The Blue Sweater extract about poverty and experiencing the tribal genocide in Rwanda
The head soldier turned and ordered the rest of his makeshift squad to kill the women and children.
"I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit then," Honorata said, her eyes turned downward. "I yelled to everyone to drop to the ground. The soldiers kept shooting, shooting, until they thought we were dead. Then they left, not checking to see who was alive. They didn't take our possessions. Maybe they knew we had nothing to take."
The rain pounded, drenching bodies and bloodying the street. Lying under a pile of corpses, Honorata thought she was dead. For what seemed like hours, no one moved. Out of nowhere she heard a young, high-pitched voice asking if anyone was still alive. Honorata laid in shock, unable to utter a word in response. Another child shrieked, "Those who are still alive, try to save us."
Her daughter shook her and pulled her hair, crying, "Mother, Mother!" She could do nothing but stare at her sister, Anunziata, lying next to her, hit by two bullets and barely alive. Every other adult was dead.
Seventeen children were still breathing. Two were critically wounded: Honorata's 13-year-old daughter had been shot in the breast, another son of a close friend, in the thigh. But before she could think of helping the children, she had to somehow accompany her sister in her final moments. That was all that mattered. Together the sisters prayed: "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." Honorata asked the children to join them. Together, they recited the prayer three times.
Honorata told me, "Of all the adults, I was the least maternal and the least courageous-I was the wrong person for God to have left alive. But there I was with 17 children in my care. So I told God that our fates were entirely in His hands." As she turned her focus to the children, the prayer of forgiveness and surrender gave Honorata a strength she had never known before.
Where to run? The churches were no longer secure. Thousands had sought refuge at chapels and cathedrals previously considered safe havens. Priests and nuns had turned over their congregations to die.
With the children in tow, Honorata stumbled back to Anunziata's house, now littered with papers, food, chairs, and mattresses. By the time she returned to her twin sister, Anunziata, was dead. At dawn, workers from Doctors without Borders found Honorata holding her twin, keening and sobbing at the site of the massacre. She accompanied the two wounded children to Butare's hospital, where a MASH unit had been set up. Throughout the day, terrified, Honorata shuttled between the hospital and Anunziata's home, where the children were still hiding.
By the end of the first day, after community members learned what had happened, an old acquaintance found Honorata at the hospital and gave her $20, now all the money she had in the world. Other friends offered to take her children into hiding with them. Even strangers shared whatever they could to help her buy food for her children.
When I think of how aid agencies characterize Africans as desperate for handouts, I think of Honorata and her support system, still functioning and generous in a brutish world gone mad. For the better part of 6 weeks, Honorata remained at the hospital, comforted that the other children were safer outside town. "The soldiers would come into the hospital, see my children, and say, `These children are offspring of Inyenzi [cockroaches]."' Other Rwandans came to the hospital to give her and other survivors whatever they could spare for medicines and food. In turn, Honorata did what she could for other patients, comforting them and praying with them. By June, Honorata felt safe enough to brave another journey, this time to the refugee camps in the French-controlled Turquoise Zone near Cyangugu.
Honorata is alive and well later in the book, which is non-fiction. But she faces several more very daunting obstacles to continued living
Jacqueline Novogratz. "The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World" (Kindle Locations 2281-2303. Kindle Edition.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
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