Episode 246 - Henriette Mutegwaraba

[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Okay, so I'm here with my friend Henriette, mute Waraba. Did I even come close? [00:00:51] Speaker B: You did an amazing job, my friend. [00:00:55] Speaker A: So this is real. We're like friends irl Henriette in real life. This is what the kids say, you know, IRL in real life. But I feel a little bit embarrassed because we have shared coffee and meals and time at tables and in cars and all of the things. And I have heard your story in bits and pieces and I have had your book in my possession for months and sat down this week and read it, read it by the pool, read it having coffee. You accompanied me in my breakfast this morning as I was finishing it up. And I just want to say again how grateful I am for you sharing your story. Thank you so much. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Thank you, Alexis. Thank you so much. [00:01:55] Speaker A: So, my friend Henriette has written a book called by any means necessary healing and forgiveness after genocide. And of course, I'll put the link to where you can grab that book in the show notes here. But I want to say as we're recording and as this is going to be released, we are marking for folks who it may not be on their radar necessarily. We be are marking 30 years after the rwandan genocide that took place in the spring and summer of 1994. Henriette, first of all, again, I'm just so grateful for you continuing to tell your story and to speak out. You and your sister are survivors of that genocide with very different stories of how you came to be on the other side of it. But this is something that I'll just name and you talk about it quite a bit in the book, and I'm grateful for your voice in this space. This was, I'm hesitant to say this was an event, I will use that for lack of a better term right now, but I will say this was an event that the world did not recognize until after the fact, how horrific this actually was. And as you say in the book, genocide doesn't just happen. This wasn't someone woke up one day and decided to commit mass murder. There were many, many, many decades of warning signs leading up to this moment. And still the world turned away and we ignored what was happening to your people. And so when I say I'm grateful for you telling your story, I don't understand what that must mean for you to retell this over and over again. But I have a small bit of understanding of what it means that you would do that not just as a warning for the rest of us, but so that we can learn lessons that we should have been learning all of those decades ago. So, yeah. Where would you like to start, Henriette? [00:04:41] Speaker B: Well, I just wanted to start a thank you to say thank you so much for putting this, you know, for this time of giving me a voice. And really, that's what we need as survivors of genocide or any survivor, any tragedy, events like you said, or, you know, it can be any. Anything. You always want people to give you a voice, especially when you're ready to give a voice, because you're not always ready to speak up about what happened, the horrific events and the traumatic events you went through. It takes some time from different people. It can take years, it can take two. But when we are ready to speak, we need a safe place where we can share our stories. And this is why I wanted to start to just say how thankful I am that a people like you can always give us a safe place where we can share our stories. And. Thank you so much. So where should I start? You kind of nailed it. Genocide never just happened. There is always somebody, some people who acting genocide and they take time. In the case of my country, beginning 59, 30 people with targeted and forced, like we always see forced immigrations. Forced immigration. It's personal to me. It's more than historical to me, because I lived it. I was once a refugee. My parents, my grandpa was killed in 59. So it was many, many, many years where we were oppressed. And the propaganda that goes behind it to the point where your neighbor, a human being, can turn to another human being and look at them and think, they are not human, they deserve to die. So it's very dangerous. It is very dangerous. When we see propaganda, when you see hate speech and we don't speak up, we don't sit, do anything about it. I always say that there's two things that scared me to death. It's when people don't see the propaganda, and it's when a government or institution that has power keep denying and keep saying that everything is okay in the country, why it is not okay while people are still dying, while people are being forced to leave their country, while you have hundreds and thousands of refugees, like in the case of South Sudan, who lived in a surrounding area, who will never probably go back to their country or who do not even know how their country looked like. They were born in refugee camps. And up to now, that's their life. It's very sad. So before the genocide, I started to experience when I was a little girl, like any other little girl, like a normal little girl, they go home, they go to school, they come home. There is a bread, there is tea, there is a good conversation, there is laughter with the family. There was no fear. But in our case, when we grow up, there was so much fear because our families were terrorized by the government because of how God created us. So I remember vividly everything. Like prior to the genocide, the 1994 genocide, I remember going to school and coming back with a lot of questions because of what happened to me to school. I remember when I was a teenager when I would go to school and we rolled blocks everywhere and I got stopped because I was very tall. I remember those events. I remember when I was dehumanized and other student called me