Pride and Joy in Rwanda

Pride and Joy in Rwanda

Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee

In 1994, the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, stirred an irrepressible rage that swiftly swelled in scale and speed to genocide. In just 100 days, nearly a million Rwandans, mostly Tutsis and Hutu political moderates, were slaughtered.

Fifteen years later, in May of 2009, five members of the Heifer International board of directors traveled to Rwanda to see how Heifer dairy and farm projects are helping both victims and perpetrators put the violence behind them to step into a future of healing, reconciliation and progress.

Heifer International is two years into the East Africa Dairy Development Project (EADD), a partnership funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help dairy farmers form cooperatives that will help them boost production, improve quality and more easily get their products to markets. Charles Stewart, Julie Wilson and Arlene Withers of the U.S., Johnson Nkuuhe of Uganda and Fu Changxiu of China made the trip to study the EADD model of cooperatives as a new strategic direction for Heifer’s international programs.

What they found astounded and inspired them.

“What surprised me most, I think, was the level of excitement and anticipation that the project holders demonstrated and the fact that in Rwanda this project has been a major part of helping toward reconciliation, post-genocide and war,” Stewart said. “Communities are encouraged to work together, work across a lot of different lines. People are working with people they know had a role in destroying some of their family members.

“People who might have been fighting on opposite sides of the fence are having to cooperate and work together to ensure everyone’s success. It’s a major testament to the power of forgiveness and reconciliation and necessary for healing on all sides that it takes place.”

Wilson agreed. “The genocide continues to play a role in the daily lives of the people we visited,” she said. “It impacts individuals’ willingness to participate in the project, but most importantly, the project is a major healing force for the very open wounds of these communities. Prosecution of the perpetrators of the genocide continues openly at all levels of the judicial system in Rwanda: village tribunals, provincial trials and government courts.

“I think all of us were impressed by the stories we were told, where victims could not move on in their healing until their neighbors who participated in the genocide admitted their role and asked for the survivors’ forgiveness. Passing on the gift to someone who killed your family members was repeatedly cited as a powerful bridge between factions in a community, and a major tool to bring shattered communities forward into a functional group that was willing to work together to build better lives for their families.”

“People in the dairy program had learned that it was within their own ability to produce enough milk and get it to market before it spoiled,” Withers added. “They understood that if they pooled milk and money to own a chilling machine they all could do very well. Instead of looking backwards they were all looking toward the future. It was in everyone’s best interest to work together and to not forget the past, but to put it behind them.

“I hadn’t really thought about the Heifer model being a tool of reconciliation in a war-torn country. That was quite a learning experience for me,” Withers said.

Pride and Joy in Rwanda

Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee

In the Northern Province of Rwanda, they visited farmer Uzabakiriho Gervais, who has done very well with Heifer’s help, and now he will share what he’s learned with other participants in the East Africa Dairy Development project.

“This guy had become so successful with his farm he now employs 13 other people,” Stewart explained. “That’s a component of Heifer’s work we don’t measure as part of the impact model, that other families are helped through job creation.”

Uzabakiriho grows crops to provide food for his family and to feed his animals. He also raises dairy cows and other livestock. In addition, he effectively harvests water from his home with a gutter system that funnels rainwater into holding tanks. He collects water during the rainy season and maintains a supply of water year-round. Uzabakiriho also has a biogas processor that transforms cow manure into fuel for cooking and lighting his home.

“It’s a perfect demonstration project,” Stewart said. “The purpose of the Gates project is to take farming beyond a subsistence level to a process that begins to create wealth within communities. This guy demonstrates it perfectly. He met all of the pass-on requirements. He can sell cows now and generate more wealth.”

Uzabakiriho is married with three children of his own. His family has also taken in children orphaned in the genocide, a practice commonly found in Rwanda.

“We saw that in many, many villages that we visited,” Stewart said. “I think it’s just a remarkable testament to the beauty of the soul of the Rwandan people.”

The board members also visited the Rwamagana district to see the difference between farmers who benefited from Heifer’s training and government-supported farmers who didn’t get Heifer training.

Heifer instructs the farmers in how to build an appropriate shelter before they get the animals. Heifer’s model for building cow sheds enables farmers to collect urine and manure and to feed cows and bed them down. The model helps farmers keep the stalls clean and the cows healthy while preventing the milk from getting contaminated.

The government has a “One Cow for Every Family” program based on the Heifer model, but they don’t do extensive training, Stewart said.

There was a big difference in these two projects, he said. The Heifer cow was producing more than 10 gallons of milk per day, with the government cow producing three gallons per day. The stalls the government-provided cows were in were not as clean. “Because of the success of the Heifer model, the government is incorporating more of it,” Stewart said. “They see the difference of the effectiveness and long-term sustainability of the project.”

