Jeanne Mwiliriza

So much happens here at Tubahumurize and in general that it is easy to forget that Jeanne Mwiliriza is the sole reason this association exists. It is time you knew more about this amazing woman.

Some of you may know that the reason Jeanne started this organization was because a dear friend of hers, constrained to a wheelchair, had called, afraid that her life was in danger from her husband. Jeanne talked with her and reassured her that it was just idle threats again. They planned to meet the next day. But by then, her friend had been murdered. Very shaken and filled with guilt, she suffered for a few months. But when she made some kind of peace with herself, she also made a decision to start a centre for traumatized women who had lived or still lived with violence. She wanted to do something so that her friend’s death would not be repeated.

But perhaps that is leaping forward somewhat. Jeanne had been married to a successful doctor, Joseph Butara. They had three children: Eloge, Valentin and Sandrine. Prior to the genocide, they had lived in Kigali, but when a new ruling Hutu party was elected, Tutsi families such as their own were no longer welcome in Kigali. They moved around quite a bit searching for a safe place to settle.

In April, at the time of the genocide, her children were ten, eight and five. During this time, the family’s story takes two paths. One results in the murder of Joseph Butera and the escape of the two boys to a refugee camp with their Aunt Charlotte where they lived for about seven months. The other results in Jeanne’s miraculous survival and that of her young daughter.

Over the course of the genocide, Jeanne was taken at gunpoint seven times to be killed, but each time (except the last) there was an argument over whether she was a Tutsi at all. (At this point in Rwanda, identity cards had become a moot point: it was all about madness and murder and how people looked.) Jeanne is not a tall woman, and Tutsi women tend to be tall; thus, the soldiers argued over her “identity.” Each of these six times she was spared and was released.

The seventh time, several soldiers came into her home determined to kill her. The leader was especially intent. He ordered Jeanne to get into the wardrobe in her bedroom so he could kill her. She refused. Her lack of fear really annoyed him and he was hell bent on her death. So instead of the wardrobe, he told her to get in the closet. Again she refused. Finally, he flung open the door to the closet and swept aside the hanging clothes. His abrupt actions caused a photograph of Jeanne and her husband on their wedding day to fall from the top shelf to the floor in front of him. Startled, he looked at the photo and paled.

He asked Jeanne if the man in the picture was her husband. When she replied that it was, he said that he could not kill her because her husband had operated on and saved his own badly mangled leg when he was a young boy. Other doctors had wanted to cut the leg off, but Joseph had wanted to heal his leg because he was still so young. “Without your husband,” he said, “I would not have been able to walk in here to kill you.” Thus, he reasoned, he could not kill her.

He left with all the other soldiers, telling them and everyone else that she was to be left alone as though dead. For the remainder of the genocide, Jeanne and Sandrine were untouched and unmolested.

Rwanda is not that big and people have connections everywhere. Through these, Jeanne finally found out that her husband had been killed, as well as her parents and two sisters, but there was no word of her two boys. She was sure that they too were dead along with her sister Charlotte. She cried all the tears she had, dried them and turned the page onto a new life as a widow and mother to young Sandrine. She also took in children who had become orphans overnight, and whose parents had been Jeanne’s friends and neighbours. Eventually, she “adopted” five orphaned children.

Only in December did Jeanne discover that her boys were alive and well with her younger sister, Charlotte. She was overjoyed to welcome them home into the family. However, Jeanne was never able to find her husband’s body, though she looked frantically for many long months. His bones were never recovered or identified, and to this day, her greatest sorrow is to have been unable to lay him to rest in the ground with a proper burial.

Jeanne is a beautiful and charismatic woman of fifty now. I can only imagine her in her thirties, even after three children. She was, no doubt, still a beauty, filled with intelligence and sparkling charm, despite her many sorrows. She met her second husband, Aaron, a few years later through the church where he was pastor. His own genocide story is of utter loss: his wife, his siblings, his parents and all seven of his children were killed. I cannot conceive of the loss and emptiness he must have felt and, no doubt, still feels from time to time.

