Students give aid to Rwandan victims

Students give aid to Rwandan victims

Christopher Maughan, Montreal Gazette

Published: Wednesday, June 04

MONTREAL - After the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Leocadia Mugorewera returned to her village to find the local children aimlessly wandering nearby banana plantations looking for food.

The bodies of their parents - Mugorewera's neighbours - lay sprawling across the streets, their limbs severed by the blows of machetes.

Three of her own kids were among the dead - they hadn't managed to escape the Interahamwe militias sweeping the country. The other two, including Montrealer Beatha Kayitesi, had gone missing.

 

So Mugorewera started building herself a new family. "My mom went around and collected all the kids," said Kayitesi, now a Dawson College student. "She went around to the other villages and collected the kids there (as well)."

Mugorewera ended up caring for 18 children in total, most of whom were just toddlers in 1994 - which means she's still struggling to feed and care for them today.

Thankfully, she's about to get some help. On Wednesday, Kayitesi was on hand at Royal Vale Academy to watch as a class of seven students from the Mackay Centre put together a care package for Mugorewera's kids.

"I think this will help them," said Kayitesi of the t-shirts, school supplies and hand-knitted blankets the students donated. "But it's never enough. Recently, I went back with seven boxes and it wasn't enough. But it's better than nothing."

Kayitesi said she thinks the care package - in its own way - can help her adopted brothers and sisters learn reconciliation in the wake of the genocide, which began with ethnic purges in 1990 and had killed 1 million Rwandans by mid-1994.

"There are Hutus and there are Tutsis there, living together," she said, explaining that the propaganda that helped fuel the genocide dies hard - and is still around 14 years later. "I have hope that those kids are learning how to behave, learning how to love each other."

Part of the reconciliation process, Kayitesi said, is "learning how to share when a school gives them pens and books. If they learn how to share, they will learn how to live with one another."

The Mackay students said they were inspired to do something for Mugorewera's kids after hearing Kayitesi speak at their school. Heidi Flowers, 19, said she learned a lot about her counterparts in Africa.

"They have no food, no water. They don't even have bathrooms or TV - they have nothing," said Flowers, who helped knit one of the blankets being sent. "I hope they'll be excited to see it," she said of the package.

Flowers, who came to the Mackay Centre because she is deaf, said the experience has inspired her to travel to Africa one day to work with people with disabilities.

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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: +250-08470205
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East Africa
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