How Dare the Sun Rise
Page 18
These are my portraits of survivors of the Gatumba massacre that were first shown at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, in 2012. Included are some words from the courageous people pictured.
HERITAGE MUNYAKURI is my eldest brother. After surviving years of trauma from being a child soldier, Heritage almost lost his life in Gatumba. He was shot in both of his arms the night of the massacre. Heritage now resides in Rochester, New York, with his wife, Monique, and two beautiful daughters, Joy and Shalom. He is a pastor at New Hope Free Methodist Church.
ESPERANCE SERUHUNGU is studying business administration in college. “August thirteenth was not like any other. I watched my people getting shot and burned alive. I lost my mother, my uncles, and my friends. I got shot in the leg, but that isn’t the wound that hurts. What hurts me the most every day of my life is that Agathon Rwasa and Pasteur Habimana are still walking free. Until these men—who openly took responsibility for the massacre—are treated as the criminals they are, I will never heal. I want the international community to show us that they care about us, that our lives matter by taking action against these men and a country that shelters criminals.”
DESIRE RUSENGO survived the 2004 Gatumba massacre. “I lost my mother and two young brothers Claude and Musore on the night of the attack. I am now a United States citizen living in Virginia. I am a full-time employee of General Dynamics Electric Boat.”
FIDELE SEBAHIZI was resettled in California in 2007 following the Gatumba massacre. “During the attack, my brother and his two children were shot but were lucky enough to survive. I urge anyone with influence to fight for marginalized and persecuted communities, such as Banyamulenge. It is important that we stand against anyone who tries to oppress another human being in any form. I recently moved to Texas with my beautiful wife and six-year-old daughter. My goal is to serve the American community as a police officer.”
ALINE KAMARIZA was six years old when the massacre happened. “I am lucky to have survived. I lost both of my parents and my uncle. I got shot in the leg and suffered severe burns on most of my body. I am now a senior in high school, working a part-time job and heading to college. I am thankful for my life and how far I have come.”
TERIZAYA NYAMASOMO lost her husband and three children in Gatumba. She was resettled in Albany, New York, where she lives with her grandchildren.
My mom, RACHEL, and my dad, PRUDENCE. This was my parents’ first professional shoot. It was funny to direct them and watch them struggle to understand what in the world I was doing.
This is the only surviving photo of my sister Deborah and me, taken in Burundi before the massacre. Pictured from left to right: Dad, Mom, Deborah (front), me, my uncle Rumenge, and Princesse.
Mercy High School Show Choir.
A funny photo before junior prom with my friends Leah (left) and Mackenzie (right).
My family at Princesse’s college graduation, from left to right: Alex, me, Mom, Princesse, Dad, Adele, and Heritage.
My siblings and me at Alex’s high school graduation.
At Christmas in 2013 with my cousin Claudine, Adele, and my mom (left to right).
My date, CJ, and me dressed up for the senior ball in 2013.
High school graduation with my mother.
We celebrate my sister’s wedding in Rwanda with Claudine, Adele, and Princesse.
I reunited with Foroteya (right) in Phoenix, Arizona. My family and Foroteya shared a tent in Gatumba. We recently connected after each had thought for years that the other had died during the massacre.
These photos are from a trip to Rwanda in 2016. This is the boarding school I attended while living there from 2005 to 2006. I wanted to go back and thank the director of this school for giving me an opportunity to learn. This school gave me joy in a time when everything seemed dark. They took me in and gave me a sense of normalcy.
The entrance to College Baptiste De Kabaya.
The girls’ dorms.
My classroom.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Life seemed to stop for me after the Gatumba Massacre. I lived every day terrified of what had happened that night. Even now, I still relive the worst night of my life, long after the world has stopped caring. I heard a man, Agathon Rwasa, go on public radio and confess to having killed my sweet sister along with 165 other people. And then he went on to run for president of Burundi. As I watched the world continue to spin, I stood there wondering what I had done for God to grant me such a life. I wondered why I stayed, while others did not. I stood numb year after year. I heard the deafening silence of the whole world. I was waiting for someone to tell me that I mattered.
