Powerful moments

This is the week to commemorate the Genocide of 1994, and every evening, each community church holds a mass for worship. I attended a service Monday evening in a small village on the outskirts of Kigali.

I recently met some film student from Berlin who have been working in Kigali for the past few months producing a documentary of post-Genocide Rwanda. They have focused on young Rwandan’s, age 25-35 years, who would have been children during the April of 1994, the time of the Genocide. One of their subjects is a 22 year old woman named, Angela.

Angela was 7 years old when the Genocide started. Her family was slaughtered before her eyes when their home was sacked by Hutus. She survived the attack by escaping and running to the home of her grandparents. When she arrived there, she found everyone who lived in that house had already been killed. For the next 7 days, she hid in her Grandparent’ house among the slain bodies of her extended family. She was joined by another young girl who miraculously survived a similar attack.

Unfortunately, patrolling Hutus heard some noise coming a the house that had already been marked as ‘dead’. When they entered the home, they found Angela and the other girl hiding. The attacked Angela, hacking off her left arm above the elbow, slashed her in the head and legs, and left her for dead.

Again, she survived.

The capital city of Kigali was soon overthrown by the Tutsi run revolutionary army, which had invaded from Uganda to the north. Angela took refuge in the home of her uncle.

In country like Rwanda, communities are composed of extended family units. Angela’s family was from the village of Kabuye.

After the church service, I joined the Berlin students, who were filming their segment of nearly three months work. Together with Angela and the church pastor, we sat in greeting room behind the church, and visited awhile. The pastor handed me a stack of loose papers, some typed, some written by hand. There were about 40 pages in all, each representing a family unit.

On each piece of paper, a simple column of names, either typed or neatly written ran down the left side of an otherwise blank page. Each page listed at least 10 names, many over 20. These were the names of the people who were killed from each family unit. The page representing Angela’s family listed 23 names. Every single person in her family is listed on that piece of paper, save one.

Meeting Angela, I never would have guessed that such atrocities could have happened to this beautiful young woman. She smiled shyly every time our eyes met across the room. I sat down with her at the dining room table of her uncle’s home (his family was largely untouched by the genocidaires, and Angela lives in his family’s home). Speaking very good English, Angela asked me questions for the rest of the family to hear. I think they were proud of her mastery of English, since most of them only speak Kinyarwandan and French. She wanted to know things like, how old I was (yes, I told the truth!), , what kind of doctor I was, did I have a girlfriend back in the US, why not? ect… The family really seem to enjoy the conversation and we all had some good laughs.

Angela want to return to studying at the local university. She has mentioned that she would like to be a film producer/director. The family doesn’t have enough money to pay for her schooling, so the film students from Berlin are working to direct any proceed from their documentary to Angela’s University fund. I sincerely hope that life brings good fortune to Angela and her new family.

Tonight I watched a film on the Genocide at the Intercontinental Hotel. I watched the most intense film I think I’ve ever seen. If you liked ‘Hotel Rwanda,’ you owe it to yourself to see ‘Un Dimanche a Kigali.’ It’s a love story between a Canadian journalist and a local Tutsi woman during the time of the Genocide. If you really want a feel for what it must have been like in Rwanda during the Spring of 1994, see this film, you will not be disappointed.