Rwanda orphans build hope from horror 30 years after genocide

PARIS: Jeanne Allaire Kayigirwa was sure she was going to die three times during the Rwandan genocide in which most of her friends and family were massacred.She and her sister hid in the bush for six weeks as the slaughter went on around them, moving on all the time as Hutu extremists hunted Tutsis like them “down with dogs.”“I don’t know how we survived,” she said.Much about that time she does not want to remember. “Otherwise I won’t be able to go on.”Jeanne learned to live with her demons, but “you cannot wipe a genocide from your memory. It comes back went it wants.”Then one day she took stock. “Am I going to let the killers who wanted to wipe me out also take my second life?“Or am I going to live it?” said the 46-year-old, who went on to be a top local government official in Paris.More than a million people died in the genocide organized by the extremist Hutu regime in 1994.Men, women, children from the Tutsi minority systematically exterminated…