My community

My name is Ingabire , I live in Kigali. During the Rwandan Genocide, I was still 20 years old. I was raped by the Interahamwe militiamen for their simple pleasure of having sexual relations with a victim’s girl. In this way, I was infected with HIV/AIDS. Before the genocide, I had a fiancé, but he left me after he learned that I had been raped and infected with HIV.

At this time, I live an unhappy and pitiful life. Because of my poor health, I cannot find work because I am always sick. I am allergic to anti-retrivirals. No one is here to take care of me, my family was exterminated during the genocide. I am the only survivor. My friends have all left me because I am a burden to them. The neighbors, whose family members committed genocide, they laugh at me, saying that I was a prostitute and I caught AIDS. I live a life of complete anguish. at a certain time some one come to tell me that he loves me, he pregnanted me and he lives me because he has a good education that I don’t have, I accepted to give birth and suffer with my baby girl who has no value in the family because she is a girl, I am working in a saloon, with little money I earn my living with my baby, but I don’t know what wrong with me, now , I did a fornication with a man who came and tell me that he is going to marry me legal, but I am more suffering than ever , because , I am the one to pay rent, to find food and every things of our needs, and some time he leave me with some materials, and after I see him back. this is Ingabire ‘s story.

As we called our journal heal yourself, and we see that the big problematic of domestic violence In Rwanda is that culture ask women to keep quite, now we are helping them to express their problems, so this is an openly debate for you to give advices and think how women together we can release our friends from ignorance and oppression.

a story by Charlotte