It was four years after the 1994 genocide against Tutsi and every other child at the orphanage was getting their names called with "your family is here for you” but this was not the case for Jean de Dieu Kamanzi.

Apart from his sisters’ names, Kamanzi didn’t even know the name of the place where his once happy family used to live.

"For my mother, I only knew one name. She had beaten me seriously when I called her by her names, and I completely forgot about her second name,” Kamanzi laughed as he explained in an interview with The New Times.

Kamanzi’s mother was killed from the family home in Kabeza a few days after the Genocide started. His father had also been killed a few days back.

"We were hiding at RAB offices in Rubirizi, which I used to think was a church. They announced that the killings had stopped and we went back home with mom and my sisters,” Kamanzi said.

Not knowing it was a trick to get the Tutsi from their hiding, the refugees returned to their homes and the Interahamwe followed them there.

Kamanzi was hiding behind his mother as she opened the door when the killers knocked.

"They said they would start with me and ordered her to get out of their way so they could kill me. She shoved me and told me to run. They shot her and she died on the spot,” Kamanzi said.

Jean de Dieu Kamanzi. / Photo by Willy Mucyo

He later reconnected with his three sisters and they decided to seek refuge elsewhere, just like every other Tutsi neighbour. They went in two pairs, with the older holding the younger.

Although Kamanzi’s memory is blurry, he thinks he lost his sisters when shots were fired at them. He ran with so many people, thinking his elder sister who was holding his hand was with them.

When they reached a quieter place, he turned and there were only strange faces. He would spend the next 27 years without any information about his immediate family members.

Kamanzi doesn’t have any recollection of how he ended up in the current Nyamagabe district, which is hundreds of kilometres away from where his parents were killed in Kigali.

He just remembers joining groups of people who were hiding from place to place and who he would go with one day wasn’t necessarily the same group he would be with the following day.

A few days after the Genocide was stopped, a well-wisher picked him and took and took him to an orphanage in the former Gikongoro Prefecture.

Unlike other children whose families came looking for them, Kamanzi and a few others who didn’t even know where they were born or who they were born to, were always moving from orphanage to another.

Kamanzi initially lived with hope that his elder sisters would come get him at the orphanage until he gave up. He moved from one orphanage to another – five of them – until a lady who taught at one of the orphanages decided to adopt him.

She sent him to her relatives who lived in Nyaruguru who raised him with their children, took him to school and gave him a sense of belonging.

"They treated me like their own and raised me well. I am really grateful,” he said.

While Kamanzi’s life changed when his teacher adopted him, he still wanted to know his roots. He described to The New Times that the thought of not knowing a single relative or where to ask from almost drove him to the brink.

All attempts to search led to dead ends.

"There reached a time when I couldn’t sleep. I decided it was time for me to be human; to know my roots,” Kamanzi said.

In 2021 when he graduated college, he got in touch with a local YouTuber and shared his story. It only took hours until his sisters started calling.

"I would pick and they would ask me: ‘Is this Kamanzi’? I said I was, and they would cry and hang up. They did it several times until a cousin called and came to pick me so I could meet them,” Kamanzi said.

He couldn’t believe that he had waited 27 years to find his family and it only took hours after he decided to share his story.  

"Even birds had nests, but I didn’t even know where I was born. This would hurt me so much and I would lose my mind over it,” he said.

But then the day he was waiting for had come. And he was not only going to know his relatives’ names. He was going to see his sisters in flesh and blood. They were going to spend days and nights together reminiscing on their childhood.

"It was amazing, with so much tears and wondering how such a thing could happen when you thought that person was dead and then there they are,” he added.

Kamanzi was shown where their family house was located, although it was no more. He also got to meet other members of his extended family and according to him, this is when he became human again.

Surprising details of how close he was to his family includes the fact that Kamanzi and his sisters lived in Kigali; Gikondo and Kicukiro, and that in university, he shared a class with one of them.

Kamanzi is not the first to reunite with his family after decades through social media. While countless Genocide survivors who were young have no clue on where their families lived or who they were, social media such as WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube have tremendously helped some find their families.

For someone who was part of the sole survivors’ group (Nyakamwe), Kamanzi believes his story should encourage other people not to give up the search for their families.

He also says he hasn’t fully believed the reunification- which he refers to as a miracle, but he is living each day as it comes and happy to finally know his family wasn’t wiped out.

"People should support Genocide survivors because each one of us is facing different problems, and sometimes we feel alone, which should not be the case,” he added.

Kamanzi and others who have reunited with their families decades later remain among the lucky few who at least remembered their names or the names of people in their families.