Jeanne and Aaron married and continued to raise Jeanne’s expanding family. Memories of the genocide haunted them both, and Jeanne began meeting with other women to share stories and hardships and to comfort one another. They healed slowly, in the knowledge that they were not alone and that their stories mattered.

After the death of her friend, after Jeanne had determined that she would open a centre for traumatized women who were once or were still victims of violence, she began taking the steps she needed to take to be able to do a good job: a sociology degree, courses in trauma counselling, youth training, first aid, health education, Grameen banking and micro-credit loans. Jeanne has founded several associations of women as well, but since opening its doors in 2006, Jeanne has worked full-time for Tubahumurize. She works without a salary to this day and her own home is used for the centre, thus forgoing the rental income she would otherwise have recieved.

One thing Jeanne is really passionate about is that the future of this country depends on letting go of ethnic divisions. Thus, the mandate of the association is specifically inclusive of all women, no matter their religion, ethnic background or economic status. Everyone is welcome. That does not always sit well with some women, but in order to build something new, something old has to be left behind. Jeanne is a devout Christian actually, but is not narrow minded. Indeed, I believe Jeanne has captured one of the great strengths of Christianity, perhaps its best, and that is a belief in the equality of all people.

I witnessed her listening to a young woman recently, a sewing student, who was relating some information to her about her family situation. Jeanne was totally present for this young woman, listening attentively, gazing at her with her warm eyes, asking questions, saying reassuring things. It was a joy to behold. Jeanne, filled with boundless energy and enthusiasm, filled with ideas and plans and dreams and more ideas, sitting so quietly in the presence of this young woman. This is an example of how she works. A whirlwind sometimes, not always organized or on point, but always, always has her priorities straight when it comes to the women. She is there for them.

Jeanne certainly cannot run this place alone, nor should she, but she has many qualities that assure this organization’s success. I am certain that through faith and determination, she will make sure this happens. One dream at a time.

Group Counselling at Tubahumurize

On Thursday, I had the privilege of attending a group counselling meeting. It was not planned that way; a group of Canadians was at the centre filming (research for a funding proposal) and they and I were invited to introduce ourselves to the group and the group to us. The plan was that we would then leave and the women were to have their regular counselling session in private, especially because they are a relatively new group, having been meeting for only a few months.

But what happened in reality was that after our introductions to the group, which were translated from English to French to Kinyarwanda (a fairly tedious process)(and for me just French to Kinyarwanda), the women introduced themselves one by one, and each one told us about their lives and about what had happened to them during the genocide. All of the women present are widows with children and all are HIV positive. They range in age roughly, from thirty to forty. Most of them experienced brutal, violent rapes. Most of them lost their husbands and families in horrifying ways. Many never were able to bury them as they would have wished. One woman said she had no more tears to cry and that she didn’t care if she lived or died. Each of these mini stories was translated for us as we watched and listened.

One woman, who I will call Fortuné, made a decision to tell her whole story for the first time. And she told it well. She is about thirty three now and is very beautiful, so I can only imagine her beauty as a girl and young woman. I suspect that beauty was also once a curse.

She began her story talking about her birth in Kigali to two parents, the first child of what would have been a family of five. But a few years after her younger brother was born, her parents separated and the father took a new wife. Her mother lost the baby that she had been carrying and then her brother died as well. The parents spent the remainder of her childhood fighting over who would get her. She was shuttled back and forth from house to house, even stolen, all of which created a lot of confusion and instability for her.

At age fourteen, the house servant, who was her friend, offered to take her away because all this fighting over her was causing Fortuné to suffer. So she agreed and they stole away to another place entirely, far away in another area of Rwanda. But the so-called friend betrayed her and brought her to a man who locked her in a house. Even if there had been any possibility of escape, it wouldn’t have helped, as she had no idea where she was nor where home was. So she was given more freedom. The man, needless to say, raped her repeatedly and she became pregnant. He also beat her frequently. She carried the baby and gave birth to a girl.

