Genocide Survivor: Learning To Go From Surviving To Living

While surviving each day in war zones and refugee camps was a traumatic experience, the biggest battle to win is still the one in my mind.

To my beloved son: so that you always keep close to your heart where mummy comes from and what a miracle and survivor she is. May it be your inner strength and inspire you through your life journey. May it make you see possibilities where everyone else sees no way.

This is my native country: Rwanda; country of thousands hills. Beautiful little country in East Africa.

The first 4 years of my life were happy years: third child (out of 5) in a stable and comfortable family, surrounded and covered by the love of my parents, siblings and family friends. I cannot remember all the details but the feeling of safety, belonging, togetherness and unconditional love were present then.

This childhood was quite promising and straight forward… until 1994!

We woke up in the morning of April 1994 by a bomb explosion in our garden. That was the start of one of the biggest human massacre of history. It marked the beginning of the rwandese genocide that resulted in the death of about 1 million of human beings in a margin of only few months.

That led my closest family and I to run away from the country leaving everything behind us. We lived in refugees camps for 5 years in Zaïre then Congo, hiding and running from the opposition army.

This is what we faced during the 5 years of escape:

Death — at several times we were woken up in the morning by shootings and bombs explosions, discovering sometimes that some of our neighbors, the children we played with the day before were dead.
Starvation – we spend days and weeks without any drinkable water or any food.
Loss of family members and friends.
Illness – I remember almost being declared dead because I had cholera and no vein could be found since I was extremely skinny and dehydrated.. A miraculous doctor (be blessed wherever you are) managed to find a point on my arm and was able to stick a needle. He saved my life!
Uncertainty at its highest: we were literally surviving each day as if it was the last one.

You can only imagine how all these events were troubling. Even though, at that time we didn’t think much about the emotional part. What truly mattered to us at that time was: will we be able to get through this day alive and will we be blessed enough to see the sun rise again tomorrow morning? That’s the only thing we had to think about and that was enough.

What truly mattered to us at that time was: will we be able to get through this day alive and will we be blessed enough to see the sun rise again tomorrow morning?

By the mercy of the almighty, prayers from my Queen mother, catholic sisters help; we managed to get out of refugee camps and safely to Congo Brazzaville at one of my father’s friend house. He kindly welcomed us to his house and we started a safer life routine outside of the camps. We stayed in Brazza few months and Queen mother managed to find family connections who were living in Ivory Coast. That is how we moved to IC and later on to France by the assistance and support of catholic communities — shout out to Fallado — “Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes” and Sisters from “Communauté des filles de la charité”, Capion and Pellerin families. We are forever grateful for the wholeness of your heart and the grace of your souls.

Once in France, we started learning how to live when still on the survival mindset most of the time. An example of the mindset was that “we live each day fully because we don’t know if tomorrow will come” (and I still have that voice, it somehow keeps me grounded). The high sense of urgency was still real in our daily life.

This could be expressed through food: overeating — I am what it’s called in French a “Bon Vivant”. I love food, that’s a fact. But sometimes I eat more than necessary, aware that I am full but not wanting to leave leftovers for the next day. Thinking often: “What if I die tonight, this nice piece of pie would be wasted”..

It could also be expressed through relationships: my lack of tact. I could easily express my feelings quite rapidly to a person I liked by fear of not being able to see them again to get the chance to tell them how I felt about them, etc… Most of the time those unconscious actions would naturally have painful emotional outcome. The kind of things you do and you want to disappear from the universe or bury yourself deep somewhere.

Starting to get more and more aware of how my traumatic past was having consequences in the quality of my life, I started reading about self development and other types of books. I also went to seek help, meaning I went to a psychologist.

It is after several sessions, multiple YouTube videos and books that I realised what had been happening all these years: I was on autopilot, still surviving each day and only pretending to live on the external.

Knowing that, these are the changes I made in order to switch to the living mode:

I read about humanity, psychology, other people stories - people who went through “similar” experiences, life’s meaning and purpose…
I started applying the tools I had read about — still in progress, despite a lot of insightful information; it seemed that I couldn’t manage to apply it in a sustainable way at the beginning. I would feel motivated one day and then as soon as I would be faced with a life difficulty, it would awake all my inner monsters.
I practice meditation and pray to reconnect with my true self — because trauma causes a disconnection with oneself. That is what trauma does. And once one is disconnected, one searches for external solutions to fill up that hole instead of looking inside oneself — because that is where all answers lie, they have been there since we were born. We just need calm and stillness to reconnect with the inner self through prayers, yoga, and meditation — choosing what works best for each of us.
I started silencing slowly the little silly voice telling me that tomorrow may never come, without killing it totally because as I said earlier that one keeps me grounded and conscious.
I started trusting my environment and people in general. Applying this mantra: I will trust until you show me I shouldn’t, and once you show me that I will peacefully leave you on the side and keep on walking my way. I experience this to provide a sense of inner peace and serenity. Because as a good friend of mine said: “whatever people say or do, it only reveals what kind of people they are”; so nothing to be taken personally , only lessons to be learnt— shout out to you Linda Chbib Adams.
I saw myself in others and as a part of the universe

We are indeed in this together. We each have the phases we will go through, which differ from one individual to another, each on distinctive timing, but the humanity journey is universal.

