When the Hutus came to his town, Robert Manzi hoped his family, like him, would run away. Instead, his mother, father and siblings were slaughtered, but he was able to get a second chance at life in Canada to 'make his parents proud,' he tells Louise Umutoni.
By Louise Umutoni, Citizen SpecialApril 8, 2009
Robert Manzi's parents and all three of his siblings were killed in Rwanda. 'I was told that they were taken to a forest and clubbed to death.'
Robert Manzi's parents and all three of his siblings were killed in Rwanda. 'I was told that they were taken to a forest and clubbed to death.'
Photograph by: Jean Levac,
The Ottawa Citizen, Citizen Special
As his mother handed him his Canadian citizenship card, Robert Manzi instinctively knew this would be the last time he saw her. "She told me to take care of my siblings and I could see it in her eyes that she knew she was going to die. I cried," said Manzi, now a 28-year-old Nortel employee in Ottawa.
Although he was born a Canadian citizen in Quebec City, he could not escape the bloody calamity of the Rwanda genocide. When he was four, his parents moved back to Rwanda when his father was offered a job as a lecturer at the National University of Rwanda. It was a fatal choice.
The family lived in Butare, in southern Rwanda, a small serene town commonly known as the town of bicycles. "It was an area filled with scholars because of the university," Manzi recalls.
"The only memories I have of any reference to ethnicity were at school, where people were asked to stand up when their tribe was called out. At first I did not stand up because I had no idea what my tribe was and when I told my dad about this, he shook his head and told me I was Tusti."
Other than this, Manzi says his childhood was normal. He recalls no other kind of discrimination. He had three siblings and a passion for soccer, which he played with a small ball made out of plastic bags. A typical boy, he remembers his parents had to punish him frequently.
"I know everyone says this, but my mother was the most beautiful woman, but she was tough. My father was a brilliant physicist and kind of reserved. One of my memories of him is of him counting words in the popular newspaper Jeune Afrique. I have no idea why he did, but I think it was to keep his brain alive," Manzi remembers.
His world crumbled in 1994. "We started to hear about killings in different provinces before 1994, and these were of Tutsis. We were not scared though, because we believed our area was safe," he says. When then-president Juvénal Habyarimana's plane crashed on April 6, Manzi was a 14-year-old boy. He said he was glad to hear of the crash because Habyarimana had been threatening action against the Tutsis.
However, it was the crash that, in part, fed the genocide, as many Hutu believed Tutsis were behind the death.
The plane went down at 8:30 p.m. By 9:30, roadblocks had been set up all over Kigali and the bloodbath had begun. However, it was not until April 20 that the killing started in Butare. "They came to our house three times looking for my parents, but the first two instances they were hiding somewhere else. At this time, all our Tutsi relatives and friends in Butare were dead and the Hutu did not speak to us. It was at this point that my parents gave up and seemed to accept the fact that they were going to die."
His mother then gave him his citizenship card.
"The grownups stopped hiding and just sat around talking about the past and praying."
The third strike saw Manzi run for his life, hoping his family members had done the same. They were not so lucky. He lost his parents and all three siblings. "I was told that they were taken to a forest and clubbed to death, but for a while I refused to accept this. I hid in a bush, which I later left to hide with other Tutsis. They were all taken and killed one day while I was using the bathroom, and as sad as it might sound, I usually laugh when I think about how lucky I was to have been in there," Manzi said.
Tired and hungry after two weeks with no nourishment except water, Manzi was saved by soldiers of the Rwanda Patriotic Front. Fifteen years later, he talks about it with hope -- hope for a future that is to come. "I do not want to go on living in distress. I am going to make the best out of what I have and make my parents proud," he said.
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About the Writer
This April marks the 15th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. For 100 days beginning in April, 1994, thousands were slaughtered, most of them members of the minority Tutsi tribe. Louise Umutoni is a Rwandan journalist with the New Times in Kigali. Currently on a three-month internship at the Citizen under the Rwanda Initiative, a partnership between Carleton University's journalism department and the National University of Rwanda, Umutoni met and spoke with genocide survivors who make their home in Ottawa. Today is the second in a series. The final instalment is Thursday.
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