“THE SORROWFUL ONE” – GENOCIDE IN RWANDA (1994)
Vanessa was five years old when the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda killed around one million people in 100 days. Like hundreds of thousands of others, she fled the unprecedented eruption of violence. Her mother tied her and two of her siblings together by their shirtsleeves so that they would not lose each other in the flow of people.
With her siblings, Vanessa moves from place to place without parents or family members. They do not know where to go. So they just keep walking, together with hundreds of thousands of refugees. They are hungry, now and then someone gives them a sip of water. At some point, they come to a place where Save the Children is active. Like many others, the organization is looking for relatives for the 300,000 children who have been separated from their families in the aftermath of the genocide.
To do this, Save the Children posts Polaroid photos in public places. Trained teams search for their families across the country. Vanessa and her siblings are also photographed. The Polaroids still exist today. But what often succeeds, does not in Vanessa's case. Vanessa never found out what happened to her parents.
Today, Vanessa lives with her husband and four children in a village near the border with Congo. She is still deeply traumatized. She does not like to talk about the past. She prefers to look to the future.
