Rwanda: A wounded generation

African Rights
DISCUSSION PAPER No. 14 April 2006

A WOUNDED GENERATION

THE CHILDREN WHO SURVIVED RWANDA’S GENOCIDE

As part of the genocide commemoration this year, Saturday 8 April will be devoted to children. Among the horrific accounts of the Rwandese genocide which African Rights has gathered since 1994, the stories told by children have enormous impact. An entire generation lost their childhood and will be forever scarred by their memories. Children were slashed with machetes, shot at and subjected to all manner of abuse during the genocide; girls, some as young as six or seven, were frequently raped. Many child survivors lost their parents or siblings in the massacres; many witnessed the murders themselves. They watched as their neighbours, teachers and the parents of their friends and classmates—and sometimes even their relatives—killed their parents and close relatives. They have been left to bear the legacy of physical injuries and emotional anguish, often without even minimal support of a social network. Their views of human relationships were subverted overnight, and their incomprehension in the face of the catastrophe permeates their moving testimonies. Nonetheless, the visions of the genocide offered by its child victims also contain astonishing revelations and examples of resilience.

Introduction

The genocide, with its broad-ranging consequences, has affected every aspect of the lives of young survivors, individually and collectively, in both practical and emotional terms. It continues to define their relationship to their surviving relatives, to classmates, friends, teachers, to each other, to the wider community and the outside world. Whether they were very young in 1994, and are now teenagers, or teenagers then and now young adults, the shadow of the genocide is a tangible and painful part of their everyday life.

For those who were children in 1994, the breadth and depth of their losses and bereavement have become more pronounced with time. Even adults say that the tenacity, resilience and morale of survivors is diminishing, rather than improving, as the years go by. A teacher in Kigali spoke about the cumulative impact of the last 12 years on children.

As time passes, the impact deepens and becomes more and more visible. Those who were very young during the genocide, and who didn’t know what was happening, have for now grown up in a bad environment where they feel the full weight of what happened. That can only increase their bitterness every day. They have never known love and cannot, therefore, love others in return. When you go to commemoration services in memory of the victims, you see clearly that the morale of survivors is on the decline. Their hearts are much more wounded. They are the living-dead who, rightly, feel that they have been abandoned by their fellow-citizens and by the world. And on top of all that, comes the extreme poverty which they face after having lost everything during the genocide.

I don’t know why the sorrow has increased instead of diminishing. I think in 1995, and until about 2000, they still hoped that justice would be done. But now, they have been disappointed and they have no hope of justice. And that affects them enormously.

A teacher who received training in counselling in Butare agreed that the problems of some children worsen with age.

The older the survivors get, the more they are saddened and troubled by the genocide. That’s why a lot of the survivors who are at secondary schools are traumatised. It’s because they have a growing awareness of what they actually went through during the genocide.

Thomas, who was 17 when the world he had known came to an end, echoed these views.

Just after the genocide, we were hopeful about justice. But now, we see that we must lie with injustice. This makes me feel morally insecure. I can’t explain this sense of insecurity, so I can’t go and complain to the police. All survivors feel this insecurity, and it is that, more than anything else, which undermines us. Because it has an effect on all aspects of our life, including education.

When There is No Way to Forget

Vestine Umugwaneza was aged 11 in 1994. Her family lived in Rusatira in Butare. Her father, brothers and sisters died in the massacres at the agricultural research centre of ISAR/Songa between the 24-28 April. She was left to comfort her mother who had become distraught. At night, they searched the nearby ravines for sweet potatoes and manioc which they ate raw. At the end of four days, Vestine’s mother had gone beyond what she could endure and disappeared. Despite the danger, Vestine returned to their home and discovered her mother’s body in their living room. She found a bottle of poison lying by her mother’s side.

Vestine’s life was destroyed at ISAR.

I have led a miserable life since the genocide of April 1994. I went through a terrible time when they went after the thousands of Tutsi refugees at ISAR/Songa. I will never forget that time. How can I? The massacre at ISAR changed my life forever. I was the only survivor from my family. I became an orphan at a very young age. I had to leave school, not for lack of means, but because of psychological problems. I had trouble remembering things after the massacre.

Giselle , living in Mudasomwa in Gikongoro, was also 11 at the time. With many of her relatives, she joined the exodus to a school under construction in Murambi, on the outskirts of Gikongoro town. The school came under a well-organized attack at 3:00 a.m. on 21 April. Giselle’s parents, two younger brothers, a younger sister and her grandparents died at Murambi. Her grandparents and sister were killed in front of her.

Fortunate to find a caring guardian, she was able to finish secondary school and has a job. She regrets that her salary does not allow her to pursue further education, but she considers herself fortunate compared to other survivors when it comes to the practical impact of the genocide.

When I compare myself to the other orphans, I believe I am very lucky. The other children of my age who lost their parents during the genocide could not continue with their studies, many have become cleaners, others are prostitutes to find the money to survive and are dying of AIDS. They also see that I am in a better situation than they are. And yet I equally have a long road to travel, may be not equal to theirs as I at least have something.

The consequences of the genocide which impact a lot on me are those relating to the loss of my whole family. I can’t bear to hear others saying that they are going to see their parents as it makes me think of mine. I often think of all that they were and all that they would have been for me.

Like so many survivors, Giselle is haunted by the fact that she has not been able to give her parents and siblings a dignified burial.

The people who were killed at Murambi were thrown in mass graves. No-one is sure they have buried their own relatives who were at Murambi, but they tried to believe it to avoid torment. Personally, I condemn myself for not having buried my parents, brothers and sisters. It is the one thing that I could have offered them and I have not been able to do it. Sometimes, when I am in bed, I dream of what happened to my family, my friends and cousins. I see my family again as they were before the genocide… I often lose myself in thought and ask why God permitted such a horror. Even today, I don’t understand it and have not been able to reconcile myself to the genocide.

Jean-Baptiste, who was 15 in 1994 and is a native of commune Mbogo in Greater Kigali. His mother, two sisters, one of them a primary school teacher and the other a student, and a brother who was at school, were among the victims of the genocide. In 1995, his father also died. Jean-Baptiste was then a student at the Ecole Technique Officielle in Kibungo. He found that thinking about his life—past and present—distracted him from his studies.

Some days, I think about my mother and my brothers and sisters. Even my grandmother was killed and she was eighty. Thinking about this almost drives me mad and prevents me from studying as I should, especially when I remember a photo of all the members of my family. We had a photo like this in an album which was stolen. This photo often returns to my mind. It reminds me of my dead brothers and sisters, of the way some of them were torn to pieces by grenades. This thought often comes to me during my homework in the evening. Tears follow thoughts like this. After I cry I feel better. I unconsciously find myself reflecting on these things. It’s certainly difficult for me to do as well as I should.

I also get sad when the children are visited by members of their families. I don’t think it’s due to jealousy. My family were killed by people; they didn’t die from illness. They were tortured before being killed. When I see people passing by, even strangers, I say to myself, from the heart: “May be he killed people.”

I want to go home to Ngaru to reflect upon the life I led there with my parents, my brothers and my sisters. There were a lot of people around me. Now there is no longer any happiness without my parents. We buried the remains of my mother and my two older sisters in 1995 before my father died. I will never forget seeing the remains of my beloved mother.

When I think about the children of my age who were killed simply for being Tutsi, it makes me want to leave this country and go and live or die far away from here. I’m incapable of understanding, or accepting, this sudden loss of such a large number of people.

Beginning a new life after the genocide is a constant reminder of the absence of loved ones, as Thomas, who was 17 in 1994, remarked.

