Trauma Healing and Grief; Life After The 1994 Genocide Against The Tutsi.13 min read
My name is Judence Kayitesi. I am a mother of 3 and a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It is my great honor and privilege to share the story of my life before, during, and after 1994.
I now live in Karlsruhe, Germany but I was born in a place called Kigali-Ngali, Rutongo Commune, Cyuga Sector. Today it is in Kigali city, Gasabo district, Jali sector. My father, Callixte Kabarari, and mother, Genevieve Mugorewabera, had 5 children. We were a family of 7 but only 3 of us survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, myself and my 2 younger brothers.
I learned of my ethnicity at school. At that time, it was common in all schools to ask the ethnic Tutsi pupils to get up every morning after the normal presence check. In first and second grade, I was never asked to get up. I later learned the teacher was Tutsi himself. I did not know I was a Tutsi until the third grade when my teacher asked the Tutsi students to stand up. I remained seated and the teacher stared at me and asked, “why don’t you stand up even though you know that you are a Tutsi?”. I remember very well that we were only four Tutsi students in that classroom.
When I looked at the other seated students, I noticed they were looking at us with a certain contempt in their eyes. Being children, we didn’t understand the problem. Sometimes the other children spoke to each other in whispers, so we didn’t understand what they were saying. We felt ashamed and frustrated. I once asked my teacher: “Why do I always have to stand up, even though you have written my name and you know I am a Tutsi. Have you forgotten that we are only four Tutsi in your class? Why do we have to stand up every day?”. He said that the other students should know who we are. I didn’t understand anything and kept quiet. Looking back, I am convinced the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi was in preparation at that time.
When I was in fourth grade, I met a teacher called Desire. I will never forget him. He was one of the teachers who used to beat students. I was unjustly beaten on many occasions, although many of my classmates were not beaten like me. I wondered why he did that to me. I was an excellent student, but I was only the best in first and second grade with my teacher called Kagabo. Now I was in the top five, but I could see that some students were getting better marks than me even though they didn’t deserve it. From the third grade upwards, I sometimes took sugar and milk powder from home to give some of my classmates so they would take good care of me, or at least allow me to play with them that day.
In fifth grade, I remember telling my father about a teacher called Pascal. He hated me very much and frequently hit me for no apparent reason. I often asked permission to go to the toilet, but he refused. I had no choice but to pee in my underwear and I was laughed at by the other children in class. I told my father what was happening to me and begged him to come and talk to my teacher. I saw in my fathers’ eyes that he was helpless and would do nothing, but he promised that he would visit me in school and talk to my teacher.
I was 11 years old when the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi started. I was not at home, I was visiting my aunt Therese in Nyamirambo, in a neighbourhood called Kivugiza. When the plane carrying former President Habyarimana was shot down on the evening of the 6th April 1994, the situation turned to a sudden crisis.
There were 13 of us in the house where I was staying: A family of 8 people, parents plus 6 children; the eldest daughters’ husband and 2-year-old daughter; another boy who had come for a holiday; plus a domestic helper. The domestic helper was Hutu and he had no problem, but 11 of us were in danger. Of those 11, only 8 survived, and one died later.
On the 8th of April, we sought refuge in large numbers in Gaddafi’s Mosque in Nyamirambo. We were not Muslims, but the mosque was the nearest place of worship. The domestic helper would go home to prepare food and bring it to us once a day. On the 13th of April, during the hours we were waiting for him to bring us food, the Interahamwe militia and soldiers in jeeps came to the mosque and took us out. Because there were Hutu amongst us, we were told to separate – the Hutu to go to one side and the Tutsi to go the other side. After they separated us, the Hutu were told to go to their houses, and they had no reason to flee.
We were taken on foot to a street just behind the mosque. We walked in rows between a chain of soldiers and the Interahamwe on both sides. They took us to a house complex in Kivugiza. Many were left in a compound but some, mostly women and children, where taken into the house with me. It was in this house that one of the Interahamwe cut my head with a machete and I immediately lost consciousness. After they cut my head, I became dumb and could no longer speak. This remained so for many years.
In the house where I was cut, my aunt’s eldest daughter was killed but her daughter survived. She is still alive and lives in Germany. Many people died in the house and in the compound by shots. The third daughter of my aunt was shot in the arm, on the nose, in the cheek, and on the hip. Her parents were still alive.
When we left the house of the killings, my aunt and uncle decided to return to their house but said that we had better go home and be killed at home because there was no way to escape. We went and found an empty house. Everything had been looted. From there, a Red Cross car took us, a cousin and me, to a Red Cross office in Kiyovu. This is where we stayed until the end of the genocide against the Tutsi. Some days after arriving at the Red Cross office, my aunt Therese and her husband were killed at home.
When I first arrived at the Red Cross in Kiyovu, they refused to treat me because they thought I would die that day. Three days later I was still alive. The worms had started to move around my neck. I would touch them and throw them away. It was then they decided to treat me. They sutured my wound without anesthetic, and I will never forget the pain. It hurt so much! I felt a pain in my whole body that I have never again experienced.
The Interahamwe militia kept coming and attacking us because the Red Cross welcomed everyone. The Interahamwe and the soldiers wanted to kill us. Bomb shells hit near the Red Cross station many times, but we survived.
When the RFP-Inkatanyi soldiers liberated Kigali, they rescued us and took me to an orphanage called “Foyer des Hirondelles” in Kimihurura. After a few months, my aunt Godeberth, my mother’s sister who had been injured during the genocide against the Tutsi but survived, took me in. We went to Kivugiza, near where I had been hit by the machete, to start a new life.
