Emerida Mukasharangabo is a Genocide widow living in Kigina Sector of Kirehe District. For years, the 44-year-old has lived in a dilapidated house waking up every morning with a sigh of relief that the roof did not cave in on her.

"I lived in a mud and wattle house. My only hope was that it could collapse on one side and I move onto the other part as I was unable to renovate it or construct another one,” she told the media.

Mukasharangabo is among 99 families of Genocide survivors that will soon get shelter in Kirehe thanks to a partnership between the district and Development Bank of Rwanda (BRD).

On Wednesday, BRD provided roofing materials for 22 houses in the first phase of construction activities. Provision of other materials will be done by the district.

Speaking at the construction site of one of the housing units, Peter Rwambara, the chief risk officer at BRD, said the bank started to support Genocide survivors in the district in 2015.

The bank staff had earlier visited Nyarubuye Genocide memorial site and met a tailoring cooperative of women survivors and decided to support them.

"It is a cooperative which had one old tailoring machine, the bank management decided to buy them five more machines and a generator for machines which operated on electricity. This gesture significantly changed their living conditions,” he said.

Another group that received support was that of vulnerable widows and widowers (incike) whose family members were all killed in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, according to Rwambara.

The district wanted to construct houses for the group but it was still looking for partners, so we thought that we should be the first to support the act by providing roofing materials for the 99 houses that the district wanted to construct, he explained.

Rwambara said, despite providing loans for people’s projects, they thought of activities that would link them with population as part of giving back to the community.

Kirehe mayor Gerard Muzungu said they had a total of 103 Genocide survivors that the district wanted to construct houses for.

He said the BRD support will accelerate the exercise.

"This roofing support is reducing the cost of construction. It has helped increase the number of houses we planned to construct because if you had to get funding from the central government for the whole construction, including the roofing, it means the cost would be higher,” he said.

Emotional gratitude

Mukasharangabo, a mother of six, said: "I couldn’t imagine myself getting a modern house. I thank these people who thought of vulnerable persons like me. I’m sure that in this house my life will be secure.”

Rwambara said the roofing materials they provided Wednesday for 22 houses were worth Rwf8.5 million. The whole roofing materials for 99 houses will take Rwf46 million.

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