Alfred and Donata

Raquel Villaécija and Alberto Rojas, two reporters of Spanish daily El Mundo, have been travelling through Rwanda to tell the story of the people who experienced the 1994 genocide, the country's reconstruction and the population's reactions in the aftermath of the massacre carried out by the hutus.

We chose to tell the story of Donata and Alfred, which can be considered as the symbol of the possibility of reconciliation between victims and culprits of the genocide. 

They are a married couple; he is a tutsi, she is a hutu. Two families to tell about the wounds caused by genocide, and the opportunity to heal them. Under their ceiling in fact what is going on is the living together of a murderer's daughter and the son of his victim.

Everybody in Kamembe, one of Rwanda's poorest areas, know about this love story. Alfred and Donata have lived in the same village with their families since their childhood, and they did not think that being hutu or tutsi was important: their parents were friends to eachother. But in 1994 when the hutus started exterminating the tutsi citizens, Donata's father joined a group of militiamen who killed Alfred's father and the other members of his family.

“Not only he murdered him - said Alfred's mother - but also signalled the place where my husband was hiding”.

When this couple decided to get married, Donata's father, who was in prison for the crimes committed during genocide, wasn't very happy about it. He could not accept that a tutsi asked for his daughter's hand in marriage. Now the man has come back to live in their neighborhood close to the family of his victim. Thanks to the kids' marriage, now the parents-in-lae are good neighbors.

A life's love has healed a wound that had been left open for twenty years. "I don't care about that my father did, says Donata, I just want to live in peace. Our story is an example of reconciliation”. And Alfred echoes her saying his wive "has nothing to do with the sin committed by his father". The man has forgiven his father-in-law because he went to the couple's home and demanded pardon for what he did, which is a condition set by Rwanda's popular courts to allow murderers to exit jail.

Not every one in the village is happy about this story. Some neighbors think it is a counter-nature relationship. But Alfred and Dpnata, together with their children, the future of Rwanda, have shown that forgiveness is possibile, and that after nearly 20 years the country called as "Africa's Singapore" can overcome its past and understand that there are many more things that unify them rather than things that divide them.