Steven Hakizimana was 8 when his parents and siblings were murdered before his eyes during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. For the next nine years Hakizimana struggled both to simply survive and to understand the atrocities wreaked on himself and his country.<\/p>\n
Hakizimana came to feel that in order for healing to occur, reconciliation between his Tutsi group and the Hutus \u2013 both being responsible for widespread killings at different points \u2013 must be pursued. He wanted to deepen his understanding of justice and peace and to improve his skills for transforming conflict.<\/p>\n
Hakizimana is the 2013 recipient of the Winston Fellowship \u2013 the most generous scholarship that the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI)<\/a> is able to offer. He found SPI at Eastern Mennonite University through an Internet search of peacebuilding programs, but was encouraged by a friend who knew EMU to apply.<\/p>\n I was interested in SPI \u201cbecause of where I come from,\u201d he says, referring to his home country, whose 1994 genocide formed the basis of the 2004 blockbuster movie Hotel Rwanda. \u201cThe second reason is that I needed to come and exchange with those who have lived the same tragedies.\u201d<\/p>\n Hakizimana \u2013 who will be entering his last year of law school in the fall \u2013 had, with a couple of his friends, been making some effort to help the community heal through a program they called \u201chealing through the arts and drama,\u201d but they soon realized that they were not equipped to deal with the depth of people\u2019s pain and anger. When the friends all left for school, the program ceased.<\/p>\n Hakizimana explained that ultimately the group didn\u2019t have enough skills to know what they were doing. Now, at SPI, he is gaining an understanding of what people went through and how they react, not to mention why he reacted to the conflict the way that he did (through burying his feelings).<\/p>\n After Hakizimana\u2019s family was murdered, he and a friend fled to the swamps where they hid. Soon, however, someone found them and attacked, hitting him on the head. Hakizimana woke up some time later in a hospital bed with his head in bandages.<\/p>\n Eventually, he was adopted by a family who viewed him as little better than a slave and forced him \u2013 from the ages of 8 to 10 \u2013 to do hard labor for them. When he couldn\u2019t take it any more, Hakizimana left and went to a neighboring family looking for work. There the husband was kind to him and treated him like a son, but the older of the two wives was an \u201cevil sort,\u201d recalls Hakizimana, mistreating him while the husband was away.<\/p>\n He endured conditions with this family for about 18 months until one day the husband came home and told him that there was reason to believe that one of his grandmothers and one sister may be alive.<\/p>\n On Feb. 12, 1998, this kind man took Hakizimana to meet his sister and his grandmother. They barely recognized each other, but felt overjoyed at being reunited. At the time, they were in a very desperate and vulnerable situation and the husband offered to keep Hakizimana until they were able to get on their feet. So Hakizimana found himself back with the good husband and the hurtful wife. A week later, though, Hakizimana left to live with his sister and grandmother, preferring their love despite their poverty.<\/p>\n At the age of 14 Hakizimana started school for the very first time. \u201cHigh school was a very lonely time,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was very painful to see visiting days with parents bringing things for their children.\u201d<\/p>\n The children without visitors \u2013 most of whom had lost family members through the genocide \u2013\u00a0formed their own \u201cfamilies\u201d in school by separating themselves into groups of ten or so with a nominated \u201cfather\u201d and \u201cmother,\u201d usually the oldest male and female in the respective groups. \u201cThat is how we tried to cover ourselves as family,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re not living life if there is not someone to praise you.\u201d They became so close that during the holidays most of the children decided to stay at school, partly because they had nowhere to go that felt like home and partly because they had found family with one another.<\/p>\n Hakizimana explained that after the Rwandan genocide the main question that people asked themselves was, \u201cWill I be able to survive after I have survived this?\u201d It is still a very tense and politically unstable region where victims and perpetrators must learn to coexist amidst pain, fear and anger.<\/p>\n His own turning point came in 2005 when the Rwandan government began a mass release of tens of thousands of prisoners, most of whom had confessed involvement in the 1994 genocide. Among them was a man who confessed to having killed Hakizimana\u2019s uncle.<\/p>\n This man knocked on the door as Hakizimana, his grandmother, and his sister \u00a0were eating lunch and asked to come in. Upon hearing his confession, Hakizimana\u2019s grandmother and sister ran from the room because they did not want to hear any more. Hakizimana said that as an African man he had to sit down with him and hear the man\u2019s apology. Although Hakizimana was upset and shaken, he told the man to go and come again in one week.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some truths that are very regrettable,\u201d Hakizimana says today. \u201cThere are some truths that are hard to handle.\u201d When the man came back, Hakizimana extended his forgiveness, but he said it was many years before he actually believed his own words. For him, forgiveness was a choice. He decided he would forgive the man and over time, he actually began to be able to do it.<\/p>\n A year after this encounter, Hakizimana was finally able to sit down with the man and have a beer and to make peace with his crime. It was at this point that he was able to ask him, \u201cWhy did you do it?\u201d and listen as the man told him his own story.<\/p>\n Prejudices between the Hutus and the Tutsis are deeply held and from a very young age the man \u2013 who was also raised by his grandmother \u2013 had been told that his family had been killed by Tutsis, which he later learned was not true. However by the time the 1994 genocide occurred, the man had developed so much hatred for the Tutsis that it was nothing to him to simply join in with the massacre. Now, however, the man must live with both the guilt of what he did and the shame that his wife and family feel for his participation.<\/p>\n At first Hakizimana,\u2019s family called him naive for his efforts to forgive both the man and other perpetrators. In 2007, though, Hakizimana had the opportunity to attend a World Vision training. He decided to take his sister with him to the training and hoped the experience might spark a spirit of forgiveness in her. There they embraced several sayings to help them move past the atrocities committed against them such as, \u201cwhen you dwell on the past, you lose the future\u201d and \u201cwhen you\u2019re going to build a new order, you have to destroy the old, because you cannot develop both.\u201d<\/p>\n Hakizimana and his younger sister ended up moving away from the community in which their grandmother still lives in order to get away from some of the lingering pain and bad memories. From that point on, he says his sister began changing for the better. She finished high school in 2010 and is now a university student who works as a bank manager.<\/p>\n \u201cForgiveness is personal,\u201d Hakizimana mused. \u201cIt\u2019s not a feeling. You can\u2019t close your eyes and wait until you feel like forgiving. Forgiveness is not logical. It\u2019s not even knowing the truth. You may even be distracted by the truth. It is a decision. You sit there and say, \u2018I solemnly swear that I will forgive\u2019 and then you work at it until it comes slowly, slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n After SPI, Hakizimana plans to return to Rwanda to finish his last year of school. (Consider the educational gap he has closed between entering school for the first time at age 14 in order to be a multilingual university student today at age 27.) Hakizimana also will complete a four-week internship with the Strongest Oak Foundation in Rwanda, the organization that sponsored his SPI application. This internship is required by his Winston Fellowship, which covered all expenses associated with traveling to EMU and attending three SPI sessions. He hopes to one day resume his work of healing and reconciliation through drama and arts and believes that the skills learned the past three weeks at SPI will help him to do this with more understanding and effectiveness.<\/p>\n For a related story from the neighboring country of Burundi, read about <\/em>Jean Claude Nkundwa<\/a>, who is earning a master\u2019s degree in conflict transformation<\/a> from EMU\u2019s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Life as a homeless orphan<\/h3>\n
Discovering grandmother and sister<\/h3>\n
Beginning school at age 14<\/h3>\n
Facing unresolved fear and anger<\/h3>\n
“Why did you do it?”<\/h3>\n
Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling<\/h3>\n