The story of a little girl Lida who survived the Rwandan genocide and her life after. She escapes death countless times and ends up separated from her biological family. Taken in by strangers Lida finally makes her escape to freedom as a refugee. She has the will to survive against all odds but her past comes to haunt her. Lida meets her future husband falls in love and gets married. The sparks of the hatred that led to the genocide are ignited as the two are from opposing tribes. Her marriage becomes a warzone. In a land of peace the war still rages on in the hearts and minds of a generation not willing to bury their differences and it costs her everything.
The story of a little girl Lida who survived the Rwandan genocide and her life after. She escapes death countless times and ends up separated from her biological family. Taken in by strangers Lida finally makes her escape to freedom as a refugee. She has the will to survive against all odds but her past comes to haunt her. Lida meets her future husband falls in love and gets married. The sparks of the hatred that led to the genocide are ignited as the two are from opposing tribes. Her marriage becomes a warzone. In a land of peace the war still rages on in the hearts and minds of a generation not willing to bury their differences and it costs her everything.
My name is Lida Uwamahoro born on the 13th of September 1989 in Rwanda. My Father was Rusingizwa Alphonsi, and my mother Mukandezi Eveline also from Rwanda. Honestly I knew little about Rwanda as I never got to grow up there. I am a fourth child in a family of seven children. This is my story.
In 1994 Rwanda had a war(genocide) between the Tutsi and Hutu. Being a child, I could not comprehend what happened and I am yet to understand it. I still never got to solve the mystery of what took place. The war was terrible and we had to run.
We all used to sleep in one room under the bed with so many mattresses on top of the bed. At night sometimes you could hear shootings going on and in some houses people being killed. The militiamen attacked people in their houses and killed them however they wanted.
We were petrified and ate dinner by 5pm. Soon after we left the house to sleep in the bush. Sometimes we slept in the banana tree plantation until morning. Each night we changed the position. Rwandan militiamen came searching for us in our home whilst we were hiding and we saw them hiding talking. My little brother was very stubborn and a crybaby. Maman(mother) used to close his mouth with her hand all the time. She told us not to talk or move so they would not find us. God's grace was upon us. It was after these quiet killings the country broke out into a full war. That is the time I saw people dying in many ways. Maman asked us to close our eyes. Some women died slowly by having body parts cut off. The militiamen threw babies against the wall which died instantly. Other women killed their children under duress before being murdered.
People died different deaths from bullets, machetes, knives, bombs and some were burnt alive. I remember there is a time they threw a bomb in a place we were camping. Thirty percent of the people died. For some time I thought I had died too. I pinched myself and my brother to see if we were okay. Dead bodies surrounded us and thinking of it made me scared. Even at roadblocks, they killed people as they wanted.
This story covers a lot of ground emotionally, geographically, and historically, as well as more than twenty years in the author’s life.
It opens in 1994 with the war (genocide) between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes of Rwanda. The author is a young child at this time, the fourth in a family of seven children. She does not understand what is going on or why. She just knows the family has to run. And they do. Mayhem and murder ensue.
The family escapees to a refugee camp where they stay “for many years,” until militiamen attack the camp. Same story elsewhere, with shootings, murders and other atrocities an almost nightly occurrence. It seems that the author loses both parents and a sister as she and her brother run from another deadly attack by militiamen, fleeing into the bush because “using the main road was dangerous.”
You can almost hear the gunfire and smell the smoke.
She finally arrives at Mbujmayi and is taken in by a kind family and nursed back to health. “They loved me as their own child,” she writes.
From here, the narrative details many additional moves and how the author struggled to get a job and keep up with rent and other basic necessities without an education. She also chronicles her basic distrust of men and how that was overcome when she met and married her husband. They later move to Mozambique.
But all is not well in the new marriage. The tribal warfare and hatred that resulted in the genocide she saw as a child invades her marriage. The author faces rejection by her father-in-law and family. Because the author and her husband are “from opposing tribes,” the marriage soon “becomes a war zone.”
Probably because English is a second language, the text is sometimes difficult, resulting in a choppy, uneven read in places that requires extra patience. More attention to basic grammar and punctuation would help remedy this. Additionally, the title seems oddly dissonant. It may leave some readers scratching their heads.
Even so, this is still is a powerful tale of deprivation, hunger, fatigue and disease and loss. Fraught with peril, it’s also a story of persistence and faith in the face of unimaginable brutality, adversity and hardship. Faith-flavored and hopeful, it also includes kindness, grace, and God’s goodness. “Miracles happen,” the author affirms. “God’s time is the best time.”
This is a story that should be heard.
Ibwiza biri imbere. (“The future is bright.")