Healing and hypnotherapy Volume 4, Special Mega Annual Issue , 15 June 2020 | Page 5

MUKAMURIGO VENERANDA 

A Survivor - TTT Trainer
“During the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda I was hiding in the church in
Kayonza together with a lot of people. The church was full, you could hardly
move or had space to lay down and rest. We were there for two weeks, but
then one morning the killers came – we heard them shouting and singing
songs about how they were coming to get us. There were so many of them,
what could we do?
They threw in burning mattresses and people panicked. They stormed the
church with machetes and clubs, killing people around me. I recognised
several of the killers, they were men and boys from our community, some
were my neighbours others were local leaders of our area. They all came to
kill us. They started swinging their machetes, and soon there was blood
everywhere. Children, women and men were screaming.
I looked around, desperately searching for a way out. I was so small, only
eight years old, and I ran as fast as I could and managed to squeeze myself
out between the iron bars in one of the windows. I jumped to the ground and
climbed a tree, my throat so tight that it felt like I was suffocating. From the
tree I saw them kill people below me, but the killers didn’t see me. How long
did I sit there? I don’t know. My fear made time stop.
After the genocide, me and my sister that survived came to live with the only
aunt we had left – she was the sister of my mother and was married to my
uncle. We used to live together as a big family before the genocide. Now it
was only her and her two children, plus my sister and me left. Imagine!
Long after the genocide was over, we lived with fear that the Interhamwn
would come and finish their job, to kill all Tutsis. Government soldiers had to
escort us to school because the Interhamwe continued to attack even
children like us. I suppose they did so because they had been told all Tutsis
were bad. When they finally found and identified the bodies of my parents it
became even more dangerous, because it became clear where they had
been killed and by whom.
Even though three years had passed since the genocide it was unbearable.
We could not live like this and the soldiers told my aunt to let me and my
sister move to Kabuga to go to school there. Since the people we moved to
were no relatives of mine, I offered to work in the house even though I was
going to school, so that they wouldn’t feel that it was a burden to take care of
me.”