Peace and Reconciliation

Peace and reconciliation through food and income security

“If it’s not food what else do people have to fight about?” this was a question given in an answer to a  question by an elderly man in Gitarama long before the project with the same name was conceived for the region. Food in Kinyarwanda, the Rwanda national language means literally anything material or gain; the old man was not far from reality, the conflict in Rwanda is caused by among other things poverty and demand for scarce livelihood resources. The country is one of the most densely populated in Africa with a population of eight million, 304 people per square kilometer and 95% of the population subsisting on agriculture, the pressure for livelihoods is difficult to overcome.

In 2003, the program with the support of a project called FinnChurch Aid received funding from the European Commission for peace and reconciliation through food and income security. The project that will last for three years is a truly integrated rural project that focuses on maximization of small landholdings in the Gitarama region through modern, adoptable and appropriate farming techniques alongside capacity building for off farm income generating activities. The project comprises of a rural farm demonstration and training centre where farmers drawn from different sectors of Ruyumba and Ntongwe districts of Gitarama province spend time being trained in practical skills and techniques to improve their farming methods at the same time improving their knowledge and organizing themselves to access markets for their produce. Another component of the project is farm credit that enables farmers to purchase quality seeds, farm inputs and livestock to provide both manure for their farms, livestock and poultry products for home consumption and sale, it involved extensive organization by farmers into solidarity groups around one contact farmer in order to maximize opportunities for the transfer of skills and techniques learnt from the centre.

In 2004, the centre trained nine hundred and seventy five contact farmers in basic farming and animal husbandry techniques, three hundred among them will undergo a further two phase training to equip them with reasonably advanced skills to be able to provide peer training to their neighbors. The use of contact farmers and the solidarity group has proved effective and has begun to yield positive results; there is visible improvement in crop yield in this drought prone area. Dairy and poultry production has improved a great deal raising incomes of local people. Children who had dropped out of school were able to restart school at the beginning of the school year. In the words of a benefiting widow “even I have something to smile about.”

The Centre has attracted a host of stakeholders such as research centres led by the Agricultural Research Institute (ISAR) and others that see the centre as an opportunity for appropriate technology transfer in rural energy requirements, especially household level biogas technology, solar food driers, food processing technology and many other technologies that have been developed at the institutions. It’s not just the research institutions that have recognized the great potential of the centre in poverty reduction but other NGOs involved in poverty reduction and other related issues have realized the opportunity that the centre offers to rural communities and there is an upsurge in demand for the rural courses. Other LWF/WS Rwanda integrated rural development projects too, have adopted best practice from this project and using the contact farmer model in maximizing benefits of food security interventions.

James Rubakisibo, the project manager and one of the brains behind the project is confident that at the end of the three years the centre will have achieved its objectives and will carry on its mission with minimum external support as its sustainability is already assured by the interest it has generated through it’s programs for rural farmers. if there is anything LWF Rwanda can be proud about this indeed is one of them.

The brutality, the madness was just too much for her to bear!

During the 1994 Genocide when killing started in her village, Mukarugwiza took her husband to her parent’s home which was about three km away as she believed that her family would protect him. She then returned to her home to find that her house had already been demolished and quickly gathered her five frightened children who were scattered about the village. As she took the children back to her parent’s home to join her family, she found that her husband had already been killed and her family was too hysterical to tell her what had happened. 

This was too difficult a situation for her to cope with, she decided to return to her demolished house and live there with her children. She believed that since she was a Hutu the killers would spare her children. When she got home and as she was preparing a meal for her children, she was taken by surprise as the killers struck and killed all her children right in front of her except for one child who ran away. The brutality, the madness was just too much for her to bear, she became extremely angry, then into despair and deep depression which led to extreme trauma.

To forget her terrible experiences after the Genocide, she turned to drinking. After getting drunk, Mukarugwiza would shout, and even fight, crying “I have nothing to live for and after all, why live?” No one seemed to bother, she was considered just another drunkard in the village, and this is not unusual in a country where more than half the population is traumatized.

In 2003, LWF/DWS Rwanda program with funding from FinnChurch Aid started a pilot project within its Kibungo integrated rural development project to psychosocial consequences of Genocide and the reconciliation processes that were underway. The approach was to train community based psychosocial counselors at the smallest administrative unit to avail psychosocial services at community level. Twenty counselors were then trained first as counselors and then trained again as trainers for community level counselors. Trainings were conducted by trainers for community counselors identified by the communities themselves, once established community members such as Mukarugwiza were able to find psychosocial help. 

Sarafina is one of those counselors trained who kindly agreed to tell us a story of her patient. “I am forty two years old, married with seven children and a trained counselor. I live in Rukira District of Kibungo Province. cultivating but I occasionally also do tailoring to raise additional income to help my family and I do counseling in my free time or when needed for traumatized people in my area especially Genocide survivors and some women whose husbands are in prison accused.” 

 Apart from being a counselor Sarafina is also a trainer, “I acquired my counseling skills through two workshops one organized and supported by LWF and the second one organized by an interfaith group which was also supported by LWF to train trained counselors peer trainers.”

“Currently I am assisting a widow called Mukarugwiza who is my neighbor traumatized during the 1994 Genocide. She is a Hutu who married a Tutsi husband and together they had 5 children.” Sarafina is very categorical that counseling skills alone are not enough for the job, however the skills are invaluable, “due to my training in counseling, I was concerned about Mukarugwiza especially due to the effect she was having on her daughter, her only living child, who was then in primary six. I therefore decided to spend my free time counseling Mukarugwiza.” she believes the job goes with compassion and concern for others “So I began several visits to her home and through conversation and the time I spent listening to her, she became comfortable with me and I was able to persuade her to tell me her story.”

Sarafina believes, compassion awakens sensitivity and earns confidence from those in need of counseling, she employs those human qualities to reach the people she works with, she believes that is why she was able to gain confidence and trust of Mukarugwiza. “She slowly gained confidence in me, and today she tells me her story and I am the only one who can persuade her to go home and stop drinking. Slowly I am observing some improvements and believe she will be completely healed soon. I am also optimistic that her daughter can now continue her studies with fewer problems as she has regained her mother again.”

Mukarugwiza’s story is but one of the many stories that community counselors can tell. The trauma caused by genocide and the new cases that continue to come up as the wounds are re-opened by the reconciliation processes in the country, such as Gacaca traditional justice system is beyond what a simple story can tell. In the words of one community counselors we will need fivefold the number of counselors to cope with the trauma now and in the future.