Not too long after that, at some point, somehow, she recognized a man from Kigali who was a friend, and through this relationship she was somehow able to escape with her baby and find her way back to Kigali. She eventually found her mother and settled in with her for a short while. But one day, the father of her baby came with some other men and stole the baby from her. She was despondent and suffering as well, since she was lactating and stopping so abruptly made her ill. She went for help and, while out, again, a man took her hostage and locked her up, raping her over and over, as well as being very abusive towards her. I don’t know how long she was in this situation, but not too long.

At some point, she was able to get away from this man, but just then also came the beginning of the genocide. She was pregnant again actually by this second man, but did not know that for quite some time. She was fifteen. After leaving this second man, she returned to her father’s home. One night, militia entered the house and raped her, one after another, while her father was forced to watch. Then they killed her father in front of her and took her away again, again imprisoned as a sex slave. Throughout the genocide, she was passed from one man to another, each one staying with her for one or two weeks. Sometime during the genocide, she realized she was pregnant and she gave birth to another child near the end of the genocide. However, she did not know that she was HIV positive and, indeed, didn’t know that for a long time. She repeatedly told us that she wished she hadn’t left the man who beat her (the second child’s father) as it would have been better than what happened during the genocide.

Finally, Fortuné, at seventeen, was found by a man who was good. She did not love him, but he was nice to her. Over several years, they had four children together, plus the child of the second man. But one day in about 2002, a friend of hers, who had suffered in the same way she had during the genocide, decided to go and be tested for HIV. She was positive. This made Fortuné decide that perhaps she too should be tested, but she was very afraid to go as she did not want her husband to know what she had been through during the genocide. She was so ashamed. She thought he would reject her.

But in the end, she did get tested and was positive. She told her husband and he too was tested, but was negative. She was sure he would leave her. But he did not. He accepted all that she had suffered during the genocide and wanted to stay with her. But Fortuné herself decided to leave him. Why was not clear as he was a good man who treated her very well. Perhaps it was that she did not want him to become ill too. But she did leave him with her children. Perhaps it was the shame of him knowing what she had been through.

During the past few years, she has only had the courage to have two of her children tested for HIV. She did not say if they were positive or not, but since she did not test the others, one can only assume the news was not good.

Through the years, Fortuné continued to look for her lost daughter. She was finally able to find her in 2003, but at that point the father and his family had turned the child against her. The child rejected her completely. But she continued to see the child, affirming her love for the child and telling the story of how they came to be separated from each other. At this time, the child and Fortuné are becoming closer. But as a “widow” with five children, she does not have many options.

Just to read this story is bad enough, but to be present to the pain with which she spoke, the anguish that rose up from somewhere very deep inside her over and over in waves, to hear her heartfelt cries for her mother and for her lost child, the unimaginable shame she felt to have her father witness her multiple rapes, I (and everyone else in the room) could not help but share her anguish, her shame, her sorrow as she relived her past as a fifteen year old girl again. Our tears flowed freely with hers. And somehow, what arose from this deep sorrow was some relief and some peace. Fortuné reasserted that she had never told the genocide part of this story to anyone, and was only able to do it that day because she was with friends who were present for her. She left, I am sure, lighter, filled with the certainty that she had not been rejected yet again. That she was not just accepted but loved.
She was smiling and able to give and receive hugs.

I feel very privileged to have borne witness to the very heart of the group counselling that goes on here at Tubahumurize. Each one of these women arrives here alone and suffering. Each one is able to share her deepest burdens with the group, in her own time and way. And each is growing in previously unimaginable ways. The women support one another, as each person is at a different stage, and all of them have been through similarly horrifying experiences. I don’t know what will happen to Fortuné in the long run, but I do know that she is now on a new stage of her journey. She knows that she is no longer alone.