"If you keep your problems in your stomach the dogs cannot steal them" : trauma, forgiveness, and con-viviality in Rwanda : an ethnographic study following the healing and rebuilding our communities (HROC) project in Gisenyi, Rwanda
By bringing together survivors of the genocide with released prisoners to discuss trauma, healing, and trust, Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) in Rwanda may help people to broaden their networks of support and rebuild everyday life. ... After 1994, Rwandans, particularly in Gisenyi, found that many neighbours were strangers and members of "the other side". Few Rwandans are able to meet their daily needs without accessing relationships of reciprocity, so how are such relation- ships established after genocide? In this thesis I argue that restoring relationships of reciprocity is critical to the restoration of the everyday in Rwanda. The genocide in 1994 was unarguably a traumatic experience for the population in Rwanda, and it damaged common modes of social interaction. But for those I spoke to, forgiveness was important to the process of healing...
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