Abstract:
In the face of collective trauma such as genocide, apartheid, mass killings and xenophobia,
ubuntu requires of us to show solidarity with our fellow human beings. To my mind, one of the
highest forms of doing so is to open up spaces of authentic listening to the stories of those who
have experienced these atrocities. In the genocide narratives of the commemorative project
Rwanda: Écrire par devoir de mémoire (Rwanda: Writing as a duty to memory), travelling and
writing become a mode of listening and transformation. However, this theme is articulated
very differently in the many texts which form part of the project. This article concentrates on
one such representation of the transformative voyage that the writers propose, namely the
highly symbolic work of Koulsy Lamko.
