Leocadie, in her nineties, was living alone and everyone in her community wondered how she was surviving.

She would get out of the house in the morning and head to her gate (it would take her hours) where she would ignite her three-stone stove and sleep next to it for the rest of the day.

Her clothes were in tatters, owing to the burning sparks; her neighbours were worried that the fire would burn her, given how she was mostly unaware of what was happening around her because she was sleeping all along.

Even the supplies given to her by well-wishers ended up being stolen by people who stealthily entered her home, as she slumbered.

Because she couldn’t trust anyone in her community, Leocadie would only eat food that her distant grandson cooked for her. He would come to the house once in a while and boil her a saucepan full of beans and cassava which she would eat until he returned, sometimes after several weeks. 

She mostly depended on rotten food. 

Elderly survivors at Impinganzima Hostel that was built in Nyanza District. / Sam Ngendahimana

Other fellow Genocide survivors would sometimes visit and clear bushes in her compound and help her with the cleaning. She never remembered anyone and most of the times, she wouldn’t know they even came to the house.

In 2015, she was among the elderly- whose families were wiped out during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi, who were taken to the first Impinganzima Hostel that was built in Nyanza District.

Several others were built right after, and they have provided home to the elderly who are not only grieving all their children, spouses, and siblings among other relatives. Some also live with disabilities, and others are terminally ill.

Apart from being taken care of whether physically and psychologically, these senior citizens have lived together for years like brothers and sisters, sharing stories of their childhood and most importantly, helping each other heal.

With their age and conditions they have lived in, some of them have died, leaving the rest in tears. 

Although they are given health care at the hostels, those with life-threatening illnesses were usually taken to Rwanda’s only Centre for Palliative Care in Kabuga, something the hostel’s residents found heart-breaking.

"They used to tell us that every time we took one of them to the hospital, we return them in coffins, and we understand how it hurt them,” Régine Iyamuremye, the Secretary General of Unity Club, which built these hostels.

But this was until earlier this month, when together with other partners, Unity Club built a Palliative care unit in Impinganzima Huye hostel, which is expected to not only help the terminally ill to breathe their last while surrounded by their loved ones whom they live together, but to also give first class care to them in terms of reducing their pain and other shortcomings.

Now, these people are taken care of in the hostels and offered medical and mental health support, something their children would have probably done for them had they survived. Additionally, they will now have an arm of their own to hold, if they have to breathe their last.

Iyamuremye further explained to The New Times that before building the hostels, several options to take care of the elderly survivors had been tried, but they were never effective.

"Sometimes we would visit, but some were in very bad conditions; not able to leave their beds. Some would be helped by their neighbours, but it was not that consistent because they also had other things to take care of,” Iyamuremye explained.