SOUTHERN PROVINCE

HUYE  — Up to 131 students of the National University of Rwanda (NUR) were traumatized during the mourning week that ended last Sunday, officials said on Tuesday. Representatives of survivor students said that scores of the affected students are yet to recover from the trauma.

Théodate Siboyintore, in charge of social affairs among the student survivors at NUR told The New Times that the crises began in the evening of April 7 the day when the official commemoration began. In what he described as unusual, Siboyintore said that a play about the genocide showed at the university’s auditorium in that evening left at least 24 students in trauma.

But films projected on campus and survivors’ testimonies were the most deranging to most survivors since they created a flashback on what these students went through during the Genocide in which about one million people died in less than a hundred days.

"The films try to show what happened but the survivors can’t endure it since it reminds them what they have been trying to forget,” said Siboyintore who is also a trauma counsellor.

Siboyintore, a third year student in Psycho Clinics worked with other 60 students to help those who were distressed to overcome trauma. They had earlier received two-day training by NUR lecturers in counseling to handle such cases.

"We tried to prevent crises,” Siboyintore said.

"These trained counsellors helped the distressed and no single case required going to the hospital.”

At least 15 of the affected students were not genocide survivors. The number of trauma cases during this year’s genocide commemoration at NUR is far higher than that of last year when only 20 students were affected.

Siboyintore attributed the rise to a high number of students who turned up for commemoration activities. He observed that the students’ auditorium was always full of students and the students tried also to attend mourning activities held at the NUR genocide memorial site through the nights.

"At the memorial site survivors told their experiences during the genocide and this was shocking to many students,” Siboyintore said.

He added that the traumatized are still weak, days after the commemoration week ended. Some of them still feel headache while others are yet to resume classes.

"It is taking them some time to recover but we hope they will be alright,” Siboyintore said with optimism.

And there are few things counsellors can do for the distressed other than  attending to them and allowing them enough time to rest.

"Counsellors need to be near them whenever they are not asleep,” said Alexandre Kayitare, one of the counsellors.

He said that the traumatized are getting better only that many of them are still unable to attend classes. The counsellors have to regularly bring them some nice food to eat and enough water to drink, among other services.

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