We are committed to do God's work everywhere in the Rwandan community. The work ranges from prison ministry and community services including mainly unity and reconciliation, social, and economic development activities, counselling, construction of practical reconciliation villages (imidugudu), evangelism, teaching HIV/AIDS life skills such as sewing and weaving the traditional baskets etc.

Thanks for your support and we look forward to continue this work a long with your support.

Research at PFR!

Since December, PFR is hosting Masahiro Minami, a Japanese Ph.D. candidate in counseling psychology from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Masahiro came to Rwanda to carry out a research, investigating possible effectiveness of a non-conventional approach to reconciliation, based on Japanese Morita Therapy. Traditionally, almost all psychological interventions are based on talking sessions in which problems are discussed. Conflicts are resolved by a trained mediator who leads discussions and mediate between two parties. The same applies to the current process of psychological reconciliation. An offender usually asks for forgiveness, a victim answers, and it is left up to whether the victim accepts or declines. The process takes place on a entirely verbal domain. Does this help make a real change within a person? Does it help the victim heal from trauma and the offender from guilt?

Masahiro, as a Registered Clinical Counselor in British Columbia, Canada, has a lot of experience delivering verbal mediation, and worked as a counselor/mediator for years. He is also trained and certified as an expert in Morita therapy by the Japanese Society for Morita Therapy. This organization promotes the therapy first developed in 1919 by the late Dr. Shoma Morita, a Japanese psychiatrist who explored the possibility of healing through “engagement in purposeful action”. To put it simply, it asserts that a change is brought about, not by talking, but by doing. Traditional Morita therapy has features similar to those of Zen, but has been applied exclusively outside of this context and frame of reference. It promotes an “obedience to nature” and what is natural. For example, Morita therapist considers that our feelings, being it pleasant (e.g., happiness) or unpleasant (e.g., sadness) as natural consequence of event/circumstance/situation. Feelings, as natural human capacity, we have no influence over its control, but we can observe and take them as they are. However, action is possible in spite of the feelings, and through this, we can incorporate our feeling-world into our life without interfering our daily activities. Morita therapists believe that the solution to a problem is not found in words and logical and rational discussions of a conflict, but in action, engagements in working and doing something together. In a case of a conflict between a teenage daughter and her mother, rather than discussing for hours whether it is true or not whether she has cleaned her room, they can clean the room together under the observation of a therapist in lieu of the discussion. Masahiro feels that this approach has been far more productive and also effective in conflict mediation according to his clinical experience.

Masahiro aims to try and apply the same Morita therapy principle in challenging field of reconciliation. He considers that the true reconciliation is not achieved by only a confession of guilt and a forgiving answer (in the best-case scenario, while in the worst, conversations and the process just get stuck with differing positions). Masahiro sees that under the verbal and forgiveness-seeking based approach, the offender, who has already taken so much from his victim, is asking further for yet another psychological resource from the victim. Masahiro aims to observe possible benefits of practical forgiveness-seeking. Under this approach, victims receive. Victims receive from the offenders through working together for the victims, sharing daily works of the victims, an approach identical to what PFR offers at 6 of their reconciliation villages. Through this join-labour for the victims, victims and offenders might be able to rediscover the reciprocal exchange of humanity and be closer and do something together, which is to live together again.

Is it possible to transform a relationship by an inter-action? According to the empirical studies conducted in the area of contact theory, the answer is yes. Meta analyses of the studies support that a prolonged contacts, meeting certain “contact conditions” are most likely to lead to positive attitude change towards each other. Not only the time spent together is beneficial for the victims, but also is for the offenders in a different light: by working in a concrete way to help the victim, offenders are given opportunities to atones for their deeds and to give concrete evidence of his good will. Action-based practical reconciliation approach never forces the victim into an acceptance or even acknowledgment of offender remorse and guilt before the services and atonements being done. It also promotes cooperation in a clearly delimited context with engagements in works of daily living (which has to be done anyway and therefore is not an activity foreign to the parties and existing only for the purpose of reconciliation). It leaves control to the survivor who chooses when, what and how to accept the offenders offer. Masahiro considers that the role of a mediator is therefore that of a witness who coordinates and facilitates the encounter without giving any answer or steering the direction and media (verbal or non-verbal) of the encounter.