cockroaches or snakes, and I would go home. And for the parents who suffered oppression and division for so many years, sometimes they don't even know how to answer. They don't know how to warn the young ones because they want. They wanted to show them that it is okay, even if it's okay. That's just a parent's heart. They don't want to show you the fear, the danger in a present moment, hoping they are protecting you. But as you grow, you end up facing it. So what I remember, you know, my grandparents was killed, and my grandpa was killed in 59 because he was a tutsi. So now after the genocide, my mind goes back, and I can see my grandma's face and my father and try to think for them. Like, what are they thinking at that time after going the 59 genocide or mass killings? Sometimes I feel their pain, and sometimes I feel that we're here so we can have this conversation, because they are gone. They face 59 in 1994, that we all gone, killed during genocide. So I was young. And now knowing what I know, I wish they were there. So we can talk about these things that I'm talking to you or I'm writing in a book, so I'm sharing with the media, or I'm sharing with a place I go to speak and people come and ask me those questions. And I wish I was. I wish my parents were there. I wish my grandma was there. I wish my siblings were there. I wish everybody was there, but it's not the case. They are not here and I am here. So I decided not to keep mute silent. I decided to speak up and try to be their voices and my voices, even if they're not here today. [00:10:47] Speaker A: Henriette, I'm so grateful. And I thought about what you just said, that you have chosen to use your voice, and I know you well enough to think that you'll agree with me on this point. I just want to. I just want to kind of put a fine point on it to say that you have chosen to speak up. But that doesn't mean that other people who have experienced the genocide and the trauma and are suffering from those traumatic events, if they choose not to speak up, there's no shame there for them because you have a hard calling that you're living out right now to continue to use your voice. And so I was thinking about that as I was finishing your book this morning, thinking about the people, for example, that you share near the end of the book. I don't want to spoil everything, but when you get the job at the museum in Kigali and you're able to minister to the survivors who have come in and just thinking about how voices like yours matter, because so many who have gone through that for reasons, personal reasons that are completely valid are not. Number one, they don't have the public platform that you have had, and they may not feel comfortable sharing in a public space that may be something they're doing with their families or with their therapists or, you know, with the Lord in prayer, but not to the public extent that you have and what a service you're providing to the people who are akin to you, who have experienced this trauma as well. So, so I just wanted to name that, but I want to go back to the propaganda piece for a minute because you named when you were a kid and a teenager, and then we see it happening when the actual genocide happens, this language of cockroaches and snakes. And how this was happening to you in school, not only by other students, but from teachers, staff and faculty members who are calling out Tutsi children, who are presenting them in front of the class, who are, who are pointing them out, pointing out the differences that they see, naming who they are and shaming those students publicly. And I want you to talk for a minute, because I heard you talk about this at the Holocaust museum here in Houston last year, this dehumanizing talk, this propaganda, because we hear it, I would say we're hearing it now, especially with the war going on in Gaza. We're hearing more anti semitic dehumanizing talk, but we're also hearing anti arab dehumanizing talk. When you talked about immigration, refugees, forced immigration, we have heard that from political figures. A dehumanizing talk when it comes to immigrant populations and how, I don't know if we're just desensitized to that, but we don't, I think, give that the credence that we really should in that being one of those data points that we can look at and say genocide doesn't just happen. There are things that lead up to it. And one of those things includes this propaganda, specifically this dehumanizing language, which is hate speech. So can you elaborate on that a bit for us? [00:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Let me share the light a little bit on the first, the things you said first about how some survivors of genocide are not capable of sharing their story or talking about it. Our stories are deeply painful. And when I speak to survivors of genocide, of my friends, including my cousin, I have a cousin who lives in Paris, and I invited her to come to the conference. I don't want to talk about the conference. We're not there yet. And I asked her, would you like to share your story? Has been 30. She has never shared her story. She has seen her stories. I mean, I don't want to say her story, but it's sad. And she looked at me, she said, where am I going to start? And she said, how can I even say a word? It has been 30 years. I don't want my memory to go back. I don't want it to hurt myself to her going back to those memories. It's hurting herself again. So a lot of survivors of genocide up to now, I just left Dallas, and we have 400 survivors of genocide and their children. And when we give them the opportunity to speak, like, just few of them, out of the ten people we selected, they have never said a word about what happened to them during genocide. We selected ten people. All of them have never said anything. And all they did