For this week’s Sunday Radio Matinee feature, Victoria Uwonkunda makes an emotional journey back to Rwanda, where she grew up. It is the first time she has visited since the age of 12, when she fled the 1994 genocide with her family.
Victoria retraces her journey to safety out of the capital Kigali, to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way Victoria speaks to survivors of the violence – both victims and perpetrators - to find out how the country is healing, through reconciliation and forgiveness.
Victoria meets Evariste and Narcisse, who work together on a reconciliation project called Cows for Peace. Evariste killed Narcisse’s mother during the 1994 genocide. Cows are important in the Rwandan culture. Evariste and Narcisse explain their own journeys to forgiveness, healing and reconciliation. And Victoria meets Claudette, who suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of a man, Jean Claude, sitting next to her as she tells her story.
There are those who say that the steps Rwanda has taken do not go far enough and question freedom of expression in Rwanda. But Victoria finds hope in the country, a desire to move on for a younger generation – and she finds her own peace with the country that she was born in.
