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After years of separation, families are restored
Sunday, September 24, 2000
By Anita Srikameswaran, Post-Gazette Staff Writer with pictures by Martha Rial, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Staff Photographer
On this warm Friday afternoon in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, the airport was virtually deserted. The regular flights from Belgium and other African cities come and go in the evenings. But there was one special flight coming in this afternoon, arriving from Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo.
The passengers from that plane began to come through the gate. A slightly built white man greeted people enthusiastically in French. An African woman grinned and bustled about efficiently.
And then came three teen-age Rwandan boys sporting new clothes, sunglasses and running shoes, who seemed determined to play it cool.
They were anything but.
The three were coming back to Rwanda for the first time in years to be reunited with relatives, after living in refugee camps in Congo-Brazzaville following the 1994 genocide in their homeland.
The finery they were wearing was paid for with the equivalent of $30 U.S. that each child received as a kind of relocation allowance.
They were masking their anxiety behind unsmiling expressions because some of the adults in the camps had told them that Rwanda was a frightening, war-ravaged place with no cars, no jobs and no men.
This propaganda was disseminated by ousted genocidaires, the men who had participated in the mass killings in Rwanda six years before. Going back to that country would mean facing punishment for their crimes. Such men don't want others to return, either, because foreign aid is available in the camps only as long as innocent victims are there, too.
It is not a simple thing to get children to reunite with families they have not seen for as many as five years.
They have to be convinced that there really is a family there, one that really wants them. And they have to be persuaded that Rwanda is a place with enough food and hope to make it worth leaving what is familiar to them, what they have come to call home.
A child who goes to the unaccompanied children's center in Congo-Brazzaville has to trust the workers from the International Rescue Committee with information like names and old addresses. Those facts are sent back to Kigali-based staff who handle family tracing.
Elias Rugenza and his team may spend days in an area trying to locate a particular relative. Every lead must be followed. Sometimes that means tracking people down at their workplaces, in the market or at church.
Family members, who are usually shocked to learn that a loved one is alive and could come home, have a critical role to play. Rugenza has them write letters about their lives and entreaties for the child to return. He tries to get notes from parents, siblings, extended family members, close friends -- anyone the child may wish to hear from.
Even that is sometimes not enough.
Rugenza videotapes the relatives at their homes, interviewing them so they will talk about how much they want the child to come home, about their living circumstances, about the safety and hope for the future that exists in Rwanda.
The tapes are then sent to Congo-Brazzaville so the child can see what Mom and Dad and the house look like and hear their relatives' voices.
Once young people finally decide to go back to Rwanda, they are put on flights in a United Nations-chartered plane like the one that arrived this day in Kigali.
Just because they board the plane, though, doesn't mean they have resolved all their doubts.
During the ride to the International Rescue Committee's Kigali office, the three teen-agers looked around at the bustling streets, the car and truck traffic, the nonchalance of pedestrians. They said nothing, but Rescue Committee worker Christian Michaud knew they were relieved. It wasn't nearly as bad as they'd feared.
Soon, the boys relaxed and started smiling. They no longer looked like hard-bitten young toughs.
Two of the boys would be reunited with their families during the following weekend. But this very afternoon, Janviar Zihabaramye, 16, would see his parents for the first time in four years.
The drive into the family's Kigali neighborhood became a sort of homecoming parade, sans ticker tape.
The van first stopped when Janviar saw his brother Alfred riding by on a bicycle. Janviar hopped out of the van and joyfully greeted his brother, who happily lifted his bike into the back of the convoy's pickup truck and climbed in himself to follow Janviar home.
From this point on, the news of the boy's return preceded him as neighbors shouted to each other and raced ahead of the convoy, which moved slowly because of bad roads and foot traffic. Another of his four brothers boarded the pickup and there were a few more stops so that old family friends could greet the boy. Rugenza videotaped the encounters so others could see the unrestrained welcome and be enticed to come home, too.
If that didn't convince them, surely the love and joy that was showered on Janviar by his parents would. He basked in it, a broad grin now a permanent feature of his face.
When his turn came to be videotaped, Janviar said earnestly to the camera, "There are no problems here."
Since the reunification program's inception in July 1999, more than 85 young people have returned to Rwanda.
Some of the children are old enough to remember something of the families and homes they left behind after the genocide.
