Africa After War: Paths to Forgiveness – Why Jeannette employs her family's killers

As years passed, the cooperative prospered – linking into the $20-billion global "specialty coffee" market, which includes roasters like Starbucks. The cooperative now even sells its own brand – "Maraba Bourbon" – at retail stores in Britain.

Over the years, Jeannette began to separate killers' past deeds from their current contributions. "This doesn't change the emotions," she explains, "but it does help me interact" with them. Through the cooperative, she says, "We've been building a relationship that changed our lives. We ended up reconciling in a way we didn't know."

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Rwanda's economy is expanding quickly. And coffee exports are helping fuel it.

Since 1995, the country has often achieved 7 percent annual growth. This year, coffee surpassed tea as the country's biggest export, bringing growing prosperity to the country's 500,000 coffee farmers. One group of 20,000 farmers saw revenues of about $800,000 last year, says Dr. Schilling, a Texas A&M professor, who runs a US-funded initiative called the Partnership to Enhance Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL). It helps connect Rwandan farmers with high-end overseas buyers. This year's harvest was better than last year's, so the 12 cooperatives expect about $2 million in revenues. Roughly 85 percent of profits go to the farmers, whose average coffee-related annual incomes have jumped to $400 in 2006, up from $75 in 2001 , Schilling says.

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In the spring of 1994, it was as if the government had promised Anastaz a kind of lottery jackpot in return for killing people.

If this poor farmer – and millions of other Hutus – would help kill all the Tutsis in Rwanda, the genocide-era government pledged that they would have riches, land, and security. And they wouldn't have to work again.

"During the genocide, everyone was planning to take properties and kill – but not have to work," Anastaz says, remembering when then-President Juvenal Habyarimana came to a nearby town and told Hutus they wouldn't be prosecuted for killing Tutsis.

It clearly didn't work out that way.

Sitting on a crude wooden bench in a two-room house with a dirt floor, Anastaz begins quietly shaking and sweating as he talks about the genocide. A trio of baby white rabbits hops around his feet. He's raising them for food. A machete sits within arm's reach.

Anastaz has publicly admitted to killing two people during the genocide – and has spent seven years in prison for the murders. In many cases, Hutus who resisted killing Tutsis were harassed, hurt, or killed for not pitching in. Asked if he was involved in killing Jeannette's husband, his eyes widen, he blanches, and stays quiet. Yet later, he hints he did more than he has admitted to, saying, "The punishment is not big enough for the crimes I committed."

Yet he also blames the previous government for his terrible acts. "We were just implementing," he says. "There was a policy" that every Tutsi "found in his or her home would be killed." It was a perversion of traditional Rwandan culture, which has long thrived on communal labor. Indeed, for centuries, groups of villagers have tackled projects that one person alone couldn't do. During the genocide, the "project" was killing. "It was like we were doing a community activity," says Karori Murwanaskyaka, a Hutu sitting with Anastaz.

But now, "We are feeling guilty and very bad for what happened," says a clearly repentant Anastaz.

These days, unlike before the genocide, there are no promises of easy riches. And Anastaz says it's better that way. "The economy is different," he says, "We don't have war. And we're getting money." During the two-month harvest, he and others make about 80 cents a day picking coffee. Now, "someone can work and save, and everyone has the right to own properties."

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