There was cold silence in the room as Esperance spoke to the Umubano volunteers about what she had experienced as a child of eight during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
With tears running down her face she described to us the violence and death she had witnessed, lived through and from which she had miraculously survived.
Solace Ministries provides counselling and clinical support to women like Esperance. More than 8,000 have sought help here in the last decade. Some carry deep scars across their faces or heads. But for most here, the scars are emotional and spiritual: girls orphaned, mothers who lost their husbands and children, and women who were raped and suffered unspeakable brutality.
Project Umubano is run from rooms rented from Solace. As in previous years, many of our volunteers are staying in the large guest house set up by the charity to generate secure income for its work. The friendship we have struck with Solace now runs very deep. The staff fizz with enthusiasm when they talk about David Cameron who stayed here in 2007.
Earlier in the day the entire team had visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre to mark the start of Project Umubano and reflect again on the backdrop for all the different streams of work our volunteers will do during the coming fortnight.
The exhibition at the Memorial Centre never loses its power to shock and disturb. But this is also a place of hope and inspiration as Rwanda continues down a path of national reconstruction and reconciliation.
We laid a wreath and observed a minute’s silence.
As the Umubano volunteers began dispersing to their centres of activity throughout the country, they carried with them a deep belief that this social action project run by the Conservative Party in Rwanda and Sierra Leone is, in its own tiny way, contributing something of lasting significance in these two troubled countries.
Now in its fourth year, Project Umubano continues to demonstrate our Party’s passion for real development which places civil society at the heart of efforts to end the cycle of poverty and misery in Africa.
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