(6/9) “The next morning, I heard people calling my name and I...

(6/9)  “The next morning, I heard people calling my name and I decided to show myself.  I was too exhausted to resist.  They told me there had been a general pardon for women and children.  And all of us who believed the rumor were taken to this place, the house of a Tutsi widow.  I found my mother and sisters when I arrived.  They were still alive, but were so weak and depressed that they could barely move.  We stayed in this house for two weeks.  There were sixteen of us here.  Then one night a soldier came and told us that we were scheduled to be executed.  My mother urged my younger sisters to run away, but none of them wanted to leave her side.  I begged Francine to escape with me.  She was the oldest.  We had a chance.  But she was too tired.  She’d been raped a few days earlier.  She told me she was ready for death.  Eighty soldiers came to the house that night.  They were carrying a list with our names.  They began grabbing people.  During the struggle, I jumped out the window and hid in a tree.  My mother was forty-eight years old.  Francine was sixteen.  Olivia was fourteen.  Noella was eleven.  Augtavienne was seven.  Claudette was four.  And Bebe was almost two.  I listened to their screams until I fainted.”
(Butare, Rwanda)