Every survivor had to start his or her life from zero after the genocide : to make new friends and construct a new life. It’s as if we were born a second time, but this time in a society where the social fabric has been torn to pieces and where we must live side by side with the perpetrators. Even if I’m fortunate enough to still have my mother, I lost my father, my brothers, friends, neighbours and relatives. They cannot be replaced. We will miss them forever and it will be impossible to fill the emptiness they left behind.

Charlotte Ingabire was only 15 when she spoke as if she had already lived too long. Charlotte’s entire family was massacred in front of her in their home in Gisuma, Cyangugu.

I’m dead, even if others see me as alive. I hid so I wouldn’t die. This is how I’ve come to be suffering alone, with no consolation and with no-one to rely on in the difficult conditions in which I find myself today. Where my family is, there is no suffering. Why did I remain on this cursed earth, full of more interahamwe than I can count, who killed my family and destroyed everything which belonged to the Tutsis?

It is unlikely that Elizaphan Ndayisaba will ever have peace of mind. He keeps asking why his neighbours left him without his brothers Ndagijimana and Mbonimpaye, to talk to and play with. Aged 12 in 1994, he had already left school to do what he loved best, to look after cows on the green pastures of Bisesero. Overnight, the hills he had come to love turned into a war zone as thousands of Tutsis fought pitched battles against soldiers, gendarmes, communal policemen and militiamen.

One day the militiamen and soldiers attacked us. The little children started to cry. My mother put Nyirakanyana on her back and my older brother did the same with Mbonimpaye. We then ran in different directions. Many people were killed that day. When the militiamen had gone home, someone came to tell me that my whole family had been killed. When I heard this, I went to every hill to try and find their bodies.

I carried on looking until I came across my mother’s body and my little sister who was on her back. They were both dead. My elder brother was next to my mother and on his back was Mbonimaye. My older brother was still breathing but the child on his back was dead. The dogs were coming to eat the corpses. I watched how my mother, who had nursed me, was going to be eaten by dogs. I felt sad. She was lying there without any clothes on.

A few months later, after a stint in an orphanage in Gitarama, Elizaphan returned to Bisesero. It was a sad homecoming.

I had to live with my paternal uncle because my parents were dead and all our possessions had been destroyed. My uncle was alone too. I had to do all the work and I spent all day farming so that we wouldn’t die of hunger. I didn’t farm before the genocide. I don’t know where to go to get anything back. My father had a lot of cows and other things which were worth something. My uncle does not have the time to help me. I am alone so I can’t cultivate my father’s fields. All that is left now are bushes.

At night, instead of sleeping, Elizaphan reflects on the projects “that have come to nothing”, but above all on the circumstances in which he finds himself.

I wonder why I ever left school. I thought that my father would give me a lot of cows and build me a house.

Before the genocide, my brothers and I would chat and play together before going to sleep. Now when I go to bed I think about the genocide. When I close my eyes I see all the bodies that were at Bisesero, especially the one of my mother with the child on her back. I have become disheartened. Nothing seems to give me back my courage. I don’t know what my future will be anymore.

There is no one to shield him against the shame and hurt he feels.

Other children my age, who still have their parents, wear new clothes on special days, for example at Christmas, and when they go to mass. However, I am left feeling sad and I look at my clothes which are all worn. I wonder why they killed my parents and the other Tutsis who gave me things. I wonder what we have done to have to suffer like this for the rest of our lives. I haven’t been able to answer this question.

In 1992, Justin Twagiramungu’s mother was killed in Mbogo, Greater Kigali, with his baby sister of three weeks strapped on her back. His seven-year-old sister was burnt alive. Justin had made it in time to his grandmother’s house. His father and three of his brothers were killed in 1994. His young brother and sister who remained were taken in by the Saint Elizabeth orphanage. He mingled with the huge crowds en route to Zaire in July and ended up in Mugunga camp. In 1995 he eventually traced his way back to Rwanda.

I don’t think there’s anything that could make me happy now. Nothing will bring my family back to life. I’ve got nobody to talk to. Until 1992, I didn’t have a care in the world. My parents looked after me and all my brothers and sisters. Now, I spend night after night lying awake, thinking about my future and the future of the children I’m responsible for. If my parents had lived, I would’ve carried on with my studies. And my parents would have looked after us. If only my brothers were still alive... I was the eldest. Alfred, who came next, was just a little younger than me. He would’ve helped me look after the two little ones if he hadn’t been killed. None of them did any harm to the people who killed them. They were tortured before they died. And I’ll feel tortured for the rest of my life. I can’t commit suicide, but I sometimes think death would solve all my problems. I think that especially at night, when I can’t sleep.

Even a life abroad, free of the demons of the genocide, is beyond Justin’s imagination.

Sometimes I want to go and live in a far-off country, so I can forget the genocide and the ruins of Tutsis’ homes. But then I remember I might meet commander Stanislas Kinyoni, one of the main people responsible for the genocide.

No-One to Lean On

For children and young people, parents and close adults are not only a source of love and economic support, but of guidance and advice. Even the youngsters who have managed to overcome adversity feel the absence of caring adults in their lives. Brigitte Kankindi and her older brother are all that remain of a family of nine people. Her parents and siblings were killed in Nyanza, Nyabisindu. While her brother was repairing their damaged houses, Brigitte finished her secondary education and worked in Nyanza hospital. She then went to university. Her brother returned to secondary school. They live together with two young female cousins, both 23, the only survivors of their respective families. They do the best they can, but regret that there are no adults they can look to as anchors for security and confidence.

We are a family of young people only. We have learned to take on all responsibilities after my parents’ death. We have no-one to give us advice or to set us straight. No-one in my father’s family, except for our two cousins, is alive. They used to be a large family. We have a few maternal aunts but they live far away and we see each other rarely.

Despite their own problems, they helped the orphans of the genocide who were attending a nearby nursing school, sharing their meals with those who lived far away. To support themselves, Brigitte and her brother rented out the houses they had rebuilt.

Although they are no longer there, Justine Nyiransabimana continues to hold her family close to her heart. Just before the genocide began, Justine’s mother went to visit her own family in Bugesera, taking the youngest child, a one-year-old boy. It was the last time Justine saw them; they were killed there, along with their relatives. Justine’s four younger sisters and brothers were killed in Mbogo, the commune where they lived. Justine and her father got separated and found each other in August 1994. They began to repair their house and their lives. The information her father provided contributed to the imprisonment of a number of genocide suspects. He remarried and, in March 1996, Justine had a new sister. Two weeks later, he was killed in front of his house. Justine suspects that he was murdered by the families whose relatives he had imprisoned.

I cannot forget my family. When I feel unhappy, I wish that I could die so that I can join them. I will not find happiness as long as I live. It is impossible to get my mother and father back. I will never have a brother or sister. I am all alone in this world. Perhaps I will see them on resurrection day. But when will this take place?

Justine lives in Bugesera with her maternal uncle and his eldest daughter and has, in her words, “found joy again.” But she misses the company of an older female relative in the household.

I don’t have any aunts. My uncle looks after me but he is a man. I want someone who can reassure me but I can’t find anyone. I wish I had an aunt. I don’t, however, have the choice.

The depth of their loss is brought home to the survivors on social occasions. Because people generally socialise as a unit—either as couples or as families—it is difficult to re-invent oneself and to be sociable on one’s own, or to find joy in gatherings which simply underline the extent to which one’s family and circle of friends had diminished. As such, school holidays, weekends, Christmas, New Year, birthdays and weddings are often filled with emptiness.

Emmanuel Uwizeyimana, 17, longed for his father, older brothers and uncles when his sister, Donata, decided to get married. Although happy for his sister, he found himself trapped in the past as he prepared for the wedding, thinking about his parents and the eight brothers and sisters who should have been there.

