At 28 and like many others her age, Grace Umutoni is what you would call an ordinary young woman.  

Educated and now gainfully employed, Umutoni is ready to begin the next chapter of her life, which she hopes will include children.

However, there is a void in her life that needs to be filled before she can move forward.   

When the Genocide against the Tutsi started, Umutoni was only 2 years old.

Twenty six years down the road, the soft spoken professional nurse continues to search for information that can help her piece together her roots.

Umutoni with her adpotive mother Leonille Mukahigiro shortly before the latter passed away. 

"I do not know anything about my life before the Genocide. I don’t know who my parents were, their names, how they died or where they are buried. Everyone calls me Rafiki but I don’t even know if that was my real name or just a nickname from my parents,” she narrates in an interview with The New Times.

The genesis

Umutoni’s story begins from King Faisal Hospital.

A toddler at the time, she is said to have showed up at the Kacyiru-based hospital confused and scared and in the company of her brother only identified as Yves.

On close inspection, it was discovered that five year old Yves had sustained gunshot injuries in his palm and ribs as he fled their home.

When the fighting to capture Kigali intensified, the two were part of the hundreds of unaccompanied children that were rescued by RPA-Inkontanyi soldiers and taken to Ndera Neuropsychiatric Hospital.

Umutoni is now a nursing graduate from the University of Gitwe. 

At Ndera, women who were at the time volunteering to care for the children, were able to extract scanty information from Yves, before he passed away as a result of his injuries.

From the information, Umutoni now knows that her home was located in Nyamirambo and that she was the second of three children.

Besides Yves, her younger sibling, whose sex is unknown, is believed to have been killed alongside their parents.

When the Genocide ended, Umutoni and the other children at Ndera hospital were moved to a nearby school which had been converted into an orphanage centre.

"My earliest childhood memory was in the orphanage where I stayed and took my nursery lessons for years before I was adopted by one of the caregivers who loved me very much because everyone used to comment about our resemblance,” she said.

In 1998, a decision was made to close the orphanage and Umutoni was promptly adopted by Leonille Mukahigiro, a Genocide survivor herself, who moved with her to her ancestral home in Ngoma, in the current Huye District.

Unfortunately, not long before she was adopted, Mukahigiro fell seriously ill and passed away. Mukahigiro’s mother; Margarita Nyiragabiro, who is now 85, took on the guardianship.

She sent Umutoni to Ecole Primaire de Ngoma, before she proceeded to College Imena for O’ Level which is also in Huye and later Agahozo Shalom’s Liquidnet Family High School for her A’ Level.

She then joined Gitwe University in Ruhango District where she pursued a course in general nursing and completed in 2018.

Umutoni currently works in a pharmacy in Western Province.

Filling a void

Umutoni says that she waited for 26 years to start a thorough search for her family because she did not want to burden her foster grandmother, who is still alive.

"Searching for my family crossed my mind so many times but I wanted to first complete school because it requires a lot resources and I did not want to  burden my foster family. I decided that when I get a job, I will start the search,” she says.

She says that her first attempt was in April 2018 when she wrote to the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG) seeking for help.

"I followed up, was sent to the Ministry of Local Government and I have been following up but nothing has come out of it. It is then that a friend advised me to use social media. I am hoping that perhaps someone can see my face and perhaps see some resemblance to one of my parents,” she says.

She says that since the poster was shared on social media early this week, she has since been contacted by one of the ladies who worked at the orphanage at Ndera.

"She told me that maybe if the ladies who were taking care of us at the time could sit together, they could try to remember if there are bits of information that could help,” she said.

Tracing archives

Umutoni added that she has recently found out that there were files regarding each child in the former Ndera orphanage which she is trying to trace.

"I was told that my brother could have said something to shed some light on our parents’ names or some other small but helpful details but it seems no one knows where these files are,” she says   

Umutoni says that she has heard unverified information that the orphanage where she lived was by run by a European national.

"I have not yet verified the information but I have been told that before he left, he handed over the orphanage files to Serafina Bizimungu who was the First Lady then. I hear the files were taken to Tumurere Foundation,” she says.

Big Wish

Umutoni is hopeful that with opening up and support from media, there is a chance that she may finally have closure.

"I know for sure that my parents are dead but I would like to know about them. Could my uncles, aunties, cousins be out here? I would like to have a picture of what my family was like. Maybe from this story, someone out there may recognise me from any resemblance I may have to one of my parents,” she says.