The Beauty of Resilience

This year marks the 31st anniversary of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, a period of unimaginable darkness. Yet, Rwanda is also a testament to extraordinary resilience, a story of the enduring human spirit. In this inaugural episode of "Rwanda Rising," we begin a special series exploring the lives within the Foundation Rwanda community. We begin with Agatha, a survivor and mother. In 2007, she was a woman marked by deep shame and isolation recounting the horrific violence she endured, including the devastating betrayal of her neighbor who used a machete to knock out her teeth. Today, we share her powerful testimony, translated and recorded for this podcast, a testament to her journey, her strength, her resilience, and her unwavering will to smile again.

Trigger Warning: Please be advised that this series addresses sensitive topics related to the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, including experiences of sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.

To survivors everywhere: you are not alone.

Resources:

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network in the US): rainn.org 

Solid Minds Counseling Rwanda: https://solidminds.rw/

National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC): https://www.nsvrc.org/survivors

Foundation Rwanda:  foundationrwanda.org *Out of respect for the privacy and safety of the Foundation Rwanda community, our site is not available in Rwanda.

Survivors Fund (SURF):https://survivors-fund.org.uk/

Avega Agahozo: https://avega-agahozo.org/

Special thanks to: 

Agatha for her courage in sharing her powerful story.

The amazing PR and podcast production team at Fallow, Field & Mason for their generosity and pro bono support:  Juliet Fallowfield, Franceska Knechtli, Sam Scougall Knight.

Leah Rose, Andrew Hida, Aidan Sullivan, Kevin Smokler, and Eric Bonabeau for their insightful critiques. 

Production and Sound Engineering: Dan Lawrence, Jim Greer, and Hida Visuals. 

Foundation Rwanda’s incredibly dedicated colleagues and partners at Survivors Fund: Samuel Munderere, Raban Havugimana, Emilienne Kambibi, Vincent Nyawuma, David Russell, Liliane Umuhoza, and Jeanette Kawera Kajette.

The Foundation Rwanda Team: Sara Solfanelli, Dan Kusnetz, Jonathan Torgovnik, and Mike Gordon. 

The Glo Good Team: Dr. Jonathan B. Levine and Stacy Levine. 

Schulte Roth & Zabel

Our amazing translator: Carine Ingabire. 

Rwanda Sound Engineer: Ernestine Mucyo.

Original music by Alyn Sano and artwork by Shyaka OB. 

© Foundation Rwanda 2025.

Transcript

Rwanda Rising: The Beauty of Resilience

[00:00:00] Rwanda is a story of immense resilience, a testament to the enduring human spirit 31 years after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. We embark on a special series. We exploring powerful stories of resilience from the Foundation Rwanda community. We'll delve into the experiences of second generation survivors.

Born from the atrocities of rape committed during the genocide, as well as their mothers. Through their voices, we'll hear their hopes. Dreams, challenges, and how they are shaping a brighter future for all of Rwanda. This is a story of Rwanda rising trigger [00:01:00] warning. Please be advised that this series may address sensitive topics related to the randan genocide and its aftermath, including experiences of sexual violence.

In 1994, Rwanda endured a horrific genocide against the Tutsi, marked by the widespread rape of hundreds of thousands of women. This resulted in an estimated 20,000 children born from this trauma. These mothers face immense challenges. Many survivors grapple with HIV, PTSD, depression and anxiety, often exacerbated by stigma, economic hardship, and aging.

I'm Jules Shell, co-founder of Foundation Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide may be decades past, but its wounds. Still linger since 2007. Together with Survivors Fund and our local partners, we've [00:02:00] been empowering survivors and their children. Born of rape, offering mental health support, economic empowerment, and education.

We've reached over 850 families, but the need is immense and our work continues. In this episode, we will meet a very special survivor and mother named Agathe. Agathe is a partner in the Survivors Fund Foundation Rwanda program, and a recipient of a micro lending grant for her small business. Her testimony was first published in photographer Jonathan Torgovnik’s Intended Consequences Project, highlighting the experiences of 30 women's survivors.

When I first met Agathe, I noticed that she covered her mouth in shame and did not like to leave her house. We first recorded her testimony in 2007, which she gave us permission to translate and record for this [00:03:00] podcast. Her story is one that I will never forget. Carine Ingabire translates Agathaes testimony to English. 

Before genocide, I had a family, parents, relatives. I had brothers and sisters. We lived a happy life. Until genocide came and destroyed our life. Everybody was killed. None of my family members survived. I went to the church, to the parish nearby, all my family wanted the same church. A priest came and said I should go in and hide in the head priest’s house.

When I entered the house, he called his friends. They said this was an opportunity for them to enjoy a Tutsi girl, and so they raped me. Both of them raped me in the [00:04:00] room of the cheif priest. Three times the militias came. And that is when they got me from that house and almost killed me. My upper teeth were removed by clubs they thought had been killed.