Before the genocide, my older brothers and sisters had been married. On their wedding day, we got lots of beers and people came to the house to celebrate and brought presents for the married couple. My father had prepared speeches to welcome the visitors. Grandparents, other members of the family and neighbours came to the party. My older sisters bought many things—plates, clothes and suitcases—for the new household.

He had to make decisions beyond his years.

A marriage demands a lot of ceremony and money. I looked for an older man to take my father’s place. I wondered how I could provide for Donata’s marriage. I went to Mbogo and claimed my father’s cows, which had been taken by militiamen during the genocide. I sold the cows I found to raise the money. I got 80,000 francs and other survivors helped me. With this money my sister bought the things she needed. My sister’s husband brought the beer. I found an older man to take my father’s part in the marriage ceremony.

The wedding was not a joyous occasion.

There were a few of us drinking beer in our little house. It didn’t feel like a celebration. The conversation was about the genocide. I heard people saying: “It would have been better if their parents were still alive.” We accompanied my sister to the Parish of Gihogwe in Rutongo for the religious ceremonies and afterwards her husband took her to Butare.

Forced to drop out of school because of poverty, he decided to become a farmer which only heightened his loneliness. When a charity donated corrugated iron, windows and doors to the survivors of Mbogo, the older survivors helped Emmanuel build a house. He moved in on 1 May 1997. He was delighted to find a nephew, the son of his brother. Taking care of him has given meaning to Emmanuel’s life, but the child cannot fulfil his need for companionship.

We are surrounded by the families of the militiamen who killed my family. The child spends all day at school. I stay alone in the house and there is no-one to talk to me. My neighbours will never come to my house. They say I am their enemy, though I have done nothing to them. They are the ones who murdered my family.

The pace at which his neighbours work their fields made him realise how much his world had shrunk.

I no longer have the courage to farm. My neighbours who see me farming alone laugh at me because I can work on a small patch for more than a week, whereas they could even plough a whole hill in a few hours because the father, mother and the children all go to the fields to farm. I cannot find anyone to help me. I cannot even get married. I’m still young. I have no security and I think I will be killed one day. I care for the child and I look for study materials for him.

Régine Uwase finds the period of commemoration especially unbearable.

I stay in bed until the commemoration is over.

When the friend she lives with became engaged, the gathering turned into a sad occasion.

It was very hard for us to find someone to preside over the ceremony.

The death of parents, grandparents and siblings creates regret and fear not only about links to one’s past, but also concerns about continuity to the future. Marie-Rose Uwizeyimana lives with an elderly aunt, who has since taken in three other orphans. She and her husband do their best to support the children, but their age and lack of means is never far from Marie-Rose’s mind.

If I didn’t have my aunt, what would happen to me? Now that she is ill, I am afraid that she will die and leave me alone. I have no-one else. My other uncles, aunts and cousins were killed. I am constantly afraid that my old relatives will die. I would have nowhere to go. I am the eldest of the other children and I am still too young to work.

Adults Before Their Time

The genocide has robbed thousands of children of their parents, extended families, their homes and their childhood. Many children and young people have been forced to assume responsibility for the remaining members of their family, often at the expense of their own well-being.

At 16, Julienne Umugwaneza lived through the horrors which left about 50,000 Tutsi men, women and children dead on 21 April 1994 at a school under construction in Murambi, outside Gikongoro town. She later met up with her two younger sisters and their maternal uncle took them with him to Kigali. They lived there until 1997. But aware of the pressure on the family which had taken in many other orphans, they went to live with their paternal uncle. Julienne married a soldier and had three children with him; they later separated.

It’s very difficult for me to guarantee their education. But I have to manage because I don’t have anyone left from our family to share the responsibility with. I share these troubles with many other genocide survivors. We must, for better or worse, ensure our own survival in extreme solitude. Others have families they can turn to in times of need, but we are condemned to live in this way.

In addition to her own children, Julienne is looking after her two sisters who are attending secondary school. Their fees are paid by the FARG, but she must meet all their expenses and tries to do so from the income of her family’s fields.

I ended my schooling in order to dedicate myself to my younger sisters’ education. I had done the first year of secondary school in 1995 and I did well. But I couldn’t continue because at that time the FARG had not been set up to help me. I therefore chose to devote myself to ensuring that my little sisters would not miss out on their education as I did.

Marie-Chantal Mukansange’s parents died when she was three years old. She lived with her grandmother; after her death, she and her younger sister moved in with their aunt who lived in Mbogo, Greater Kigali. They scattered in different directions after their home was destroyed on 10 April. Marie-Chantal, then fifteen, eventually found her sister and aunt. Two of their neighbours, including a headmaster, gathered the Tutsis in the area and separated the men and women. The men were shot and finished off with machetes. The women were driven to a communal graveyard located near the marketplace.

One by one, each woman and girl was struck on the back of the neck with a hammer and then immediately thrown into the large well where there were other dead people.

In the evening, Marie-Chantal climbed out of the pit. She was saved by a Hutu woman whose Tutsi husband had been killed. When a civil servant asked to employ her as a domestic worker, her host encouraged her to accept. She lied to protect her, saying she was her niece. She fled with this family to Zaire in July 1994, and met up with the woman who had originally befriended her. She lived with her until they returned to Rwanda together in September 1996. To her joy and surprise, she discovered that her sister, Marie-Rose, 14, was still alive. At the time of the interview, the two girls were living together in a house given to them by a family friend. Marie-Chantal looks after her younger sister who attends primary school.

I cultivate but I don’t have enough strength. I rent out fields and find money to take on one paid labourer to cultivate the rest of the fields. We have no-one. All the members of our family were killed during the genocide.

Marie-Chantal had completed sixth year of primary school just before April 1994. She would have liked to continue her education, but lack of money and her sister’s dependence on her have forced her to put her own aspirations on hold.

I had good marks. If my aunt had stayed alive she would have put me in secondary school. But now I don’t have any money and I have to stay at the house to prepare the food. I have no choice but to live like this. When the food runs out, I worry a lot for my younger sister.

Apprehension about their security is another source of unease.

We spend our nights alone in the house and I get very frightened by the smallest thing. I don’t sleep well.

It has not been possible to close the door to the past, and the nights are not restful either.

I always see the ruins of our house. I see Tutsi neighbours who had children of my age and whose families were wiped out. I live in eternal pain. I saw terrible things. I had never seen a dead person before. I was frightened of dead bodies. Even when my grandmother died, before the genocide, I refused to see her body. But during the genocide I saw lots of dead bodies and people in agony. This will never be wiped from my memory. When I sleep at night and dream, these images come back to me and frighten me. I also dream about the militia chasing me, in order to kill me.

Uwayisenga was seven when the killings began. Her family took refuge on the hills of Bisesero. A man who worked for her father and who she considered a family friend brought a machete down on her head and stuck pieces of wood into her face. He left her for dead. Her mother washed her injuries with water. She hid her in the bush where they stayed until the arrival of French troops who transferred her to a hospital in Goma. Her father and four of her five siblings were killed. Her mother married Uwayisenga’s uncle whose own family had perished and in time she had a new baby sister. But her future was blighted by the injuries from the machete as she was forced to leave school.

Still, I was happy to see my mother taking care of me and I looked after the baby.

But the contentment that Uwayisenga drew from her family did not last long. In February 1997, her mother died suddenly.

When I heard that she was dead, I wanted to kill myself.

Her mother’s death has brought the devastation of the genocide to the forefront of Uwayisenga’s life.

When I go to bed, I immediately think about how the genocide was carried out in Bisesero. My head hurts all the time. Before the genocide, I used to eat and sleep without any problems. I did not have to think about my future because my parents looked after me, my brothers and my sisters.

It also transformed her into a mother, at the age of ten. The narrow shoulders of a child are too weak to carry such a heavy load.

