Too Much Rwanda

January 12, 2005

Survivor's story is one she must tell

Published: Monday, January 10, 2005
By Kathy Lynn Gray
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

When Jeannette Shimimana was 9 years old, she plunged a stick into a bloated corpse and covered herself with the blood that squirted out.

Then she hid in a pile of bodies and prayed that the Hutus who were hacking Tutsis to death wouldn't notice the slight rise and fall of her chest as they piled a bleeding mother and two dead babies on top of her.

I'm lying and lying and lying. I am not thinking. I feel like I will not get up in this place. I can't get out; I have to push her and fight to get out. And so I get out, and I am trembling all over. I ask the lady, ''What can I do for you?'' And she said: ''Young girl, why don't you just go save your life?''

Jeannette's voice still trembles a bit a decade later as she tells this story, the story of her life in the first days of genocide in the small African country of Rwanda. Those days in early April 1994 changed her country and changed her life.

She recently completed her first semester at Ohio Dominican University, 7,530 miles from home. She studied French, acting and English composition; lived with her boyfriend; and dressed in jeans and sweaters. She wanted to be like the students around her, rolling their eyes about the 20-page paper that's due, gossiping about who drank what at the weekend off-campus party. But she couldn't.

She has seen too much.

The day the genocide began, my father said we have to separate if we're going to survive. We're supposed to go to another city, called Kabwayi, and we have a place to meet. My mom was going with my siblings. For me, I chose to go with my two aunties and two uncles. As soon as we got down the street from my house, we got stopped. To one of the ladies who was in front of us, the killers say, ''Come over here. All of you, look: This is pure Tutsi. Look how tall they are. How they have straight nose, little nose and eyes.''

They just cut her into pieces, right onto the stone. One body piece fell there, another there.

Hutus and Tutsis, the two main ethnic groups in Rwanda, have long been at odds. Tutsis, in the minority, dominated the government for hundreds of years until the Hutus rebelled in 1959. Since then, the groups have fought bloody battles for power.

The slaughter of Tutsis began April 6, 1994, the day Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down over the Rwandan capital of Kigali. To avenge the death of their leader, Hutu death squads began to attack Tutsis and any sympathizers with machetes, clubs and axes.

In the end, an estimated 1 million died and another million fled the country.

Like many Rwandan families, Jeannette's is mixed. Her mother is pure Tutsi, but her father was part Hutu and part Tutsi. Before the genocide, her father, Mathias Hakizimana, didn't speak of friends, neighbors and relatives in Kigali as Hutus or Tutsis; he wanted his children to grow up without the prejudices of his generation.

But even as children, they sensed the hatred of one group for the other. They knew adult relatives carried two government IDs, one listing them as a Hutu and one as a Tutsi. They never knew who might ask for one, and judged which to show by the looks of the inquirer.

As the genocide began, the children quickly learned that their father was a hunted man because of his Tutsi sympathies and his high profile as a businessman.

We walked all the way to the river called Nyabarongo that first day. At the river, you're supposed to show IDs. They look at my aunt's ID. They put us on the left side, where it looked like they were picking people to be killed. The killers, they are not even about 21. I still remember their faces. They asked: ''Are you related?'' We all said we are not. In a couple of minutes, they call my uncle. They say, ''Take off your shirt.'' They cut him into three pieces. He was gone.

They say to my auntie, ''You have to lift up this body.'' She refused. They kick her so badly. They beat her. Then she took off all her clothes. They tie her, one leg there, another leg there. And they took a stick and pushed it through her virginity.

Both aunts and both uncles were murdered, but Jeannette kept walking along with hundreds of others fleeing the massacre. She found her family in Kabwayi, staying with friends, but they quickly split up again. Her father left at 4 a.m. to drive to Congo; Jeannette, her mother, two sisters and brother left separately to meet him there.

We're driving, and someone stopped us. In my mother's bag, there's a picture of my father with the Tutsi government. My mother took the picture and chew it. And while she's chewing it, she's crying.

They look in my brother's eyes and they said, ''You are Tutsi. Get out.'' My mom begged and begged: ''He's not a Tutsi.'' They slapped her. They kicked her in the head. After they tired of beating her, they simply ordered us back in the car.