On the first day, they brought a vehicle to take us from the church, but before we went, they had dug holes in the forest. That's where they hit me with clubs and machete and threw me in among the dead bodies. They thought I had also been killed. I was buried. An estimated 20,000 children were born from rapes committed during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Due to the stigma associated with rape and HIV/AIDS, these children and their mothers have been [00:05:00] severely marginalized. By both their families and communities, they do not actively seek help and no existing government programs have been created to support their specific needs. I named my daughter Agnes after my mother because I wanted to keep my mother with me in my memory.

I used not to love my daughter. I was a little bit distant. I used not to really, really close to her, but after I got into counseling at Rwamagana with Emilienne and the team at AVEGA, that's when I got to bond with Agnes and now I love her very much.

Agnes is Agathe's daughter born from rape during the 1994 genocide. Like her mother, Agnes is incredibly courageous in sharing her story. You can hear Agnes's full story in our next episode.

[00:06:00] When asked about using anonymous names, both Agnes and Agathe said, we are not afraid to tell our stories to the world... You'll hear us mention AVEGA throughout this series. It refers to AVEGA AGAHOZO, the National Association of Widows of the Genocide, a Rwandan nonprofit that empowers widows and orphans of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and a longtime partner of Survivors Fund and Foundation Rwanda. Its facilities serve as a key location for our mental health and trauma counseling programs.

And just to give you a sense of their mission and incredible work. Agahozo means dry one's tears in Kinyarwana, the national language of Rwanda.. ....................Healing from the genocide requires more than just addressing physical wounds. The emotional scars run deep, often silently [00:07:00] carried by the mothers. For these women Foundation Rwanda's Community Counseling Initiative is a lifeline.

This peer led program offers by weekly group sessions addressing their complex trauma and the often difficult journey of disclosure.................... in the midst of so much hardship. I asked Agatha what her dream was. Her answer was a testament to her resilience to send my daughter Agnes to school and to get my smile back.

Her dream was to get her smile back and you guys said, well, let's do it for her. Let's get her smile back. And you also said, can she come to New York? Well, why not? Can't she come to New York? I asked and we learned quickly that we really couldn't get her to New York. This is Dr. Jonathan B. Levine and Stacey Levine.

We did come up with a solution. We did take a simple alginate impression and we'll make her a beautiful smile. And how are we gonna be able to do [00:08:00] that? Like DHL? The impressions to Jonathan's New York City dental practice. And his team went to work on creating what was going to be the most magnificent, life changing smile for her and to really make her wish come true to go back to Rwanda and give her her smile.

So we did it. And so it was a very, very quick decision. Let's do it. Dr. Jonathan B. Levine, a renowned dental specialist, and Stacy Levine. Co-founder of Go Smile and GLO Science.. Are the husband and wife team behind Glo Good. Which provides medical and dental care to underserved communities. And so walk me through the steps of what it took to make it happen.

Well, I mean, quite miraculously a simple impression. We go through a lot to make sure the prosthesis are perfect. She had her front four teeth knocked out in the genocide, as you know. [00:09:00] But when the alginate came to my practice, we were able to fabricate a very permanent framework of cobalt and steel on this alginate impression.

Now, without perfect bite registrations and without counter models, it's not that easy to, to develop precision. It was a a little bit of pit in the stomach. How is this going to fit? And so there we were. We were in one of six dental offices for 7 million people, something like that. President Kagame’s dentist.

And the stage was set. Thank God I had the appliance. Really the smile, the teeth with this steel base in my knapsack. 'cause they lost our luggage. We showed up that morning. I got to meet Agathe and I could feel her passion and I could feel her energy and I could feel her wish to really want. To have her smile back.

If she's got Bone 1, 2, 3 and Bone 1415, then we can make her a partial set of a don't these three in the front door out, [00:10:00] and by extracting those teeth, we can build her front teeth that look much better aesthetically and work better, function better.

She will be praying for you. That you’ve wiped the tears from her eyes,  she feels like she's a human being. She has changed a lot. She says that I am the most beautiful mother and the most beautiful woman with a very big and amazing smile. The same village that Agathe calls home is also where her perpetrator resides.

It's a small place and she risks a chance encounter every time she ventures to the town center. Agatha testified against the man who knocked out her teeth at the Gachacha Court. A system of transitional justice in Rwanda after the genocide, the aftermath of the genocide [00:11:00] and the path to justice are complex to shed light on these issues.

We're joined by Dr. Myriam Denov, an expert in the field. She's a professor at McGill University and the Canada Research Chair on Children and Families in Armed Conflict. Her current research is exploring children born of conflict related sexual violence in Northern Uganda, Rwanda, and Cambodia. So the gachacha was a form of reparative justice In the aftermath of the genocide, victims and perpetrators were brought forward into. As a joint context, a dialogue.

