Hewa Rwanda - Letter to the absent (Rwanda)

Thirty years after the genocide in Rwanda, Dorcy Rugamba, actor, author and director, brings to life an extract from his work Hewa Rwanda – Letter to the absent, a profoundly moving tale of his family, culture, and spirituality. 

“How can one grasp the full dimension of an event that wiped out more than a million people, in which my brother’s death ... is almost an anecdote, one case out of a million others?”.

In tandem with Senegalese multi-instrumentalist and singer Majnun, Rugamba presents a musical reading from his new memoir - an ode to immeasurable loss and love.

Every year, Dorcy Rugamba returns to his family's home in Kigali. Ivy still climbs up the walls, calla lilies and fire tongues grow on the terrace, the palm tree and the papaya tree are still there at the entrance, as well as Mount Jali to the north and Mount Kigali to the south. His return was, however, impossible for many years. 

In his book, a love letter to those who are no longer there and a hymn to life and to his ancestors, Dorcy Rugamba addresses his father, mother, and all those who are absent. 

He speaks of what he saw and what he learned from them, as a child and young man, and the time it took him to accept the unacceptable. He remains as close as possible to those who are absent, honours their memory and lives, and explores the world of before in search of its beauty and poetry. 

He then asks himself: how can we translate into words that which is out of our reach? Dorcy Rugamba, a major figure of the Rwandan cultural scene, brings us this moving account, transporting us with his writing and a voice of rare intensity.