In 1994 Rwanda suffered a devastating genocide. Close to a million were killed by neighbors, friends, even family.
The country has made great strides in economic recovery, but “people are not like roads and buildings” says Kiki Katese, Rwandan theater director. “How do we rebuild a human being?”
Kiki decided to start Ingoma Nshya, Rwanda’s first women’s drumming troupe, open to women from both sides of the conflict. There was only one requirement: to leave the categories of the past at the gate.
For the women—orphans, widows, wives and children of perpetrators—the group has been a place to begin to live again, to build new relationships, to heal the wounds of the past. Yet the struggle to survive and provide for their families still persists.
So when Kiki came up with the idea to open Rwanda’s first and only ice cream shop, the women were intrigued … What was ice cream exactly and how would they do it? Kiki invited Brooklyn’s Blue Marble Ice Cream to come to Rwanda to help the drummers open their shop.

Sweet Dreams follows this remarkable group of Rwandan women create a new future for themselves.