A Story of Survival and Recovery with Odette Nyiramilimo

Meditation Without Borders – Being the Change Podcast

It is hard to imagine violence on the scale that occurred 30 years ago this spring in Rwanda. But for our guest, Odette Nyiramilimo, she doesn’t have to imagine, she can remember.

We are so honored to have Odette on our podcast. She is not only a medical doctor who with her husband founded the first private maternity and pediatrics clinic in Rwanda as well as being a doctor for the Peace Corps, she also served as a senator and as Minister of State for Social Affairs under the government of Paul Kagame. Her account of the genocide is featured heavily in book “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families” by Philip Gourevitch and is also depicted as a character in the film Hotel Rwanda. She now believes that wellness is the path to helping continue the reconstruction, so she founded the Rushel Kivu Lodge on Lake Kivu, where we had our meditation retreat.

Last month when we were in Rwanda, we got to sit down with Odette in person and listened to her life story of what it was like growing up in that country during the growing escalation and then the genocide that took so many including 16 of her 17 siblings and other family members. We also got to hear about how, through her work in both medicine and politics, she played a major role in the rising of Rwanda from the ashes.

We hope you appreciate hearing Odette’s story as much as we do. By hearing her firsthand account, it made the atrocities that happened in Rwanda all those years ago seem very real for us and so much more than a historical event.

We wish to acknowledge with utmost respect the lives of all those who lost their homes, their families, their livelihood, their health, or their lives during the violence of the 1994 genocide and all the Rwandan conflicts the late 20th century.

“From that time, I never sit. I work every day. I cry when I am telling those stories but the other time I say no crying. I need to make sure no more genocide happen in Rwanda. That my children, my grandchildren, my neighbor’s children they need to have a country
where they feel safe. Not the country where I grew up.” - Odette Nyiramilimo

Show Notes:

2.00 Odette´s Childhood
6.30 1959 and the beginnings of the Genocide
10.30 “If we have to die, we die together, but here.” Odette´s Father.
13.00 First Private Clinic in Rwanda and the Peace Corps
15.40 Surviving the Genocide
23.40 “We think the war is finished. She didn´t understand it was the beginning.” Odette
25.00 Hiding in the convent
27.00 Military men
34.00 Hiding in the swamp
51.00 Interrogation with the police
53.00 “After, he has been killed. And he was a hutu. Because he protected us, and he
protected his wife and some other people maybe.” Odette.
56.00 Taken for dead
59.00 Calling friends
1.02 Hotel Rwanda
1.04 Character in the movie
1.07 “From that time, I never sit. I work every day. I cry when I am telling those stories but
the other time I say no crying. I need to make sure no more genocide happen in Rwanda.
That my children, my grandchildren, my neighbor’s children they need to have a country
where they feel safe. Not the country where I grew up.” Odette
1.08 Peace Corps Medical Officer and Doctor at the American Embassy
1.09 Orphans living with Odette
1.11 Odette as a Minister of State
1.21 Going back home
1.25 A promise of light