After a night's stay in Congo, the family fled south to Burundi and then to Kenya, where Jeannette, her brother and older sister eventually settled into a boarding school.

Jeannette felt safe. But her mother and father began hearing whispers that her father was not. Some said his best friend would kill him.

Hakizimana didn't believe them. He returned home to Rwanda in the late fall with his wife and youngest child. Soon, killers came to their home, put a gun to his head and dragged him away.

Jeannette Shimimana's younger sister, Yvette Hakizimana, is shown at the funeral of their father in Rwanda. Mathias Hakizimana was killed in November 1994.

My father had a lot of faith in people. He loved people. It destroyed him. He died like a dog when he came back home. His best friend murdered him. They strangled him. We finally found his body in an abandoned house. He had no legs, no arms. The dogs had eaten him.

The years after that are fuzzy in Jeannette's mind. She lived at schools or with friends in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Uganda again and then back to Rwanda. Her older brother and sister moved to Belgium, where they've stayed for nine years. Her mother, meanwhile, pushed for justice for her husband in Rwandan courts.

In 2000, Jeannette was sent to the United States to meet a friend from Congo who promised to be her guardian. He placed her in the all-girls Purnell School, a college-preparatory boarding school in rural Pottersville, N.J. A few months later, he disappeared.

The former headmistress, she said, ''We'll have you stay here, free tuition.'' I appreciate what the school did for me, but it wasn't fun. People were giving me old clothes to wear; I never refused. I had no money. I had no friend. It was like I was starting all over again.

For the four years she spent at Purnell, the teenager saw no one from her family. She raised spending money by telling her story to groups of Americans; the school absorbed the more than $30,000 a year in tuition, room and board.

But Jeannette's background made her feel like an outsider. She didn't bond with anyone until two years ago, when she met Margaret Masiero, the school's new accountant.

Without her, I would not have all of this. I would not be trying to get my life together. I had a home, a best friend, and I was happy. She's the first person here who accepted me, understood what I needed and what I was missing.

Masiero became Jeannette's American mother, giving her a place to feel safe, both emotionally and physically. She worked with Catholic Legal Services to gain asylum for Jeannette so she wouldn't be sent back to Rwanda after high school.

After months of gathering paperwork and hours of interviews with immigration officials to prove she would be endangered if she returned, Jeannette was awarded asylum on Nov. 5, 2003, nine years and a day after her father was killed.

In June, Jeannette's mother, Donatilla Muhimpundu, and her sister, Yvette Hakizimana, 11, traveled from Rwanda to Purnell for her graduation.

Although the reunion was joyful, the relationship between mother and daughter was strained by the years apart and the resulting cultural gap. Jeannette swore she hated Rwanda and would never return; her mother found the United States unwelcoming and disappointing.

After years of living on charity, Jeannette wanted to work after high school. But Masiero worried that she might never attend college if she didn't go immediately. Ohio Dominican officials heard her story and offered scholarships for a portion of her tuition.

Jeannette moved to Columbus, where she entered the university as a freshman in August.

Although many people have stepped up to help her in Columbus and Jeannette enjoyed her classes at Ohio Dominican, her life again might be about to change.

Yesterday, she left New York City for Belgium, where she plans to see her brother and sister for the first time since she was 10. She hasn't decided how long she'll stay or what she'll do on her return.

Jeannette's not sure school is the place for her right now and wants to start earning money, so she might look for a job in Miami, where a family friend lives. Returning to Ohio Dominican is also a possibility.

Whatever she decides, she'll continue to tell her story.

I want people to know what happened. Africa has the same things other countries have, but we are missing freedom and peace. You can trust nobody.

She's seen too much.

RWANDA

Population: 8 million. It is the most densely populated country in Africa Area: 10,169 square miles, slightly smaller than Maryland Ethnic groups: Hutu, 84 percent; Tutsi, 15 percent; Twa (Pygmoid), 1 percent History: Gained independence from Belgium in 1962. During a civil war between Tutsi rebels and the Hutu government, Hutu gangs in 1994 began a genocide that killed about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels won the civil war that July, and presidential elections resumed in 2003. Economy: About 90 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, mainly subsistence. Source: CIA Factbook 2004

Reprinted with permission - 2005 The Columbus Dispatch.