Activist dances from horror of Rwandan genocide to healing
Using dance, poetry, music, drama and storytelling, a Rwandan artist has made it his life’s quest to give the trauma and pain of inhumanity a voice. "I didn’t choose to be born in this period of genocide, but I was born and I was there and I lived through it," says scholar and activist Théogène Niwenshuti. "I can choose to be silent or I can choose to do something. To be silent would be a betrayal of the memory of the people who lost their lives — parents, friends, neighbours, my whole nation and the whole of Africa. "Some of these people lost their lives protecting me so I could stay alive. My father Elie, neighbours and friends like Fideli, Gakwavu, Muzehe, Coleta, Gahire, unknown soldiers and many ordinary people saved my life in various circumstances during genocide … I owe them more than I can repay. I have to tell their stories, honour and remember them," he says. Niwenshuti was a teenager in April 1994 when his family sought refuge at the Caraes Ndera Neuropsychiatric Hospita...
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