Now I am like an old mother. I wonder how my mother’s baby will grow up. When he cries, I cry too. He gets his food from cows’ milk. Other orphans from the genocide were placed in the orphanage of Nyamishaba in Gitesi. I couldn’t abandon my father’s fields to go to an orphanage. I wanted to live here in Bisesero to look after the cows and the baby. I didn’t want to go back to school because I couldn’t see the point of studying.

Because men were the primary target of the genocide, women constitute a significant percentage of survivors. In a society where it is easier for men to deal with bureaucracy, young men find themselves under constant family pressure, as Thomas testified.

I have a lot of responsibilities which take up a lot of my time, responsibilities which I would not be carrying today if it was not for the genocide. I can’t give my family sufficient time even though I’m the oldest and they really need my presence. Sometimes I even miss classes. The teachers think that I lack discipline, but I can’t tell them the reasons for my absences.

Pierre finds himself caught in a similar trap.

Because many of the survivors in my extended family are women, they ask me to help with this or that urgent matter. And I feel under an obligation to put my studies aside and to assist them. There are priorities that must take precedence over school, and it’s impossible to do anything about it. This has negative consequences for our grades.

Robbed of Their Sanity

During the months of April, May and June 1994, thousands of Rwandese children experienced horrors and saw crimes that no child should ever see. Many witnessed massacres or were subjected to physical violence that no words can adequately describe. Their parents and siblings had their throats slit in front of them, were blown apart by bullets and grenades, or seared by clubs. In a last act of love, many parents placed their children underneath them when soldiers and militiamen stormed sanctuaries. These children held their breath as their parents’ bodies were slashed with machetes, their blood pouring over them. Fearful of the killers who returned to massacre sites to finish off the wounded, children—debilitated by hunger and thirst— crouched for days next to the rotting bodies of their parents and other relatives. They watched as dogs devoured the bodies of the people who had loved and protected them. Many of the murderers were men and women whose children were their playmates.

Emerging from these horrors has been further restricted by their encounters with a hostile or indifferent world. Normal relations were turned on their heads in the genocide and children, least of all, can cope with the fact that they knew many of those who murdered their families. Often their own lives were under threat from people who had formerly welcomed them into their homes. No child can be expected to understand or come to terms with this knowledge.

A huge number of children lost not only their parents, but all or most of their siblings, their grandparents, uncles and aunts. For them the only substitute for home became the limited security and support which an orphanage could provide. This was usually the best they could hope for, and some children demonstrated immense courage there, managing to take their first steps towards recovery.

While the signs of trauma were most evident in the very young in the first two or three years after the genocide, the fact that trauma is today particularly pronounced among survivors in secondary schools speaks volumes of the hurt and injury in the hearts and minds of those who were very young in 1994.

Olive, aged about three in 1994, was found on the road to Butare. She had been in the Kacyiru orphanage in Kigali for a year when African Rights met her in mid-1996, but had hardly spoken a word. Although her words were not clear, the staff noticed that she was making an effort to improve.

Olive was only able to tell African Rights that she used to live in Butare, and that her mother was called Espérance. But the people who looked after her said the little girl was always calling for her parents, and demanding that they take her to her parents’ home. They could not respond because they did not know her parents’ names, if they were alive and they could not understand what she was telling them.

At the age of twelve, Floride tried to commit suicide, together with her eleven-year-old sister, Josephine. The two girls ran towards Lake Kivu with the intention of killing themselves after their parents died in a massacre in Rwamatamu, Kibuye. At the edge of the water, the girls met a group of Zairians who took them to the island of Idjwi in their boat. They subsequently went to live with their brother-in-law in Rwamatamu.

But Josephine, unable to accept the loss of their parents, was deeply unhappy and troubled by nightmares. Floride spoke about the distress her sister feels and about how, as the older child, she is called upon for help. But Floride is unable to do anything.

My sister asks me if our parents will come back. And then she cries all the time and that also hurts me. I have no way of calming my little sister down, especially during the night when she shouts a lot that the killers are running after her. She calls out their names and it’s the names of the men who murdered our parents.

But Floride cannot fill the void at the centre of Josephine’s life. Josephine’s questions and her needs—emotional and material—are painful reminders of Floride’s own devastation and sense of helplessness.

She asks me to give her clothes, when I haven’t got any. That makes me think about the death of my parents who used to give us everything we needed. My little sister doesn’t want to go to school. She wants to stay in the house. I don’t know how to behave in this situation. I am incapable of doing anything to soothe my little sister. I’m also not in good health because they beat me on the back with massues. Even if I was healthy, I couldn’t do anything at my age.

Etienne’s life is a protracted battle to overcome the grief in his heart. This is a weary struggle for a boy of ten. In 1994, he lived in Kigali. His parents were killed but he and his five surviving brothers and sisters were hidden at the Parish of St. Michel and were later taken to the Gisimba orphanage. He returned to school but was frequently away because of sickness as his feet were affected by paralysis. Etienne, nevertheless, tried to hold on to the future.

I am going to stay at the orphanage until the age of at least seventeen, when I will be grown-up. I would like to become a doctor.

Despite his seemingly positive attitude, the extent to which Etienne was at a loss was obvious. He would refuse to talk or to eat. He wouldn’t answer questions, but sit with his mouth closed. The staff had to force him to eat, putting food on a spoon and trying to get him to swallow it, escalating into a battle of wills.

Claudine was shot in the leg as the family fled from Butare to Burundi. Her leg became infected and was later amputated. Her father was also shot and is no longer able to provide for his family as he used to. Claudine has found it difficult to come to terms with both her disability and the very difficult circumstances that the genocide has forced upon the family. Claudine was too withdrawn to be interviewed herself. Her mother spoke of their inability to help their child.

She gets a complex when she sees others of her age who are in good health, especially because they have two legs and she doesn’t. Claudine asked us for an artificial leg so that she could walk like the others. We have been unable to do anything about Claudine’s problem. Her father really has no resources. Everything was taken from us—especially the cows and the goats which used to bring in some money. Also, because he can’t walk, he can't work to get money. After she asked us for this artificial leg, Claudine became especially anxious and distressed.

The family do what they can to reach out to Claudine.

I try to calm her down. But nothing works. She doesn’t want us to talk about her life. She wants to be alone; she goes into a corner, crying a lot. If anyone asks her why she is crying, she says: “I’m not crying.” If they say why are you alone here, she says: “It’s my right to be.” I have bought her a crutch. But since the school is far from our home, she sees the other children of her age who are going to school and her anxiety becomes intense. She is always crying. Sometimes she says that we don’t love her. We try to comfort her, but we don’t succeed.

Augustin, from Kibuye, sought to confront the legacy of the genocide with an emotional ferocity that was tearing him apart. Both his parents were killed and he, aged 13, was struck by a machete. Two years later, he could still not speak about his experiences except to mention his parents’ names and to say: “If you are an interahamwe kill me; even my parents are dead. But don’t ask me a lot of questions.”

A fellow-survivor from Augustin’s home area talked about the distraught state in which Augustin was living.

He witnessed the death of his parents and was cut on the head by machetes. Also, being the only one left in his family causes him a lot of problems. Now he has left school because he used to shout that everyone was a killer, while the teacher was giving a lesson. When he is told to go and draw water, he takes a jerry can then leaves. When he gets to the well he spends the whole day there and leaves the jerry can at the well. If he is asked the question: “Where is the jerry can?”, he says: “Go and look for it. I’m not your servant.” Sometimes he remains calm and doesn’t speak; the alternative is that he cries, especially during the night. We have noticed that he has been affected by the machete cuts on his head.

Neighbours could not find a way to console Augustin. It was clear to them that Augustin needed sustained medical treatment, but the level of poverty in a remote rural area does not afford them the opportunity to help him.

