Dr. Joseph Nsengiyumva can’t suppress a smile: "No," he says, "there’s no place like home." And he certainly should know. Because he’s back from a long and harrowing journey from his home in Butare in Rwanda…to Butare. It was a journey that lasted ten long years.
It all started back in 1994. Married and with a 2-year old daughter, Joseph Nsengiyumva was a medical student in Rwanda’s university town of Butare, confidently looking forward to qualifying as a doctor. Suddenly everything came unglued as year of political turmoil culminated in genocide that left millions dead, and made millions more orphans and refugees. Joseph and his friends and family gathered a few belongings and fled towards Gikongoro, today the site of a poignant memorial to the thousands of Rwandans who were slaughtered there while seeking refuge in a school.
At that time Gikongoro was the site of a camp for IDPs, internally displaced persons. Here the family was fortunate to be fed by the Red Cross for a week before being moved on to Cyangugu, a lakeside town bordering both the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire) and Burundi. On the way the family, packed into an overcrowded minibus, had to run the gauntlet of militia roadblocks and extortion. Hungry and broke, they arrived to a scene that Joseph today sums up in one short word: panic.
Word was spreading that the Rwandan government had made a decision to function in exile, and was calling on citizens to go with them. This created a massive movement of two million civilians, many weighed down by the doors and windows, chickens and pots that they thought they would need. Joseph crossed the border towards the Congolese town of Bukavu, where he met a priest whom he’d known in Butare, and who offered him $40 – not much, but enough to keep his family alive.
From here a lucky few, including his sister and brother-in-law, were taken into France. "They had studied and trained in France many years earlier," remembers Joseph. "Maybe that’s why they were accepted." Others were granted asylum in Belgium, Canada and the US. But not Joseph. He and his family were left to fend for themselves in Bukavu, where there was no shelter, no toilet and no potable water. Today, Lake Kivu is once again the picturesque pearl of the Great Lakes Region.
But for the fleeing refugees in 1994, its waters were used for bathing, drinking and waste disposal. They moved on again, this time to Uvira in DRC, where the exhausted family took a ferry across to Kigoma in Tanzania and on to Mpulungu in Zambia. Thinking that their chances would be better in the capital, Joseph first made his way with the family to the railhead at Kapiri Mposhi. They then took a train to Lusaka – and walked in to their first major problem: they were promptly arrested. Fortunately the police quickly understood their plight, gave them food and drink, and then took them to UNHCR. "They were kind," says Joseph. "They promised to take us to Maheba, in the North West, where there was a camp with schools and hospitals."
UNHCR provided a truck for the trip. But Maheba, a cold forest area with no hospital or school in sight, was hardly the paradise they hoped for: "We would have had to cut down trees just to find room for our tents!" They realized that if they stayed, they’d be forgotten, so they stubbornly refused to leave the truck. Recall Joseph, "We stayed on the truck for two days. One or two of us would leave it and cook just next to the truck. The driver couldn’t make us leave, so he had to take us back to Lusaka." There they soon found themselves in a camp with refugees from Angola, Mozambique and Uganda.
They started to settle into their new life in Zambia. Most of their group were professionals who wanted to work and integrate, and their first step was to learn English. Joseph describes their Zambian hosts as very hospitable and helpful. A Catholic priest quickly helped him find his first job, and soon he was employed in the hospital pharmacy.
Joseph still wanted to become a doctor; he applied for a scholarship in Lusaka and six months later was accepted, even though he had to repeat a year. Finally, after years of hard study, he became Doctor Joseph Nsengiyumva, and soon he was working in the university.
In October 2003, hearing that Rwanda was organizing elections, Joseph, and got in touch with UNHCR in order to be repatriated. After several postponed trips, he finally moved back to Butare … back where it all began.
Today he feels that everything in Rwanda has changed, positively, despite the outside media which, he believes, tends to depict Rwanda in a very negative way. Indeed, "genocide" is still synonymous with the country. But Joseph was pleasantly surprised to find that life is normal again, that people work and enjoy themselves, and there’s peace and development – something that’s difficult to explain to Rwandan refugees still outside the country. "They laughed at me when I said I was going back home," he chuckles.
Dr. Nsengiyumva now earns almost as much as he did in Zambia, and when asked what advice he has for Rwandan people living outside the country, he thinks for a moment and says "Coming home is not for everyone. Some people have successful businesses that they cannot abandon." He pauses. "But those in camps should come back." Even though the people in Zambia were kind and friendly, it was the refugee label that he badly wanted to shake off. And he has. Back home again in Butare, Joseph has friends and family. He is settled and happy. He smiles again: "There really is no place like home!"
By : Caroline Mwangi
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| Photo: Flickr |
