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.

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Daniel

Daniel was eight years old in 1994 when the Hutu militia arrived in his town. They forced all the Tutsi families from their homes and herded them to a pit on the edge of town. They lined the people up at the edge of the pit and struck each one with machetes, cutting them down. As his father was killed, Daniel jumped into the pit, pretending he had also been struck. He lay perfectly still for the next ten hours as people bled to death around him and on top of him.

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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.

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Mechanic

Mechanic was nine months pregnant in April 1994 when the Rwandan genocide began. Extremist Hutu militiamen arrived in her town and rounded up all the Tutsi. Mechanic was forced to watch as her husband was killed along with the other local men. Then, as members of the militia gang raped her, she went into labour. She gave birth lying on the ground, surrounded by jeering men in uniforms. The moment her baby emerged, the militiamen killed it with their machetes. Then they forced her fourteen-year-old son to rape her, and afterwards they killed him, too.

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Liberian elections in 2005

During the Liberian elections in 2005, a Network for Africa volunteer was manning a polling booth, monitoring the voting process. It was five thirty in the morning, and thirty nine degrees centigrade, yet a crowd of thousands had formed in orderly lines in the clearing, waiting to vote. The Network for Africa volunteer spotted a woman appear at the edge of the clearing, and from her face it was clear she had forgotten it was election day. In a flash she instructed her three children to run off in different directions. Within five minutes they returned with flour, sugar, oil and a cooking pan they had borrowed from their mother's friends. The woman started a fire and within no time she was cooking donuts and selling them to the crowd.

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Claudine

Claudine is now twenty-seven years old, but she was only fourteen when the Rwandan genocide began. It took her ten years to be able to talk about what happened to her family. Like many survivors of the genocide, she could find no words to express her sorrow, depression and anxiety. Finally, three years ago, she stood before a meeting of three hundred and fifty genocide survivors and told them about how she had been forced to watch as her brothers and father were slashed with machetes until they died. She said she had been taken prisoner by the extremist Hutu militiamen who had rampaged through her village, and was forced to “marry” one of the commanding officers. Two months later the man tried to kill her with a machete. He left her for dead, but she escaped from the militia’s camp and found shelter in the home of a sympathetic and brave stranger.

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