We try to calm him down, but nothing works. If we could comfort him, for example by taking him to hospital, we would. That requires money we don’t have.

Raped as a Child

Rape was used widely as a weapon of genocide. Girls as young as six were gang-raped and kept as sexual slaves both in Rwanda and in the refugee camps set up in neighbouring countries. Many were raped alongside their mothers or sisters, often by the men who had just murdered their fathers, brothers and other relatives. To compound the physical violence and the psychological shock, some of the young girls became pregnant, which subsequently alienated them from their surviving relatives. Many more have endured illness or caught sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.

Dévota was seven in April 1994. She lived with her mother and grandparents. The family abandoned their home and Dévota was with her grandmother in the bush when they were found by the interahamwe. They killed her grandmother, but one of the men claimed she was his daughter and took her home with him. Dévota had never seen him before.

He then began to rape me. He asked me: “Have you seen how the others were killed?” alluding to a boy he’d just handed over. If you don’t do everything that I order you to do, you will also be killed.” He took me when he wanted and did what he wanted to. When I got to the stage that I couldn’t walk anymore, he left me for one or two days. Then he began again. To rape me, he put me on his knees and when I cried, he asked me if I’d really thought that he was my father, as he had told the killers. While he was really hurting me badly, he would tell me, in a nasty manner, to be quiet. I stayed with him for about two months.

He took Dévota with him to Gikongoro, and then from there he joined the exodus to Zaire. Although Dévota was no longer at his mercy, she had to beg at the market for food. Soon afterwards a gang of street children moved into the house she was staying in.

There were eight of them. The eldest was 20, but all these children were older than me. They were all boys; I was the only girl. The 8 boys also raped me. Some times they took turns. There were also times when the eldest took pity on me and, after he raped me, he told the others off. He was the strongest; the others were afraid of him. They held me lying on my back while they carried out their will. We lived for a week together like this. Sometimes, they all raped me. Other times it was just the eldest.

A woman who saw her in the market took pity on her. Dévota moved into her house but was left alone with her husband every day and soon he too began to rape her.

He knew through his wife that I had been raped by several men, so he told me: “Come here, you’ve got nothing to save,” meaning that he wasn’t the first.

Dévota was raped by this man “several times” even though she was already visibly suffering from a sexually transmitted disease, the consequence of previous rapes. She was too terrified to tell his wife.

Reunited with her mother after the genocide, Dévota has been taken to the doctor regularly with the apparent ongoing symptoms of an STI, despite treatment. She does not appear to have been informed of the specific cause of her illness. However, she has been tested and is not HIV positive. She was in the fifth year of primary school, having had to repeat several times due to frequent absence. Her mother is working and looks after her. Despite visits to the doctor she remains unwell.

These pains even prevent me from sleeping. I cry out very loudly. So I have to consult a doctor.

I’ve hidden my story from the other children. I don’t want them to make fun of me. They could say that I’m a woman. None of them went through the same problems as I did.

The man who raped Justine initially took her and another girl to a woman’s house for safety in Nyamata, Greater Kigali. However, one week later the woman was ready to call the Presidential Guard to come and kill them, so he came back and took them to his house.

He raped me in the absence of his wife on about five occasions. He would choose between me and the other girl; as he raped one, the other would go outside. One day he told us to lift up our clothes. He hit us and said that he would put sticks between our legs, but we begged him not to and he left us alone.

At the age of just ten, Bernadette was separated from her family and left to crouch in fields near her home in Gishamvu, Butare. An adult man found her there and raped her. During the following days, she remained constantly on the run from the gangs of killers she could hear roaming around. Later, while sheltering in the reeds, she was discovered by another man who also raped her.

As I was still a young girl, the rape was the first time that I’d had sexual intercourse with a man. It was too painful and it was very hard for me to put up with it. I shouted a lot but the rapists didn’t care. I had difficulty standing up and couldn’t even walk. Before raping me they also hit me. They were offended that I had rejected their offer to sleep with them.

I didn’t recognize any of the men who raped me, so I can’t bring them to justice.

Justine found herself without any family left. She decided to move in with a man, saying that her experience had left her feeling that she “wasn’t a little girl anymore.” She was 12 at the time.

I thought that he would be at the same time my father, my mother and my brother. I married towards the end of 1994. We separated after we had two children; the eldest is now six years old.

Shortly before April 1994, Anathalie left her home in Gisuma, Cyangugu, which she shared with her parents and nine brothers and sisters. She had just finished primary school. She went to stay with her older sister in Gikongoro. When the killing started, her sister went to Butare and Anathalie was left alone in Gikongoro, hiding with sympathetic Hutu families or in the bush.

When I was in the bush, militiaman raped me three times. There were a lot of rapists and I didn’t know them.

Anathalie was 14 at the time. She returned to Cyangugu after the genocide to live with her sister. Although repeatedly unwell, it was only when she was about to marry that Anathalie was tested. Her HIV-positive diagnosis has destroyed her future and she is visibly crushed. Now in her twenties, Anathalie is watching her life slip away. She found it very difficult to speak about what has happened to her and how she feels.

I hadn’t told my fiancé that I’d been raped during the genocide, but I told him everything once I’d got my results. He was really shocked. The news rekindled my bad memories of the genocide. I had real difficulty in coming to terms with the results. I still can’t accept what’s happened to me today. I avoid thinking about it, but that’s impossible.

Anathalie cannot forget as she is so often sick.

We live in a house built by an NGO but it’s not solid. We live off crops from our fields; we don’t have any other source of income. I’m very weak. I’ve not taken any medication to prevent the illnesses that come with HIV. I don’t even know where they distribute these. If it were possible to receive help, I would like priority to be given to my medical needs and to making our house a bit more solid.

Solange’s parents, as well as her seven brothers and sisters were killed at their home in Ngoma, Butare in April. Left to fend for herself at the age of 10, she hid in the fields, then turned to family friends for help. She was taken in by a Hutu woman, married to a soldier, who asked Solange to look after three children.

Several weeks later, the soldier returned and urged his wife to flee the advance of the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA). Solange was taken with them to Cyangugu where soldiers had set up a camp in a secondary school.

I was raped several times by two men who were guarding the military. I didn’t know them beforehand and I don’t know where they are now. They told me that I was also old enough to be raped like the other Tutsi girls who were there. In fact, I was the youngest of all of them. They told us that our time was up, that we should give in to their desires. These men hurt me. They were violent.

Despite the evident injuries, she is nervous about taking the HIV test., but fears that she may be infected and that she may have internal injuries which will prevent her from having children. Her neighbours make it difficult for her to meet potential partners.

If my neighbours find me chatting with someone, they tell him that he’s going to be infected with AIDS because they know everything that happened to me. When I think about all these things, I wonder why I survived.

Her only salvation, she believes, would be a partner who was exceptionally understanding, a prospect about which she is not very optimistic.

I can’t get married unless I find someone I can tell everything to and who will agree to live with me despite that.

Education: The Harsh Lessons of Indifference

For the children who escaped the genocide, attending school invariably means overcoming crippling economic problems, disability or ill-health and facing up to haunting memories, prejudice, fear and loneliness. Sometimes the difficulties are insurmountable. Even when children are forced to drop out of school, their belief in the importance of education is rarely extinguished. Most young survivors see education as their only hope for the future, the best chance to give meaning and restore order to their lives. Many are prepared to attend classes although they are hungry and lack any of the necessary equipment, including notebooks and pens. Families will make considerable sacrifices to finance the education of their children; some young orphans have even left school themselves in order to pay the fees of their younger siblings.