The community was involved in the justice process, and so in many cases, the women came forward alongside their perpetrator and this kind of community based justice was carried out. We know that between 250,000 and 500,000 women [00:12:00] were raped during the genocide, and rape was used as a a tactic to terrorize local populations as a form of gender power relations and as a form of, of course, ethnic cleansing genocide.

What was the follow for these women We know about the rejection by their families, by their communities, that they were often blamed for the sexual violence. And associated with that, losing their worth and their value. As women, as mothers, as wives, many of these women were also forced to leave their homes and were left to fend for themselves.

The economic precarity and the poverty that's associated with that is very important to consider as well. There's also the physical elements. Many of these women contracted hiv aids. They suffered long-term gynecological problems, chronic health problems that they're currently still living with. To come up against such a [00:13:00] horrific experience and then to regain your smile, that is the ultimate in resistance and showing I can move forward.

Regardless of what you have done to me. My name is Emilienne Kambibi, I am social worker at Survivors Fund and Foundation in Rwanda. I'm a genocide survivor and I'm very proud to help other genocide survivors. My sisters were raped during genocide two of my sisters died. When I'm helping other women. I feel like I'm helping my sister.

The first day I met Aga she told me, I used to conceive them myself as a crazy woman 'cause uh, she was healing lonely and abandoned and ashamed. But now since she joined the groups of counseling, she charged a lot. The people who [00:14:00] committed genocide, they want to kill all Tutsi, finish them. She told me the person who pulled her teeth out of her mouth, what just he did was delaying her development.

They didn't kill her hope. They didn't kill her joy. They just delayed her. But she's not dead. She's joyful. She's resilient. I have witnessed ripples of change in Agathe's life in our family and the community. Today, she’s a responsible mother and she's a role model to the community. She's now a leader of a group of unity and reconation in her village.

It has been 13 years since Agathe got her smile back and 10 years since I've seen her. I flew from San Francisco to New York, then Brussels, and finally [00:15:00] Kigali. From there, a three and a half hour drive to Kranji District in Rwanda's Western province. Her smile radiates as we share a long embrace.

We wanna see how you were doing. Look at her smile. Look at the smile. Look at her teeth. I haven't seen her in 10 years. You had another baby. How 10 years old are we gonna meet him? Yes. Okay. Even a grandchild, I have to meet the grand. And how old is he? Four years. Four years, and what's his name?

She put on this traditional clothing preparing for the visitors. This is like when a woman want to feel like confident and beautiful. And Sara is taking a picture of her and she's [00:16:00] posing as a queen.

She's very happy today. It is a profound moment of joy for both of us, but the reality for survivors is complex, a mix of incredible strength and enduring challenges. I'm curious as to what she would say 31 years later to the man who knocked out her teeth?  I have not much to tell him. I would like to tell him that he wasted his time and I am alive.

I'm still alive. Women, they go through different deaths, like during the war, they kill the body and they kill the soul. They use. The body as the weapon to make them lose their humanity after getting a chance to survive. I chose to have hope. I chose to love my [00:17:00] country, so this is something that I'm teaching my children.

To fight against the genocide theology, to fight against the division, they have to work hard because the future of the country was going to depend on them.

This podcast. Is a living testimony to the Foundation, Rwanda families, the courageous mothers and their children who have shared their stories. Rwanda's journey of healing is far from over and there are countless more voices to be heard... It took a village to make this podcast special thanks to Agathe for her courage in sharing her story.

The amazing team at Fallow Field and Mason, Juliette Fallowfield, Francesca Connect, Sam Kugel Knight. To Leah Rose, Andrew Hida, Aidan Sullivan, Kevin Smokler, and Eric Bonabeau for their [00:18:00] insightful critiques, Production and Sound Engineering by Dan Lawrence, Jim Greer and Hida Visuals , Foundation, Rwanda’s incredibly dedicated colleagues and partners at Survivors Fund. Samuel Mundere, Raban Havugimana, Emilienne Kambibi, Vincent Nyawuma, David Russell, Lillian Umahoza, and Jeannette Kawera, Kajette. The Foundation Rwanda Team. Sarah Solfanelli, Dan Kuznetz, Jonathan Torgovnik, and Mike Gordon, the Glo Good team, Dr. Jonathan B. Levine and Stacy Levine, our amazing translator, Carine Ingabire , Rwanda Sound Wngineer Ernestine Mucyo. Original music by Alyn Sano and artwork by Syaka OB. If you liked the story you heard today, please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. Visit our website@foundationrwanda.org or drop me a line at info@foundationrwanda.org to see how you can get involved.

Thanks for [00:19:00] listening and to survivors everywhere you are not alone.