Watch this piece from Voice of America's TV2Africa on the 2012 Common Ground Awards and recipients Chris Stevens and Ingoma Nshya (5:19)
INGOMA NSHYA ("NEW ERA")
The Hutu and Tutsi members of the group Ingoma Nshya have broken a cultural taboo in becoming Rwanda’s first and only female drumming troupe. Serving as role models for other women survivors, theirs is an inspirational story of women’s empowerment, the healing of the wounds of genocide, and of finding joy and hope.
Founded in 2005 by Odile Gakire Katese, Ingoma Nshya includes women from both sides of the conflict – orphans and widows / wives and children of perpetrators. Now numbering over 100, the group has been a place where they could begin to live again – to build new relationships, to heal the wounds of the past and to create a brighter future for themselves. Ingoma Nshya personifies the idea that healing and reconciliation are possible, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Sweet Dreams, the newly released documentary film about their story, was shown at this year’s Silver Docs Film Festival, and to an audience of 400 at the United Nations.. The film follows the remarkable story of these women as they emerge from the devastation of the genocide to craft a new future for themselves as Rwanda’s first female drum troupe, and as they conceive, build, open, and run Rwanda’s first and only ice cream shop. The women staff the store and share equally in the business.
Through Ingoma Nshya, Rwandan women who have lived through the Rwandan genocide are planting a culture of hope, faith, love, respect and tolerance.
Bound together by loss and necessity, these extraordinary women are creating a space in which female Rwandan artists can be free to develop their creativity as they work together to preserve traditional Rwandan culture while building a livelihood for a future that they can share in.
