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!!