I slowly regained my memory. I remember that on my way to school, I had to walk along the street in front of the house where I had been hit by the machete. I never dared to look at the house. It made me feel paralyzed and when I would reach the place, I used to run.
We were 7 people in my aunt Godeberth’s family. I later learned my brothers Valens Kabarari and Didas Kanamugire had also survived. The victims in my family of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi were my parents, my brother Phocas Baganizi, and my sister Jeanette Uwamahoro.
After the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, I went back to school in Kivugiza. My aunt saw my situation and decided to send me back to grade 4 instead of 5. I struggled to relearn how to speak! When someone told me something, I understood it and could answer in writing, but I had to learn to speak like a child from scratch. I was told a word and I had to repeat it over and over.
Even later, when I could speak a little, I struggled with pronunciation. I could not pronounce the word “umusirikare” – “soldier”. I had to describe it as “a gunman who is not a policeman”. It took me a long time, but I would repeat it until I could pronounce it.
Even today there is a list of words in English and German that I still cannot pronounce. It is an ongoing process.
In 1995 Rwandan refugees started to come back, and the authorities were accommodating them near the Kivugiza sector office close to my school. I don’t remember which month, but I saw a man around 10 o’clock at break time and when I saw him, I fell to the ground. The children who were with me pulled me up and asked what had happened. One of my cousins, Aimable, who was a soldier and was in the sector office, came and picked me up. I pointed at the man and said, “This man is the one who hit my head with a machete”.
Everyone was very surprised that I could speak spontaneously because I had only communicated in writing. I also only wrote at school. They were the first words I had spoken since I had been hit by the machete, but they were also the last for a long while. They gave me a piece of paper and I remember writing down what had happened to me, how he had hit me in the head. My cousin asked him, “Are you the one who hit this child with a machete”. I remember his reply, “I have hit so many, and if this child here belonged to Kivugiza, then that is right”.
He was arrested and taken to justice. I was immediately taken to the Remera counselling centre where I was treated for about a week. I only managed to speak again in the middle of secondary school, many years after the genocide against the Tutsi.
The hardest thing for me to accept was that my mother was dead. I secretly kept looking for her. At the time when I lived in Kivugiza, I would secretly go to the main bus station near Rubangura House in downton Kigali. I would wait for my mum to help her not take the wrong bus to Karuruma, in the direction of our former home. Sometimes I would see women dressed and looking like my mum from behind. I would follow them and when they turned around, I realized with great pain that it was not my mum. I carried the burden of waiting for my mother a long time.
I finished secondary school and got married. Because of what I had experienced in the genocide against the Tutsi, I was not afraid of death. I often wished I would die at any time. It was only when I had children that many things changed for me.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I lived in Ethiopia where my husband worked. I met a woman, Susan, who worked for the African Union and we became good friends. She called me every day to ask me how the baby was doing in the womb. I felt certain she knew my mother and I secretly believed that my mother had sent her to take care of me. We lived happily ever after, and I spontaneously called her mum.
When I gave birth to my first child, Susan became like a mother to me. She told me that she would come to thank me for the birth, which is a very important ceremony in the Rwandan tradition, because you invite good friends. I cooked a lot then because I thought she would come with my mother.
I was so sad that my mum had not come. It was from that day on I knew my mother was really gone and that I had to live without waiting for her. Thank you so much, Susan, for the way you treated me. Every time I gave birth, you assisted me, you prepared a full traditional ceremony and came to thank me.
It was because of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi that I went to therapy. During therapy, there were things that were so hard for me that I didn’t want to talk about them, especially how I was cut with a machete and all the bad things I experienced during the genocide against the Tutsi. The counsellors did their best and helped me to accept what happened to me. That gave me the strength I needed to start a new life. It helped me to make a living, build myself up, and raise my children well.
It was in 2010 that I decided to write a book about my life and history. I remembered that in the Red Cross compound I had wished to write about what had happened to me, because I couldn’t talk about it. It was very hard for me, but I felt compelled to do something. I felt that I was writing mainly for my children, my brothers who were still children at the time of the genocide against the Tutsi, and maybe others. I wanted to let them know my story and the history of our family. I did not want my parents and my siblings who did not survive to be forgotten.
28 years after the genocide against the Tutsi, I want to tell you that we are alive now and have hope for the future. We have managed to recover, even though it has been a difficult journey. Even though our parents are no longer alive today, my children are their grandchildren.
This makes me feel that I have a reason to live, not only for myself but also for those who have been killed only because they were Tutsi.
We will always be grateful to the RPF-Inkotanyi for their selfless efforts to save the few surviving Tutsi. They managed to save our lives. While the international community was watching and the UN decided to withdraw its troops of UNAMIR from Rwanda and leave the Tutsi to the killers, the RPF-Inkotanyi forces stepped in to stop the genocide against the Tutsi. It was not easy for them, but they did their best to save us. Only a few survived.
Allow me to thank the United Nations for having dedicated the 7th April as International Day of Reflection on 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. Keeping the memory of our beloved ones is an act of empathy. Your choice to listen to the survivors of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda is to rehumanize them, after decades of dehumanization which took the lives of our people. Being able to tell my story today is proof that humanity has decided to prevent the denial of genocide against Tutsi. Denial is a threat against the human dignity and I thank you in the names of my fellow survivors. As we hope that with everyone’s support, space like this will continue to heal the wounds of survivors enabling them to interact with the humanity about the past. Let’s all work together on our peaceful future.
My story is very long indeed so I have tried to summarize it. You can find more details in my book “A broken Life” about my story and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.