Then there are the children who were toddlers or even infants during the genocide, and who may have only vague memories of places and people, or none at all.
The orphanages that house these children hold yet another group: children whose families were so poor, their parents sent them to institutions in hopes of giving them a better life. Of course, that meant cutting ties with their families as they masqueraded as orphans.
"With everything falling apart and poverty increasing, and a center open and willing to provide your child two meals a day, clothing and an education, a lot of families sent their kids" to orphanages, said Bridget DeLay, technical advisor for the Rescue Committee's child and youth programs. Most Rwandans perceive children from the centers to be privileged, she added.
Now, however, funding reductions are pressuring orphanages, also known as unaccompanied children centers, to close.
Even before the orphanages were threatened with shutdowns, most children separated from their families over the past six years had been reunited with a parent or other relatives, or unofficially adopted into new homes.
When refugees streamed back into Rwanda after the genocide, for instance, relief agencies like the Red Cross were able to create huge databases and set up transportation so that 80 percent of the minors separated from their families could rejoin them, DeLay said.
The children still in the centers were those who had no luck with such traditional, large-scale tracing efforts, those sent there because of extreme poverty, and those whose physical or mental disorders, or both, had ostracized them.
One difficulty in reconnecting some children with their families was that in Rwanda, people generally use their Christian and Rwandan names, but rarely use their surnames. Because of that tradition, it isn't as easy to use last names to trace families.
Before trying to find foster families for the young people who remained in the centers, DeLay decided the agency should make a final, special effort to locate any relatives left in Rwanda, because "under normal circumstances, a child is better off with the [biological] family."
So the Rescue Committee took on the task of intensive tracing, which demands a lot of legwork by staff.
If they know where a child was originally found, for example, workers may scour the area and ask a lot of questions, hoping to jog memories. Clues may be as broad as "my neighbor had a red bicycle," or "I went to school with a boy named John." The agency will often put such tidbits on the radio, and that may be enough to bring parents or other relatives forward.
"We've reunified a child by saying [on the radio] that he was wearing a long red sweater with blue buttons when he was found," DeLay said. "It's like detective work."
The Rescue Committee used this approach before closing one orphanage, and managed to find relatives for 60 percent of the children who otherwise would have gone to foster families.
It was the fifth of July, the day after Rwanda's anniversary celebrating its liberation from the government-sponsored genocide, and a lovely, sunny day for a reunion.
Brothers Samuel and Jerome Sebakunzi, 11 and 10, and Mvugebalijyana Nsabimana, 12, had been simmering with both hope and reluctance, excitement and anxiety. For six years, they had lived in centers for unaccompanied children, not knowing whether their relatives were alive or dead, or even if they were wanted.
Today, they would leave the orphanage in the village of Musha, about 45 minutes east of Kigali. Their new homes would be far away, near the town of Ruhengeri in the northwest corner of the country. The brothers were going to their grandparents' house, and the other boy would be reunited with his mother.
They had known for weeks that they would rejoin their families, but the event was delayed until they could complete the school term.
Anticipation had kept Samuel awake the night before. Jerome had slept, but had a vivid dream that when he returned home, he found his mother there, miraculously alive. Mvugebalijyana could not remember his mother or his house, though he did recall a younger brother he was eager to meet again.
The children's caretakers, known as mothers, helped them pick some clothes from the communal cubbyholes in the dormitories.
Then, they were handed the going-away package every departing child receives: Ten blank notebooks for school, pens, four plates and two cups of bright-colored plastic, soap, a jerry can for hauling water, a bucket, a hoe, mosquito netting. The items are intended to ease the economic burden on the families receiving the children.
Finally, the boys were ready to go. The other children waved and cheered as they ran as far as they could alongside the vehicle.
One little boy sat on a step and sobbed, already missing his friends, certain that he would never have a family to call his own.
After the boys had stopped in a Kigali market to purchase new outfits and shoes, the red dust and crowds fell away as their van drove into the mountainous area northwest of the capital. Here the hillsides were lush with the leaves of cassava, sweet potato, so-called Irish potato and other plants. The black soil of the region, enriched by the nutrients in the ash from eruptions of nearby volcanoes, is the most fertile in the country.
The van pulled up beside a low, mud-brick house along the roadway. Neighbors gathered to watch a tall, thin man in a flowing white robe greet the visitors and welcome his long lost grandsons.
