my name is Grace maka Sakura 38 I'm married and have a daughter she's five my name is Manuela I guess I can start with my life in Ronda before the genocide I had a happy childhood was very happy like any other child grew up I came from a big family of eleven siblings so lots of kids and the genocide when the genocide happened I was at home with my parents I was 13 when the genocide happened I was home with my parents and the first memories I remember of the genocide is of my father the
look on my father's face the morning of April 7th I believe yeah the morning of April 7 when he heard the news of what had happened and the reason I remember that image or the look of my father's face is because my father was always a happy person I remember as a child I remember my father being a happy person a smiling person and that day he wasn't he was not smiling at all he was not happy something was troubling him I came to find out a letter you know what had happened so in that
moment my father that morning my father left with my uncles and my older brother and that will be the last time we saw them we stayed home with my mom eventually we had to leave their home go in there hiding in the bushes and then we'll come home at night we did that for some time and she was no longer we were no longer able to do that and were no longer about to do that because my home was burned down when they couldn't find my father they burned our home down on the burner house
down we had to go to we were running from home to home trying to find anyone who were willing to hide us so we went to a home the man was willing to hire us we stayed there with him for some time and I was with my mom at that time still with my mom and my siblings and going back a little bit as the memories now come to me I remember there I guess the last meal that my mom made for us because I remember she cooked for us that day she cooked for us
and I don't know it's because the last meal we had with her but I remember being so good yeah so we went to the to that men's home and we were hiding there for some time but eventually when the people the killers the property I found out he was hiding people they will come a search so when they came to search who tell us to go hide we'll go hide we used to hide behind the bushes or ever wherever possible you can go and so we'll hide and I tonight will come to him to his
home we did that until we couldn't do it anymore one time they came to search and we are in our separate ways and that was the last time I saw my mom alive actually that was the last time I ever saw my mom because we never saw her dead or alive we never found her body or her remains her and my two younger brothers that hit she was with although in my heart I believe I believe one of them is out there and I have always had that feeling I never left let that feeling go
I always feel like someone is out there so to continue the story from there we were in our separate ways eventually I met my siblings my younger sibling a brother my younger sister her name is Leticia my brother's name is Joe eventually found ourselves in another hiding place so we would do that we hide from places to places until no longer we were no longer about to hide there and then eventually nobody was willing to hire us so we found ourselves back to my uncle's home and we're all hiding there with like 15 other people
family members like aunts uncles cousins sorna uncles aunts and cousins in one night were hiding there one night they came to kill and where we were hiding someone knocked on the door and they asked us to come out made us line up and remember one of our aunts offering money so they can spare our lives and they agreed they said yeah you give us money we do nothing happened to you but was a lie he gave them she gave them the money and ditch and she was the first to be killed they killed her they
killed her daughter who was holding on to her Francine I remember beautiful little girl she I think I want to say she was like five or four and they killed her they killed the mom and then became chaos we all start running we realize no they're not going to spare our lives they killed the other ants in the children and then for me I got hit in the back of my head with like a baseball bat kind of a weapon and I got hit in the back of my head I fell to the ground and
I pretended I was dead and in that process when I was still on the ground a young man was killed and this young man used to work for a home in our home but he was also a Tutsi they killed him and he fell on top of me and so I lay there I pretend to be dead I could I never I tried my hardest so they were not noticed that I was still alive I'll stay breathing and it it helped that it was at night I think it was not easy for them to see
or maybe they were not as alert to see who this dead or alive at that time so I survived that night thinking I'm the only one who survived it was so quiet so they killed enough that they killed I went to my uncle's home to go take things out of the home but that they used to usually first kill the people and then they'd take their things so while they were rooting taking things out of the home they heard the baby cry my aunt's had a baby on her back they killed her but the baby
did not die so they came back to finish that's their term they said to finish him off they came they killed him and the left and I remain on that ground for some time until I felt they were safe to move I moved into the home into the house I stayed there until the morning when the Sun came up and realized like seeing the number of dead in the compound and then I heard a sound I heard like foot footsteps and the first step towards my younger sister Leticia she was not hurt but she had
she had been behind the house the whole time she came from behind the house and the look on her face is shocked I just remember vividly like prophase being shocked in shock and then I heard we heard another sound and then we were both you know scared and then it was realized my brother also survived but he had injuries his hand was almost cut off his shoulder had a wound from like I think a spear and then my cousins two of my cousins also survived by survived was really bad the head injuries he was cut
so many places in the head that's eventually he died from his wounds but why were there his his sister also was there she had the machete cut her through her face like that and she also had injuries on her head my dress I remember being fully covered in blood my head felt like ten kilos I felt really heavy but went on the streets and they killed the people are the roadblocks they were shocked to see us I think they probably thought I was dead people walking across my cousin's head is wide open my brother's bleeding
