Rwanda: Photo Essay by Kimberlee Acquaro
Kimberlee Acquaro is a photojournalist and writer »
This photo essay documents Rwandan women’s emerging rights and roles in the country’s reconciliation and reconstruction
Butamwe, Rwanda 2001
Joseline with her 5 month old son on her back works with her secretary. Like women everywhere she struggles to balance the demands of her family and her job.
Joseline survived the genocide in hiding. She returned to her village to find that her parents, five of her siblings and her sister’s family had been slaughtered. In 1999, as a 23 year old mother of three, with only a primary school education, she campaigned in the new government’s first elections and won her position as head of development in her village — overseeing the public health, finance, infrastructure and education of one of the country’s poorest areas.
Butamwe, Rwanda 2001
Joseline shows me photographs of family members killed in the genocide as her husband looks on.
Joseline survived the genocide in hiding. She returned to her village to find that her parents, five of her siblings and her sister’s family had been slaughtered. In 1999, as a 23 year old mother of three, with only a primary school education, she campaigned in the new government’s first elections and won her position as head of development in her village — overseeing the public health, finance, infrastructure and education of one of the country’s poorest areas.
Butamwe, Rwanda 2001
Joseline’s infant, Christian, was born after the genocide and Joseline believes his life will be better because of the changes in the country.
Joseline survived the genocide in hiding. She returned to her village to find that her parents, five of her siblings and her sister’s family had been slaughtered. In 1999, as a 23 year old mother of three, with only a primary school education, she campaigned in the new government’s first elections and won her position as head of development in her village — overseeing the public health, finance, infrastructure and education of one of the country’s poorest areas.
Butamwe, Rwanda 2001
Joseline’s husband plays with their daughter. He is proud of his wife’s position in the community and often helps with the house and the children, a new role for a Rwandan man.
Joseline survived the genocide in hiding. She returned to her village to find that her parents, five of her siblings and her sister’s family had been slaughtered. In 1999, as a 23 year old mother of three, with only a primary school education, she campaigned in the new government’s first elections and won her position as head of development in her village — overseeing the public health, finance, infrastructure and education of one of the country’s poorest areas.
Chantal with her husband Johan and her daughters, Jeanette, 2 years old and Cendrine, 4 years old.
Chantal was repeatedly raped during the genocide, kept by two different men as a “wife”, and ended up at the prefecture office in Butare with other refugees seeking protection where again, she was repeatedly raped by Hutu militiamen. She survived because Hutu leaders who were taking “old women” to Mirango to prove to the world that they were protecting and not killing Tutsis mistook Chantal, then 21, for an old woman.
One of the few rape survivors to be married after the genocide to man that knows what happened to her, Chantal has two daughters and a child on the way. Many rape survivors are dying of AIDS, while others are social outcasts because they were raped. “My children are my consolation,” she says. “Most rape survivors have nothing and although we are poor, I have my family. It is all I want.”
Butare, Rwanda 2002
Liberata is dying of AIDS contracted when she was raped during the genocide. She survived with her daughter Joseline, but the rest of her family, including some of her children, were killed. Liberata misses the children she lost and often cares for a neighbor’s young boy. She told me it helps her deal with her grief.
Kigali, Rwanda 2001
Specioze survived the genocide with her children but lost almost all of her family. Her mother and father were killed on April 9th — just 3 days after the genocide began. Her daughter was born on the third anniversary of her parents’ death. She gave her the name Agohozo, which means “my consolation”. Specioze returned to her childhood home and built a small memorial to rebury her parents, whose bodies had been thrown in a pit latrine, along with 87 others from her community. Today she administers a rotating fund for Rwanda’s women through the Ministry of Gender and is raising her three children alone.
Kigali, Rwanda 2002
A placard decorates a home in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali.
Butare, Rwanda 2002
Mary was 16 when she was gang raped during the genocide. It was her first and only sexual experience. After the genocide, she lived alone — only one brother survived the genocide — slowly dying from AIDS. “But I’ll die of loneliness before I die of AIDS,” she told me.
Mary died on February 14, 2003. AIDS drugs are available now in Rwanda for as little as $60 (USD) per month, but she could not afford them.
Butare, Rwanda 2002
Mary was 16 when she was gang raped during the genocide. It was her first and only sexual experience. After the genocide, she lived alone — only one brother survived the genocide — slowly dying from AIDS. “But I’ll die of loneliness before I die of AIDS,” she told me.
Mary died on February 14, 2003. AIDS drugs are available now in Rwanda for as little as $60 (USD) per month, but she could not afford them.
Kigali, Rwanda 2001
Adelphine teaches her brother to tie his shoes.
