Dancilla Nyirabazungu
Before the genocide, Hutus favoured Hutus. Teachers, politicians and soldiers were Hutu. Tutsi kids didn't pass the national exam. And people's race was written in their ID documents.
After Habyarimana's aeroplane was shot down they started burning houses and taking people's cows. Everyone gathered in the church. I was there with my entire family. On 15 April, the attackers came with guns, clubs with nails in them, grenades and axes. They broke down the walls, threw grenades into the church and shot at everyone. The Interahamwe were ready with their machetes. I hid, and kept hiding until God rescued me. On 14 May, the RPF captured Bugesera. They told everyone that they were equal; that they had to be Rwandans, not Hutus, Twa or Tutsi. They had to rebuild Rwanda.
I still have my children - the ones who ran and hid with me, and I gave birth to the one I was carrying when the genocide happened. But I lost 18 members of my family. I clean, I garden, I separate the clothes from the bones left on the church floor. This place is important not only to me, but to all Rwandans - and the world as a whole. There are people who deny all this and if they came and saw the bones and corpses, they would have to believe it. If we don't maintain the place, the genocide might be forgotten.
A longer version of this account is published by the Aegis Trust in 'A Time to Remember: Rwanda, ten years after the genocide'.