My name is Bizimana Gad Budugure, I am married and the father of seven children. In 1996, civil war broke out in the Congo, but it soon changed into tribal warfare with extreme acts of violence that were directed against my tribe, the Banyamulenge Tutsi. In 1998, there was another war that was classified as a civil war by the international community, but in our country, all of those years consisted of tribal warfare that was very dangerous for our tribe.
I was a businessmen/tradesmen and on the days prior to the war breaking out in 1998, I was far away from our home and doing business in Kantaga when the war broke out. In Africa, when you are a businessman you develop friendships with the vendors in each town you do business. The vendors I did business with in Kantaga were not Banyamulenge Tutsi, but they were my friends. They had learned what soldiers were saying; that all Banyamulenge Tutsi were going to be killed by the government, so they told me. I ran away from Kantaga, that was on a Thursday, I found out later that all the Banyamulenge Tutsi in that town were killed on the following Sunday.
I ran to Vyura where I knew Banyamulenge were living, I wanted to alert them to the danger. I found the soldiers had already circled the village. However, God did a miracle; some of the Banyamulenge Tutsi were able to escape the massacre and I ran with some of the villagers and fled to South Kivu province to a camp for displaced persons, eventually we had to flee across the Burundi border to the UNHCR Gatumba Refugee Camp. Because of the great distance between my family and me and these terrible events, I was separated from my family for nine years, from 1998 to 2007. I would like to tell you about the terrible events that my wife and children endured while we were separated because of the war in the Congo. I will tell you the story in my wife's words.
Very early in the morning that the war broke out again in 1998, soldiers surrounded our home and began pounding on our door, demanding entrance. My brother-in-law was staying in our home and I knew it would not go well for a Banyamulenge Tutsi man if soldiers found him there and so I hid him and our seven children before answering the door. I answered the door, they wanted to speak with my husband, but I told them he was not at home. They forced their way past me, and by God's grace, they did not find my brother-in-law or my children, but they took me in their vehicle to the interrogation facility where I was taken to an empty room and left for hours. While I was sitting there, I noticed mounds of abandoned men's clothing and I wondered who they belonged to, I began to fear for the lives of the Banyamulenge Tutsi in our town. After a long time, my interrogation began; they demanded information about my history, my tribe, I lied because I knew they would kill me if I told the truth, I told them that my father was Banyamulenge Tutsi, but my mother was from another tribe. They put a Kinyamulenge Bible in front of me and demanded that I read it, I lied and told them I could not read it. They asked me if I prayed, I answered yes, they asked what God told me, I answered that God told me He would protect me. The interrogators told me that I should say goodbye to anyone I needed to because I was going to die, I answered that I did not have anyone to tell goodbye. (I could not reveal that I had children, I was so worried about them). After some time had passed, I asked about the men's clothing across the room on the floor, I was told that the clothing had belonged to the Banyamulenge Tutsi men that they had already been captured.
The next day the other captives and I was loaded into a truck and transported to the airport, but on the way to the airport, the truck hit a tree. God sent a sense of foreboding over the driver of the truck and he would not take us any further, he turned the truck around and drove us back to the interrogation facility.
The officer who had secretly ordered our transport now had to get an official signature from the administration to have us taken to the capital city, but administrator refused because he knew that the officer would have had us killed when we reached the final destination, and so we were taken to a jail.
There were other Banyamulenge Tutsi prisoners already in the jail that we were taken to. The jailers had been deceiving the Banyamulenge Tutsi in our town by telling them that the jail was the safest place to be during the war and so they were allowing the jailers to bring them into the jail camp and keep them there to protect them from danger. The reality was, we were all prisoners of the government. (Concentration camp) I was so worried about my children, I did not know what happened to them and I wondered if my brother-in-law was able to care for them. After two weeks in the jail, I tried to bribe one of the guards with some of the money I had hidden on my body. I asked him to allow a friend of mine outside of the jail (she was not Banyamulenge Tutsi) to sneak my baby into the jail so that I could nurse her because I was in so much pain from not nursing my baby. When the head jailer found out what had happened he went into a rage. The soldiers were angry with me for bribing the jailer, they dragged me into the jail yard and tied my hands behind my back. I prayed that God would protect me. When the soldiers asked me where my children were, I told them they had been left behind when I was taken by the interrogators. They asked me again where my husband was, I told them again that he is away on business. They asked my where my brother-in-law was, I told them he was in Kinshasa (capital city of Congo). Then they told me, if you do not reveal to us where your brother-in-law is, we will kill you in his place. The soldiers began arguing with each other about whether or not they should kill me. They decided to drive me back to my home, they loaded me into a vehicle and drove toward my home, but they drove right past my home because I told them that my children had been taken by the UNHCR.
The soldiers decided to keep driving through the city to capture other Banyamulenge Tutsi families and take them back to the jail. After they had captured some people they passed back by my home and went into my home and found my children there and captured (the youngest was under one year) all of them, the soldiers killed my brother-in-law.
It was later decided that all of the women and children from the jail would be moved to another location in the city. While we were being transported, we came to a roadblock. The soldiers at the roadblock wanted to kill all of us because we were Banyamulenge Tutsi, but the soldiers who were transporting us argued with them and told them they were responsible to transport us to another jail.
Life in the jail was very difficult, we felt death was very close. We were hungry all the time, four of us died from hunger. One of the women delivered her twins in jail, we didn't have a knife to cut the umbilical cord; we used a stick (Rose Mapendo now lives with her twins and seven other children in Phoenix, Arizona, her husband was killed while in the jail).
There was a jail next to ours where our own Banyamulenge Tutsi men who had been at officer training school before the war started were now prisoners. They all died in the jail from being beaten, or from starving to death.
In 2000, we were moved to another jail in Kinshasa, at this jail we were given food on the first day we arrived. We ate a little bit, but kept some so that we could feed our children some more the next day, but we did not receive any more food until two weeks later when the Congolese commander general came to visit us and he gave the order to the jailer to feed us. The jailer just gave us food for the next three days, but then no more.
Later in 2000, the I OM (International Organization for Migration) visited the jail and requested the release and resettlement of all the captives to a Cameroon refugee camp. While we living in the Cameroon refugee camp, I received word through the Red Cross that Bizimana was alive! He was searching for the children and me. Unfortunately, because of many filing mistakes and the long resettlement process for refugees we were not reunited in the United States until 2007.
We thank God for his encouragement even though we have passed through so many problems we still put our trust in Him and we hope for a better future for our children. It is safe here in America even though it is difficult for our family to find jobs and to care for our disabled son.