Adelphine was 10 when her parents were killed in the genocide, leaving her to raise four younger brothers and sisters. Because Adelphine had no living male relatives to challenge her, she was able to move her family back into their childhood home. Before the genocide, a woman did not have the right to inherit property or even have custody of her own children. A new inheritance law allows Adelphine to own the family home. She quit school to support her siblings and now sells greeting cards that she makes out of banana leaves. Hers is one of 65,000 child–headed households supporting 300,000 children orphaned by the genocide.
Kigali, Rwanda 2001
Adelphine gets her siblings ready for school before she heads off to work.
Adelphine was 10 when her parents were killed in the genocide, leaving her to raise four younger brothers and sisters. Because Adelphine had no living male relatives to challenge her, she was able to move her family back into their childhood home. Before the genocide, a woman did not have the right to inherit property or even have custody of her own children. A new inheritance law allows Adelphine to own the family home. She quit school to support her siblings and now sells greeting cards that she makes out of banana leaves. Hers is one of 65,000 child–headed households supporting 300,000 children orphaned by the genocide.
Kigali, Rwanda 2001
Adelphine insists that her younger brothers and sisters finish school although she was unable to. She and her sister Jeanne work to support their family.
Adelphine was 10 when her parents were killed in the genocide, leaving her to raise four younger brothers and sisters. Because Adelphine had no living male relatives to challenge her, she was able to move her family back into their childhood home. Before the genocide, a woman did not have the right to inherit property or even have custody of her own children. A new inheritance law allows Adelphine to own the family home. She quit school to support her siblings and now sells greeting cards that she makes out of banana leaves. Hers is one of 65,000 child–headed households supporting 300,000 children orphaned by the genocide.
Kigali, Rwanda 2001
Adelphine and her sister bathe before work in the morning.
Adelphine was 10 when her parents were killed in the genocide, leaving her to raise four younger brothers and sisters. Because Adelphine had no living male relatives to challenge her, she was able to move her family back into their childhood home. Before the genocide, a woman did not have the right to inherit property or even have custody of her own children. A new inheritance law allows Adelphine to own the family home. She quit school to support her siblings and now sells greeting cards that she makes out of banana leaves. Hers is one of 65,000 child–headed households supporting 300,000 children orphaned by the genocide.
Kigali, Rwanda 2001
Adelphine with her brothers and neighbor children in a rare moment of leisure.
Adelphine was 10 when her parents were killed in the genocide, leaving her to raise four younger brothers and sisters. Because Adelphine had no living male relatives to challenge her, she was able to move her family back into their childhood home. Before the genocide, a woman did not have the right to inherit property or even have custody of her own children. A new inheritance law allows Adelphine to own the family home. She quit school to support her siblings and now sells greeting cards that she makes out of banana leaves. Hers is one of 65,000 child–headed households supporting 300,000 children orphaned by the genocide.
Gitarama, Rwanda 2002
A foot of a preserved corpse at one of many genocide memorials. Bodies were kept as they were found and brought to a former school. Room after room after room hold bodies of men, women and children whose lives were taken during the genocide.
In 2001, photojournalist Kimberlee Acquaro traveled to Rwanda, meeting and photographing women who survived the genocide. In her words:
“From April to July 1994, Rwanda’s extremist Hutu government waged a systematic campaign of propaganda and terror that turned the country’s Hutu majority against its Tutsi minority. The violence culminated in one of the worst crimes ever witnessed by humanity: the Rwandan genocide. Three of every four Tutsis in Rwanda were massacred. In all, as many as 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in 100 days.
The majority of the survivors were women, many who had been brutally raped, a key element of the genocidal strategy. Many rape victims were infected with HIV and are now dying of AIDS. Others survived to find themselves pregnant from the rapes.
By some estimates, the genocide left the country 70 percent female and handed Rwanda’s women both an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity. Stepping into roles historically held by men yet blocked by deeply rooted attitudes and customs, these women have made remarkable progress. Many are becoming business owners and heads of households, mayors, legislators, and ministers of state.
The movement is not just political but also deeply personal. Working to rebuild their lives, these women are accomplishing the far larger goal of reconciling Rwandans after the genocide. Women who lost everything are mending their own souls by attending to the suffering of others. And their personal reconciliation has national consequences. Woman by woman they are rebuilding their war-ravaged nation and redefining their role in Rwandan society.”
Ms. Acquaro and her Rwandan colleague Norah Bagarinka spoke at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum about Rwandan women survivors on November 8, 2004.
Read the transcript »
Read more about these women in a Mother Jones article she co-authored with Peter Landesman, “Out of Madness, A Matriarchy.”
“God Sleeps in Rwanda,” a documentary film by Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacey Sherman about Rwandan women survivors, was nominated for a 2006 Academy Award.
Learn more about the film »
Ms. Acquaro’s work was made possible by the Pew International Journalism Fellowship Program.
