The people who, as children, survived the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, by being hidden at the Gisimba orphanage in Nyamirambo - Kigali, have eulogized Damas Gisimba Mutezintare, as a person to whom they are greatly indebted.
Gisimba passed on early Sunday morning at the Nyarugenge District Hospital due to kidney problems.
ALSO READ: Damas Gisimba: Genocide hero dies at 61
He was the Director of the Gisimba Memorial Center, a former orphanage in the Nyamirambo suburbs of Kigali where, 29 years ago, he, against huge odds, saved hundreds of orphans at the height of the 1994 Genocide.
ALSO READ: Gisimba on managing largest orphanage during Genocide
He was acclaimed for hiding up to 405 people, many of them children, during the genocide.
One of the people who survived at the orphanage, Johnson Mutibagirana, 37, eulogised Gisimba as an extra-ordinary person who made him who he is.
Not an ordinary person
"A person who saves you from genocide is not an ordinary being. He made me who I am, he moulded me,” Mutibagirana told The New Times, on Monday, June 5.
Mutibagirana was nine years old when the genocide started in 1994.
After his mother was killed, in Nyamirambo, the youngster was taken to the Gisimba orphanage where he and others survived from.
ALSO READ: How the Gisimba Memorial Centre came to be
He saw Gisimba fight to save their lives; trying various ways to ensure that the marauding Interahamwe, who were then hunting for the Tutsi in every corner of the country, didn’t hurt them.
"When the Interahamwe would attack the orphanage, the adults would hide but the children stayed around. Then Gisimba would face the Interahamwe. He had no weapon but he knew how to protect us. Sometimes he would offer the attackers food, or money, to make sure that they go their way and not kill the children. It is hard to explain how we survived; it was a miracle,” Mutibagirana noted.
"He loved children. People that survived at the orphanage can tell you how they appreciate him.”
Sonia Mugabo, a Kigali-based fashion designer who also survived at the orphanage as a child, tweeted: "Forever indebted to Gisimba for paying the ultimate sacrifice for all of us children at the Gisimba Memorial Center during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
"May God receive him among his own.”
ALSO READ: Today, I will share my testimony – Sonia Mugabo
On the night of April 8, 1994, Sonia was taken to the orphanage, located only about 100 meters from their home, by her father.
Within a month, just like all the children at the orphanage, Sonia was malnourished.
It was hard for Gisimba to find enough quality food for the children. But through all the pain and suffering, hundreds of children survived the bloody 100 days.
At the time, while Gisimba struggled to ward off Interahamwe, his wife [Béatrice Mukandanga] who at the time also had a one-year-old child, their firstborn, was always kept busy helping care for the babies we had.
"When the babies became many she devised means to ensure they do not become dehydrated. We would mix salt and sugar in boiled water and give them. We had about 40 babies,” Gisimba told The New Times in April 2019.
Gisimba would venture outside and face off with Interahamwe while his wife, and some other mothers who had taken refuge at the orphanage with their babies, cared for the babies without mothers and other small children.
Former footballer Eric Murangwa, whose two siblings survived at the orphanage, eulogised Gisimba as a friend, neighbor, big brother, and hero.
"His courage and bravery during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, where more than 400 lives, mainly young people including my two siblings, were saved at his orphanage centre, will remain among the most significant legacies of all time in Rwanda and beyond,” Murangwa tweeted.
Ibuka, an umbrella for genocide survivors’ associations, said it will always remember Gisimba’s good heart, and pledged to uphold his legacy.