Stories of survivors

 

Here in Gisenye I met two impressive survivors of the genocide, Odette and her sister Evangeline.

Odette managed to flee to Burundi when the killing started. Her home was burned to the ground. She returned two days after the Hutu militia was driven out in July 1994, starting a restaurant from the ashes of her former home. Business was good, so she added a bungalow. Over the years more followed and her place became what is now known as the Malahide Paradis, a divine hotel, which is raved about in all guidebooks.

How do I know all this? One evening, Odette’s sister Evangeline was visiting from Kigali, together with her French husband Pierre, who spoke excellent English and loved to talk. Born in Cartagena in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he fought with an all black militia in some of the many civil wars in this country. His grandfather had arrived with the army of King Leopold, who turned the Congo into his private colony and ruled the country with an unparalleled brutality.

Pierre’s parents were both born in the Congo and Pierre was sent to Brussels to study law and worked as a corporate lawyer for oil companies all his life. In 1986, he returned to Africa, to Uganda, right after Idi Amin’s fall. Seeing no future for the oil business in Uganda, he moved to Kigali in 1990, where he met Evangeline, Odette’s sister.

Once the killing started, Evangeline went into hiding. The Hutu militia knocked Pierre’s teeth out, because he would not tell them where she was. So they also fled to Burundi. When I asked how they passed the many Hutu roadblocks, Pierre smiled at me: “I had 50 bullets when I left Kigali. When I arrived in Burundi, I had one left”. I figured it was not proper to ask for more details.

Before the genocide, Tutsis made up about 20% of the population around Gisenye, an unusually high percentage. It also became the area which suffered the most comprehensive killing of Tutsis anywhere in Rwanda: 9 out of 10 were massacred. The lake became the grave for thousands and thousands of corpses.

The post-genocide orphanages in the area were legendary and even today the center of unaccompanied children is busy with what are now teenagers.