I stopped people pleasing, waiting for people’s approval and went for my dreams, taking responsibility of the life I wanted to create.

Trauma causes a disconnection with oneself.

— Gabor Maté

Benefits and collateral damages of being a survivor

Despite all the loss (childhood, family members, friends, a home — and what that really means), the 4.000 km walked bare feet escaping the enemy, the mental and emotional damages…I still see how the Rwandese genocide has been a life learning field. I cannot imagine what life I would have had in Rwanda if all of it didn’t happen (and I will never know, that’s okay). But I know for sure that I wouldn’t be the human being I am now If I didn’t go through what I went through.

Down to earth attitude

I sometimes get high though, but when I get too high on my horses, I have the inner voice that reminds me to slow down and re calibrate. Otherwise most of the time, I do my best to keep my both feet touching the ground.

Human oriented

I have seen the worst part of humanity but I still have hope. Humans are capable of doing amazing things on earth, they do. In each human I see light (and darkness — Ying&Yang), I see unlimited possibilities and potential. I also see mystery and that’s what keeps my curiosity high to get to know (new) people around me.

Joie de vivre — Joy of living

I love life. I mean I love all of it (less the painful though, but it’s a package). Life fascinates me. I have to admit that in rough periods I am not that much philosophical but I still try to see purpose even in the hardest days during my passage on this earth.

A sense of purpose

I want to consider myself as a person who lives purposefully. I let little by hazard. I have this deep sense that I did not survive to live a meaningless life. I strive to give purpose to my actions and daily life. I also have this fire to accomplish, to create, to learn, to empower.

A disconnection to the environmental and cultural reality

This one often gets challenging to deal with on a daily basis. I rarely blend in nor follow the flow and I definitely don’t conform to most of the modern cultural norms. I have hard time understanding conformism!!! I find it to be a waste of individual unique potential we all have. Well, yes that can get troublesome in practice, oftentimes in work environments. This was also very challenging in my teenage years where belonging, approval had an important role.

Feeling of genuine gratitude

Knowing my background and the miracle I incarnate to still be alive when others died innocently; I try to live each day in gratitude and prayer. Living for me but also for those who didn’t make it.

Not taking anything or anyone for granted

When I get a new job or new promotion, I am like okay good, thanks God, this is awesome! Owning material things is nice and practical, I get grateful and enjoy all of it.. But I also have the awareness that it can be gone or insignificant the day after: a nuclear war can start, a huge snow storm can occur, I can have health issues etc.. (I am aware that this is a tiny bit morbid but it is my reality). Same goes for people in my life: I don’t take them from granted, I am aware that I can loose them whenever for whichever reasons. Life is unpredictable and that’s the fun of it in my sense. This of course can get negative for the mind and in relationships since one try not to be fully attached to whoever or whatever. That often result in a lack of stability and safety since one is most of the time wired and ready for change (one almost constantly crave it). In another perspective I get okay with that reality, indeed as Héraclite d’Éphèse said:

The only constant in life is change — Héraclite

Unconscious victim-hood mentality (slowly but surely healing from this one)

I got aware of this one recently. I didn’t know I had a victim mentality. I thought of myself as being a grown up ass woman who is responsible..But going through some life challenges lately, I discovered that the victim card was pulled way too often. I discovered myself having deep inside myself a victim mentality. Even though I like to think of myself as a survivor and not as a victim, my subconscious kept the victim hood attitude ready to be pulled in cases of emergency. And we know that the victim mentality deprives one of taking responsibility and owning their “business”. So once I got aware of acting “victim”, I knew what I had to do: take responsibility.

Trust issues

Having experienced how people from the same country, same culture, same language and traditions could betray and massacre each other; this made me be skeptical in terms of trust. I used to expect the worst in everyone not to be disappointed. Nevertheless, having researched, read and realize how the lack of trust has negative impacts in life, I started the journey of cultivating trust towards myself, others and the environment.

Constant alert mode/PTSD

I tend to be very alert: to my surroundings and people around me. As if I was double checking that I’m safe. This also leads me to be quite reactive and defensive because of that high alertness. I think this was very useful and relevant in the war fields, less in every day life nowadays especially in relationships. It can get quite tiring on the long run for myself and for my surroundings. Fortunately I got to be aware of all of this through therapy (ongoing) and currently doing the work to lower the negative impact in everyday life.

I could keep the list going on. Paradoxically, I globally think that surviving the rwandese genocide made me a more aware, conscious and caring human being. It also contributed in developing a certain resiliency level to life challenges.

Until next time, stay in serenity and take good care of you (mentally, spiritually and physically).