Uwimana’s journey through hell

Denise Uwimana-Reinhardt lost her husband Charles and many members of her family in the 1994 Genocide, but she and her three children miraculously survived. Since then, she has testified about her miraculous survival in many countries across the globe. She is also the author of a book; With God through Hell on Earth in the Rwandan Genocide. The book is written in German, a language she now speaks fluently, with an English translation already in its second paragraph. She has been living in Germany since 2008, and visits and ministers to the traumatized victims in Rwanda, together with her husband Dr. Wolfgang Reinhardt, a former lecturer and pastor. Since 1997, the couple has been coordinating charity and sponsoring activities for the survivors of the Genocide. Uwimana and her husband were in the country for a week for the burial of the former’s mother. With God through Hell on Earth in the Rwandan Genocide is a meticulous account of the events of April 1994 through Uwimana’s own eyes. It paints the writer’s early childhood in Burundi, the Congo, family and country life in Rwanda, her new life in Germany, and of course her miraculous survival. She is active in social work and counseling with survivors, and recently started an association of widows and orphans, Iriba Shalom, in Mukoma Gafunzo, Cyangugu. The group gathers to pray and share their post-traumatic experiences with a view to individual and collective healing. “Some of the women in this association had their children hacked to death before their own eyes. These traumatic events make these women to suffer as images of their crying babies come back to haunt them,” she remarks. The first chapter, Face to Face With Death, recounts the events of Saturday, the 6th of April 1994. At the time, she is working with Ciments Du Rwanda (CIMERWA), A Chinese-owned cement factory in Bugarama, only a few kilometers away from the border with Burundi and the Congo. At 1:00pm on that fateful day, screams and pandemonium in the neighbourhood announce the arrival of the killer gangs. They find Uwimana in her rented tenement, which she shares with ten other relatives. “As they entered the house, I fled into the bathroom. I was hurting so much inside. My heart was breaking and I said to God: “Oh, God, you are disappointing me! Why didn’t you tell me before that I have to die and be your bride? Then I could have prepared for my death. Instead, you promised to protect me. Now I will die and go to Heaven to be with you. But still, I am disappointed because you did not tell me before,” it reads in part. “After I had cried to God in my disappointment, my fear of death vanished. I felt a new strength inside and I knew that I could face the militia,” she writes. A short time later, the Interahamwe battered down the wood door to the bathroom in which she was hiding with their steel axes. There, they found her strapping her small son Christian on her back, her belly protruding with her third baby who was due soon. “I was confronted with a face distorted by hatred, dripping with sweat from his gruesome hard work. The black skin of his naked torso and the gleaming white of the attacker’s eyes had something demonic about them. He was wearing a broad belt from which hand-grenades swung to and fro and made clicking noises with every move. Two straps with rows of bullets were crossed on his naked chest, but the men did not need to use the bullets, they did their work with naked steel, leaving behind them a sea of blood,” writes Uwimana. After some silent consideration, the attackers made their request known: money, or their victim’s life. Under her pillow was the wallet that saved Uwimana from imminent death. It contained her papers and 170,000 Rwandan Francs. In all her adversity, she had not given up hope of being able to flee the militia and go to the Congo. That is why she at first tried to conceal the secret money from her tormentors. With a heavy heart, she took the wallet out and gave the leader of the group the money. “After each of them had pocketed his share, the leader said to the others: “Reka sha! Ntaco atwaye! Don’t bother about her. Leave her alone!” “For a brief time, I lost consciousness. When I came to and looked around me, I at first did not know whether the blood-bath around me was real or just a bad dream. When I had regained my senses, I looked down at myself and was surprised that I was still alive. I was weak and hungry and additionally weakened by the pregnancy, but I had had the strength to face the murderers. I thanked God for this in my heart,” she writes. The next day, Saturday, the 7th of April, at 6 o’clock in the morning, she turned on the radio to listen to the news. All she heard was classical music. Not even the usual hate propaganda she had grown accustomed to. An indefinable fear now gripped her. She knew immediately that something terrible must have happened. “I stepped outside the house and went to the fence that separated my property from that belonging to my neighbor Goretti and called her name. She immediately came out and told me that the President of Rwanda, Habyarimana, had been assassinated. His airplane had been hit by a rocket as it was approaching the airport of Kigali, an act that accelerated the killings. New dawn After her traumatic past, Uwimana now finds solace in one word: Love. “I have only one aim: to help surviving widows and orphans to emerge from their deep sorrow and trauma, poverty and loneliness,” she says.