Although this practical approach to reconciliation has been the one adopted by PFR throughout the past years to achieve unity and reconciliation, there has not been any actual quantitative or qualitative research conducted about it and on how much this approach brings about healing and positive changes in attitudes within the communities. If the results of Masahiro's research are positive, they will provide strong empirical as well as theoretical backbone to the works PFR has already been doing. It will offer scientific support to our work and give us further affirmation and determination to carry on with our work. It will also provide us with empirical evidence with which to seek for further support. 

We will keep you informed of his research progress and the results!

Masahiro (in the middle) with the PFR team!

 

Recently, Masahiro has founded, together with Bishop John Rucyahan and Pastor Deo Gashagaza, and been appointed as the director of PFR-Morita Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Research. 

For more information of his research and the research centre, and to discover how you could help, visit www.pfrwanda.org!

Meet our women, one story at a time

Abihigira Godelirwa : 35 years old, single mother of three

Abihigira is a mother to three children: Joyeuse (12), Angelique(11), and Rodrigue (9 and her only boy). All started to attend Primary school just a few years ago, when she became able to pay the fees - partially thanks to our women’s cooperative, which she joined in 2006.

As many of the other women, she lost her husband, the father of her children, to AIDS, in 2004, two years after she discovered that she too had contracted the illness.

She is originally from Muhanga, in the South of Rwanda, but she came to Kigali in 1999 to marry her late husband.

Her family can hardly support her- from the chaos of the genocide and its aftermath, only Abihigira and her mother came out alive. She is Hutu: but the war did not spare her family. Afraid from the killings and the ongoing madness, she hid away with her siblings in the fields, until the end of the killings, while her mother went out looking for food every night and moving her children to different places, trying to save their lives.

Her father and her brother where not in her hometown at the time of the genocide, but in Kigali. Her brother, 27 years old, was shot on the street, and she never found out why. Her father was killed shortly after, sometime between 1994 and 1995 in Kigali: reason, place and time are still a mystery to everyone but his killers.

Now she lives alone with her children, and earns her life walking every day for miles and miles, selling fruit and vegetables on the street- if she's lucky, she manages to get between 500 and 1000 rwandan francs a day (on the best of days this means less than $1.60, €1.20 or £1.00)

Selephine Kagaju : 52 years old, single mother of five

Selephine comes to the PFR office twice a week to learn to sew with a group of women who have similar problems to herself: widowed and HIV-positive, she has five children to care for, Irene (25), Hakizimana (22), Pascal (19), Consolé (13), and the adopted Ndahiro (13, who came into the family after Selephine's little sister's death).

The women sit together, working and chatting, trying to find a way out of their problems and a way into hope. Twice a week, from 8am to 2pm, under the supervision of their teacher Betty, they learn to sew, something which will hopefully allow them to create a better and dignified life for themselves and their children.

Selephine's husband, Corneille, whom she married in 1979, died of AIDS in 2005. He had been working as an accountant in Kigali, where they had met during Selephine’s studies (she is originally from Nyamata, in Bugesera district).

Two of their children had already preceded him in death during the genocide. Corneille was Hutu, but Selephine was a Tutsi. He managed to hide her and the children, but the two older ones fled when the killers arrived, and were mercilessly killed on the open street.

Now she is alone, raising the five children left, and life is hard on her.

Her children are nearly adults now, but as she could not always afford to pay for their studies, the older ones are still in high school, and she struggles to pay the school fees, which are 65.000 Rwandan Francs for trimester (110 US dollars).

“I dream that my children will be able to complete their studies. I'd love so much to see them finishing school and find a job. Be able to live, like anyone.”

Let's hope that this will not stay a dream- you could support Selephine, Abihigira and the other ladies in our cooperative by buying their products.

 

For more information about the products and how you could help, please feel free to contact us at info@pfrwanda.org!

A woman in Rwanda

Working at PFR is full of adjectives.

It is challenging. Changing. Multilingual. Smiling. Emotional. Overwhelming. Tiring. Funny. Thrilling.

 Every day brings something and someone different: a visit from a pastor, who needs help to get an authorization to enter a prison, the kids who jump on your lap while you're trying to write a proposal, a conversation with the guard who just discovered you master a few words of Swahili, a psychologist from the U. S. who is helping people to overcome their trauma...

