Not a lot of "processing" in this one, but i want to share our house-visiting this week. It was pretty impactful to me.
This week we kind of focused on people particularly affected by the genocide, considering how we’re still a pretty heavy time of the mourning season in April. At the first house, we found a lady who’s father sent his children away to Butare when the genocide began while he stayed behind in Kigali. She married and had a baby, but Butare turned out to be no safer than Kigali … her husband and baby were killed;
she’s 32, so she must have been like 17 when the genocide occurred. Her father was killed in Kigali genocide (I think other family as well … the only survivors were half-siblings). Then, she “took” a husband during genocide – it was a forced marriage and she was raped. She started getting sick in ’03 and found out she had HIV in ’04 (from genocide). Her stepmother at first wouldn’t let her live in father’s house and continues to “encourage” her to sell the property, but its all she has left of her family. She’s been in mourning big time these last few weeks – she calls it “traumatized.” I SO wanted to get up and go comfort her as she cried, but I didn’t know if it was culturally appropriate! Another girl lives with her – they met 4 months ago at the hospital, and she invited this girl to live with her b/c she was alone. This girl was one of a whole group of people who where taken to a house during the genocide and it was set on fire … she was like one of two survivors so she has serious burns on the right side of her body and is looking at having surgery done in Uganda. Its hard for her to move her body b/c its burned together; she was hidden by a muzungu and that’s how she lived. She might have been like 4 or 5 years old. I think her parents must have not been with her cause she talked about finally finding them and they had been killed when she did – I think. It all is running together. She was in school but traumatized and when she remembers things, it causes her classmates to remember, so she was asked to leave school and get “treatment.”
This week we kind of focused on people particularly affected by the genocide, considering how we’re still a pretty heavy time of the mourning season in April. At the first house, we found a lady who’s father sent his children away to Butare when the genocide began while he stayed behind in Kigali. She married and had a baby, but Butare turned out to be no safer than Kigali … her husband and baby were killed;
she’s 32, so she must have been like 17 when the genocide occurred. Her father was killed in Kigali genocide (I think other family as well … the only survivors were half-siblings). Then, she “took” a husband during genocide – it was a forced marriage and she was raped. She started getting sick in ’03 and found out she had HIV in ’04 (from genocide). Her stepmother at first wouldn’t let her live in father’s house and continues to “encourage” her to sell the property, but its all she has left of her family. She’s been in mourning big time these last few weeks – she calls it “traumatized.” I SO wanted to get up and go comfort her as she cried, but I didn’t know if it was culturally appropriate! Another girl lives with her – they met 4 months ago at the hospital, and she invited this girl to live with her b/c she was alone. This girl was one of a whole group of people who where taken to a house during the genocide and it was set on fire … she was like one of two survivors so she has serious burns on the right side of her body and is looking at having surgery done in Uganda. Its hard for her to move her body b/c its burned together; she was hidden by a muzungu and that’s how she lived. She might have been like 4 or 5 years old. I think her parents must have not been with her cause she talked about finally finding them and they had been killed when she did – I think. It all is running together. She was in school but traumatized and when she remembers things, it causes her classmates to remember, so she was asked to leave school and get “treatment.”
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