Many times we talk about the Genocide against Batutsi as if we are talking about a faceless monster. Genocide is a monster, all right, but it has a face. Actually, it has many faces. Faces of more than a million innocent children, women and men who were breathing. Breathing and dreaming of a bright future.True, we’ve seen and heard testimonies of survivors at national and international platforms. And we’ve been touched by heart-rending descriptions of those explosively intense moments as the survivors stared the Genocide in its horrifying face. These testimonies enable us to imagine the situation of children and women who were face to face with Monster Genocide.Yes, they touch our soul first, those infant and female souls. But remember the adult-male souls fast, too. For, in most cases, they didn’t even have time to think about themselves. Their first concern was the defence of their beloved infant and female souls.Unfortunately, media reports seem to have fallen into the habit of describing deaths of children and women as if there are no men. A sentence like this is not uncommon: "Many people died, including women and children.” It sends wrong signals, for a victim is a victim and we care equally about them all. Many men have become cynical because of that and do not care about sharing accounts of their survival. To be fair to Mr Claude Rwabakika, however, that’s not a reason for which he does not care about sharing his story. His reason is that recounting it propels him back to the anguish of the circumstances in which he lost his brother, his parents and practically all his relatives and friends.Claude was the eldest of four boys who were with Mr and Mrs Muhikira, his parents, in their house when the Habyarimana jet was blasted out of the evening skies, on April 6, 1994. Two of the boys were his brothers and the other was a close relative. They lived just bellow Paroisse Sainte Famille, here in Kigali.That night, they all kept vigil, waiting for Interahamwe gangs to come for them. But that night and following days came and no one came for them. For the moment, Interahamwe did not break into homes that had young men, fearing that they were armed, but combed the rest of the area, with lists of targeted homes and people in rounds of killing.For ten harrowing days and nights, the family waited as they continued to hear screams and wails of those being killed around their house. Unable to bear it, on 17th the parents decided to keep guard at their veranda and advised the boys to somehow find their way through the many roadblocks to St. Famille Church.With Claude leading the way, the boys passed through a narrow opening in their fence and crouched outside a friendly neighbour’s fence. At night the boys jumped over the fence and the neighbour received them, fed them and gave them a place to rest. But he could not dare shelter them for long. They had to try and reach St. Famille. Before trying anything else, however, Claude had to find a way of rescuing his parents.Alas, when he sneaked back to their house, he found both dead. He put their bodies inside the house and sneaked back and that night, on 19th, the boys went over the walls and into a house nearer ‘Calcutta’ whose occupants had run way.Later that night, they were able to jump over the walls again and into ‘Calcutta’, the home for orphans and the aged that’s a several metres from St. Famille. They hid under beds, as Interahamwe kept checking inside the home for any refugees. The following day, the nuns in the home beseeched gendarmes who came and helped the boys to go through the roadblocks and to St. Famille.Having heard of how Interahamwe were hunting for him, Claude passed through the back door and went to hide in the nuns’ quarters. Going to the main church hall would have been too dangerous for him, what with the wrath of the parish priest, Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, and the Interahamwe. Some Interahamwe were also holed up in the church, after running away from zones captured by RPF fighters.Meanwhile, there were rescue missions by RPF fighters going on but they were unable to reach those hiding in the parish. No one was opening for them, suspecting their knocks to be those of Interahamwe. The parish priest who would have facilitated the operation wished them dead as much as the Interahamwe did, if not more. So, when the final assault by a combination of government soldiers and Interahamwe came, hardly anybody survived.To cut a very long story short, Claude was shot in the neck but his youngest brother was killed in that assault. When Claude came to his senses, he was in Kabuga, which was under RPF control. He was to be told later that he had been rescued by the UN mission in Rwanda, UNAMIR.Paralysed, he was taken to an RPF clinic and was slowly nursed back to normalcy. But to this date he gets terrible pains in his neck and head. Claude is only one face of the 1994 Genocide against the Batutsi.Yet people like Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, a Catholic priest with hands dripping with that 1994 blood, is walking the free world. And his pope, Benedict XVI, is sleeping the good sleep.

@butamire