But, whatever their commitment to their studies, once at school, orphans and the children of survivors often have trouble learning. In most schools little effort has been made to accommodate the psychological and practical problems which survivors of the genocide confront. Often they are in the minority and are easily identifiable, whether because of their machete scars, because they are the only children not wearing uniform or because at secondary school their fees are paid for by the FARG. Staff and pupils may make them feel unwelcome at best, and at worst they may tease or harass them, making them feel humiliated and isolated. This was especially true in the years immediately after the genocide Hunger and lack of resources can disrupt their studies and lead to poor grades and low self-esteem. Few will achieve the standards they reached before the genocide. Others are regularly expelled because of their inability to pay school fees, interrupting their education and undermining their confidence. And yet schools may be the only social network with which these children interact. Without parents or extended family, they need additional support from teachers and other pupils. For some it has become their only “home” as they may have nowhere to go in the holidays or, particularly if they live in the countryside, may not be able to afford the journey to visit a relative or friend.

Moreover, the trauma of genocide is forever present in the educational system. Schools were among the most common sites for large-scale massacres in 1994, partly because most parishes include schools in their compound, but also because many people believed that schools would be exempt from attack. It has been estimated that as many as 2000 people were murdered at the primary school of Nyakanyinya in Cyimbogo, Cyangugu on 13 April. Many of them were former pupils of the school. Of those who survived, some stayed on in the school as they did not know where else to go. A number of the girls and women were raped repeatedly. Children as well as adults had their lives cut short in a massacre at St. Joseph’s school in Rwamagana, Kibungo on 16 April. In Gikongoro, 90 schoolchildren were trapped at the College of Kibeho. On 7 May, after weeks of torment, all except eight were assassinated. Those who tortured, raped and assassinated them included their schoolmates and teachers. Mass graves lie within sight of many classrooms; they contain the bodies of children who used to sit in those classrooms. Some children are forced to study in the schools where they themselves were injured and their families were murdered.

Children are painfully aware that some of their teachers—whether in exile, detained in Rwanda or at liberty—were active participants in the genocide. Perhaps of all the professions, teachers—who wield considerable authority—particularly in the countryside, distinguished themselves in the genocide, killing, amongst others, their own pupils and the parents of the children they taught.

Pupils also took part in the killings. Many of the leading perpetrators—both men and women—“worked” alongside their children, especially their sons, who often acted as their drivers or as heads of the militia loyal to their parent. Other parents took their children along to intimidate, rob and kill the refugees gathered in churches, schools and hospitals. Some children and young people are absent from educational institutions following accusations that they played an active role in the genocide. They are spending an important part of their formative years behind bars, on charges of genocide. There can also be no doubt that many who have charges to answer are at liberty, in schools, sitting next to survivors of the genocide.

Death is present in a tangible manner in schools throughout Rwanda. Reminders of former friends and teachers are everywhere. In the words of one child, there are “coffins” in the classroom. Before children can hope to progress at school, this pain and fear must be addressed. Unfortunately, teachers like Charles Hitimana, from Mbogo, who recognise the extent of the difficulties faced by child survivors are comparatively rare. Charles is a survivor himself who lost several of his own children in the killings.

There are not many children survivors. The majority of them are orphans whose parents died during the genocide. The children rebel against everything. They have mood swings. Sometimes they cry for no apparent reason and sometimes they want to talk all the time and tell many, many stories. Other times they are alone, locked in their solitude. Some are disabled because of their injuries and scars. The children often hurt the others with words or because they can’t control their actions. It is very hard for these poor children and the heavy burden is understandable. Even I am incapable of coping. Life has no meaning anymore.

Another teacher, Edith, sees a bleak future for these children “without special attention and teachers who like them.”

I have noticed that at school, the children who are survivors are poor and have no uniforms or materials. This is because they are looked after by other survivors, especially old people, who have no-one and nothing left. Most of these children have lost the desire to study.

The comments from teachers in close contact with survivors in school have hardly changed in the 12 years of African Rights’ research. In mid-1998, Eustache Gatarayiha was teaching at the primary school in sector Rusasa, commune Mugambazi in Greater Kigali.

The children who’ve survived the genocide need special attention. Deeply distressed by the death of their close relatives, they’ve lost all interest in their studies. Nobody can care for them the way their parents did. They’re living with poor families who can’t afford to buy them uniforms when they need them. Even if these children no longer have to pay the cost of their schooling, they need much more support of various kinds. That might help them to come out of their isolation. Orphans have little interest in their lessons and tend to get poor results. And their new parents aren’t strict enough with them. A boy in the fourth year is an example. He lost both his father and his mother and is living with his grandmother, with five other orphans. The child isn’t being looked after. He’s got chiggers. And his school attendance is poor. Since the genocide, he’s been one of the ones at the bottom of the class. The grandmother he’s living with told me she’s looking after another orphan who’s left school, even though he was only in the first year of primary school.

The evidence suggests that 12 years on, genocide survivors are particularly prone to troublesome behaviour. Teachers and pupils suggest that their attitudes to education and authority have been affected by their experiences. While many cope admirably with the hardships they face, precisely because they see education as their best hope of survival, others have behavioural difficulties or have simply given up on education and on life in general.

Speaking not only as a teacher but as a mother and a survivor, Dancille made particular mention of the attitudes of young survivors.

The young survivors, most of whom are orphans, don’t seem to be aware of the unfortunate position they are in. There is a lot of delinquency. I say this because one of my sons dropped out of school. I think this kind of behaviour is an attempt to cover up their grief and their sadness. They can’t think straight after what they went through during the genocide.

The adults looking after youngsters who cannot cope face delicate predicaments. They are aware that they cannot give these children the love and support their parents provided. But they are also conscious of the importance of imposing a certain measure of discipline. Careful not to push them beyond the point of no return, they search for a balance that is difficult to establish.

The testimonies of the youngsters themselves reveal the turmoil in their lives. In mid-1996, Jacqueline Mukayisenga was a pupil at a school in Mugonero, Kibuye. She spoke from personal experience when she said that it was impossible for orphans and other survivors of the genocide at her school to focus on their school work.

The prefect for discipline at this school told us that the problem for the traumatised children is that they feel alone. Since he is responsible for these children he watches them closely. That is why there is a list of children who don’t even concentrate in class, who are there physically but their thoughts are elsewhere. When people try to get them to pay attention, they reply: “What’s the point of studying?” Sometimes children hide somewhere and cry. When they are asked why they're crying, they calm down without saying a single word. I’m one of these children.

For Jean de Dieu Furaha, school was a daily encounter with everything he had lost in the genocide, bringing him close to thoughts of suicide. Jean de Dieu, 15, is from Gatare in Cyangugu. His parents were killed. His older sister is married and not in a position to help him and his older brother was unemployed. .

During the holidays I stay at school because I don’t have anywhere to go. I feel very sad when the exams are over and I see the other pupils wash their clothes, preparing to go on holiday to their parents. At such times I do nothing; I just think of my parents who are dead. I have my older sister, who is very poor. I could go there in the holidays. But I can’t get a ticket to go there; it is in Cyangugu.

At school the pupils also tease me at study times. Some of the pupils tell me that if they were me, they wouldn’t waste their energy studying because I have no parents or other people who could ask me for my report. When I hear that I even think of committing suicide, because my parents were very necessary to my life.

I cause problems at school because I don’t pay the fees to buy school things and food. If I stay there during the holidays, the school is obliged to feed me; this is another expense for the school. The school head can no longer bear orphans. They have sometimes made us go out of class to ask us to go and get the school fees. In the meantime, the teachers continue to teach the children who have their parents and also to give them tests.

When they chase us out of class to go and get the school fees, we stay in school. We refuse to leave because we have nowhere to go. Later, they tell us to go back into the classroom. However we do expect to be thrown out of school at the end of the year.

