For more than a week, Uwimana (not real name) was gang-raped by several Interahamwe. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she decided to carry her then three-year-old, who was her last born at the time, and run away. During the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi, the Interahamwe killed all men in her home area, including her husband and rounded up all women in her family, including her mother, nieces, and nephews. The killers had promised to spare them because they were women, but by “spare” they meant from the killing alone. “Every night, a gang would come to the house and take my teenage niece and me to the woods to dehumanise us. They would take us to separate locations and bring us back when they were done,” Uwimana narrated in a calm voice. Every time they returned to the house, they would never discuss what happened during what the killers referred to as ‘Kubohoza’ (take over). She was 37 years old at the time and a mother of four. Her niece was around 16 years old. “I wouldn’t know if I would come back when they took me because it was unbearable. Sometimes they were five, sometimes they were more. I didn’t know most of them,” Uwimana added. Earlier, before the Interahamwe took her captive, she had stayed with a one Mazimpaka who was also Interahamwe, but had promised to protect her; little did she know he also had ulterior motives. One day, when the man was out cleaning the house he wanted to put her and her then youngest child in, Uwimana ran away to save her dear life. But how far would she go? Where was she going to seek refugee? These are some of the questions that raced through her mind, and without answers, she started contemplating suicide. The man he had escaped from was also now on her case, swearing to give her a terrible death, and the thought of what he would do scared her to death. She looked for a banana fibre rope to commit suicide, but she couldn’t get one. “In my mind, I had to take my life because it would be a more decent death. I even tried tying my Kitenge on an avocado tree, but it was too short. I then decided to join my family at the house because death would come to me anyway,” Uwimana narrated. She didn’t know that what she had survived from Mazimpaka was what she was running into, yet even if she had known, she didn’t have any other option. After a week of torture and dehumanisation, she decided to sneak out of the house during the night, and that is when the rest of the people- more than a dozen of them, were killed and thrown in a toilet. Mazimpaka assumed she too was killed along with the others, and was overheard days later confirming Uwimana’s death. “I saw her light skinned thighs in the pit,” he would brag. Uwimana ran to hide at a distant relative’s home. Though her life was somewhat safe, treatment from her family was rather harsh. She was treated like a domestic worker for weeks until the RPA Inkotanyi rescued her. Harsh realities A couple of months later, she found out she was pregnant with her fifth child. “I was so broken because how could I have conceived an Interahamwe child? That was not everything. I was hungry, poor, depressed and all the bad things,” Uwimana said. She only loved her son when he turned 2. That is when she thought to herself that after all, it wasn’t his fault and that he was only a cute baby who deserved all her love. While dealing with the disabilities from the violence committed against her, Uwimana found out a few years after the Genocide that she was also infected with HIV. Although the Association of Genocide Widows (AVEGA) supported her with mental health support and medication, she was worried about her son. “He looked very thin and I couldn’t help but worry that maybe he was infected too. I took him for a blood test and was relieved to find out he was negative,” she said. She also narrated how her son would ask her several times with a sharp voice; mother, am I okay? She laughed out loud, adding that he didn’t even know what the test was for. Her son speaks out Hakizimana (not real name) only found out he was born out of rape when he was 12 years old. Her mother had given a testimony at a memorial event earlier that day. She had narrated that together with her husband who was killed, they had four children. Hakizimana, being the youngest child, knew he was the fifth. But in his mind, he confirmed his doubts about sharing a father with the other siblings. He had feared to ask about the whereabouts of his father because, for some reason, he knew it wasn’t a happy story. But he also didn’t expect it to be as heart-breaking. “My siblings have always treated me with extra love. When my mother told me, that is when I knew they didn’t want to imply in any way that I was born from such a traumatising condition. They didn’t want to hurt me,” Hakizimana said. After the memorial event, he sat with his mother, alone, and she unpacked everything. Good enough, she had undergone a therapy session on how to tell such a story without hurting the child. “How could she raise me with so much love? Even deciding to have me is something I haven’t understood until now, but I am grateful to her,” Hakizimana added. While he is also grateful for several organisations which helped him with school and other needs, including mental health services- such as SEVOTA, Hakizimana wishes to meet his father, because he would love answers to some of the questions he has. “Why did he have to hurt my mother? Where has he been? This government has forgiven many Genocide perpetrators, why hasn’t he shown his face? There are many things I would ask him,” Hakizimana said as he broke eye contact. Sadness filled his eyes. But his mother has made sure he has all he needs. All his elder siblings got married and he stays with one of them. Back home, his mother is living a decent life, thanks to AVEGA and SEVOTA, among others. Among other things, she owns two cows, receives monthly facilitation which she uses for her farming, and she has been meeting other women who faced problems like hers to heal. “We decided to stop crying about our trauma and started creating happiness. We did that by developing our lives by investing in domestic animal rearing, among other things,” she said. Her group of women have also started ‘guhemba’ (congratulating) orphans of the Genocide who have given birth, and she finds happiness in doing that. Uwimana is just one of the over 2,500 women who were raped during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi.
