to meet and talk to me because I know how to listen. I attended lessons with specialists from the World Health Organization. I became an instructor at a national level, I followed a course held by a Canadian expert and, after studying for three years, it became easy to recognize women who had been traumatized.”
Forgiving does not mean forgetting. The women who survived have forgiven because “only by forgiving can you be forgiven.”
Christine starts to boil the corncobs to share with the other women who have met up at her house. She says softly, “I still believe in love despite everything and it is all thanks to SEVOTA.”
Godelieve moves away and the pink scarf covering her head becomes a small point in the chaos of Niabugogo bus station. I watch her, now distant, her elegant form slipping lightly away.
She is a woman who has learnt how to unite thousands of hearts, rescuing women who thought they were lost from the darkness of isolation. She has coloured pink the path of a generation beaten by suffering.
There is a pink dress hanging in Godlieve’s bedroom. I would like to see her wear it; it is the colour that girls are destined to wear, what sets us apart from boys. It is the colour of women.
In Rwanda it is also the colour of the prison uniforms of those accused of genocide who are awaiting trial.
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© Margherita Mirabella