Hugs, handshakes, tears and smiles marked the moment. Samuel and Jerome smiled shyly but said little as they joined the youngsters sitting in front of the house -- technically, their aunts and uncles.
Their grandfather, Isiaak Ntibanyendera, 65, was a preacher, or imam, in this small Muslim community. He shared this home with the younger of his two wives, 40-year-old Amina Mukashyka, and their six children. Samuel and Jerome would live here, too, although their father was the child of Isiaak and his other wife, who lived in a different house.
The boys' father died in a camp and no one is certain what happened to their mother, Isiaak said. Years ago, he and his younger wife found the boys in a Kigali orphanage and visited them, but did not have the means to support them. One day they went to visit and learned that the boys had been moved to another center. They didn't recognize the name, which indicated that the center was too far away for them to afford the trip.
When Rescue Committee workers found Isiaak and told him he could bring the boys home and the committee would help pay for their care, he was delighted.
The boys, including Mvugebalijyana, went inside the house to eat with the other children. Their first meal outside the center pleased them immensely. On the ride over, they had noted that the worst thing about the centers was the food, which was plain and unvarying because staples like cassava flour and maize were all the budget would allow. Having a family, they hoped, would mean not having to eat the same meal every day.
In return, they planned to do whatever their caregivers asked them to do without complaint. That would include following the ways of Islam, even though Samuel and Jerome had attended only Catholic churches during their orphanage stay.
After the welcome, Isiaak signed papers to show he accepted responsibility for the boys. Jerome and Samuel signed papers, too. Their lives had begun anew.
Now it was Mvugebalijyana's turn. The van headed back through Ruhengeri and into a neighborhood dense with tall banana plants and trees. A crowd noticed the vehicle and walked alongside as it made its way to a traditional round hut made of mud bricks and a thatched roof.
The boy was unsmiling and seemed almost dazed by the attention he was getting. He didn't appreciate the stares and smiles of the neighbors. And he did not seem to recognize his mother, Immaculee Akimana, 30. But she remembered him and wiped at the tears welling in her eyes.
It was a miracle of serendipity that she had found her son.
When relief workers came to the area a month before to reunite another child with his family, she ran up to the vehicle as it pulled away and asked if they might have her son. They did.
"People used to tell me that my child was dead," she said. "I didn't believe them. I dreamed of him."
Mvugebalijyana looked very different than the neighborhood children. His clothes were clean and untattered. He had new shoes on his feet. And when the papers were brought out, he signed his name, while his mother, with ink from the same pen, stamped her thumbprint on the page.
Mvugebalijyana finally smiled a little when he saw his 10-year-old brother again.
A rescue committee worker told Mvugebalijyana that he would return to check on him soon, subtly reassuring a boy who was trying to hide his fear and loneliness behind a poker face.
Some reunifications are almost perfect, while others can be unsettling, acknowleged the rescue committee's DeLay.
In the tense reunions, "there's no emotion displayed," she said. "The child is really uncertain about what is happening. He's leaving his friends. He's leaving other adults he's become attached to. He may be leaving to join his mother and father, but depending on his age, he may not know them. Or the last thing that he saw in the situation was not very positive."
The government has even been encouraging the return of children who were sent to foster parents in far richer countries, including France and Italy. Overcoming such great differences in lifestyle sounds insurmountable, but even these children are now doing well, DeLay said.
So even though intensive tracing is time-consuming and expensive, she feels strongly that it is the ethical thing to do. Even if only a few hundred children are left in refugee centers or orphanages, an effort must be made to find their relatives because they can provide the love and attention that a center cannot.
"Everyone in Rwanda is always looking toward the future, which is where I think you need to be here," DeLay said. "But for these children, their whole lives are impacted from the past. And unless there is some intervention to change it, their whole lives will be defined by the past."
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Videotapes of their families and homes can provide proof that all is well to children living in the refugee camps of Brazzaville, in the Republic of the Congo. Here, International Rescue Committee worker Elias Rugenza tapes Elie Habyarimana pleading with his three sons to return to him in Rwanda. The tape will be sent to Congo-Brazzaville and shown to the boys, whom Habyarimana has not seen in four years. Click to Photo Journal 
Mvugebalijyana Nsabimana, 12, has lived in a dormitory with other unaccompanied children for six years. Later on this day, he will be reunited with his mother, brother and a sister he has never met. Click to Photo Journal