Stories - Helping survivors of genocide rebuild their lives

Grace

Grace was twenty-one years old in April 1994, when the militia swept into her town in Rwanda, bringing the century ’s final genocide with them. She was married and had three young children, and she believed there was nothing extraordinary about her family. However, their name was on a list of Tutsi that had been compiled by the extremist Hutu forces in the run up to the assassination of the president, the signal that triggered the genocide.

Consequently, Grace’s husband was one of the first to be executed. She was forced to watch as he was hacked to death with machetes. Her children were killed in the same manner. When it came to Grace’s turn, she was repeatedly struck with the machete on her head and arms and left for dead. Perhaps it is merciful that Grace cannot recall the event, and she cannot explain how she ended up in hiding, being cared for by a stranger, or how she was taken to a hospital, at the end of one hundred days of genocide.

Thirteen years later, Grace has had several operations, and she has finally recovered most of the use of her arms. Thanks to donations from the UK “from people I will never meet or get to thank”, as she puts it, she now has her own small home within a village of other genocide survivors in Rwanda. Her sister lives with her and helps her, and she has found a job that allows her to make enough money to survive.

Many of the survivors in the village are orphans. By their standards Grace, now thirty-four, is a mature woman to whom they look for advice and support. Like so many Rwandans, the survivors have learned to cope and adapt and keep going, despite deep psychological trauma and more mundane needs like food.

Last year Grace welcomed a group of Network for Africa supporters into her home. The visitors had been advised by their well-meaning friends at home to take practical things for the Rwandans they would be meeting. The Network for Africa group were aware of that; after all, they had been busy raising money to pay for more homes like Grace’s for orphans of the genocide. But they also wanted to give something special to Grace when they finally met her, and they asked amongst their friends for jewelry and scarves to take to Rwanda.

When the Network for Africa supporters met Grace in the sitting room of her home they gave her two necklaces, some earrings and a scarf. Grace was so overwhelmed she sank to her knees and cried with joy. Like many poor women, it had been many years since anyone had given Grace a present that was meant entirely for her. The message did not need to be translated into Kinyarwandan:

“Despite your scars you are beautiful and you deserve pretty necklaces and silk scarves.” It is a doubly powerful message for people who had been told during the years leading up to the genocide, that they were subhuman.

Grace was amazed and profoundly touched that somebody thousands of miles away had sent her a pair of earrings. Having helped to raise the money that provided for Grace’s physical need for a home, Network for Africa knew that Grace also needed something to feed her heart – the knowledge that she was special and important.

For the Network for Africa supporters, their small gesture was an inadequate way of trying to apologise. “Our country did nothing while the genocide raged in Rwanda,” one explained. “Now, of course, our politicians say we would never let it happen again, but we did in Rwanda, and we do in Darfur.”

Grace’s name has been changed to protect her identity