Forgive, maybe. Forget, never!! (Testimony of a 1994 Genocide survivor)

Mukamwezi Immaculée, a genocide widow and mother of five, is currently trying to make the two ends meet and bring up her two surviving child Joy 18, as decently as possible by making bricks for construction. She inherited this business venture from her departed husband. Her husband and their other three children were killed during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. In the grim story below, Immaculée narrates the ordeals she had to go through during those trying times and yet managed to survive. My name is Mukamwezi Immaculée. I was born 40 years ago in what was then known as Secteur Rukari, Commune Nyabisindu, all in former Butare Prefecture. At the beginning of the events, which culminated into the genocide of 1994, I was living in Kigali Rural, Secteur Nzobe, Commune Shyorongi, the home town of my departed husband. My ordeal started in 1990. On the 4th of October to be exact, as this was the witch-hunting-day of the Ibyitso (the so-called RPF collaborators and sympathizers). On that day, soldiers went on a rampage all over the country, arresting all Tutsis that they came across, burning their houses and looting their property. At around 10:00 a.m that morning, two Toyota Pick-up vehicles full of soldiers came screeching to a stop outside our residence. They descended on our home like a swarm of locusts. They broke all doors and windowpanes, while the inside was completely ransacked as they ostensibly searched for firearms. They broke all the furniture and other household items, brought down all wall decorations, gleefully smashed them with obvious relish. My husband was mercilessly beaten up, was called Inyenzi (RPF cockroach supporter), while our children and I sat screaming, huddled in one corner, watching, helpless. On this occasion, after ransacking the house, they just went away with a batch of hens from our poultry coop and a piglet, with a promise that they would come back some day and finish us off. “We don’t have any use for Inyenzi z’abatutsi (Tutsi cockroaches) in our Rwanda,” they said. A month went by with no further incident, but we heard of violent deaths, rape and arson, in different rural areas all over the country. This is the time my husband and I seriously considered running away from our home. My husband decided Kigali was big enough a place in which to disappear, even if temporarily. Some time later in late November, I do not recall the exact date, a nondescript van fitted complete with a Public Address System came in our area, broadcasting incendiary messages like: Kill Inyangarwanda (Rwanda haters)! Kill the cockroaches! Kill the snakes! Kill all RPF sympathizers! By this time, we had finished our escape plans. All that remained was to pack all what we might later on essentially need, and to then take off to Kigali. Unfortunately, it now was no longer possible to escape by the main road, because irate villagers had already cut it off by stopping, and carrying out impromptu searches of passing vehicles. It would have been suicidal to go that way. So, abandoning our car, house and property, we took only what we could conveniently carry in the circumstances, and we took to the bush towards Kigali, under the cover of darkness. At around 11.00 p.m, we reached a place commonly known as Igiti cy’inyoni, a junction on Kigali-Gitarama- Ruhengeri roads, roughly four to five kilometers to the outskirts of Kigali City. Just then, a very heavy rain started which forced us to seek shelter at a house nearby, even though we did not know what type of reception we would get. To our relief, we found that the house was abandoned and we made ourselves as comfortable as we could. An hour or so later, after the storm had abated, my husband went out saying that he would be back shortly, emphasizing the fact that we should not move from that place whatsoever. Half an hour later, he was back, telling us to follow him. Outside was a vehicle, a Nissan patrol with an Ethiopian man at the wheel. My husband explained that he was a friend of his working with UNICEF. He had met him at Igiti cy’inyoni junction, and the man had offered to take us to the Germany Embassy where we could find temporary refuge. We stayed at the Embassy for about two weeks before my husband decided to rent a house outside the town. Here, we stayed in relative security until the presidential plane crash and the subsequent death of President Habyarimana, on April 6, 1994. The next day, on April 7, we had a visit from the Ethiopian friend and Dr. Gasasira, also a good friend of my husband. They are the ones who informed us of Habyarimana’s death. They said his plane was shot down as he returned from the Arusha peace talks. They impressed on us the fact that things were boiling over in town, and they wanted us to run away. However, my husband was undecided, and he kept shaking his head, looking confused saying nothing as if dazed by the news. Our friends went away, not at all pleased with his skepticism. Before they left, they pleaded with me to try and convince him. On the following day, the UNICEF man called again to tell us that the situation had worsened. Killings had started, so many people had lost their lives and whole families had been exterminated. We had better decide, and quickly, whether he should come and evacuate us to the Hotel des Mille Collines where others were seeking refuge. My husband finally gave in and asked him to come over. But no sooner had he put the receiver down than we heard a commotion outside at the main road and an army truck pulled up outside our compound. A young Lieutenant jumped out, followed by four escorts. With his heavy army boot, the Lieutenant kicked our front door, and it flew open crashing into a heavy cupboard that stood behind it, shattering its glass panes and all glassware in it into fragments. The children began to scream. One of the escorts, a bully of a man with a face like a frog, slapped my son Emmanuel with such a force that sent him crashing into an armchair across the room. I felt so much pain that I almost flew at him in anger, but my husband grabbed me by the waist and restrained me. “Is this Mugabo’s house?” The Lieutenant barked. (Mugabo was my husband’s name). My husband said that it was. “Are you Mugabo, this is your wife and these are your children”? My husband said we were. “Good! All of you in that corner!” He