was just standing to the podium and they would say, like, a few words and just burst in tears. I cried the whole time, could not control myself. And I think that God was showing me that. And that's what I feel that I need to focus on. Those who have never said anything, who, they never take faith, what they went through just to give them a platform, even if they can't meet with the two people, one person, so that they can let it out and speak it out. So people think that when we do numbers we like, it's 30 years, they should have. It's 30 years, it's gone. People should be better and strong. These things that we call genocide, when somebody come and kill all your parents and your siblings, when somebody come and rape you and then torture you and kill all, you know, unhuman acts, that you can ever think, it doesn't go away in 30 years. And it's very disappointing, but it does not. And that's the truth. You just have to learn how. How to pray and live to with it. And by the grace of God, only by his power, you can be able to function and be a normal person again. And that's what I have to say. So let's go back to the propaganda that we see today and what I have experienced when I was young, like you said, yes, it's the linking up to the genocide. When you look at the Holocaust, there was so much propaganda leading up to the Holocaust, right? You know, the Star of David, all of that, you know, the 10th stage of genocide, maybe you can google it. Doctor Greg Stanton, who is a scholar in genocide, did a very good job on authoring ten stages of genocide. I think that every country where genocide happened, the leaders of the country, they copy from what happened during the Holocaust. Ours looks similar to the Holocaust. They have published the ten Commandments, Hutu, ten Commandments. The government was majority, Hutu, the president was Hutu, the Tutu were minority. And they had these ten commandments, Hutu Ten Commandments. And all of them were just to dehumanize Tutus. How we are dissolved. Dishonest, total dishonest. People totally cannot go to the military, total, not allowed in the business, all of that, you can look it up and see it was. It was terrifying. And knowing that the government is behind it, knowing that the government is feeding it, knowing that 99% of the media, the newspaper painted during genocide, before genocide, was under the government. The government was controlling everything, and they let it happen. So it's dangerous. Now when you go to countries like us, United nations, where I think there on salute, propaganda going on today, I'm not afraid to say that because I love this country. And coming from Rwanda, I see the lead up to this propaganda. It's not good. There's always confusion with a country where we have what we call freedom of speech. Freedom of speech can be mixed up with hate speech. And I think that's what is happening in this country. So people are using the freedom of speech, but they are doing a lot of damage to the community, to the country, and it's very dangerous. Now, can we just sit down and know that people are ignorant to not see the signs? Maybe they do. Maybe there is people at the highest level who knows exactly, and they are somebody who knows exactly what is happening in this country, and they are turning a blind eye like they did in 1994. So I think what we need to do as a families, as small communities, is to find love and educate ourselves and try to do what is right and be the voice and protect our families from protecting our families, protecting our neighborhood or small communities and pray. [00:21:11] Speaker A: That's a good word. Henriette. I want to pivot just a bit and name, if it's okay with you, and name some. Some facts about the genocide. So I was in middle school when this happened. Many of our listeners are going to be older than me, but many are going to be younger than me. And this might be something that maybe they've had a small section in their history, you know, world history books about this. Maybe they've seen things come up since there have been anniversaries. Maybe they have seen things come up since we have seen other genocides take place since then, but maybe not. And so I'm wanting to see if you can help us understand, maybe just with not to be dry, but some of the things that you might read statistically, you know, when did the killing start? You know, what was the catalyst for that? How many lives were lost? How many people fled, things like that? Because I think what continues to strike me every time I have interaction with the rwandan genocide is the scale of this horrific tragedy. It blows my mind every time when I think about the scale. So could you help us understand some of. Some of that, some of those just, like, factual things so that we're kind of on the same page as we continue the conversation. [00:23:19] Speaker B: Yes. Especially for the people who doesn't even know where one is on the map, you know? [00:23:24] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're okay with that, go, please. [00:23:29] Speaker B: Yes. So this genocide actually is the genocide against the Tuti tribe in our country. This is a country that had three tribes. And this genocide, the genocide that happened in Rwanda. It happened in Rwanda, and it was a genocide against the Tutsi. And there were some Hutus who were killed, especially those who tried to protect Tutsis and moderate Tutus. Few of them were killed, but the genocide was a genocide against the Tutsi. The beginning of genocide. It was April 7, 1994. That's when the UN decided that this was a genocide. But the killing of the Tutsi people started in nineties. So in the nineties, the government will send Mauritius to neighborhood where we had a lot of Tutsis and kill them, a lot of them. So. And they put a lot of them, a lot of big