Every day is unlike the previous one, and most of the time it's interesting.

Only sometimes it becomes difficult.

It was Monday morning, and I was going to finish writing a presentation of our projects, when Guma, our Communication Manager, called me and asked me to interview some of our HIV+ widows from the cooperative, who come every week to learn to sew and make other handicrafts.

I did not realize at first how challenging that would be...

Most of these womens are in a really difficult life situation. Widows, with many children, HIV+ positive, and really poor.

To make an interview means that you have to ask a lot of tough questions, of really personal details.

And you don't have only to ask the questions- you have also to listen to the answers.

She looks proud and strong when she walks into the office.

Philomene is a woman who has had a very difficult life, but meeting her for the first time, you would never know it. 

When asked if she is married, she answers the question with a swipe of the hand, as if to say “it is all gone now”.

Philomene was born in Rurindo district, in the North of Rwanda, in 1967. She lived on a little farm, with her parents and her seven brothers and sisters, until she married to a man from the neighborhood. Life might have been peaceful with their little son, but genocide struck and put an end to all normality.

1994:

Of her seven siblings, only one survived. 

Her parents and relatives were killed.

Her husband was murdered, and their only son, three years old, with him. 

She survived, by sheer luck: she just had had a miscarriage and could not walk. While the rest of her family fled on the roads of Rwanda, trying to avoid the killers, she stayed behind, too weak to flee.

Hiding in the forest near her home for three months, she somehow escaped death, but had to pay a high price- all of her family dead, all the hopes for the future shattered, and “the illness” as an eternal companion for the rest of her life.
 “AIDS? I got it from the war.”

The Rwandan Patriotic Front, Kagame's soldiers, found her bereft of all strength in the forest and brought her to Byumba, where they provided her with medicine and financial help. 

She tried to forget the past, to start a new life and in 1995 she married again, to a mechanic from her home town, Celeste Machumi, and moved to Kigali with him.

They had three children together: André(15), Juona(10), and Patrick(7). But ten years later, tragedy struck again and in a twist of cruel irony, Philomene lost her second husband to AIDS- a last, untimely toll to genocide.

Now her daily life is a struggle. She finds it difficult to pay for school but tries hard to provide her children with a good education. They deserve to find a job and earn a living, to be able to build a better future for themselves. So she walks in the streets every day, from house to house, and tries to sell some meat, some fruits, some little things. There is a little bit of hope in every sale she makes.

She started coming to PFR in 2006, and has been making small handicrafts out of banana leaf with the other women. This allows her some extra income and now that she is learning to sew at the office she hopes she will soon be able to start her own small business.

Philomene is only one of a thousand similar and terrible stories. 

And still, in all the difficulty of their lives, these women have gone on, and are a true source of inspiration. They'll always find tome for a smile, a word to share with their friends at the cooperative, the courage to look for a way out of their problems and for hope in the pit of their memories. 

They are strong, and are following the path of reconciliation and forgiveness, notwithstanding how hard that can be.

In the words of Serephine, one of Philomene's friends at the cooperative:

"I was bitter after what happened to me in the genocide. There was a time when I refused to speak with people at all. I trusted no one. In fact, I hated other people. I feared them. I was suspicious. I found myself wondering whether reconciliation was even possible.

I wanted to know more about it. Some friends told me about Prison Fellowship Rwanda. I found out
that PFR offered trainings in unity and reconciliation, counseling, and teachings about God.

What’s most important about reconciliation is the knowledge that any other person I see is the same as I am and deserves to be treated with dignity, just like I do. We have  similar needs. We are all created the same.
After I accepted this, I began to view other people in an entirely different way. I feel not bitter anymore.

I am now moving forward. I aim to work hard in everything I do. We still live in extreme poverty, but I pray that God will provide for my children and the children of my children."

Listening to their stories is not easy. 

Living them, is- luckily for us- beyond our ability of real comprehension.

But helping these women- we try to do it, and we can do it. 

If you would like to support them-

-if you want to have some of the handicraft product our women make-

-or if you know where to sell them-

please let us know at info@pfrwanda.org!

Thank you!!