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Esther Mujawayo Quotes

born 1958 Rwanda

Esther Mujawayo (born 1958), is a Rwandan sociologist and psychotherapist. She survived the Tutsi genocide, but lost many members of her family.

Rwanda
Sociologists

Random Esther Mujawayo quote

28 quotes

It was surrealistic. I was really thinking, 'Are we dreaming?' They deny everything, they deny everything.

From her birth on a Rwandan hill to her current life in Germany. She tries to recount the appalling wound of the genocide in order to overcome the terrible guilty feeling about: "Why did I survive?

Why do I need to reconcile with the killer of my husband? I'm just glad to have a government that creates rule of law so we can live together peacefully.

People mistake us talking about this to be out of hatred but that's not the case. It is because we want people to know how it happened. So if people know how this comes about, then it would be easy to stop such actions.

Many of us have lost close friends. And we have asked ourselves: Why have we not seen the obvious? Why have we as church institutions not been able to push the international community to stop the killings?

I do not know if my reaction comes from pride or if it's a survival instinct. I know only this; that to be fully alive rather than to survive, is a way of punishing them. It's the only revenge possible to me.

We were condemned to live.

I was not born to live. I died at birth. The small grave was already dug. Everybody was ready for my funeral. Only my mother clung to the crumpled little corpse, refusing to let it be buried.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Esther Mujawayo (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.