ordered, and then asked one of his escorts if he had a hand grenade. His intentions were to burn us alive inside the house. But, after looking around, he seemed to have an afterthought and he changed his mind. “This house is very beautiful,” he declared. “I shall keep it.” He no doubt thought the house belonged to my husband. As he talked, he went to another cupboard at the far corner of the dinning area, opened a drawer and found a bottle of Whisky. He screwed the bottle open, and without bothering for a glass, he tilted his head and took a long drink. Aaah! Look at me!” he said. Whisky induced tears running down his cheeks. “My name is Mugemanshuro Jean de Dieu. I’m a pure Hutu and my blood is not tainted. You cockroaches have killed Habyarimana but You, you are going to be erased from the face of this world - exterminated. Take them out and shoot them!” He ordered his escorts. Outside, a crowd of revelers had gathered, but no one bothered to intervene. I begged the soldier who held me by the hand pushing me out of the house to let me pray first, but the man laughed it off saying that God can never listen to ‘cockroaches’. Instead, he ordered me to kneel down and he put a pistol on my cheek just between my upper and lower jaws. Silently, I uttered a brief prayer to the Lord, that He spares my husband and children. Then, the man told me to open my mouth and he fired. I felt nothing. It was so sudden, but the impact of the bullet was so violent that I went down and collapsed. I don’t know for how long I remained unconscious but when I came to, I couldn’t raise my head. My mouth was full of a sticky substance - blood - and when I tried to spit out, the pain was unbearable. I also felt pain in my chest and in my back. It was all so excruciating. Months later, I was told that a bullet had gone right clean through my cheek. The brute could have shattered my upper jaw. From where I lay, my angle of vision could take in the bodies of my husband and my three children. As my husband was nearest, I summoned all my energy and crawled closer to him I tugged at his shirt, pulled his arm, then his hair all to no avail. I knew then he was dead. I felt drained of hope. If my husband was dead, then my children would also be dead and therefore, there was no reason for me to live. But as fate would have it, I was destined to live. When I later regained my faculties, I found myself at the Centre Hospitalier de Kigali, CHK (now Kigali University Hospital). I had lost consciousness again. I was to learn later that there were a number of the Red Cross vehicles that plied our neighborhood, giving first aid to the wounded and collecting dead bodies. That’s how I was taken to the hospital. I owe my life and that of my youngest son Happy, to divine intervention and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC. As it were, when Happy, my last born, was taken to the mortuary among the dead, he was unconscious but alive. There was this young man who worked for the Red Cross. He was among those workers who carried our dead and wounded bodies to the CHK from our house. He is the one who found my Happy. According to him, he and his colleagues were in the mortuary when he saw one of the bodies moving, and then he saw the boy looking at him. The boy was staring at him, his lips moving, trying to say something. He immediately alerted his colleagues and with their help, they took the boy to the pediatrics department. As for me, I was left for dead. At the height of the RPF offensive, the Interahamwe and all hospital personnel fled as the shells were falling too close for comfort. I could hardly move, and I was so sick I thought I could not see another day. My wounds had been infected; the stench of the dead all around was disheartening. Meanwhile, I could hear mortar shells falling. Dogs also came. I saw them as they ate corpses, and I shrank at the thought that one of them would actually come and eat me alive. I was dying a slow, horrifying death. Then later (I had lost all notion of time), I heard voices as if they were coming from far, far away. They were actually those of the ICRC workers who were moving corpses. One of them lifted my arm but I must have cried out in pain because he dropped it and cried out in fright, as if he had seen a ghost. When I finally came to my complete senses, I found myself in a large white tent. I did not know how I was carried there. This was an ICRC makeshift hospital at Rugunga where all survivors at the CHK had been taken for treatment. I was in a very bad shape, but I could make out some nurses working about feverishly. They cleaned the pus oozing from my maggot-infested wounds with some antiseptic liquids, but because of the wounds in my cheeks caused by the bullet of the crazy soldier, I could not eat. I was being fed by intravenous serum. By the middle of June 1994, because by this time, it had been taken over by RPF troops, I was transferred to King Faysal Hospital, and I began getting really properly treated. As days went by, I began to recover, slowly but steadily. I also began taking interest in my surroundings, even feeling pity for some of my mates who were in a worse condition than I was. There were those who had lost both their arms, those who had open gashes of machete wounds all over their bodies. But little did I know that my face had also been badly damaged. I shall not talk about my husband. All I know is that he and my three other children died during that first attack. I never even saw their bodies ever again. The ICRC took some children from the CHK to the Hotel des Mille Collines, while others were evacuated to Byumba, behind the RPF lines, for security reasons. The critical cases, as I learnt later, were taken to Italy for treatment by one humanitarian organization, with the help of one Dr. Rwamasirabo. My daughter Joy was brought to King Fayzal. That is where we coincidentally met. When Joy and I were finally discharged from the hospital, we did not have a home. The soldiers found us a small empty house at Cyivugiza. The owners had fled to Zaire in the aftermath of the genocide. But when these owners came back in 1997, we had to vacate it for them in the spirit of national unity and reconciliation. Joy and I are now renting another small one in the same location, where we are at pains to make the two ends meet, the only survivors of an original family of seven. I may forgive, but I shall never forget! Ends