By Ruby Thomas, Record Staff Writer
When Louise Nyiramulinda fled Rwanda with her husband and two young children to escape a genocide more than 20 years ago, she left behind every member of her extended family.
Today, she said, she’s found a new family in the African community that has gathered annually — for 10 years now — to pray for the victims of violence, war and genocide in Africa.
Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz celebrated the 10th “Memorial Service for the Victims of Violence, War, and Genocide in Africa and the African Diaspora,” on April 14 at St. Thomas More Church in South Louisville. The service brought together natives of Rwanda and Burundi, who have found new lives in Louisville far from the scarring violence that left many of their loved ones dead.
The prayer service — organized by the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Office of Multicultural Ministry — has helped in the healing process, Nyiramulinda said during an interview April 12.
“When you’re praying together you realize that what unites us is more than what divides us,” she said. That community has become her “relatives.” “You can relate because they went through the same things.”
Genocide
In April 1994 a complex combination of political unrest and long-standing rivalry between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes came to a boiling point following the killing of the country’s president. As a result, some members of the Hutu tribe went on a three-month killing spree that left close to a million people dead.
Nyiramulinda said she had a “very good” life before the genocide. Her husband, Dr. Joseph Twagilimana — a leader in the Louisville African community — was an assistant school principal and she worked for a non-profit making a good income. They lived in a big house and had a nanny for their two daughters.
In the spring of 1994, they were busy making plans — they would buy a new house, she said. But that all changed overnight, she recalled. The day the president’s plane was shot down, her husband said to her, “If anybody suvives this, they will have a story to tell,” said Nyiramulinda. That incident set off a violent string of events that left families like Nyiramulinda’s on the run.
She and her two daughters, ages 7 and 2 at the time, hid in the convent of the church on the school grounds where her husband worked, recalled Nyiramulinda.
When the school and church were attacked, everyone in sight was killed. They knew then they had to leave the country, she said.
Finding peace
The annual prayer service at St. Thomas More commemorates the lives of those lost to genocide, war and violence, but is also a prayer for peace and forgiveness.
Finding peace after escaping the genocide in Rwanda wasn’t easy for Nyiramulinda.
The months following would take them on an escape route, on foot, from one African city to the next and, finally, across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Later, they made their way to Senegal, where they stayed for three years and had their third daughter. The family arrived in Maryland in 1998 and moved to Louisville in 1999.
The decision to create a new life in the U.S. finally brought a sense of peace, said Nyiramulinda.
She decided she could never live in Rwanda again out of fear that another violent event, such as the genocide, would occur. So, she set about building a new life — learning English and finding a new career, none of which was easy.
Her seven siblings live in Rwanda. So did her parents until their deaths a few years after the genocide. Part of her heart will always remain in Rwanda, with her relatives, she said.
Since fleeing, she has gone back to Rwanda twice to visit — in 2008 and 2015. Returning to her homeland was an “overwhelming” and “strange” experience, she said. Nyiramulinda’s oldest daughter — who was 7 when the family fled — has returned to live in Rwanda. During a family visit to the homeland, the young woman “fell in love” with the country and decided she’d live there one day, said Nyiramulinda.
Forgiving
Some of the Africans she worships with at St. Thomas More witnessed the killing of their loved ones in Rwanda, said Nyiramunlinda. She didn’t and can’t even imagine what that would have been like, she said. She may have had an easier time with forgiveness because of this, she noted.
“I don’t put a face to the people who did that. I don’t have any hatred for a particular person,” said Nyiramulinda. She blames the “system” of corruption in her native country. “Unfortunately that system is still there.”
She believes, she said, that the people who tried to kill her and her family were “being used” and told to carry out the atrocities.
Nyiramulinda finally has the stability that had evaded her family for years. She works for the Jefferson County Public School system as a supervisor in the early childhood division. She and her family worship at St. Thomas More, where she has found comfort in the monthly French Masses, she said.
Praying in her native language “fulfills” her and takes her deeper into her relationship with God, she said.
