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How Annonciata Niyibizi Muhayimana created the Ingata of Life Narrative Model
IN HER OWN WORDS: I am a Rwandan narrative therapist, community work practitioner and psychosocial wellbeing consultant with over 15 years of experience supporting vulnerable families, women, children, single parents/mothers and refugee communities. I hold advanced qualifications from the University of Melbourne and the University of Rwanda, and I currently coordinate the Nutrition School Garden Project in Gasabo District alongside running my own private therapy practice. I am the creator of Ingata of Life, a culturally rooted narrative therapy approach that promotes resilience and emotional wellbeing, and I have extensive experience training others in psychosocial support, child protection, trauma-informed care, health, nutrition with agriculture and community empowerment. My work is guided by empathy, dignity, healing and community transformation in Rwanda. Annonciata Niyibizi Muhayimana, Rwanda.
Annonciata Niyibizi Muhayimana works as the Home-Grown School Feeding Project Coordinator in Gasabo District for Gardens for Health International in Rwanda. She also completed the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work at the University of Melbourne, and it was through this study that she developed and presented a piece of work that speaks directly to how narrative practice can grow out of local life rather than being imported into it.
| Language / Country | Local Name |
|---|---|
| Botswana (Tswana, Kalanga) | Kgare, Khata |
| Chad (Arabic) | Hawwaya |
| Democratic Republic of the Congo (Lingala) | Nkata |
| Ghana (Dagbani) | Takai |
| Kenya (Swahili, Kikuyu) | Kata, Thakata |
| Lesotho (Sotho) | Kgare |
| Niger (Hausa) | Kahwa |
| Nigeria (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa) | Aju, Oshuka, Kahwa |
| Rwanda (Kinyarwanda) | Ingata/ngata |
| South Africa (Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Ndebele, Tswana) | Inkatha, Kgare |
| Sudan (Arabic) | Hawwaya |
| Tanzania (Swahili) | Kata |
| Uganda (Luganda) | Ngata |
| Zimbabwe (Shona, Northern Ndebele, Kalanga) | Ihata/Hata / Khata, Inkatha, Khata / Hata |
Her contribution centres on a metaphor she calls Ingata Yúbuzima, the Ingata of Life. An ingata is a handmade ring, woven and shaped by hand, that Rwandan women use to carry loads on their heads. It cushions the weight, protects the person carrying it, and can be used with help from others or alone. It is an object found in daily life across Rwanda, not something created for the purpose of therapy or research.
Turning an everyday object into a working metaphor
Annonciata took this familiar object and used it as the basis for a collective narrative practice, working in a similar way to the Tree of Life and Team of Life approaches developed within narrative therapy. Rather than introducing a metaphor from elsewhere, she drew on the knowledge already held by the mothers she worked with. She asked them about how an ingata is made, how it is used, and how it is cared for over time, and she used their answers as the foundation for a wider set of ideas about values, skills, hopes and connection.
This approach places the knowledge of the group at the centre of the process. The mothers were not being taught a new framework. They were being asked to draw on what they already understood, and their understanding was then shaped into something that could hold their individual stories.
From individual ingata to a collective one
Each woman made her own ingata as a way of recording what she wanted to protect in her life. These individual objects were then brought together into one large ingata, woven collectively, which held the combined stories of the group. The image of a ring that supports weight without causing harm became a way of thinking about how people carry difficulty, and how that difficulty can be shared rather than carried alone.
What this offers to narrative practice
The value of this work lies in how directly it connects the practice to the culture and the daily lives of the people involved. The metaphor was not translated from another setting. It came from an object the women already knew, used and valued, and this gave the resulting narrative work a level of meaning that would have been harder to achieve with an unfamiliar image.
This is consistent with a wider pattern seen across African narrative practice, where practitioners such as Annonciata build on existing cultural knowledge and local objects, stories or practices as starting points, rather than applying frameworks developed elsewhere without adjustment. The result is work that fits the people it is meant to serve.
Related approaches using local metaphor
The ingata sits alongside a number of other narrative practices that use an everyday object or image as the basis for exploring life, connection and support.
| Approach | Meaning of the metaphor |
|---|---|
| Tree of Life | A tree metaphor in which a person maps their roots, ground, trunk, branches, leaves and fruit to represent where they come from, their skills, hopes, relationships and achievements. |
| Team of Life | A sports team metaphor in which a person or group identifies the players, coaches, supporters and skills that make up their own team, used to explore who and what supports them. |
| Imbeleko | A cloth or wrap used to hold a baby on the back of a mother or father, used as a metaphor for what carries and protects a child, and for the relationships that support them. |
| Mat of Life | An approach in which people sew a mat together as a group, with each contribution forming part of a shared object that holds their combined stories. |
| Ingata yúbuzima/Ingata of Life | A woven ring used to carry a load on the head, used as a metaphor for what protects a person under weight, and for the support that can be shared collectively. |
| Games of Life | A play based approach in which children or young people use games, toys or play activities to represent and work through life experiences, used to explore strengths, relationships and coping in a way that suits younger participants. |
| Forest of Life | A forest metaphor in which a person or group maps the different trees, plants and creatures that make up a forest to represent the range of relationships, influences and resources that surround and support them. |
| Garden of Life | A garden metaphor in which a person maps what they plant, tend, weed and harvest to represent their values, relationships, effort and growth over time. |
Using the metaphor as a researcher, practitioner or educator
The ingata metaphor is flexible enough to be applied across several fields of work.
- In research, it can be used as a data collection tool. Talking with women as they make an ingata individually, as they make one in a group, or as they weave a single collective ingata, opens conversation about what they carry, what protects them, and what they want to preserve. The making process itself becomes an occasion for gathering rich, first person accounts rather than relying on direct questioning alone.
- In practice, it can be used to explore life issues with individuals or with groups. A person can be invited to describe what their own ingata would need to hold, and what would give it strength, as a way of externalising problems and identifying existing skills and support.
- In education, it can be used for students to collaborate. Students can construct a group ingata to represent shared learning goals, or use the process to practise eliciting local knowledge and metaphor from the people they will work with in future.
Other areas where the metaphor could be useful include the following.
- Community development, where an ingata built by a whole community can represent shared resources, responsibilities and priorities for a project.
- Monitoring and evaluation, where individual or group ingatas made at different points in a programme can be compared to show change over time in what people identify as valuable or protected.
- Training and supervision, where practitioners use the process to reflect on what supports them in their own work and what they draw on when carrying a heavy caseload.
- Advocacy and policy work, where a collective ingata created with a community can be used to communicate priorities to funders or decision makers in a form that is grounded in local knowledge rather than abstract argument.
- Mental health and psychosocial support programmes, where the physical act of making something protective can support conversation with people who find it difficult to speak directly about distress.
- Work with displaced or resettled communities, where the ingata can serve as a familiar reference point that carries meaning even when much else in a person’s environment has changed.
- Intergenerational work, where older women teach younger women or girls how to make an ingata, creating a natural setting for passing on both practical skill and the values associated with it.
Further reading
Annonciata’s presentation, Ingata yúbuzima: The ingata of life, is published as a video in the International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work (2025, Issue 1). Readers who want to see and hear her describe this work directly can find it at https://dulwichcentre.com.au/ingata-yubuzima-the-ingata-of-life-annonciata-niyibizi-muhayimana/
Readers who want to explore this further can visit the Dulwich Centre’s resource on African centred narrative practices: https://dulwichcentre.com.au/african-narrative-practices-a-rich-history-and-constant-invention/
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