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In July 1994, three months after the association was created, a team travelled to Kigali, Rwanda. Among them was Christiane Péchiné, head of child psychiatry at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu hospital in Lyon: “The children had been so close to death that they were in a state of mental chaos. Many have buried this experience of extreme violence and say nothing about it. Their bodies and minds suffer in silence. These images, these brutalities, work on them beyond their consciousness. Nightmares, fears at night and even during the day. If we don’t act, they will turn the fury of this immense violence against themselves or others”.
To help children traumatised by the genocide, TGH is setting up two “social canteens” in Kigali, the country’s capital. The buildings, located in the poor districts of Nyamirambo and Bilyogo, have been renovated and equipped by TGH. Around thirty Rwandans are employed to run the canteens, providing 400 children with a meal, medical and psychosocial care every day. The canteens are becoming “a place where children can relieve their mental suffering”. They also enable children who wish to do so to return to the school system. Much work is being done to reunite families or to place children in the care of the community.
However, TGH was forced to leave Rwanda abruptly in December 1995, following a decision by the Rwandan government to expel dozens of NGOs.
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