I Am Rangawari Turitsinze

I am Rangawari Turitsinze and I am five years old. I live in Rwanda, of the Tutsi tribe, and my family is proud. Our life is hard, though not so hard as it was since people have come from outside my tribe and brought aid. I do not see those who aid us, but I go to school now, and my teacher reads my parents and me letters sent from a land far away. A woman who is not hungry sends us money for food, and for me to go to school. This makes my mother glad and my father says it gives him hope, though I do not know for what.

Like all girls from my village, my hair is coiled into knots that spring from my head and they make my mother laugh. She catches me as I run past her, and tugs them gently. “Rangawari,” she says, “your hair springs from your head like the happiness that springs from your heart.” She says my smile reminds her of sunshine and of the dawn, in the way that all mothers say these things. My father says little, as is the want of fathers, but I feel his eyes follow me and I feel the fear in his heart. When I have asked why he is afraid, he has said little, though today I know.

My dream has been to leave my tribe one day, and travel to a city far away, where I might learn to be a teacher also. I would return one day, and work in the school and marry Ashara, a boy in my class who is big and strong, whose family smiles when they see us together. Ashara says this will never happen and that he does not like girls. But my mother tells me that it is the role of women to hold our tribe together and to make babies and keep our village alive.

I hear my mother and my teacher speak of the power of women and I do not always regret not being born a man. The boys in my class tease us, and tell us that our value is only to carry the water, and to help care for the goats and the plants that the men grow. But my mother says that with no water and no plants and with hungry goats the men would not last long, and with no babies to follow them they would soon be neither strong nor weak, but instead nothing at all. I tried to explain this to Ashara once, but his father heard me and beat me soundly. My father in the end made me apologise to Ashara and his father, and I saw Ashara smirking when I looked up quickly in the middle of the speech my mother had me learn. “Say these words, Rangawari”, she said. “But do not believe them – not even for an instant. We say what we need to say to survive. We do what we need to do to remain invisible. Pity the day when you are noticed by men.”

And today that day came to my village. I was sitting outside our hut, drawing pictures of myself in the dust with sticks, and making my picture dresses from leaves. And then the air was filled with shouting. From out of the surrounding trees came many men, screaming and waving pangas with blades bigger than my head, and grabbing everyone in their path as they marched into our village. Some had guns, black and ugly, with long blades tied to their ends. I saw a soldier use his blade to run a man through as he waved his hands in front of his face and fell to his knees, begging to be left alive. I don’t think the soldier even looked at him as he pierced him through the neck, then used his panga to chop his head in one hard swing from his body. I tried to run but my feet felt like they were stuck to the ground with the sap we use to make the teething sticks for the village babies. The babies suck and chew and gurgle and slowly break them down till they dissolve right away. That’s how I felt – as though something in my belly had dissolved right away. I stood there, frozen, till I heard my mother screaming; “Rangawari! Rangawari! Run!” I watched her for a moment, then turned and ran as fast as I could to our school, and am hiding now under my teacher’s desk. I looked out only once, and saw my mother held from behind by two men while she screamed, bent double. It was a fear I never thought I’d see in one so strong, and it made me sick, so I hid my face, and in the end her screams went silent. Of my father there was no sign, though I saw Ashara as I ran to my hiding place, laying outside his hut, his neck cut, and his head resting in a spreading pool of blood. They had taken his clothes also, and between his legs there was a gaping wound and another pool of blood. He was dead.

They come for me now, the men with axes. I know I am all that is left, and I know my mother would be proud that I was the last to die. I am indeed clever, and would have made an excellent teacher for my village, though perhaps there are more important things to learn than numbers and letters. I do not know if my passing will be as my mother’s, slow and ugly, or as the men of my village – short and bloody - and I pray to the God of the white men that it will be fast. I hear them now, on the other side of the door. I hear them and I wonder who will remember me.

I am Rangawari Turitsinze. I am five years old and I will not see the dawn.

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Author's note:

Rangawari was one of my sponsor children when she, her family and her entire village were hacked to death in the Rwandan massacre of 1994. I've put her story here to speak for her. Her voice should be heard.

But atrocities such as these continue today. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is seeing a concerted attack against its women by military terrorists who are seeking to destroy the very fabric of this nation by destroying and demoralizing the feminine heart and soul of the Congolese culture. The Panzi Hospital is dedicated to the surgical repair of these female victims of rape and the restoration of their physical, emotional and spiritual well being. Please, open your heart and consider giving to this worthy cause. Links to information about the Panzi Hospital are listed below.

http://www.panzihospitalbukavu.org/
http://www.pmu.se/english/about/project_dr-kongo.php
http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2005/congo.asp

To donate directly, use the drop down box in this link titled "Purpose" and select 'Panzi Hospital':

http://www.pmu.se/english/donate/donation.php?pn=51450002