Alfred’s Journey Home

Barbara Davidson

The Dallas Morning News

In 1994, Hutu militias slaughtered more than half a million of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis. Following the 100-day genocide, more than one million Rwandans fled toward what was then neighboring Zaire. Alfred was among the thousands of children sucked into the mass exodus, and he was separated from his family. His father, Nzabarwanda, explains what happened that day, “There was shooting. I have many children. I did not know who was with me and who was not. We were running. My son was tired. Maybe he sat down and we went forward.” Alfred, a boy handicapped by bad knees and deafness, spent the next several years living in different orphanages as aid agencies tried to trace his family. Then it happened. It was something Alfred’s father never expected to hear. It came over a scratchy radio broadcast from a tracing agency. A distinct description of Alfred’s handicaps identified his son to him and told him of his whereabouts. Six years after the mass genocide, Alfred was reunited with his family. In Kigali, six years after the genocide, a memorial to the victims of the genocide is being completed. Stacks and stacks of skulls and bones wait to be interred.

Barbara Davidson, "Alfred’s Journey Home," in POYi Archive, Item #31593, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/31593 (accessed November 23, 2024).