The board members also visited another Heifer-supported group called Muhazi Women’s Cooperative in Rwamagana district.

“One thing that really struck me was the huge difference the Heifer projects made in lives of women,” Withers said. “I asked the women how the animals and training have helped them. The women all said, ‘This has changed my life. I had no control whatsoever before, all went to my husband who spent the money. Now we have an equal say.’ They really felt confident about it; it was quite amazing.

“The Muhazi project was all women, rape victims from the war who also had HIV. They had been given cows by Heifer and were trained on raising them. One woman had learned to grow mushrooms with fertilizer from the manure. She was getting more income from that than from the cows. To me, that’s really incredible.”

The woman, a mother of five, had taken in eight other children who were orphans. She was able to support them with the income the family received from the milk and also from the vegetables they were growing.

“Rather than living embittered lives, they were so generous and truly embodying the spirit of the Heifer Cornerstone Sharing and Caring,” Withers said.

While in Rwanda, the group also visited with two government officials, the ministers of agriculture and animal resources, and met with the mayor of the Gicumbi District.

“My theory as to why it’s going so well in Rwanda is that the government is fully supportive,” Withers said. “The government is using the Heifer model. They realize now there’s a lot more to helping people be self-sufficient. The only question is why can’t you go faster?”

Pride and Joy in Rwanda

Board members also noted that challenges remain in Rwanda, where there is still much work to be done.

“One of the challenges we saw in some of the areas was getting water to the projects,” Stewart said. “They have lots of lakes and water, but in some of the more mountainous regions, getting water to farms is pretty difficult.

“Also, some areas expressed a need for more chilling facilities. The storage and chilling facilities they have soon won’t be adequate. Most farmers use bicycles to get to the chilling centers. They go over great distances, and the time involved in getting the milk there and appropriately chilled has to be examined closely. Because of the sheer volume of milk, the current facilities will be overwhelmed.”

The pricing and markets for milk were also concerns. “They just have volume pricing; it’s not based on quality,” he said. “They’re hoping to be able to influence the market so they can get a better price.”

Wilson saw other needs as well.

“The biggest challenges that EADD will face in Rwanda, based on our brief snapshot, are twofold: Resisting the pressure to expand too quickly without preparing the people to properly look after their cows and delivering on all the promises. Expectations are very high, and the government is adding additional time pressure to fulfill its promise of providing one cow per family. The difference in the well-being of the cows in non-Heifer cooperatives versus Heifer-trained families was very evident, even to the nonagricultural members of our group. The sustainability of the project hinges on building the infrastructure and equipping the cow owners with the education they need for success.

“The non-Heifer cooperatives that are being assimilated into EADD also lacked the emphasis on gender equity that is part of Heifer’s Cornerstones. Men predominated both in number and in leadership in those cooperatives. These shortcomings are recognized and slated for improvement.”

Stewart, Wilson and Withers were all enthralled with the people who so warmly greeted them and shared their experiences.

“I was very happily surprised by the warmth of the Rwandans and their friendliness to us,” Wilson said. “I had not expected to join them repeatedly in dancing joyously to celebrate the riches that Heifer and EADD were bringing to their lives. This form of celebration occurred at just about every group meeting we attended. Many people in a village wanted to personally thank us, as Heifer representatives, embracing us, smiling, conveying their emotions and their hopes with their body language when the language barrier arose.

“The resilience and courage of the people of Rwanda struck a very deep note in me,” she said. Despite the poverty, the high (60 percent) illiteracy rate, and the tremendous wounds, the people we met have hope, celebrate the small joys in their lives, and are very committed to being part of a modern Rwanda with equal rights and justice for all. There was a sense of selflessness among the farmers we visited, which I heard in their conversations about the project, as they framed their hopes for the impact of the project in what they wanted for their children.”

The people we met were very beautiful, extremely attractive,” Stewart said. “They are very nice, kind and gentle people. So much so it’s hard for me to reconcile with the genocide. I dearly loved them. The people we met are very optimistic looking toward the future .… This trip ranks way up there on one of the most phenomenal experiences I’ve had.”

“It was a shame that because of financial considerations the whole board couldn’t go on this trip,” Withers said. “It makes real what Heifer’s work is all about and why being on this board is such a privilege. This trip gave me the motivation to continue to take study tours. It’s really what makes the work so real to me. I went to Vietnam and Cambodia, and now to Rwanda. It’s so clear it means so much to the people in those countries to see a delegation from Heifer, from the United States, that feels they’re important enough to visit. It was really transformational on both sides.”