My name is Josephine. I was 17 and there were 8 in my family. I am the only one to survive the war. I did not know how I survived at the time, but now I give all the glory to God for protecting me and giving me discernment on what to do in every situation…Here is the story of how I escaped the Rwandan Genocide…
They were coming for us, at this time there were 15 of us hiding in my house, when we heard the soldiers coming we ran. They caught a few that were too slow and started beating them and began shooting at the rest of us. I had been shot on the top of my shoulder; I thought I was dead for sure…They told the soldiers to finish us all off and then bury us in a pit, and cover us with dirt. This was only because people were coming around and photographing and the soldiers didn’t want anyone to know what they were really doing. I think I was just in complete shock because something inside of me was sure I was dead, but something else was telling me that I should act as if I were dead, in order to survive. I did not know which was real. I could not move my body, I had no control over anything and before I knew it I was being thrown into a pit on top of other dead bodies and covered with a small layer of dirt. I stayed there, unable to move for around 5 hours until it was around 1 in the morning. I regained strength, not much, but just enough to get up and see what was going on…
I looked around and there were tons of dead bodies, some of them covered with dirt so they couldn’t be seen, there were also dogs that began feeding off of their flesh and would not eat them if the dirt covered them. There was a 3 year old still alive in the pile of bodies and I found him and carried him with me as I tried to cover more bodies with dirt. Then something inside of me told me I needed to leave the area quickly, so I fled with the child to the coffee plantation. I stayed there for a few days, surviving on only the dew from the leaves in the early morning, and trying to find a way to nurse the baby.
While hiding at the coffee plantation the soldiers came back and found the refugees there…they took the baby and killed it on the spot. Then they were called away by their commanding officers and I was safe again, but I had lost the child. I remember the next time they came back for us, they started beating us all with sticks…They treated us as though we were not human, but referred to us as ‘cockroaches’and wanted to kill us all.
During this time we started to hear shooting, and I was very scared again, I thought for sure this time would be my last. I was weak and had barely any energy to survive…I had lost a lot of blood and had almost given up. My family had all been murdered and even the baby I tried to save was gone. But this time the soldiers shooting were firing at the people beating us…The new government had come in and I was saved. Not many people escaped compared to how many people were tragically killed, but God rescued me. He kept me just strong enough to survive. And now, even though I am sometimes haunted by my nightmares, I have found happiness and joy in my life because the Lord has placed it upon my heart. I now have a family of my own, my husband and my 3 children. I married at 21 and have a good life. If you want to pray for me, I would like to have enough money to go back to school and finish my education, I pray that my night terrors are gone for good, and that my husband, who is catholic, will find Jesus and become a Christian like me.