number, hundreds of hundreds of Tutsis. They put them in a prison from nineties. And then they would go to schools, the boarding schools that we select. Tutsi kids beat them to death. A lot of them lost their lives. They would go to target boarding school. Boarding school. Normally you find really young people, right, young teenager, girls and boys. So they would go to the schools and kill students as well. And actually, if you remember when I was in high school, that's when the very first time, it wasn't the very first time I faced some depression, oppression and all of that, but it was the very first time I was arrested with three policemen who accused me of having poisoned to kill, hurt kids, which was a lie, you know, just. They will always falsely accuse something in order either to. Just to get in trouble, either to kill you or to put him in a prison. So in 1994, genocide happened. And the last for three months. Over those three months, they killed a million people. They killed the women, children, elderly people were killed in hospitals. A lot of churches in our country now, they are memorial sites because a lot of people were killed inside the churches. They thought that if they go to churches, a haughty place, a safe place, a place of worship, nobody was going to kill them, but they were killed inside the churches. [00:26:16] Speaker A: Can we stop for a second? I want to. I want to repeat that because again, it blows my mind every time I revisit this. 1 million people were killed over the course of three months in 1994, beginning in April. A million people in a three months. [00:26:41] Speaker B: Yes. [00:26:42] Speaker A: I mean, this is. The scale of. That is very, very difficult to imagine. [00:26:53] Speaker B: It was and it is, yes. [00:26:56] Speaker A: So go ahead. [00:26:57] Speaker B: Please note that we wanted to compare, but the 6 million Jewish were killed, but it took them longer to kill those 6 million people as was in a three months. Only they killed a million of people in one country. And it's not that they. Not only they killed people, they also destroyed our homes. And sometimes I wonder, when I try to think about it, the level of evilness to the point where you kill somebody, you know, the whole family is gone, but you don't even want it to see their home standing for what? So the home is gone. Our cattle were killed. All of them. All of them. My family, we had the three homes, we had nothing left. You could not even tell there was a house there. I don't know what they did to, even to the material they used to build homes. You don't know. They killed all our cattles. Everything was gone in our family, all homes. My auntie's home, my uncles, my cousins, every single thing was gone. The few survivors who survived, who were just homeless, like, nowhere to live. Of course, you don't even want to go back and live there. It was traumatizing. Remember the very first time I went to visit the ruins of my family, and it was the most painful thing to watch. I left sick, get home. I was living at my aunt at that time, and I was sick for three days. Like, couldn't even eat. Just to see the damage that they caused, the pain that they caused to other human beings. And it wasn't just for our family. You look, you open your eyes, you look on the other village, every tot home was gone, and the people were gone. You will be lucky if you have one person who survived, because a lot of families, like my aunt, who had six girls, my cousins, all gone, none of them survived in that family. Like, all of them, six. [00:29:14] Speaker A: I also want to say, help me, please help me if I'm understanding this correctly, because in addition to that, part of what I think I understand about this is that it wasn't a completely segregated country as far as who lived where. And so many Tutsis were injured or maimed or killed even by, and they had Hutu neighbors, and maybe their Hutu neighbors were the perpetrators. And then in those cases, the neighboring homes would be remaining, but the homes of the Tutsi families would be, would have been destroyed. [00:29:57] Speaker B: Is. That is correct. That's, that's exactly what happened. All our neighbor neighbors, Hutu neighbors, they still live there with their family. Their homes are still standing, ours are gone. And that's what, you know, you can tell the danger of propaganda. Those are the people who, we lived together for years. We speak the same language. We all, we have, we same color, we all color people. It wasn't white and black. It wasn't. We always speak the same language. You grow up together. Some of them in our families, they were actually, my sister used to say, how can you kill somebody, that you always go there, you find a job, you work for them, and then they feed you, they give you money, they pay you, and then you still come back and kill them. Right? So it was those case where the government was telling them, if they kill us, they can take what we have. But then they went back and destroyed everything we had. You know, you're not even going to have what we had. You know, you're destroying everything. So that's the danger of the propaganda. To see a neighbor who knows you, your kids grow up together, went to the same school. But the propaganda feeding of every single day and years in the media, it gets to their brain to the point where. And the dehumanization. Dehumanization. When I was one time at my previous job, when I was working at the genocide memorial center, one time, they brought a prisoner who killed 25 people to testify what he did. And I was in a room with him and he said, ever since I was little, my parents told me that Tootsie people, snake, they are cockroaches. So during genocide, when I was told to grab machetes and kill them, I did not see them as human. I saw them as animals, but actually