I wrote this book because I was tired of outsiders always writing my history, my present, and my future. I have spent my life being just statistics in pages talking about how many of Congo’s children are hungry, out of school, or are living in conflict. I was tired of simply existing between the lines of articles and books that were written by people who had never met me and knew very little of what it was like to be me.
I wrote How Dare the Sun Rise to tell my story, Deborah’s story, and the stories of the millions of people who feel invisible. I refuse to let the lives that were lost in Gatumba be forgotten. I refuse to stop seeking justice. I refuse to be silenced. Even with my last breath, I will seek justice for Gatumba.
How Dare the Sun Rise is a testament to the failure of Agathon Rwasa and FNL. These men have ended the lives of 166 people, but they started a fire in me. As long as I am still alive, they have failed. As long as people hear my story, they have failed. As long as I keep fighting, they have failed! This book is a declaration of my independence. It is a story of how hatred failed and love and justice prevailed. My hope is that my story serves as inspiration for those who have been harmed by the very institutions that were meant to protect them. There is power in our voices. The more of us speak up, the more likely we are to be heard. Our communities cannot thrive if some of us are made to feel like we do not matter. I hope this book inspires more people to stand up for the voiceless. Don’t let your silence be another person’s death. Fighting for each other is the only way we all win.
INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
If you’d like to learn more about some of the issues regarding women, refugees, and poverty that I discuss in the book, please visit and help these organizations. All three of these groups are doing amazing work and deserve your support.
Jimbere Fund is a nonprofit organization founded by myself, my sister Adele Kibasumba, and her husband, Obadias Ndaba. Our mission at Jimbere Fund is to revitalize distressed communities in rural Congo. We work with Congo’s most remote populations to design and implement individualized high-impact development interventions that expand opportunities and access to critical services, create jobs, and lift people out of poverty in a sustainable way. Our approach blends community organizing and development interventions. Communities identify their most pressing needs in education, women’s empowerment, health, and agricultural productivity, and we work with them to find solutions and co-implement them.
How can you help? Here are four ways to support:
• Donate on our website at Jimberefund.org. This will mean a lot and enable us to continue our work.
• Stay in touch via newsletter and/or social media, and spread the word to your networks.
• Invite us to talk at your events and to your networks.
• Introduce us to people/contacts/organizations who might be interested in supporting our mission.
Maman Shujaa means “Hero Women” in Swahili. The Maman Shujaa are a women’s movement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a movement for peace, women’s rights, rights of the indigenous, and for communities and nature. The Maman Shujaa are enabling women and girls with free computer training and online access to advocate or blog their stories; with programs that employ and empower them in environmental conservation and industry, making washable, reusable sani-pads; programs that mentor, equip, and enable the next generation o
f Maman Shujaa through their Girl Ambassadors for Peace. Learn more at www.herowomenrising.org.
The humanitarian organization RefugePoint has helped me and tens of thousands of other refugees in life-threatening situations find safety and rebuild our lives. RefugePoint was founded in 2005 to provide lasting solutions for the world’s most vulnerable refugees—especially women, children, and urban refugees. Through resettlement and holistic services that promote stabilization and self-reliance, RefugePoint identifies and protects refugees who have no other options for survival. RefugePoint envisions a future in which refugees are able to move from exclusion to inclusion, and from dependence to self-reliance. To learn more about RefugePoint and to donate, visit www.refugepoint.org.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my parents, Prudence and Rachel, for investing in me when the world around you told you otherwise.
Thank you to my sisters Princesse, Adele, and Claudine for always leading by example and challenging me to be the best me that I can be.
Thank you to my brothers, Heritage, Chris, and Alex, for always having my back.
Thank you to my whole family for letting me share our intimate stories with the world.
Thank you to Abby for always treating my story with respect and dignity.
Thank you to my agent, Jessica, and my editor, Ben, for recognizing the need for stories like mine.
Thank you to Francisco for being my rock.
Thank you to Tina Brown and Women in the World for giving me the space to share my story with the world.
Thank you to Sasha Chanoff for working and fighting for people like me.
Thank you to Mercy High School for Young Women for giving me an excellent educational foundation.
Thank you to New Hope Free Methodist Church for welcoming my family as your own.
Thank you to Kayce Freed Jennings for being my friend and support system when I had none.
Thank you to Joanna Heatwole for the incalculable things that you’ve done for my family and me.
