Before 1994, Immaculee Hedden Uhumuriza lived a life shaped by both ordinary routines and the underlying divisions in the country. ALSO READ: Kwibuka 32: Why survivor testimonies are vital Raised by her extended family, Uhumuriza later came to understand that her parents had fled to DR Congo during earlier periods of violence, and she endured discrimination at times that Tutsi were going through countrywide. On April 6, 1994, she had just returned from days of prayer and fasting when she found a note at home saying her father in DR Congo had died. She went to her cousin’s house in Nyamirambo to share the sad news. That evening, President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down. By morning, Kigali had changed completely. Roadblocks appeared almost instantly. Radio broadcasts began blaming Tutsi for the president’s death. Government soldiers and members of the Interahamwe militia moved through neighbourhoods. Families started disappearing. “I got stuck there,” Uhumuriza recalled in an interview with The New Times. “And then we started hearing our relatives were being killed.” ALSO READ: Kwibuka 32: Diaspora survivors reflect on memory, duty and resilience She was a devout Christian in her twenties and worked at a fashion house. She had grown up already knowing discrimination, being identified as Tutsi at school, and being insulted for who she was. “I heard hatred, I saw divisionism, but I never thought people could kill on that scale,” she said. Inside the Nyakabanda house were nine people; her cousin, the cousin’s husband, their newborn baby, relatives, a househelp, and Uhumuriza. They stayed indoors as instructed. Days passed, then they began to run out of food supplies. They reduced meals slowly, until there was almost nothing left. “Eventually we were just drinking water,” she recalled. “Sometimes even water and electricity were cut, and we could only survive on rainwater.” Outside, killings spread. Her cousin’s husband later left the house to check a nearby roadblock. He never returned. After that, fear settled differently in the house. ALSO READ: Experts on why genocide ideology continues to spread abroad Interahamwe militias began arriving repeatedly, sometimes shouting, sometimes demanding money and other valuable things, and shouting death threats. They moved through the compound as they pleased. At one point, they selected one room in the house, rocked it and began using it to store the loot from nearby homes. “They took the key and kept their things there, and would come anytime they wanted,” Uhumuriza said. “Imagine hiding in the same house where Interahamwe freely entered.” When voices approached, they would run into the garage and stay completely still. Silence became their survival. Even the baby’s cries, she says, never exposed them. “It was just God,” she said softly. One afternoon in May, a soldier climbed over the wall after finding the gate locked. Official orders required gates to remain open so armed groups could enter freely. He spotted her through the window. “What are you doing in there? Come out and I will finish your life right now,” he shouted to the terrified Uhumuriza. She stepped out and handed him her identity card, which clearly identified her as Tutsi. She already knew what that meant. Knowing that moment could be the last, she prayed. “Lord, if this is my time, receive my spirit. But if it is not, stop the evil spirit in this man,” she recalled. The soldier looked at the card. Then at her. Then at the card again. “I will come back after 45 minutes,” the man said, as he handed the ID card back with both hands, turned, and left. The househelp who saw it could not process what had just happened. “That man was ready to kill you,” she said to Uhumuriza, who still describes it as a miracle. “The name of Jesus protected me.” ALSO READ: IN PICTURES: How Kwibuka 31 in diaspora unfolded By the end of May, staying indoors was no longer safe. They decided to leave separately for Gisimba orphanage, where her cousins and the children had taken refuge. The walk that should have taken minutes stretched into hours. “The distance from our house to the orphanage should take less than 10 minutes,” Uhumuriza recalled. “But because you had to avoid the roadblocks which were everywhere—the house its self was surrounded by roadblocks and you also had to hide from people who might recognise you—it took like two hours.” Life at Gisimba orphanage Inside the centre, hundreds of people were already packed into a space built for around 60 children. “The heat hit me immediately,” she recalled. “There were people everywhere.” Mothers, children, elderly people, wounded survivors, everyone squeezed into the same rooms. “The orphanage used to host 60 children before the Genocide, but when the RPA Inkotanyi saved us, we were 475 people, you can imagine the condition we were in,” she said. There was a severe shortage of food and water. There were no mattresses left. Still, the orphanage's founder Damas Gisimba Mutezintare, refused to give people up. “But Gisimba was really nice to us, I can’t explain the times when the militias came asking for the people who were hiding in the orphanage, and he would stand in the entrance, and tell them 'all the people who are here are no different, you are not taking anyone here unless you kill me.' Uhumuriza recalls his daring stance in the face of death. Gisimba died in 2023. Carl Wilkens, an American aid worker, also moved in and out when possible, bringing water and biscuits. At one point, Gisimba disappeared after threats against him increased. Wilkens also stopped coming for days. Inside, fear deepened. “There were times when he did not make it to deliver water and the cookies because of a lot of fighting between the RPA Inkotanyi and government force.” People began to believe they would either be killed or starve to death. Then, one day, militias surrounded the orphanage preparing to attack. At that exact moment, Wilkens arrived. “When they saw the American, they withdrew,” she said. Days later, buses which Uhumuriza believes were sent by the mayor of the city after having a conversation with Wilkens, came to evacuate survivors to Saint Michel Cathedral, where they reunited with Gisimba. 'It was real, Inkotanyi had arrived' On July 4, while hiding inside the church, whispers spread that unfamiliar soldiers had been seen in Kigali. “At first I didn’t believe it,” she said. “I couldn’t understand how only 600 RPA individuals stationed in Kigali as a result of the Arusha Accord could rescue the entire city and the rest of the country.” “But it was real, the RPA Inkotanyi had arrived.” Their rescue however could not immediately erase what had come before it. “I started having survivor guilty. I kept asking myself why I had survived when so many others didn’t,” she said. “I couldn't understand why Gisimba risked his life for us, but now I think it was Ubumuntu [humanity]. If every village had someone like Gisimba, Rwanda would not have lost more than one million people in 1994.” ALSO READ: A diaspora influencer’s digital fight for memory and truth Having survived the genocide, Uhumuriza later wrote her testimony in her book Under His Mighty Hand, which she launched on May 1. She said she wrote the book as a way of preserving what she lived through and keeping the memory alive and recognizing the “grace that hide me.” I wish Rwanda could be where it is now without going through what it went through,” Uhumuriza said. She added that she encourages survivors to write and share their stories because speaking out helps health the trauma. “When you speak, something reduces, you are no longer locked in that cage of the past,” she said.
