Twenty-six years after she started searching for her family, 28-year-old Grace Umutoni on Wednesday, July 22, finally received the good news that she has been waiting for since she was two years old.

DNA test results in her hands indicate that Antoine Rugagi from Rubavu District is her maternal uncle.

During the commemoration week in April this year, The New Times broke the story about Umutoni’s search for her family as the soft spoken professional nurse desperately looked for any information that may connect her to surviving members of her family, if any.

She wanted an identity, she said.

"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 told The New Times at the time.

DNA test reveals all

Antoinette Mukeshimana is a close friend to Umutoni and one of the people that pushed her to circulate a poster seeking information from the general public.

Mukeshimana told The New Times in a telephone interview that Rugagi was one of the people who saw the widely circulated poster and is said to have been convinced on the spot that Umutoni was his niece.

"Rugagi saw the photo and decided to follow the trail. He even went to look for the ladies who had worked at the orphanage where Umutoni lived 26 years ago. When he finally put the pieces together, he contacted Umutoni for a DNA test and the results today say they are a match. He is her mum’s brother,” she said.

According to the three page test results document seen by The New Times, the test was carried out by the Rwanda Forensic Laboratory on July 16 at the request of Umutoni.

The results released on Wednesday July 22 put the probability of them being relatives at 82.9 percent chance.

The tests were carried out by John Rugamba, a DNA Specialist, Samson Rwahama, the Acting Director of the DNA Unit and Karolina Kabayiza Uwantege.

Mukeshimana said that the results had been received by tears of joy and Umutoni’s new found extended family that resides in Nyamirambo had immediately invited her over.

The genesis

In a previous story with The New Times, Umutoni said that her story started from King Faisal Hospital, as far as she remembered.

A toddler of two years at the time, she is said to have shown 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-Inkotanyi soldiers and taken to Ndera Neuropsychiatric Hospital where an orphanage centre had been improvised.

At Ndera, women who were at the time volunteering to provide 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 knew that her home was located in Nyamirambo, a Kigali suburb, 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 Léonille 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 guardianship.

She sent Umutoni to Ecole Primaire de Ngoma, before she proceeded to Collège 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.

However, she was hopeful that with opening up and support from the media, there was 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 said at the time.

A win for the laboratory

Though the forensic laboratory was introduced in June 2018, this is its most public win.

Previous reports indicate that Rwanda spent about Rwf800, 000 to ship a single sample to Germany or the UK for DNA testing services.

At the time of its inauguration, Busingye said that he was confident that the laboratory can do any of the required tests in Rwanda.

"We are happy to tell Rwandans that for any of their DNA tests; whether it is by court, or by prosecution or by mutual consent of two individuals, as long as it is within the provisions of the law, the laboratory is able to deliver on that. There are also other tests that will be done by the facility,” he said.