At school, each pupil has a bed and a mattress. But I have no mattress. In the evening, when the other pupils revise their subjects, I think about where I am going to sleep because every evening I ask a pupil if I can sleep in their bed. Since the bed is too small, I am forced to stay in the same position during the night, so as not to annoy my fellow-pupil.

Apart from the mattress, I always ask the other pupils to give me money to buy pens, soap, notebooks...etc. Some of the pupils give me some, others complain about me, and say: “Are we going to keep giving him money forever?’” Also when we go on walks, I ask other pupils to lend me shoes so that I don’t walk barefoot because we go on long journeys. For sport, other pupils use their slippers. But I do sport bare foot and without sports clothes; I always wear my uniform. In fact, I don’t have a uniform; I only have a shirt and shorts, so I have to wash them at night to wear them in the morning.

Before the genocide my parents used to look after me. My mother used to give me something to eat as soon as I came back home and my clothes were well-prepared, washed and ironed. My father used to pay my school fees without any problems.

Speaking in December 2003, Joseph described how his life changed virtually overnight in 1994, forcing him into a life of poverty for which nothing in his 16 years had prepared him. As he could not afford the transport, he was not able to visit his home during the holidays. His poor grades and his lack of stability led to a constant change of schools. In one of the schools, he could not buy his own bed and was forced to share with another student who had TB, which Joseph then contracted.

This illness was a terrible ordeal for me. I had no-one to visit me and to cheer me up. I couldn’t get the diet which the doctor prescribed for me either at home or at school. I decided to stay at the school because things would only get worse if I went home as those at home are even worse off than we were at school. You can imagine how distressing it was to stay at the school without anyone from your family coming to visit you.

According to both teachers and students, trauma is particularly widespread among survivors in secondary school. Joseph’s testimony highlights the many reasons that force young people to feel adrift and tormented.

Students who were survivors were often sent away because they hadn’t paid their fees. We spent all our time going back and forth. We didn’t have confidence in all the teachers as we couldn’t be certain whether they would be sensitive to our problems. That’s why we didn’t discuss our concerns with just anybody. The teachers had their way of looking at us, and we had our way of judging them according to their behaviour. There was no sense of solidarity from the student body either. For example, during the annual national commemoration of the victims of the genocide, preparing the activities was left to the survivors alone. When you give a testimony on the history of the genocide, it is only the other survivors who take what you say seriously. The other students believe, and say, that we exaggerate in order to make what we say moving. Some are even hostile.

So at school, we try to hide our feelings from the other students because that is what living side by side demands. The other students also regard the survivors as people who have an easy time and who are spoilt by the State. When they see that the State pays the fees for some of us, they draw the hasty conclusion that they are the victims of injustice since they have to pay the fees themselves. They forget that we once had parents and relatives who could see to our needs without us having to humiliate ourselves by looking for the help of sponsors.

Still, I was able to hold out because I had lived through the worst. And education is the only hope for my future; I can’t give up on it, no matter what the obstacles.

The presence of others at school at least, said Joseph, provided a distraction.

But when the holidays approached, I began to think of family problems. And life at home was much harder than at school. I even used to think of staying behind at school during the vacation.

Joseph eventually got the association of student survivors to pay for his entrance to university but said that he finds life as a student “a tough battle to win given my family circumstances.”

Even today, there are times when I spend two or three hours without taking anything in. I don’t have the time to concentrate on my holidays because I’m frequently submerged in family issues which contributes to my failures in class. My older sister doesn’t work; she didn’t work even before the genocide, but then her husband worked and supported them. I also have a younger brother who abandoned primary school just after the genocide. Later, he refused to go back to school, saying he was too old.

Caritas has found the strength to keep going, but she understands the pressures upon young survivors.

Even if a survivor is brilliant he will have discipline problems. It’s true to say that the survivors are undisciplined. It’s obvious why. There are many reasons. Some of the survivors think that anything is acceptable, that they can do what they like no matter where and no matter how because of what they lived through during the genocide. Even though they’re desperate and know the real meaning of life, they don’t control their reactions in their everyday lives. Most of them don’t have any family: no father, mother, elder brother or sister. They may live with distant relatives or alone.

The survivors often leave before the end of the year. Those who stay on are often expelled. For example out of 67 pupils in this present school year, 18 have been expelled for discipline matters and they’re all survivors. Even a well-behaved survivor will get led astray by his friends.

Laurent was so fearful for his security that for a long time he hid the fact that he had been orphaned by the genocide.

I forced myself to be something that I was not.

Without the FARG, a huge number of survivors would find themselves locked out of educational establishments. But delays in paying schools fees has been a constant criticism leveled at the FARG and has been a source of stress and academic failures for the students concerned, as Laurent pointed out.

Academic establishments don’t allow them to continue with their studies unless they have paid in full.

Knowing what he endured and saw at secondary school, Laurent commented:

At university, we are able to manage, somehow. But at secondary school, each survivor is isolated and lost within his own nightmares. Some of them come from families living in abject poverty, others don’t even have families and some live with relatives who treat them badly. Very few live with their own families and in reasonable conditions. We try to keep track of them in our association , but it’s difficult for us to find the time and the means, what with all the other school and family obligations.

With regard to students supported by the FARG, Thomas underlined that it pays only the fees.

They often lack lodgings and the necessary equipment, and their morale is always rock bottom. The result is that they don’t make it and are sent away. Then the situation becomes even worse as they blame themselves for not exploiting the possibility that was offered to them, and then they risk becoming unbalanced or thinking of suicide.

With his mother gainfully employed and a brother and sister to share life with, Thomas considers himself among the lucky ones. But he feels empathy for many of the other members of the Association of Student Survivors of the Genocide.

They don’t want to desert their studies, the only thing which will give them a future, but nor do they want to turn their backs to the obvious needs of their families. So there they are, torn and without any means. And yet they must absolutely find a way of combining these two heavy responsibilities.

He worries in particular about what the lack of choice means for girls.

Girls might think of an early marriage, and sometimes they even marry men they know have HIV/AIDS etc…

Burying Loved Ones: Essential Therapy

For thousands of survivors, Rwanda has become a country of nameless mass graves, into which the bodies of their loved ones fell in heaps. Coming to terms with their loss has been compounded by the failure to find the bodies of relatives, making it difficult to grieve them properly. They have been burned, washed down rivers, dumped and then eaten by dogs and crows, left to rot in toilets or buried anonymously in mass graves. At the same time, and for many years, survivors in the countryside kept stumbling upon skulls and bones. This lack of respect for the dead is an additional source of psychological distress. Not knowing where or how their parents, siblings, grandparents and aunts were killed has made it difficult for both adults and children to express their grief and to close their relationship with the person who has died. For survivors who were not with their families when they died, accepting their death is often impossible. As a result, looking for their remains takes on an added urgency.

Cécile Mukarusimbi attended a boarding school in Gitarama but had joined her parents for the holidays in Nyamata. The family ran to Mt. Rebero where Cécile’s mother, four younger sisters and two younger brothers lost their lives.

When I was at Nyamata I nearly went mad thinking about the situation I had come from. I had seen my relatives’ naked bodies exposed on the hill. But I hoped that my father, who was in Kigali, was alive. I longed to see him again. He was called Egide Karegeya and worked for the Ministry of Public Works. But he was murdered in Kigali.

Cécile knows that her family in Kanzenze was killed by the parents of her friends, making it impossible for her as a youngster on her own to confront them.

I have not found the remains of my family, but the neighbours must know where they left them. Why don’t they tell me? I don’t have the courage to ask them about it; when I see them, I start crying immediately. I’m angry with them, and I would like to speak to them frankly.

Marie-Rose Uwizeyimana was baptised on Easter Sunday, 3 April 1994, four days before the genocide began. She was ten at the time. She lived in Mbogo. A week later, their home came under siege and the family scattered. Later, Marie-Rose, the youngest in her family, learned that her parents, four brothers and two sisters died in the neighbouring commune of Shyorongi.

