During the week long 15th commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, it has become evidently clear that some lives still swing between hope and despair, despite the big strides taken along the country’s transformation path, sad memories still linger in people’s minds.

As Rwanda is joined by the rest of the world to remember the over one million victims of the Genocide, The New Times brings to you heart-rending testimonies of some of the survivors.

Among these is 28-year old Nadine Umutoni a senior five student at the Islamic School in Ruhengeri, Musanze District in the Northern Province.

Her age and class are far apart, do not match, a result of the distorted country’s history which swept over her life.

At 13, Umutoni suffered so many atrocities as she ran from the militia to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) opting for repeated raping instead of being killed.

She narrates with much difficulty witnessing so many killings, tortures and torments that characterised the Genocide and gives her own shocking ordeal of how she was raped by over ten men; one after another but she still survived.

The last soldier to rape her also helped her escape to the Congo where she was later to be his wife.

"Luckily enough,” she says, "I did not contract HIV though I gave birth three times.”

Umutoni over the years got past her history and upon returning home, her mother was the only family member who survived and no matter what comes their way, the two have discovered more reasons to live even for their departed relatives.

It was after her returning home that she went back to school with so many years lost hence being over a decade older than her classmates.

But she says she is determined to pursue her academic endeavours with hope that she would become a career woman.

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