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Dispatch #12 from Rwanda
It was the most intense experience I've had yet while
in Rwanda - more intense even than the visit to the
genocide site. Perhaps because this involved people
who are still alive, who can still tell their story
and who have a story to tell.
Vanessa Vick, a photojournalist, and two others had
come from Kampala to Butare for the weekend. Vanessa
had been to Rwanda twice before, in 1999 and 2000,
both times chronicling lives of post-genocide
Rwandans, in particular, child-headed households.
At the time, she had been particularly struck by one
young woman and her four brothers. The woman, who was
16 when Vanessa first met her, had witnessed the
killing of her father, a Tutsi, during the 1994
genocide. Alphonsina then became separated from the
rest of her family and lived in a camp for two years.
When Vanessa caught up with them in 1999, Alphonsina
found herself at the head of the household with her
four brothers and her own baby, a result of a rape.
Alphonsina's mother, a Hutu, had died some time after
the genocide; Vanessa suspected she had died of AIDS.
This was the Rwandan story, a story you could find a
million times over in this tiny country - one parent
killed in the genocide, another dying of AIDS and
young children ultimately left to fend for themselves.
When Vanessa came back last weekend, she was intent on
tracking down Alphonsina and her siblings. We arranged
for a translator and a driver and headed out Monday
morning to Gikongoro, a town about half an hour from
Butare. The area is intensely beautiful, more
mountainous than Butare, reminding me of the Alps but
terraced and covered with banana trees.
Vanessa recognized the spot as we were rounding a
curve, that to me looked like many others, just before
town. "Here," she said to the driver. "Stop."
The driver pulled over and we got out of the car.
Crossing the street, Vanessa pointed down the hill.
"Down there, that's where they were living."
I had asked her on the way whether she was excited or
apprehensive. She had said she was scared of what she
would find, or perhaps of what she wouldn't.
We walked down a path for a few hundred meters and she
then saw the house. I immediately thought to myself
that nobody could possibly be living in the house. The
roof looked like it was disintegrating and the whole
structure looked a bit unsteady. I didn't say
anything, but my heart sank.
We then saw an old man working in a field next to the
house. He approached us and immediately asked for
money. We ignored the plea, instead asking him if he
lived in the house. He said it was his land, his
house, and that he'd been there for the past two
years. We asked if he knew Alphonsina or where she
was. He said she'd moved to a resettlement site and
gave us some directions.
We walked back up to the car, hopped in and continued
on towards Gikongoro.
We stopped a couple of times to make sure we were
going the right way. We slowly bumped our way down a
pockmarked clay path, the car's undercarriage making a
few painful crunching sounds as we went.
The car finally stopped. Just below us was a row of
small houses. As Vanessa got out of the car she
stopped and stared. Suddenly, a boy came flying at
her. "Vanessa, Vanessa!" He grabbed her and clung to
her as if his life depended on it. I stood watching
this incredibly emotional scene unfolding in front of
me and then started bawling my eyes out. The rest of
the kids followed suit. And there was Alphonsina, a 5-month-old baby strapped to her back, bringing up the
rear and seeming almost dazed.
After the frenzied, thrilling greetings, we started to
get their story. We had them all sit on a mat so that
Vanessa could set up her video camera and interview
them. Some 20 minutes later, Alphonsina got up and
approached the translator. She said something in
Kinyarwanda before walking away. We asked what she had
said. "It's something she won't talk about outside.
You must go inside with her after," he explained. So
we wrapped up the interview and moved into the tiny,
empty house, a sole avocado rolling around on the
concrete floor.
We had Alphonsina sit on a rough-hewn wooden bench and
continued the interview while the others played
outside. The story started coming out. Her youngest
brother, Ayirwanda, 8, had been attending school but
had been forced to leave. Apparently, without her
permission, he had been tested for HIV and had tested
positive. The school kicked him out leaving all five
kids without an education and little to do but
scrounge for food during the day and sleep away their
hunger pangs at night.
Alphonsina had kept Ayirwanda's status to herself. She
didn't tell him or her brothers or anyone else. She
didn't want the child to be ostracized, or worse, by
the community.
We asked if she'd been tested or whether the other
kids had been tested. She said her other brothers had
not been. She'd been tested a couple of years back and
insisted she knew how to protect herself from HIV, but
the evidence that this could not be true was the five
month old bundle now in her arms.
I couldn't figure out how an eight-year-old boy could
be HIV-positive until Vanessa reminded me that she had
suspected his mother had died of AIDS and that
Ayirwanda's youngest sibling had also died many years
before. This just hit me square in the face and in my
heart.
I suddenly felt incredibly helpless but also in awe of
this young woman with two of her own kids and her four
younger brothers to take care of. Here she was, the de
facto mother, not by choice but by sheer necessity and
I was struck by how protective she was of these kids.
She was intent on having Ayirwanda lead as normal a
life as possible (if any of these circumstances at all
could be called "normal"), protecting him from their
community and what he would go through if people,
including himself, discovered he was positive.
And I watched as he played with his brothers and
realized how utterly hopeless this situation was for
this kid, that he likely would never see his 20th
birthday and probably not even his 15th.
We had brought them 5 kilos of dried beans (protein)
and I began searching through my bag to see if I had
anything else. I gave one of the kids a pen, they all
went nuts, so I scrounged further and found a couple
more which I gave to them. Then I saw some Eclipse
gum. I pulled that out and gave it to them. It was
hilarious. They each took a piece but before they'd
even really started chewing, Alphonsina and one of the
others spit it out! I guess they didn't like it.
We couldn't stay long as Vanessa had to head back to
Kampala. So we took lots of pictures and let the kids
play with the cameras and take some pictures. As we
started packing up to leave, I told them I'd come back
and asked them what they'd like me to bring. Their
answer: rice, beans, bread, sugar (a luxury) and some
clothes. I looked at these kids, their clothes in
tatters, but probably the only ones they had, their
feet bare. I wanted to take them all with me. But the
reality was that even if I could help this group of 7,
there were still thousands more just like them.
The 10-year-old, Bariwanda, clung to Vanessa, begging
her to take him to Kampala with her. He was the one
that had first spotted Vanessa when we arrived and the
one that read her name aloud as she wrote it even
though he'd never had a day of school in his life.
I promised to come back before I left and as we got
into the car, I emptied the contents of my bag handing
them a pack of Kleenex and a bottle of water. They
pointed to the English-language newspaper that Vanessa
had picked up in town that morning. She passed it
through the window and they grabbed it, almost ripping
it to shreds they were so eager. I wondered what they
were going to do with it.
We had spent just under two hours with Alphonsina's
family, but those two hours, I think, will stay with
me forever.
We finally headed out. My heart was heavy. I felt so
incredibly weighed down, with what exactly I don't
know. I felt useless, hopeless but also somewhat
satisfied and relieved that Vanessa had found this
family intact and alive. And that, I guess, was more
than we could have hoped for.
I hope you're all well.
Michelle
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