Footnotes from the Great Lakes: Where Silence Breaks and Memory Remains: The Convoy

As part of the course Across Waters and Frontiers: Voices, Borders and Belonging in the African Great Lakes (SoSe 2026), students were first introduced to African literature from the Great Lakes Region, alongside key critical theories and concepts, including empire, water, migration, and frontiers. In the second phase of the course, students selected a literary work as the focus of a podcast episode. After learning the fundamentals of podcast production, they had five weeks to plan, produce, and post-produce their episodes. During this period, they worked largely independently while receiving close support from the course instructor, Verena Märker, and her colleague, Fleur Riskin. The students produced two episodes: one on The Convoy by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, which explores her flight during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and another on Baho! by Roland Rugero, which focuses on a mute character named Nyamuragi who faces accusations of gender-based violence (GBV). Set in war-torn Burundi, the novel explores the far-reaching consequences of miscommunication for legal proceedings and the pursuit of justice. Caption for Chapter 1, the Convoy Today we're going to take a look at a Rwandan Author Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse and her book The Convoy. She's an award-winning author and in the Convoy, she talks for the first time about her experience of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 in a non- fictional way. This podcast is going to address the theme of memory and the importance of remembrance which are present through the book. If you want to take a closer look at the sources that we based our podcast on you will find the list down below. Sit back and enjoy! Sources: Blumenthal, Anna; Caparos, Serge; Blanchette, Isabelle (2024): Understanding the structure of autobiographical memories: A study of trauma memories from the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In: Memory & cognition 52 (7), S. 1597–1608. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-024-01565-0. Cordonnier, Aline; Rosoux, Valérie; Gijs, Anne-Sophie; Luminet, Olivier (2022): Collective memory: An hourglass between the collective and the individual. In: Mem. Mind & Media 1. DOI: 10.1017/mem.2022.1. French, Brigittine M. (2012): The Semiotics of Collective Memories. In: Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 41 (1), S. 337–353. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145936. Mairesse, Beata Umubyeyi (2025): The Convoy. Unter Mitarbeit von Ruth Winter. 1st ed. London: Orenda Books. Newbury, Catharine (1995): Background To Genocide: Rwanda. In: Issue 23 (2), S. 12–17. DOI: 10.2307/1166500. Rajaram, Suparna (2022): Collective memory and the individual mind. In: Trends in cognitive sciences 26 (12), S. 1056–1058. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.014. Podcast Project - Seminar 255130 "Across Waters and Frontiers: Voices, Borders and Belonging in the African Great Lakes", vol. 1