Reverien: Home. Back home again, 20 years later.

Révéraien Rurangwa, a good friend, a Genocide survivor and a travel companion is back at his place, his home, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the small town in the canton of Neuchâtel. The pictures bellow shows some of the moments we spent together when we went back and visited his home village of Mugina, about an hour outside of Kigali. Just over 20 years before, on April 20th 1994, 43 members of his closest family was brutally murdered in the Rwandan genocide. This short photo essay is short listed for the EWZ, Swiss Photo Award. The opening is this coming Wednesday at 17:00, in Zurich http://www.facebook.com/swissphotoaward 

Révéraien at home, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the first time we met.

Reverien, Kigali, Rwanda, January 2015

Not being dead, Reverien walked across the strewn bodies to a nearby fruit garden. Meeting the killers, he begged also to be killed. Instead, they cut his eye out.

At home. Again in Mugina. 

20 years later, a new generation plays outside the house.

With what is left of family, at the house in Kigali. 

Reverien met Janvier Uwumukiza when both were at the same red cross hospital in 1994. She was 11. She had been thrown into a very deep pit. As a result, she is paralysed from neck and down. Only a little bit of movement in her left arm remains. Still, she greeted us at her house in Kibungo near the boarder to Tanzania. She had a big smile, make up and new, pink, nails. But life is not easy. She prefers her room to stay rather dark, has a small TV set for entertainment and of course help with just about everything. She has been 20 years in bed. She can not move at all. Not even to be take outside.

This is what Janvier Uwumukiza sees from her bed. 

Révérien at home in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

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