Posted by : Lizzie on 02/09/2010 at 10:50

16 years have passed since the brutal genocide swept through Rwanda. Yet for so many, the suffering still continues.

Patrick can remember the contagious fear which spread through his village as his parents ran with him and his sisters, fleeing with their neighbours to find sanctuary in the church. He is not sure exactly how old he was at the time, he just knows he was quite a young child. But unlike the fuzziness of most childhood memories, this memory is indelibly burned across his mind.

He remembers all too well how the door burst open and men armed with machetes poured into the church. He will never be able to forget the sight of his neighbours being cut down and killed. Then the men made their way towards his family. His parents and four of his sisters were murdered in front of his eyes. Patrick and his two younger sisters, Angelique and Claudine, managed to bury themselves unnoticed under the growing pile of dead bodies.

For two whole days they lay under the corpses, too terrified to move even to find food or water. Eventually a neighbour who had escaped returned to the village to search for survivors and found them. The immediate danger was over, but for Patrick a new ordeal was beginning. He now had to be both mother and father to his younger sisters; he had to find food and shelter.

Patrick has spent the last 16 years working whatever odd jobs he can find simply so that he and his sisters could survive. He has sacrificed his own childhood and education to keep them alive. Only now is he finally getting the support he needs: vocational training, trauma counselling, health care, food support and safe housing.

Patrick sacrificed his own future for his sisters. What could you sacrifice to help more children like Patrick?


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