Jonathan Kubakundimana \u201916 doesn\u2019t remember it, but it still keeps him up at night wondering, \u201cwhat if?”<\/p>\n
What if his parents made the wrong turn down a road? What if they went into the wrong church or school to seek shelter? What if they had made a fatal mistake?<\/p>\n
The son of a Tutsi mother and a Hutu father, Kubakundimana was just six months old on April 7, 1994, when the Rwandan genocide began that wiped out nearly all of his mother\u2019s family. He shared his experience in front of a packed Patrick Lecture Hall Monday, as part of commemorations of the 20th<\/sup> anniversary of the genocide worldwide. The event, part of the university\u2019s Cultural Life Program, was themed, \u201cRemembering the Rwandan Genocide: 20 Years in the Eyes of a Survivor,\u201d and included remarks by history professor Erik Ching.<\/p>\n It was a time when people were taught that the Tutsi ethnic group was subhuman, that Tutsis were \u201cinyenzi,\u201d or cockroaches, that needed to be exterminated, Kubakundimana said. More than 800,000 people were brutally killed in about three months with machetes, nail-studded clubs, spears, and hammers.<\/p>\n \u201cFor six weeks, we ran in Rwanda,\u201d barely escaping death each day in his mother\u2019s arms, Kubakundimana said.<\/p>\n They finally made it to Nairobi, Kenya. With the help of a friend, the family was able to fly to Edinburgh, Scotland, to gain asylum as political refugees. It was there that Kubakundimana has his earliest memories and where he began to ask his parents questions about their family heritage and about the genocide.<\/p>\n \u201cOther kids had grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts and so I asked about mine,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was something I grew up with that haunted me from as early as I can remember,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The family returned to Rwanda in the late 1990s, wanting to be part of the rebuilding of their homeland. One night, fireworks on a national holiday started Kubakundimana\u2019s mother crying, shaking and screaming, reminding her of perpetual gunshots during the genocide.<\/p>\n It\u2019s something that\u2019s still very real for Kubakundimana, a political science major at Furman. \u201cFor the longest time I asked myself: Why me? Why did I survive?\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s still a question that keeps me up at night.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Rwanda is a much different place and it has a bright future, Kubakundimana said. So he has been thinking about another question: what to do with the life he has been given.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is my duty as a survivor, as a Rwandan, to my family, to tell the world our story, the story of Rwanda,\u201d he said. \u201cI may not know the reason I survived but I will do my best to earn the life I\u2019ve been given in remembrance and in honor of all those that died.\u201d<\/p>\n