cockroaches, snake. And I remember that during, before pre auto genocide, during the propaganda, they used to say that in 59, we tried to kill them, but we did not finish them. Some of them, they're still living in exile in neighboring countries. And that was something they say on the media, like really, like openly speak. And they said, we made a mistake. And we also say that it is so hard. You know how when you try to cockroaches, sometimes they go and come back. So that's how they pick that name because they say, we kill tuttis every time, but you still see them around. And that's how they come up with that name, calling us carthages, because they have done it several times and we're still there. [00:32:56] Speaker A: Let's talk about that for a moment because. And I want. We'll get there. So, listener, we're getting there. Henriette's putting together a wonderful conference at the end of this summer in 2024 that's going to be held in Houston for survivors and their families with a focus on trauma but. And healing. But I want to talk about that for a moment because when you have survivors, you'd say, let's remove the genocide portion for just a moment and let's just talk about trauma. I'm no expert, but let's just say, okay, someone has witnessed violence against their family member. Yes, we can all agree this is traumatizing. This is going to have an effect on this person who survived the violence and witnessed the violence. And then add to that. So take it back to the genocide, say, adding to that, the repeat, you're a cockroach. You're a snake. Your father deserved to die because he was a snake. Your mother was a cockroach. Those kinds of things that have been playing on purpose over and over and over, not just in someone's head, but verbally from someone else that lives in the head of that person afterwards, to a degree. So can you talk about in your community, the effects of trauma, both the violence that you witnessed? But I'm really thinking right now about just. Even that propaganda, just hearing that all the time. You told us what effect that had on the person who was able to do the killing, because he had internalized that message and said, this being is not a person, so I can kill him. But what does that do to the person who is receiving the message on the other side, who's being told you and your family are nothing more than cockroaches or snakes? [00:35:23] Speaker B: And you didn't say it. It's just trauma. It's PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. And for our families, or Tutsi families in Rwanda, I believe that trauma began even before the 1994 genocide. And that's when I was sharing with you. When you look in your parents eyes and they have this fear of not seeing their children growing up in that country, and they constantly trying to fight to protect you as a child. And actually, that's what happened with their parents, because trauma can be transmitted. Like, if I can tell you now that I know what happened to my father when he was young, losing a father, my grandpa, my grandma, losing a husband, my father was. My grandpa was killed, the torturer death. They bit him in 59. And then a few days he died because he was injured. So he did not die right away, but he died right that time. So I can only imagine the mother, the. My grandpa, my grandma, who survived with a. With a lot of children, and she had to raise him with always a reminder that the father should be here, it's because he was killed, right? And then my father, who was young, my mom, that time, she was 152, so she was young to seven years, eight years, my father probably ten. They have seen all those things because my mother used to tell me those stories. And then they are in a government, the government that is oppressing them. So really, you don't see hope that you're going to even have your children when they are twenties, you having babies, but you don't know if you're going to be alive. So the trauma goes back and then it gets transmitted. And now when I close my eyes, because now I understand what trauma can do, I see the sign of trauma in my parents, even if they are not here today. My grandparents, he was no doubt living with the PTSD. She said less. And if you were lucky to make her happy, she would tell you the story of 59, how the homes were destroyed, how the kids were starving when they were hidden, trying to hide in the bushes in 59, how the husband was beaten to death. So all of that trauma, then it comes. It goes to 1994. The 1994 was the. Was 59. They killed a lot of tuttis who had a lot of cows, a lot of money. But they will give you the option to leave the country and live in exile. So they will say, you have two choices. If you wanted to live in exile, you can leave the country. Don't not ever come back to Rwanda. So some were able to live. And that's why we had a lot of Tutsi people living in neighboring country, Burundi, Congo. They were all over the place in the surrounding country countries. And then it comes 1994. It was the worst, worst, worst genocide, because this time around, the government did not want to make the same, what they called a mistake. They wanted to kill every single tutti. They made it clear, they said, a Hutu child who is going to be born after genocide, that we ask how a tutti used to look like. So going to trauma this generation, those who face genocide, and our children. There is so much trauma going on in our country. It is unbelievable. It is beyond what you can imagine. During the genocide, a lot of women were raped. We have hundreds of hundreds of children born of rape. Raising a child, knowing that this is a child of a man, you don't even know the father because you were raped with several people. I had the testimony of one lady. She'd been asking the mother, my. The place where I used to work, you know, my cousin