Over twenty-five years ago, Tasian Nkundiye murdered his neighbor with a machete.

“I am very grateful to her,” Nkundiye said of the widow, Laurencia Mukalemera. “Ever since I apologized to her after prison life, confessing to my crimes and asking her for forgiveness, she has accepted me. I even leave my children with her when I am away.”

Today he lives nearby the widow of the man he killed. And somehow they are friends – their children and grandchildren play and share lunch together, their cows graze in the same field.

A quarter century after the 1994 genocide that killed 75% of the country’s ethnic Tutsis, Rwanda has six “reconciliation villages” like Mbyo, where genocide survivors and perpetrators live alongside each other. Convicted killers re-integrate into society by publicly apologizing for their crimes. Survivors profess forgiveness. The villages are showpieces of President Paul Kagame’s policy of ethnic reconciliation, although some critics say the communities are forced and the reconciliation is artificial.

About 3,000 victims and perpetrators live in the villages established by Prison Fellowship Rwanda, a Christian organization, and funded by the U.S. government, the United Nations and other donors to promote healing in Rwanda from the gaping wounds left by the genocide. Those in the villages also get help with housing and school fees.

https://believersportal.com/a-gift-of-forgiveness-in-rwanda-woman-forgives-man-who-cut-her-husband-in-pieces/

If it was my father that was cut

I will cut him one day

That is not easy

Strong woman
She has freed the burden from both of them

Newfoundlove:
If it was my father that was cut

I will cut him one day

It doesn't show that you're a strong person
Forgiveness is a power

This is hard for me to believe kinda.

Zaheertyler:

It doesn't show that you're a strong person
Forgiveness is a power

I don't want power
I want justice