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!