Stories - Helping survivors of genocide rebuild their lives

Nadine

Nadine was nine years old in April 1994 when a group of Hutu militiamen came to her parents’ front door. She was playing in the garden with her little sister, and she stood on tip toe to peer through the open window as the men in uniform broke down the door. She did not understand that for years Hutu extremists has been stirring up racial hatred towards her ethnic minority, the Tutsi. She was not aware that two days before the men arrived at her home, Hutu extremists had shot down the presidents’ plane, blamed it on the Tutsi, and used it as a pretext to slaughter Tutsi and moderate Hutu.

Nadine watched as the Hutu militiamen struck her parents and older brother and sister with machetes, killing them. Then she grabbed her little sister and started running towards the woods. However, her sister squealed in fright and the militiamen spotted them running away. One of them fired a gun and hit Nadine’s sister. Nadine stopped and saw that her sister was bleeding to death. She put her down and continued running. It is a decision she has thought about every day since then.

Nadine hid in the forest until the militia has passed through her town. One night a leopard joined her as she sat in bush, listening to the screams from the barricades set up on the main road. Everyone was being stopped and asked for their identity papers, and every Tutsi was hacked to death. “I had a choice between staying in the bush with the leopard or going out onto the road,” Nadine explained. “I prayed to God that the leopard was a vegetarian, and it seems he was because he got bored and went away.”

Like so many survivors, Nadine’s journey to a refugee camp in a neighbouring country was punctuated by days spent in a ditch beneath piles of dead bodies. After the genocide she was put in an orphanage and then given to a foster family who treated her like a domestic slave. Eventually she decided she was safer living alone on the street, so she ran away.

Nadine is now twenty-two years old and lives in what is known as a child-headed household, with a group of five other genocide survivor orphans. She grows food to sell in the local market and takes care of the younger orphans in her house. She says what she wants most is to learn to read and write, but so far she has had no chance to get an education.

Network for Africa, in partnership with a local Rwandan group, is building a community education centre and health clinic in Nadine’s deprived rural district, where currently local people have to walk five miles to get so much as an aspirin. The centre will offer night classes, continuing education and vocational courses so orphans like Nadine can catch up on the schooling they missed. There is no electricity in the area so the centre will have solar power, providing a place where people can meet, learn and study after dark. The health clinic will have doctors, nurses and psychotherapists, as well as medicines.

Nadine’s name has been changed to protect her identity.