told me that she'd been asking for the mother, but I have the story. They send me the story because I'm still in touch with the museum. So she'd been asking the mother, say, mother, who is my father? And she's the part. The mother will never, never say, she's traumatized. She's living with her own trauma. She was raped. All her kids killed. She got pregnant with a rapper, the person who raped her. And they have a girl. And she could not until last year to tell who was the dad, because she doesn't who's dad. So with all that trauma and the cut with the kid, the daughter who is living with trauma, asking mom, I need to know who's my dad? And one time, the mother told her, I want you to take to that village, and you're going to go and open every home and ask, who is the father? Because I don't know who is your father? Those are the kind of answer a traumatized mother will tell to a daughter, because they have no answer. And it's very traumatizing from the children. Of course, the mother is already traumatized. So there is so much trauma going on in our communities, and we also need to keep in mind that this is a country where we did not know what PTSD was. Even myself, I didn't know what was PTSD. It was when I started working at the Chigati genocide Memorial center with a lot of survivors would come to me, and I would see them getting flashbacks. I don't know what was flashback. So their memory will go back, and they would repeat exactly the same thing they see happening to them during genocide. They will scream. They will cry. I have a girl who became my friend. She had a big scar on her head when they cut her, and she would touch her face every time. She was lost in those fresh back and touching the scar because she thought there was blood coming out right now, right there when she is in that moment. So the trauma. But also the other problem was there was no any mental health knowledge in our country. There was no any knowledge about pts person, but traumatic stress disorder. So we used to take a lot of traumatized people and take them to the hospital. They would give them heavy, like, injection. I don't know what was in there. Put them to sleep for a few hours, and then when they woke up, they would send them home. And then a few years later, they started to get seizures. Seizures for the medication. I don't know what medication that we're giving to them. So that's when I started to be advocate for PTSD. I wanted the people to know exactly what was PTSD, even for myself. I didn't know what was exactly to that level as, you know, a professional cancer or therapist. But I knew was something dangerous, that our people need to be aware that what are you suffering is not witchcraft. It is PTSD. It's the effect of the genocide, the stuff you saw during genocide. And that's how I end up studying the million life genocide live funds. So we can educate people about PTSD and also find some ways to help them and give them a space to talk and help them finding some counselors and therapists. Because when I got to the US, I realized that if you go through a traumatic event, there is ongoing follow up with the doctors, therapy, psychiatrists, those things wouldn't happen back home. And now we're getting there. We have a few centers, small centers. But even now, I was talking to one of the bishop who is here this week in San Antonio preaching, and I told him about the project we're trying to do, helping those traumatized. And he goes, only if you bring every therapist from Texas, you can heal our country. That was the answer. He said, only if you bring every therapist you know in Texas. Our country is going down mentally. The young generation and those who face genocide, it is. It's bad. [00:44:00] Speaker A: Thank you for sharing that. I want to use the rest of our time to talk about your work now, as I mentioned earlier, last year, I saw you speak at the Holocaust museum here in Texas, and you gave a wonderful talk. Some of the points you brought up today as well about the warning signs of genocide, the things that happened before. You've spoken at the un multiple times. And your big project right now is a conference at the end of the summer, bringing together survivors and their children and families to Houston, actually, with this focus on the traumatic effects of what they have survived and offering opportunities for ongoing healing. So can you tell us about that conference and how people might be able to get involved in that? There's so. I mean, I have sat in only a couple of meetings thinking, oh, my goodness, there's just so much, so, so much to do. But I know people. I mean, I know you. And you would ask people to pray for that event coming up. But also there are ways, you know, if people feel led that they could donate, that some people might even feel led to attend and learn and be a support. So I don't want to name those things for you, but can you share a little bit about the upcoming conference and what that will mean for the community? [00:45:50] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Alexis? Yes. August 2, third and fourth. It is going to be at the University of Houston, Texas. And there is a Hilton hotel in front of university. Guys, if you wanted to attend, you can stay at the hotel. It is free to attend. You don't have to pay anything. And it's going to be for survivors of genocide and their children from all over the world. So there will be people from Canada, from Europe, from Rwanda. We have invited a lot of experts. [00:46:25] Speaker A: In trauma and say the name of the conference. Henriette. [00:46:31] Speaker B: Well, the name of the conference is the voice of resilience. Voice of resilience. So we are, we wanted to invite all of you watching. It's free to attend. And please bring your children there are programs for children, even though