Jacqueline Akinzaniye who was 20 years old during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi was being beaten by a 12 year old child in the middle of the street. Even though she was a ‘big girl’, she couldn’t even say “don’t” because any wrong move would have led to her being chopped into pieces by machetes (to say the least). The night before, a gang of Interahamwe had stormed at her home and gathered her whole family of 20 people in front of their house. They had new machetes and torches that made it seem like it was daytime, so she says. “One of them started by chopping my brother’s foot. When he was about to hit the machete on my head, one of them asked who would carry our bodies to throw them. They then took us to Nyabarongo River, which was around three kilometres from our house,” Akinzaniye said. “Most people say it is not possible for one to walk with onlyone foot, but it is possible. I saw it with my two eyes. We had left the foot at home,” she added. Initially, the killers’ plan was to chop one by one as they throw them into the river. But one of them suddenly pushed Akinzaniye because he thought they were merely drowning them. She could swim though, and so she did. “I wouldn’t say I was saved by my swimming skills bacause I wasn’t that good; it is God that saved me. They immediately got on a boat and came after me with their torches. Their machete almost cut me but I sunk for a while,” Akinzaniye said. As she kept swimming, she overheard them say that if they didn’t return, the ones they had left by the shore would run away, so they had to go back. Akinzaniye managed to swim her way to the shores, but she met someone who told her that her whole family was killed; everyone! In her mind, she could go back to the river and sink to her death, or just find anyone to kill her. She went to knock at a stranger’s door. She narrated everything that had happened and with excitement, the man she was talking to asked: “so they have started openly killing Tutsi people?” But he let her spend the night at his house. The following day, he told her to keep hiding in the house and said he had to rush somewhere. When he returned, at around 3:00 pm, he told her Interahamwe had learnt that she was hiding there. “He said he didn’t want me to be killed at his house, so he told his 12 year old daughter to walk me to the direction I had told him I wanted to head,” Akinzaniye said. “Throughout the journey, this child was beating my legs with a stick. I couldn’t even tell him to stop because if I did, he would have made noise and the Interahamwe would find me and come to kill me,” she said. But a few days later, she learnt that she was meant to walk into a trap on that day. The man had arranged with a gang of Interahamwe that would meet her on her way and kill her. “They were only stopped by the rain. It rained heavily that I also had to go to another stranger’s house, and that is how my life was spared on several occasions,” she said. Even at the second house where they agreed to hide her, Akinzaniye would always be sent to hide in bushes around the house every time the Interahamwe said they were going to check. “The rain saved me every time until Inkotanyi came to rescue us. When it rained, we knew we would make it to another day,” she said. Akinzaniye shares the story with countless other Genocide survivors, according to Genocide scholar, Noël Kambanda, who is also a survivor of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi. Indeed, the Genocide started in April, and that is during the rainy season. Despite the dangers of its heavy floods, rain has a special place in the hearts of Genocide survivors. “Genocide perpetrators referred killing to ‘working’. When it rained, they had to take a break. They even had to go for rest at night. That is when their targets would move from one place to another for hiding or food,” Kambanda said. This was echoed by Egide Nkuranga, the president of IBUKA, who added that when it rained, people would get a chance to go to areas where RPA-Inkotanyi was for rescue. “Rain was extremely important during the Genocide. That is when Tutsi people would get to run to other groups of people heading to Inkotanyi territories. It would protect them from the killers in that moment. Some would move during the night, but it was not as safe because some roadblocks would still operate overnight. Some people were killed like that” Nkuranga added. From time to time, Genocide survivors have praised April rainbecause some attacks they wouldn’t have survived otherwise. But according to Nkuranga, when it rained so much, some would even go in the rain to honour their memories. “We had to make them understand that during the Genocide, they didn’t have a choice but to go through it. But today, it is not the case because we are in a peaceful country,” he said.
