Everyone at the hostel calls her ‘Kibondo’ (Kinyarwanda for 'baby’), but she is the oldest resident in this home of the elderly based in Huye District, Southern Province.

She got her nickname apparently because she fondly calls everyone she meets, ‘kibondo'.

'Uraho kibondo’ ('how are you baby') is her Veronica Mutumwinka's standard greeting. Aged 102, she's described as a loving and caring citizen. 

She's known to be so kind that she would rather reserve a bite or drink she needed herself for a stranger she expects to visit.

Although she walks with difficulty even with support of a stick, Mutumwinka boasts a relatively strong memory. You can spend months away and she will still remember your face and name.

Mutumwinka was born in what is now Gisagara District in Southern province.

Unfortunately, her mother died right after she gave birth to her before her father went to Uganda in search for a job several years later. He never returned. 

The young Mutumwinka would grow up in the hands of her parternal grandmother in Gisagara who she recalls was "strict but kind". Her sister, who was much older, took her under her wing years later. 

She doesn’t know exactly when she was born, but her National Identity card indicates that Mutumwinka was born in 1918. Nonetheless, some of her fellow residents at the hostel believe that she was born much earlier because, as some told The New Times when we visited their home recently, "Kibondo was already married with children when we were still little girls." 

Performing for the King 

She says she was a young girl in the early years of King Mutara III Rudahigwa Charles Léon Pierre's reign.  Rudahingwa was enthroned in 1931.

Mutumwinka recalls that she was once selected among several girls who were taken to the palace to perform for King Rudahigwa. 

"We were practically naked," she recalls, adding that, after their performace, the monarch offered the young dancers money to buy clothes.

Mutumwinka recalls attending Urubohero (a place where girls went acquire skills for survival, including weaving baskets and mats). She also remembers helping style other girls hair into Amasunzu  (a traditional Rwandan hairstyle reserved for unmarried women to signal their readiness for suitors, and and men) in exchange of which one would then go to fetch water or firewood, instead of Mutumwinka. 

She beamed as she spoke about King Mutara III Rudahigwa Charles Léon Pierre. 

"He was dark, tall and handsome," she says. "Wamuha imbyeyi (You could just give him a lactating cow)." In Rwandan tradition, a cow was the most precious gift anyone could receive. 

She remiscised about some of the songs she and other girls performed for the King. One of them was "Tubarusha umwami wambaye”, loosley, ‘Our king is better than yours’. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the King, I will never forget that moment, I live with it to this day."

One day in Urubohero with her peers, something happened. From nowhere, a tall, handsome young man peeped. It was an abominable act, she says with a smile.

At once, the girls chased the tresspasser away. Little did Mutumwinka know that this was the man who would eventually become her husband. 

The man would later turn up at her her sister’s to woo the young, marriage material Mutumwinka. The family was happy and a few weeks later the two got married. 

"My husband loved me. People would ask him why he married a short woman, but he never divorced me.” Mutumwinka's mother-in-law also cherished her. "She was very beautiful and very nice to me. I would leave her with the kids and go to the market for the whole day. She would care for my children and me.”

Family tragedy

The couple had a staggering 17 children together. "I would conceive a baby in the morning and another at night,” she jokes. She adds that everyone who knew her during her married life knows she always had a new baby on her back. "We were a happy family."

This happiness would brutally be put to an end years later.

Save for two of her children who died lost when they were so young, all the others, their father, and her three grandchildren were killed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. 

Her eldest son was working for the former National University of Rwanda, something seen back then as a major accomplishment for a Tutsi. He too was killed. 

"I will never forget the attack by Nikodemu (an Interahamwe militia) that killed my son,” she says, breaking down into tears. One of her daughter's was thrown into a pit latrine alive "because she had refused to sleep with an Interahamwe militia."

Mutumwinka doesn’t like to share the story of how she lost all of her family, because it triggers deep grief and a loud cry.  For that reason she was reluctant to share the story about how she survived the salughter herself, or anything more about how her husband and children were killed. Over a million people were killed during the Genocide against the Tutsi. 

Once the killings ended it was only her and one of her grandchildren that survived from the entire family. The grandchild survived narrowly after the killers left her for dead in a heap of dead bodies in a mass grave. "He was almost dead," she recalls, agonisingly. It is Mutumwinka who risked her own life by going to the slaughter scene and pull her grandson out of the mass grave. 

"They clobbered him so hard, but he survived. The (RPA) Inkotanyi saved us. They treated him and he became well.”

The grandmother is full of gratitude to the former forces of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), known as Rwanda Patritoc Army, or RPA, that liberated the country in July 1994 and brought the Genocide to an end. The RPA was led by current President Paul Kagame. 

"They lifted me from a botommless pit," she says. "They bought me domestic animals to rear, they bought me and my grandson clothes and fetched water for me when I did not have anyone to help. They brought me back to life."

Her only surviving grandson has since come of age and now has a family of his own with two children.

Mutumwinka is one of the 100 elderly Genocide survivors who live at Imbinganzima Hostel in Mukura Sector, Muhanga District in Southern Province. The home was constructed by Unity Club (an association comprised of serving and former cabinet members and their spouses) before it was inanugurated by First Lady Jeannette Kagame in June 2017. It is run by different stakeholders, including government, Unity Club, Avega Agahozo (an association of Genocide widows), among others. Only eight of the occupants are men. 

Before she was brought to the hostel, Mutumwinka says she was facing a myriad of serious challenges, including harrasment from people believed to still habour Genocide ideology. "The cow that the President gave me was almost killed by people I didn’t know. They hit it so much that it would practically cry whenever it saw me. I was very hurt and afraid at the same time.”

At Impinganzima, she has found a new family. The occupants - all of whom lost all of their children during the Genocide -  share the happiness of having people around them, who care for them.

"I now sit here full of love and appreciation for our President and his wife (Jeannette Kagame). She knows me by name, she told that to Muterambabazi (the hostel coordinator)."

At their new home, the senior citizens live as a family, interacting and celebrating one another. 

On January 31, it was the scene of a big party. There was a birthday party of two of the oldest members: Veronica Mutumwinka and Paul Mahuku. The former was marking  102 years, while the latter was celebrating his centenary.