‘My family was wiped out, but I’ll never let it down’

He is billed as one of the country’s most successful businessmen. However, few know of the chilling personal story of this hospitality mogul.During the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Paul Muvunyi lost all but one relative, a brother.He has, however, defied odds and risen through the pain to become a prominent businessman.Currently, he is a shareholder in Akagera Game Lodge, owns Mountain Gorilla View Lodge at the feet of Virunga National Park and has a string of residential apartments in Kigali City. Yet the 49-year old vividly recalls every single detail of how the Genocide was prepared, planned and executed mostly in his home area of Mugonero, in Karongi District.Since childhood, Muvunyi had ambitions of becoming a doctor but he was denied the opportunity simply because he was Tutsi.In an interview , Muvunyi recounted how ethnic divisionism was instilled among children at a tender age.“While still in primary school, we could be asked to sit separately, according to whether one was Tutsi or Hutu, before starting lessons,” recalls Muvunyi, who is also into agriculture, specifically pyrethrum growing in the Northern Province.According to him, this action created a sense of hatred and divisionism along ethnic lines among the little children.He remembers that sometimes fears to identify themselves in order to avoid harassment both at school and the local community.As he grew up, Muvunyi was made to believe that ethnic equality was when any given population comprised ten per cent Tutsi. However, through thick and thin, he acquired a degree in education and was later to become a head teacher, where the Ministry of Education required him to submit periodic reports indicating the number of Tutsi and Hutu students in his school. Yet the worst was yet to come.In 1994, his father who worked as a treasurer at Mugonero Secondary School was murdered in cold blood alongside his mum and two sisters. At that time Muvunyi had fled into hiding with his younger brother.He recalls that his family was murdered under the orders of one Enos Kagaba who is currently serving life handed down by a Gacaca court last year after he was deported from the United States.“I came to learn that my parents and most of my relatives were assembled at the school where they were killed on Kagaba’s orders,” he said.Other notorious killers who haunted Muvunyi and his family include Joseph Munyakazi and Obed Ruzindana who killed Tutsis in Bisesero and Murambi.Ruzindana, a former businessman was later convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and is now serving his sentence in a Malian prison.Muvunyi never forgets Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a former pastor at Ngoma Seventh Day Adventist Church, for the mass killings he ordered against Christians who sought refuge at the church.On a positive note, however, Muvunyi is determined to lead a positive life and says government unity and reconciliation policies have helped him a lot. “We have moved on, and the current leadership has been vital in restoring hope for humanity,” he observes. “I will never let down my loved ones whose lives were cut too short, that should be the goal of every survivor.”Muvunyi is now a happily married man, blessed with three children and for him, the sky seems to be the limit.