Survivor of genocide: 'I was lucky'

On a recent chilly afternoon, eight-year-old Mystica Rose Mukeshimana, breathless and smiling, burst through the front door of her home. Just returning from school, she announced to her mother, Eugenie, that she had raced a bus home -- and then went into the other room to watch television, much like any other child her age.

"Yes, I think she knows about the genocide," Ms. Mukeshimana said.

Ms. Mukeshimana is a social work student at The College of Saint Rose and a parishioner at St. Vincent de Paul's Church in Albany. The native Rwandan is also a survivor of that country's bloody 1994 genocide, during which her father, husband and sister were murdered.

Eight months pregnant with Mystica Rose when the genocide began, Ms. Mukeshimana survived by concealing herself in a garbage pit and hiding in the home of a Muslim stranger.

Torturous time

While Ms. Mukeshimana remembers experiencing the country's ethnic tensions as far back as secondary school, when Hutu and Tutsi students studied and socialized in sharply defined ethnic groups, she was brought up by her father to be largely unaware of Rwanda's racial problems.

In April 1994, however, Rwanda's totalitarian government erupted into anarchy as a state-sponsored program of genocide -- nurtured by heavy propaganda and sparked by the assassination of the president -- swept the African nation.

In the ensuing 100 days, 800,000 to one million members of the minority Tutsi tribe were killed by majority Hutu.

Caught in genocide

"We didn't think that ordinary people like us would have been part of this," Ms. Mukeshimana recalled.

Among workaday Rwandans, she said, conventional wisdom held that as long as you "stayed out of politics" and governmental issues, "you would be all right."

She was wrong. As she hid in a Muslim's home, she listened to the woman's relatives tell stories about the killings in which they had taken part.

While hiding, she "had to be very careful," Ms. Mukeshimana said. "You have to keep everything burning inside of yourself to yourself."

Terror

Organized Hutu militias, who "had a list of everyone who lived in the city," according to Ms. Mukeshimana, began the killing by combing the country for educated adult males of the Tutsi ethnic group, a category that included her husband and father.

"They knew [my husband] was married, but they didn't know what I looked like," she explained. "They kept on postponing the day they were going to kill me. I was lucky."

Tutsis and any Hutus who supported them were murdered with machetes, axes, knives and bludgeons. Some were crucified. Ms. Mukeshimana recalls cases where Hutu men married to Tutsi women killed their own wives and children.

"Sometimes, if you paid them, they would shoot you," so you could avoid a lingering death, she said.

Crisis of faith

Today, Ms. Mukeshimana attends Mass at St. Vincent de Paul, where Mystica was recently baptized. However, she still remembers how some Rwandan priests, nuns and ministers not only condoned the killing but also took part in it.

Because of that, she sometimes questions what Christianity can mean in a situation where clergy can kill.

Since 90 percent of Rwandans are Christians, she explained, "if there's anything we trust, it's our priest. We trusted them so much. But can you imagine your priest with a gun or a grenade?"

Memories of Rwanda remain clear in her memory. She said that talking about her experiences and educating others about her past have become ways that she can help herself. Like many genocide survivors in Rwanda today, Ms. Mukeshimana received no formal therapy or financial restitution. "I did everything on my own," she said.

Throughout her ordeal, Ms. Mukeshimana said, she "still had a sense of what life could be. Every day, I heard that people died, people that I knew. And I asked, 'How am I going to live with this?' I was lucky. I owe the favor [of my life] to God."

'Madness'

When she thinks about what happened in Rwanda, she admits, "I still can't understand. They killed so many people. This was done by your neighbors, your family members. How can you understand? There was madness there.

"I am really concerned about the whole thing disappearing. If we overlook something like genocide, what are we saying? The people who planned the genocide -- where are they now? Sitting somewhere nicely, working. Maybe they're teachers somewhere. The priests and nuns that were involved in the genocide are still preaching somewhere.

"Did we learn anything from the Holocaust?" she asked. "We live in one world. Everyone has responsibilities to participate in making the world better. I feel like we are not doing enough the save the world."

(02-13-03) [[In-content Ad]]