my head so they saw us and they said no no we don't want your blood on our hands and say you better go before the others come back when they come back they will kill you while we were on that roadblock I remember the French like a French convoy of or of police it's not police but military vehicle come and someone talking to them in French trying to plea for for for them to take us but they wouldn't take us when they left the guide told us who was on the roadblock he said you better
go if you don't go they'll kill you and they're coming so we left from there and we went our separate ways our cousin or two cousins went on their own because they wanted to go to their mom's side of the family tried to find out if they can stay there we went to another home where we thought it was a friend of the family was a Hutu we thought we can stay there and when we got there he was very well coming who was happy to see us he took us in and we stayed there
for some time but right away they had to dress my brother in like a dress they had to make him look like a boy a girl and we stayed there and people would their perpetrators that will come now going back a little bit he was a Hutu but he was moved to a Tutsi he had children a more mixed so they were the Hutus of who are coming to search the home they will come and search the home and they never leave so what would they used to make us sit with all the children and
let them search and then would they leave but my brother was so scared one on one occasion he went and ran under the bed and then something told me like to take him out and I took him out and moments later they came and searched and they put like a spear or a sword of some sort under the bed and the same place he had been if we had not taken him out they probably killed him and killed us all so realizing all this you know so we survived that we stayed there with him for
some time I don't I can't say how many days eventually we ended up in a place called Rivero where RPF the Tutsi army had taken over so they came to take us they came to took us from the womb the RPF the Tutsi took us from the home rescued us from the home took us to Rivero but it was not safe to stay there so we had to move to another location where another place could see any day we stayed there for some time but even there was not safe because they are still throwing bombs
and there actually when we got there some people died there thinking they had survived so from there we went to the to the camps there Fujiko I don't know if I call a refugee camp but the camps in in goombah but before we got there someone recognized us and said I know your uncle your uncle survived he's with his family in goombah so when we went we went directly to my uncle and stayed with him and when we were there we stayed obviously we stayed in a comeback to the war was finished and when the
war was when the war ended we came back to the capital in Kigali and we stayed with him we lived with them but my sister had an older sister who was already in Canada and that time when they found out that was survived they started the process of trying to get us our papers to go to Canada in 94 before the year ended we ended up we went to Kenya to start the process of going to Canada so we spent another year in Kenya before we went to Canada in 1995 and when we got to
Canada sometimes I tell people some people the genocide the last center for a hundred days approximately a million Tutsis were killed and in a hundred days and that's bad you know that you cannot describe what that means but for me sometimes I say that was only the beginning for an orphan like myself that was only the beginning of the struggle there followed and I feel sometimes we talk about the genocide and then it's as if it stops when the war ended but it did not stop there because I actually feel that during that time of
the genocide somehow were able to to survive in the moment but when you no longer in that survival mode the reality hits you that you realize why really what it all meant realizing they were your parents are no longer alive both my parents and when we left to run that we never buried any of them when I left Rwanda in 94 those still dead bodies on the streets there are still mass graves so we were kind of taken away from this place but that place never left me so I struggled and it was an internal
struggle because now I was taken from a place where everybody experienced what I experienced to a place where nobody knew what I experienced except for my siblings so when I stepped out of the home when I went to school nobody knew so we the struggle you had was internalized and it's another layer of struggle because also the family that you go into they themselves don't know how to help you there are if we know it to stare all day sometimes don't wanna open up there because they probably think they were hurt you more than helping
you you know so I went through a phase of a good ten years of internalizing the pain I cried myself to sleep a lot in those 10 years um I had a really bad breakdown in high school and was in English in an English class and an English class were reading a book I think it's called To Kill a Mockingbird if I remember but all I remember was about the violence and the things that were happening in the book and I remember in the class for the class my classmates it was just a book and
then after the book we watched the movie but for me I had I was having visuals like memories of what happened so I that was the first time I told anybody that what happened like the school didn't know the school what I was going to didn't know that we had experienced the genocide so when I I cry when I broke down my English teacher asked me why I opened up to him and then he took me to the counselor's office and then the console suggested that I see I will seek counseling and then so the
accounts were arranged for counseling outside the school but my family did not understand it the same so I was not allowed to go for the counseling so again I had to internalize my feelings I had to internalize where I was like the images and now I can actually speak about it because since I had my baby I'm feeling like I'm starting to heal at that time I had a lot of guilt I had a lot of guilt of why did I survive and they did it and that's something that never goes away you know
