Emeliana Mukaruziga, 79, survived the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi while trapped in Kigali and, according to her, liberation did not erase the pain of loss, but it gave genocide survivors something many thought impossible: the chance to walk freely, grieve openly, and begin again.

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For Mukaruziga, the first sign that life had returned was not food, shelter, or money.

It was the simple act of walking on a road without fear.

"We always wondered whether a day would come when we could walk freely, without hiding or being chased," recalls the genocide survivor from Matyazo Sector in Huye District.

"After liberation, I could sit by the road in Kabuga and watch people and vehicles move. That freedom meant more than anything,” said the member of Intwaza, an association of elderly genocide survivors, particularly older women who survived the 1994 Genocide and support one another.

She had travelled to Kigali for business on April 6, 1994, when the Genocide against the Tutsi began, separating her from her family in the former Ngoma Commune in Butare. During the genocide, she lost her only children – a boy and a girl.

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Like thousands of other people, she sought refuge at Sainte Famille Parish with her two sisters.

At Sainte Famille, where Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, a head priest who was later – in 2006 – convicted in absentia by a military tribunal for rape and aiding militias during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, displaced people were told to register on two separate lists: one for those who wished to join the government-controlled zone and another for those who wanted to join the Inkotanyi (RPA). The announcement came from the Prefect [mayor] of Kigali, Tharcisse Renzaho, accompanied by UNAMIR peacekeepers, who warned that fighting was approaching and that everyone would have to choose.

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It is reported that Munyeshyaka participated in the massacre of the Tutsi at the Sainte Famille Church and its surroundings. On various dates between April 8 and the first week of July 1994, at the Sainte Famille Parish, at Saint Paul Church, and at Centre d’Etudes des Langues Africaines (CELA) in Kigali, Munyeshyaka participated in meetings held to organise the massacres and kidnappings of Tutsi civilians with Renzaho, and other people including Lt Col Laurent Munyakazi (later Major General), other government soldiers and Interahamwe militiamen. In 1994, Munyakazi was the commanding officer of Groupe Mobile, an elite unit tasked with guarding strategic areas in Kigali.

"I told my sisters that returning home would not change anything because we believed everyone there had been killed," she says. "I said we should join the new Rwanda [joining RPA] because we felt there was nothing left for us to return to."

Three days later, trucks arrived.

About 10 vehicles carried those who had registered "to join Inkotanyi” toward Kabuga, while others who had chosen the government side were taken to Gitarama and later fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the time, the RPA facilitated a structured exchange and rescue operation by swapping captured government soldiers and their family members in exchange for securing the release of trapped Tutsi civilians.

When Mukaruziga&039;s group reached the RPA position in Kabuga, a town located about 20 minutes from Kigali on the Rwamagana highway, relief mixed with frustration boiled over.

"We asked them, 'aren't you ashamed? We were dying while you were right here,'" she recalls. "They just welcomed us. There was nothing else to say."

Looking back now, she says the anger did not last.

"I was sad, but I was also grateful," she says. "They had risked everything to save us. It was just frustration in the moment."

Kabuga had become a reception point for many survivors. There, they found safety for the first time in months, along with food, temporary shelter, and counselling as they began to process what they had endured.

According to Mukaruziga, material things felt meaningless after months of terror.

"The shops were open and we could get food, but by then those things had little value. All we wanted was to live."

One night, RPA soldiers told them to leave their houses because they were being taken back to Kigali. She asked a soldier why those whose homes in Kabuga were still standing were being sent back to their ruined houses, while people like her, who had nothing left, were not. She was informed that she could not return to her home in Ngoma because the area had not yet been liberated.

A few days later, she says, the RPA established its government. Survivors who had gone ahead to Kigali returned with news that people and vehicles were moving freely again, with nowhere off-limits. Encouraged, she made her way back to Sainte Famille.

What stayed with her most through it all was the feeling of safety.

"Whenever I saw RPA soldiers passing, I knew we were safe. For the first time, I could rest without fear."

As she sat outside an RPA office watching vehicles bring in more survivors, a man approached her. It was Mathias, an acquaintance who had returned from the refugee camps in Burundi. He brought the first glimmer of hope she had received in months: some of her nieces and nephews had survived.

"When I heard that my children were gone but some of my nieces and nephews were alive, I asked the RPA to take me back."

She returned to find her home destroyed and her community shattered. Eventually, she found her surviving relatives, including her 12-year-old nephew, and his younger sister, both of whom had made their way back from the refugee camps in Burundi.

Starting over was difficult.

"I wasn't afraid to tell RPA soldiers what I needed," she says.

An RPA soldier who she recalls was called Muhoozi helped her find a house, and she gradually rebuilt a household around the young relatives who survived.

"The home meant everything to me, but I could not relate to it because I had no one left. So, I created another home with my nieces and nephew."

Grief and loneliness lingered for years, she says, but remembering that others had risked their lives to save survivors gave her strength.

"I lost part of myself during the war, but resilience, unity, and gratitude pushed me to continue living."

In the early 2000s, she was given a cow through Girinka, the government's One Cow per Poor Family programme. When that cow later died, she saved enough to buy another one, and eventually a second. The cows now help sustain her family's livelihood.

Today, Mukaruziga lives with the nephew she raised after the genocide in the home she worked hard to buy.

Mukaruziga says her nephew, his wife, and the couple’s child are a living reminder of the family she rebuilt from unimaginable loss. Looking at her grandchildren today, Mukaruziga sees both the pain of what was lost and the possibility of what was rebuilt.

"We became each other's parents, children, and family. That is how we survived."

As Rwanda marks the 32nd Liberation Day, she says, the country's recovery depended not only on ending the killings but also on rebuilding trust, fighting hatred, and helping survivors live again.

Her message to young people is direct.

"Never listen to people who spread hatred. That is what led to the tragedy we experienced. Protect the unity we have today and do not allow Rwanda to go back to where it came from."