Marriage my only lifeline after the Genocide

As the world joins Rwanda to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the memories of those who survived are refreshed. It is a period when survivors testify and praise the many ways through which God helped them to escape the tragedy. Rosette Umutoni, 35 testifies how she had to join marriage life without any body forcing her, but out of no other options. “I did not know how my relatives vanished from me. I got lost with them, as we tried to escape death from the killers,” she said. She explained that in the rush for their dear lives, at 20 years old, she realized the relatives had disappeared. “I was beaten almost to death. Finally, a man who felt sorry for me, ordered me to leave. I did not even know where to go, but I had to move,” she recalls. Umutoni said that Remera was home; the father had a permanent home and was a business man in Kigali city. She says that Richard Mutabazi and Sarah Mbabazi were the names of the parents. However she does not remember the man who helped her until the end of the Genocide. “The man got me from the streets and took me to his place where I met many other boys and girls,” she said. She further explained that in 1995, the man ordered all of them to find a way to start their own life. Adding that, that was another difficult moment in her life. “I had to look forward to having a future. I made a way out to get a man at only 21 years old,” she said. Added that it was too early for her to get into marriage, but there was no way out for life. Married and a mother of 3, Umutoni has managed to maintain her marriage. Despite the challenges she experiences, creativity has made her keep on. “I stay in lower Kiyovu, during evening hours; I go to the market and sell clothes, while my husband is a motocycle taxi operator. We combine our earnings to support the home’s financial needs,” she says. The husband has tried to make her forget all the past, by catering for her by all possible ways. “My husband, his relatives, and children are the only people and relatives of mine,” she said. Adding that she has tried to search for her relatives, but all in vein, she was however quick to suspect that they might be dead. “It’s now 15 years, I have not seen any of my relatives, they must have died,” she suspected. Ends