Skip to main content
CNNfyi.com >News
Select a section:




ON TV
Daily guide
Guide Archives
Transcript
Enroll now

CNN Student News is a TV program for classrooms. It airs at 4:30 a.m. ET Monday-Friday on CNN TV
STUDENT BUREAU

What is Student Bureau?
How can I participate?
Locate Student Bureau
In partnership with: Harcourt Riverdeep

Rwandan village breaks down Hutu/Tutsi divisions

Discussion / Activity

November 26, 2001 Posted: 11:36 AM EST (1636 GMT)
graphic


By Janice McDonald
CNN NEWSROOM

(CNN) -- Ask the residents of the Nelson Mandela Peace Village if they are Hutu or Tutsi, and you will get a different answer altogether.

"I am Rwandese," says an old woman working to pull beans from the vine. "Rwandese," echoes her neighbor. Located just 50 kilometers from the capital of Kigali, the village was established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1996 to intentionally blur the lines between the two ethnic groups; groups with a history of such deep seeded hatred that, in 1994, it erupted into a genocide, claiming the lives of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus.

Each of the 152 residents of the Peace Village lost someone in the slaughter. They are all orphans, widows and refugees. They came to the village to try and forget their ethnic origins in an effort to live together in peace and build a new Rwanda.

VIDEO
CNN's Rudi Bahktiar tours the Nelson Mandela Village south of Kigali, Rwanda, where age-old enemies are learning lessons in peace (November 23)

Play video
(QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)
 

Literacy programs help the women rebuild their lives, while giving them the skills to earn a living and create a better future for their children and, in many cases, their adopted children.

"I'm happy to be here," says Fabrice Rukundo, 13, with a smile. Orphaned by the genocide, he has been adopted by a woman who lost all of her children. They moved to the village in 1997. Fabrice, like most of his classmates at the village school, remembers little of life before.

Many of the children are not told if they are Hutu or Tutsi, so that they can answer the question truthfully.

Fifty-six-year-old Tutsi Edisa Barakagwira remembers the past, however, and she wishes she could forget. She lost two sons and a daughter to the unimaginable violence. The Ntarama Church just down the road still contains the bones of her sisters and her neighbors.

discussion activity

"It's too much," she says, sadly shaking her head. "The older children were the ones who could help me now and they were killed."

Her remaining daughter was so traumatized by what happened that she can barely function, so Edisa must take care of her two younger sons by herself.

She says that knowing the past makes it difficult sometimes to live together with Hutus, especially since the mother of her sons' killer also lives in the village.

"She cannot look me in the eye," she says. "She knows what her son did."

But when asked if she would mind if her children married a Hutu, Edisa says, "It's not a problem."

She says that while she cannot forget the atrocities, she cannot afford to bear grudges, because it would make it impossible to continue living. She accepts the Peace Village's efforts at reconciliation.

And when Edisa is asked if she is Hutu or Tutsi, she responds now like her fellow villagers: "I am Rwandese."



RELATED STORIES:
RELATED SITES:
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
• UN System in Rwanda
• Rwanda Information Exchange

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

Weekly Activities:
Updated September 21, 2002


feedback
   
  © 2001 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us.
BACK TO TOP