we calling this conference of survivors of genocide and their children. But we also wanted to invite american friends with their children as well. There are programs that can benefit kids age eight and up. Of course, we wanted to invite their parents as well. We believe that we can learn from one another. We believe that if you come to attend this conference, you can learn something from what happened to Rwanda in 1994, and you can take to your communities and share. We have experts from raw schools, professors, because if we talk about trauma, we also wanted to talk about the roots of trauma. That's why we invited a lot of experts and human rights activists, professors, doctors, therapy, psychologists. We also have somebody who is going to be speaking how God can heal trauma, because I believe God can heal trauma. So if you are a Christian and you wanted to be part of it, you can also come and attend. There's going to be a room for prayers. If you want a prayer, there will be a group of people who can pray for you, but also for those who wanted to write a paper, say that you wanted to write a paper about trauma or human rights issues or genocide history, anything. You can come up there and do your work as well. And if you wanted to. Did you say donate to? Yes. We need money. [00:48:19] Speaker A: It all takes money. [00:48:21] Speaker B: It takes money that. So we are still raising funds for this conference. We have the venue. Our speakers are all covered. You know, we have to pay speakers. You know, you have to pay speakers. We, some of them gonna travel from or, you know, different places, buy their ticket and the hotel. We have to take care of them, but we wanted to feed them. So now we're trying to raise 36,000 to buy food because we're gonna feed the people for three days. We don't want people to have that excuse. Oh, I'm not gonna want to provide the food. They can feed their spirits. Yes. And I thank you. And also, I really want to encourage you, even if you're not going to donate, because this is not about asking for donation, but we want you to be there, even if you. You don't have nothing to donate. We just want you to come. It's going to be an amazing, amazing conference. [00:49:11] Speaker A: Well, I'm so grateful for you putting that on and opening it up to us. I think that, again, like one of the themes that kept running through my mind as I was reading your book, but also just in casual conversations that you and I have had over the course of our friendship, I just keep thinking about how the more we know, we can't change the past. But we can help contribute to healing. And we can also keep our eyes open, keep ourselves on the lookout, and speak up when we see signs similar to what your country saw in those years leading up to 1959 and 1994. We can use our voices. We can say, this is not okay. We can walk in love, we can speak in love, and we can do those things because people like you have shared your own experiences with us. And so I'm so grateful for this conference and what you're doing in this, 100% for the survivors and their families, but also just the residual effects that events like this will have on the communities surrounding yours. And I feel like the fruits of those are just yet to be seen. So thank you so much for sharing about that. [00:50:39] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you so much, Alexis. Yeah, it's amazing. And I always say that we're about to close that. Let's start with our families. If you have small children or teenagers, teach them how. What is love? What is love? How can you love your neighbor? Teach them. Nourish their body and their mind and their soul with love. Love your neighbor. That's how we're going to make a difference. We don't have to change the whole world, but when we're having right there, like it's not going to happen overnight. But we can start gradually teaching who we are, the children we have in our home. When we are eating our Derisius dinner, what kind of conversation do we have with our children? Are we pointing the points to the neighbor and tell them how different they are, how different they look? Oh, are we teaching them how to love and see them as a human being? So I think it's possible to make a difference even if we just change one family at a time. And you and I can do that. [00:51:56] Speaker A: Amen. You read my mind. I was just about to ask you, what do you want to leave us with? Henriette, you're good at this. You've done this a few times. Well, I'm going to. I'm going to end it with naming your book again. Like I said, I just finished it. I didn't say this recording, but I am going to now. I have made it required reading now for my older children, a because they know you and they've met you and it's fun to read something from someone that they know. [00:52:27] Speaker B: And they have come to the conference, too. So that's good. [00:52:31] Speaker A: That is good. But also because I want to practice what I'm preaching here and say this isn't just for me to know. They weren't alive obviously when the genocide of 1994 took place, but they can learn from your experience still. So the book again is by any means necessary healing and forgiveness after genocide by my good friend Henriette. I will put the link to that book as well as some of the other resources we mentioned. Also the million lives fund that is the nonprofit that Henriette has started several years ago and the link to the conference, the voice of Resilience conference that's coming to Houston in August of this year. So thank you so much friend for joining me. I really appreciate it. [00:53:25] Speaker B: God bless you my friend. I love you. [00:53:27] Speaker A: Love you too. [00:53:28] Speaker B: Bye bye. [00:53:30] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit us at that makestotalsense.com dot.