Special investigation: How Wirral’s generosity is rebuilding Rwanda

Mar 3 2010 by Jade Wright, Birkenhead News

Jade Wright in Rwanda, at Kiramuruzi sector Abishyize Hawiwe Cooperative

In a Wirral News special report Jade Wright finds out how your donations are helping Rwanda’s vital environmental projects

MUKABUTARE Theopiste and Mukamutara Phelomene walk six miles every morning with a precious cargo of banana leaves.

Like the other 11 members of the Abishyize Hawiwe women’s co-operative they deliver this waste product to a group of weavers who make them into beautiful shopping bags.

Plastic carrier bags are banned in Rwanda for environmental reasons, and the women have spotted a business opportunity. They deliver their leaves, which would otherwise rot on the ground, to a partner co-operative in a nearby village.

It takes three days for one woman to make each bag, which sells for around £2. It may seem a small sum, perhaps, but given that an average monthly wage is £11, it is a considerable amount for these women.

And as it recycles waste leaves and cuts down on plastic bags, it makes sound environmental, as well as financial, sense.

But together with entrepreneurial bent and an admirable work ethic, the women in both co-ops also share something much sadder.

“We were all raped in the genocide,” says Mukamutara, the president of the Abishyize Hawiwe co-operative. “We were badly beaten and many of us have been damaged internally so some cannot walk without crutches.

“Growing bananas provides us with an income, but more than that, it stops our loneliness. It stops our hunger, and it also soothes our pain.”

During the 1994 genocide, a million of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates were murdered by the Hutu dominated government and its followers.

Over the course of 100 days, 20% of the total population of the country was wiped out – and the majority not at the hands of soldiers.

“The men who came and beat and raped us were not soldiers,” explains Mukamutara. “They were people from our own villages. People we’d known all our lives. It filled us with shame to be treated like this by former friends of our families.”