There are seasons that return not with weather, but with memory. For survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, April to early July is such a season. Beginning on April 7, Rwanda enters 100 days of remembrance, a time when grief resurfaces, and silence carries weight. This year marks the 32nd commemoration. And for the first time, I am experiencing it away from Kigali, a distance that has brought a different kind of reflection, one that feels both heavy and deeply personal. Like many others during this period, I find myself walking more slowly, speaking more softly, carrying the memory of all I lost, my mother, my siblings, and many relatives, among the more than one million lives taken in just one hundred days. We remember the families broken, the futures stolen, the children who never grew up. In 1994, I was in my twenties, a young teacher in Shangi Sector, Nyamasheke District, full of hope. Then the genocide against the Tutsi began, and every certainty dissolved. What followed was a darkness I could never have imagined. On April 10, I faced death for the first time. A neighbour raised his weapon toward me. Terrified, I whispered to him, The Bible says do not kill. Something shifted in him. He lowered his arm and let me go. He took my watch, but not my life. Many of my relatives were killed that same day, across different parts of Rwanda. Weeks later, on April 29, we sought refuge in Shangi Church, believing it would protect us. It did not. The Interahamwe militia stormed the sanctuary. I still hear the screams, the footsteps, the desperate prayers, until everything fell silent. I survived by what I can only call the grace of God. A young man who had been in my brother's class came to search me for money — my brother was among the family members we had lost just days earlier, on April 10. People knew I was a teacher; they assumed I had something worth taking. As he searched through my pockets, the militia were killing on the other side of the church. In that instant, someone nearby was struck down, and their body fell over mine. I lay still beneath them, alive, but surrounded by death. In that moment, I understood how thin the line between life and death had become. After the Genocide, I moved to Kigali with my two young sisters, determined to rebuild. But fear settled deep within me. I could not go back to the place that had once been my home. For years I stayed away. I attended memorials, honoured those we lost, but avoided the land where our house once stood. When I briefly returned in 1996, there was nothing left, no walls, no ruins, not even a trace of the life we had lived. It felt as though the earth itself had erased us. I left and told myself I would never return. And yet, over time, something began to shift. Memories softened. I began to remember not only the violence, but the life that came before it, the laughter in our yard, the river where we fetched water, the quiet beauty of sunsets over the lake. Those memories stayed with me, gently, persistently. In 2022, I went back. Together with my younger sister and a cousin, we made a promise to each other: we would remember our loved ones not by how they died, but by how they lived. The road to Shangi is steep, and so were the emotions. But something in me had changed, something that held firmer than the fear that had kept me away for nearly three decades. When we reached the place where our home once stood, the land was being cultivated by others. The past had moved on. But standing there, I did not collapse under the weight of it. I felt, more than anything, a quiet calm, as though I had finally caught up with something I had been running from for years. That evening, we attended a vigil at Shangi parish. The last time I stood in that place, I was certain I would die there. This time I stood in the same spot and felt nothing but stillness. The past had found its place within my story. Returning did not erase the pain. But it changed what the pain meant. My healing and Rwanda's are not separate stories. This country has rebuilt from unimaginable loss, and that is not a small thing. It is a reminder, for all of us who carry these memories, that survival is not the end of the story. I have not yet taken my children to see where I grew up, but I will. They need to know that their story does not begin with loss. It begins with people who loved each other, who fetched water from the same river, who watched the sun go down over the same lake, and those people are part of who they are. They need to know that what we survived does not define us. How we rise does. As this commemoration begins, this time away from home, I hold close every survivor and every Rwandan, wherever they may be. We remember together. We heal together. We rise together. Felicite Dusabe is a survivor of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. She is a Human Resources professional and mother, committed to forgiveness and resilience.