They were killed far away from me. I don’t know who is responsible. They died at the hands of people who didn’t know them. No-one is in prison for killing the people I loved. I’m the only one who could have them put in prison and I don’t even know who they are. There’s nothing I can do about it.

Every time we searched the mass graves at Shyorongi, I found nothing. Even if I had found them, what would I have done?

After a few moments, Marie-Rose answered her own question.

At least I would be sure of their deaths.

For a long time, the uncertainty sustained the hope that they might be alive.

When I am at the market, amongst a large crowd, I always think I might find my brothers. If I only knew where their remains had been put, then at least I could go where I could remember them.

When I am asleep, in my dreams I imagine myself at home as if no-one was dead. When I wake up I feel sad when I realise that it isn’t true.

When I go home to my parents’ house, all I do is cry. I can’t go there alone. I’m afraid of meeting people who I don’t know, especially men, when I’m alone. I always think that they have a machete and that they will kill me.

For Justin, the possibility that his family’s remains might be in a mass grave somewhere, as opposed to obliteration, is what he holds on to.

I’ve got nothing to remind me of my parents or brothers. I don’t even know where they died. I suppose they lie somewhere in a mass grave. I hope so. Sometimes, I think that perhaps the bones of my loved ones are still lying on a hillside somewhere. My heart aches whenever I think of it.

Régine was 16 in 1994 and was living in Ruhashya in Butare. She left her home on 23 April, together with three young girls, to take refuge on the steep hills of Rubaba. Pursued by the interahamwe, they ran to the sprawling grounds of the agricultural research centre, ISAR in Songa, in the neighbouring commune of Rusatira, where she met up with her parents and four brothers. Her father advised them to disperse, and Régine tried to make her way to Burundi. She was ambushed by militiamen when she reached commune Ntyazo and left for dead in the bushes after a severe beating. She crawled out and joined a group of survivors who managed to cross into Burundi. She spent four years in an orphanage in Nyamata, and since 1998 has lived with another orphan.

I lost more than 20 members of my family. I can’t tell you if they have been buried or not. And not knowing is such a source of sorrow that I can’t sleep. It happens that I will go through a whole week of nightmares, thinking about my father, at the advice he used to give me, telling me to be good towards everyone. Now, there’s only loneliness. I sometimes get into a taxi without knowing where I’m going.

What I find the most upsetting is that I don’t know who killed my parents and my brothers. I don’t have a photo of my mother or of my brothers; I only have a passport photo of my father which I got from his bank card.

Fear and Mistrust: The Legacy of Betrayal

The scale, speed and brutality with which genocide was accomplished in Rwanda—a country lacking in the modern infrastructure and technology of mass death—is a tragic monument to the ability of a State to divide its people, severing bonds which had intertwined people and communities for decades. In part, the genocide owed its efficiency to the direct involvement or tacit collusion of many relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues of its victims.

The mechanisms varied by which the perpetrators convinced the population to turn their backs upon those with whom they had formerly lived side by side, but promises to disinherit the Tutsis of their land, homes and belongings, the threat of financial penalties, intimidation and propaganda caused many to succumb to the message of hatred. This betrayal has robbed survivors of their loved ones, their communities, their homes and possessions and of any sense of security. Their ability to trust even those closest to them has, in many cases, been permanently destroyed. Tutsis were also betrayed by people in positions of authority and responsibility to whom they had looked for protection—priests, nuns, doctors, local government officials, nurses and, amongst others, teachers. It will undoubtedly take the Rwandese nation several generations to recover from the social and psychological consequences of this mass betrayal.

Goretti Murebwayire feels so cut off from her former life that she does not feel the need for new friends. What, she wonders, would they talk about? Goretti, 17, lived in Gikoro Greater Kigali. She experienced the genocide in Rwamagana, Kibungo, at the home of her grandmother. When Kigali fell on 4 July, her thoughts focused on finding her family in Gikoro, cellule Bwiza.

I made myself go home to Gikoro. I wanted to see my family and to tell them about my miraculous survival at Rwamagana. I thought that they would be worrying about me, thinking I was dead. I didn’t think that they had been killed. My heart assured me that they were there, and that I was going to see them and talk to them. When I arrived in Gikoro, I found the opposite: my family had been wiped out in April.

Her parents, four sisters and brother had died; she found virtually no trace of the extended family.

My uncles and cousins who lived in Duha had all been killed. The burnt bodies were still there, at my uncle Gakire’s place. They had been shut in his house, killed by hand grenades and then burned with petrol. My aunt came from Uganda here to Gikoro where her brothers and sisters had been killed. She found only me.

Goretti refused to return to the home of her surviving grandmother in Rwamagana.

I didn’t want to leave before burying my family.

Although only 13 at the time, Goretti’s decision to settle in Bwiza was a gesture of defiance.

I wanted to show the people who had killed my family that I was there. My aunt stayed with me. She had three children whose father was Ugandan. We formed a family. We cultivated the fields for food.

But after three years of sharing her life with her new family, Goretti found herself on her own.

In December 1997 my aunt, who had become like a father and mother to me, died of an unknown illness. She was all I had. After her death, her children returned to Uganda. I was alone again. A cousin has come to live with me, because I couldn’t stay alone. He often works in his fields in the day time and comes back in the evening. Sometimes he doesn’t come back and I’m afraid of spending the night alone.

Goretti, who had been in the fifth form of primary school in 1994, had to abandon school to help her aunt with farming “in order to survive.” The task of burying the family’s remains had not been completed when her aunt died; Goretti continued and completed the burial in May 1998.

Unable to comprehend why their neighbours and the local population turned on her family, Goretti has withdrawn into herself and lives in isolation and in fear of her own life.

My parents did nothing to deserve death. They were on good terms with the neighbours. Now I’m continually afraid of the people in this region who killed my father, my mother and all the children, even the youngest. They might also kill me. I never go to call on them, and they never call on me. I have no friends. Most of the young girls of my age have fathers and brothers in prison because of the genocide. I don’t need friends in any case. What for? What would we talk about? My life is miserable. Nothing makes me happy. I no longer fear death like I did before the genocide. Death would be welcome, because then I could join my parents wherever the dead go.

At the age of ten, Uwayisenga was bewildered by the ease and speed with which a family friend turned into an executioner.

When I saw the militia, I ran. One militiaman came up behind me. He was a strong man and he caught me. I was astonished. I realised that he was a friend. His name was Hazigama and he was from Rwankuba. Before the genocide, Hazigama used to come to our house everyday. He farmed my father’s fields and he received a salary. He received his salary on time and we never had any problems. We used to play with him and he was like a brother to us even though we were not from the same family.

With the innocence of childhood, Uwayisenga turned to logic to make sense of a world beyond her comprehension.

Hazigama was just about to kill me. I asked him why when I had done nothing to hurt him. I begged him to take pity on me. He said nothing but just hit me on the head with a machete. He had bits of wood in his hand which he stuck into my face. When he thought I was dead, he left.

Towards a Better Future?

Only a small number of people were saved from genocide in 1994; in the intervening years, few have been protected from its consequences. In their desolation and despair, these youngsters echo each other. Their words, which bear witness to a series of personal tragedies, are a prolonged collective indictment of the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. But they are also evidence of unacceptable neglect on the part of both national and international actors over the past 12 years.

In the aftermath of this appalling crime against humanity, a clear rejection of the attempt to dehumanize a people was, and is still, needed. This requires both justice and a comprehensive attempt at the rehabilitation of survivors, restoring dignity to a people who have lost all else. The alternative is to remain bystanders to a slow torture as genocide crimes continue to destroy minds, bodies and spirits.