Thank you to the “Survivors” exhibit participants for letting me tell your stories and Visual Studies Workshop for giving the platform to share those stories with the world.
Thank you to all the friends, pastors, and educators whose encouragement and love helped me grow in to who I am today, including Kaya Hesed Stratton, Shannon Crammer, Philip Maenza, Linda Adams, pastor Michael and Amelia Traylor, Leah Rusin, Virginia Lenyk, Mabel Hope, Neema Namadamu, Ms. Clasquin, Suzanne Johnson, Felix Mwungeri, Kate Fady, Colleen and Nina Glass, Elizabeth Primus, Keri Barnett Basset, Kim Barker, Rita Fancher, Mr. DeSain, Ms. Khoji, Mutware Makuza.
—Sandra
Thank you to Sandra for sharing her story.
Thank you to my creative and ever supportive family: John Pesta, an author who taught me the art of storytelling, Maureen O’Hara Pesta, an artist who sees the world in a different light, and Jesse Pesta, a globe-trotting writer, photographer, and an editor at the New York Times.
Thank you to my agent, Jess Regel, and my editor, Ben Rosenthal, and to Katherine Tegen and her team at HarperCollins, for seeing the beauty in this book.
A special thanks to Joanna Coles, an inspiration to journalists everywhere who aspire to think creatively.
Thank you to Tina Brown and her team at Women in the World, including Kyle Gibson, Anna Hall, and Karen Compton, for introducing me to Sandra.
Thank you to authors Sheila Weller, Sam Marshall, and Laurie Sandell for their stellar advice on all things publishing.
Many thanks to all the editors who have helped me tell great stories, including Kayla Adler, Miriam Arond, Sara Austin, Lauren Smith Brody, Laura Brounstein, Alison Brower, Joyce Chang, Katie Connor, Riza Cruz, Pip Cummings, Roe D’Angelo, Deidre Depke, Mike Elek, Rosemary Ellis, Edward Felsenthal, Lori Fradkin, Anne Fulenwider, Lea Goldman, Susan Goodall, Jill Herzig, Noelle Howey, Lauren Iannotti, Susy Jackson, Rich Jaroslovsky, Whitney Joiner, Ellen Kampinsky, Lucy Kaylin, Marina Khidekel, Cindi Leive, Ellen Levine, Tracy Middleton, Marty Munson, Wendy Naugle, Jessica Pels, Geraldine Sealey, Michele Shapiro, Harry Siegel, Jane Spencer, Paul Steiger, Sade Strehlke, Andrew Tavani, Tunku Varadarajan, Tom Weber, and Leslie Yazel, among many others.
—Abby
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
SANDRA UWIRINGIYIMANA is cofounder and director of partnerships and communications at Jimbere Fund, an organization that aims to revitalize distressed communities in Congo. Since her family’s resettlement in 2007, Sandra has fought to call for justice for the Gatumba massacre and has become a voice for women and girls, refugees and immigrants, and forgotten people like the Banyamulenge tribe. In telling her story, Sandra has shared the world stage with Charlie Rose, Angelina Jolie, and Tina Brown at the Women in the World Summit. She addressed the United Nations Security Council at the request of Ambassador Samantha Power to plead with world leaders to act on the pressing issue of children in armed conflict. Sandra is a student at Mercy College in New York City.
ABIGAIL PESTA is an award-winning journalist who has lived and worked around the world, from New York to London to Hong Kong. Her investigative and feature reporting has appeared in global publications, including Cosmopolitan, the New York Times, Marie Claire, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Glamour, the Atlantic, New York magazine, and many others.
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CREDITS
Cover photography © 2017 by Dustin Cohen/MergeLeft
Cover design by Joel Tippie
COPYRIGHT
Photographs courtesy of Sandra Uwiringiyimana
Gatumba survivor portraits courtesy of Sandra Uwiringiyimana and Alex Ngabo
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
HOW DARE THE SUN RISE. Copyright © 2017 by Sandra Uwiringiyimana. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957991
ISBN 978-0-06-247014-0
EPub Edition © April 2017 ISBN 9780062470164
Version 08112017
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Sandra Uwiringiyimana, How Dare the Sun Rise