VILLAGE OF WIDOWS

Words by Sreeratna Kancherla | Images by Nema Etebar

Almost 20 years ago, the world began to hear about Rwanda, a small landlocked country in East Africa. Suddenly, the international media was filled with stories about the “100 Days War,’’ a battle fueled by political factions igniting ongoing tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. More than 800,0000 people were killed in 100 days, nearly eradicating the Tutsis and destroying the nation.

Recently, we spent six weeks in a Rwanda with women survivors of the genocide. What originally was meant to be a trip exploring a country we had never seen became a very personal experience. We spent hours in the homes of women who were victimized, teaching yoga to their grandchildren and finding ways to contribute to the livelihood of a community still in need of healing.

Nearly 20 years after the genocide, we saw a new generation rise. The country has rebuilt itself with modern infrastructure, advanced health care, foreign investment and tourism. Rwandans have united to heal and rebuild, yet buried underneath the beauty of the landscape, and the smiles, are stories of almost unbearable pain and loss. We wanted to focus on the faces and stories of so many of these brave women, but instead we chose to share those that encompassed the strength and perseverance of them all. --S.K. and N.E.

On April 24th, 1994, Libirata, gave birth to her seventh child, a baby boy. She was 35 and had five boys and one girl, the eldest being 12-years-old. It was dawn, in the rainy season, and dense fog covered the hills. She was displaced from the rest of her family, hiding from killers. At 6 a.m. cold, alone and crouching in a forest, she delivered her baby. “There was no one around. I knew though that there was killings in the street. I had to keep my baby quiet. I didn’t want him to cry or they would find us. For many hours I was able to keep the baby from making a sound, holding him close to me and hiding where no one could see me.”

“But in the afternoon, around 3 p.m., he started to cry and it wasn’t soon after that a woman around the age of 60, carrying a ceramic pot on her head, stopped and started to talk with me. She asked my name and if I was ok. Suddenly, the old woman took from her pot a knife and slashed my baby boy in half through the stomach,” Libirata remembers.

The baby was less than nine hours old. Libirata, parched and bleeding, was left there with him dead in her arms. She doesn’t know how long she waited before a man, a neighbor from her own tribe, carried her to the street, where she saw her other children. The man found her husband and told him what had happened. But Libirata never had a chance to see her husband again. Within hours, he too was killed. The perpetrators were on a rampage, hunting down all the boys and men in the village who were not of their tribe, the Hutus.

A Hutu woman from her village, stopped and gave Libirata water, “I drank ten liters, I was so thirsty. The woman left, and then I saw my eldest son, my daughter and the youngest son. They asked me where the baby was, I couldn’t tell them that their brother was killed, but they knew.”

Nearly 20 years later, Libirata continues to describe the next few days of her life, and each detail is more horrifying than the last. She sits on a tattered couch wrapped in a pink cotton sarong, wiping away tears.

Libirata and her three children ran to find shelter. Her other children had already been killed. She dressed the boys up in girls’ clothes in hopes that the perpetrators would not kill them. But her two sons were captured and found out. The killers bludgeoned them with stones and threw them in a latrine. They snatched her daughter, hit her with a stone and threw her in, but she was left hanging on the edge. Libirata knew she would be next. She grabbed her bleeding daughter and jumped into the ditch. The perpetrators began to cover the ditch with dirt and stones, burying her alive.

“I don’t know what happened next. I was disoriented; I think maybe I was out for a few days. I only know I was awakened by the noise of my daughter. She was screaming my name; she was eight-years-old at the time. I couldn’t see her but I finally caught her hand. I kept screaming for help. It was dark, but I could feel she had gashes on her head and was bleeding, there were maggots feeding on her.”

Finally, someone came and started to dig her out. It was the woman who gave her water. The woman told Libirata her husband had killed Libirata’s husband and she wanted to help her. She took her to her house and cleaned Libirata and her daughter, who were covered in ashes and dirt. At the woman’s house, Libirata had to face the man who murdered her husband. He said the Hutus were now ordered to kill women and girls, because some day they would give birth and then the Tutsis could never be erased. But the woman who helped Libirata would not let it happen. She somehow stopped him from killing Libirata and her daughter and they left the two behind.

After Libirata spent days in hiding, the killings were over. She had lost six boys and her husband. She had no home and was considered a refugee.

Libirata now lives in Kigali, Rwanda in the township of Kimironko, among 160 other women -- a place people here call the “Village of Widows.” It was formed in 1997 for omen survivors who lost their husbands and children during the Genocide.

The village is filled with stories of the war: People beaten with rocks, chopped with machetes that were once used to cut grass, blasted with guns. Babies and children were thrown against walls and left to bleed to death; women were raped. Bodies lined the dirt roads from one end of the country to the other, in the hills, valleys, and lakes. Those who survived were considered lucky.

As I listen to Libirata and try to process what she’s saying, I wonder if she is lucky, if in fact death is better than a lifetime of memories of suffering and disease. She lives in a dark house with hardly any furniture and grey cement walls. She rarely leaves except to get groceries, confining herself to nightmares and thoughts of the past. Last year, she was diagnosed with blood cancer. She is unable to sleep or eat, but takes care of her 8-year old grand daughter, whose mother abandoned the family.

Libirata’s story is one of many we heard in the village. Other women were raped and purposefully infected with AIDS by their enemies. Many women between the ages of 40 and 70 are in pain because of the disease and can only move about in sunlight since cloudy days affect their joints. One woman lived a charmed life for 82 years but is now close to 100. She is crippled and hunched, curled up on the floor like a cat as she tells us about the days she walked like a princess, all luxuries at her disposal. Her nerves and muscles are mangled because of brutal beatings 18 years ago.

The community has been trying to rebuild itself, creating a self-help group that makes crafts for sale so that the widows can earn a living, but mostly because the activity gets them out of the house and distracts them from painful memories.

As we left Libirata’s home, I asked her the meaning of her name. She said, “I was born in 1959 during the war {Hutu Revolution}. My father gave me this name-I think it means to be strong in the future.”

Whether the meaning is true or not, it is what she believes. Her story of survival, loss and now cancer, makes it hard to doubt. She, like the many women in the “Village of Widows,” have survived the unimaginable. Some have given birth to their rapists’ children, but care for them lovingly. Libirata, like the many women we met in the “Village of Widows,” represents the epitome of strength. After all they endured, they’ve worked to raise children who they hope will build a nation of peace and restore the meaning of humanity.

After meeting them, we left Rwanda transformed. Story after story made us wonder how people could be so unimaginably cruel. And then we would see a smile or crack a joke with the women, and more than the cruelty they described, we were moved by their will to live and the simplicity of their day to day lives. We know the pain exists, but all we can do is hope that the world has learned a lesson from Rwanda and its widows. And we hope, for the sake of the next generation, that the word genocide itself will be erased.

Sreeratna Kancherla is humanitarian, entrepreneur and human rights lawyer. Nema Etebar is an international photojournalist and regular contributor to HYCIDE.