Out on the street he saw that the road was littered with dead bodies: his neighbors had been cut and killed with machetes, and uniformed men in jeeps were roaring all over the town, looking for other families like John-Pierre’s.

In a nearby ditch were several dead bodies. John-Pierre hid under them for the following three days, until he was certain the gangs of armed men had gone.

He did not understand it at the time, but the ten-year-old boy had just survived the first days of the Rwandan genocide that exploded in April of 1994, claiming 850,000 lives in one hundred days and nights of hell on earth.

It took John-Pierre a month of hiding in bushes, only daring to walk at night, to reach safety in a camp. Soon he was put in an orphanage, and then sent to live with a foster family. However they treated him as a servant and beat him, and he ended up living on the street for several years, begging for food, and receiving no education.

Throughout his ordeal, John-Pierre never stopped looking for other members of his extended family who, he prayed, might have survived the genocide. Then his luck changed for the better, and he heard about SURF, a group of genocide survivors. He was told they were building houses for orphans in the Peace Village in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. The Peace Village is a cluster of homes, run by the orphans themselves, with practical advice and moral support from a local widow who lost her husband and children in the genocide.

Now John-Pierre is twenty-one years old and living in a modest four-bedroom bungalow with his seven surviving cousins that he gathered together from refugee camps, orphanages and foster homes across Rwanda. He is studying to become an accountant, and his cousins are attending schools.

John-Pierre is the head of what is called a “child-headed household”. Sadly his terrible early experiences in life are not unique in Rwanda. There are estimated to be 400,000 genocide orphans in the tiny, verdant, mountainous country at the heart of Africa. Four thousand are thought to be living rough on the streets in Kigali.

The government minister, Angelina Muganza, told me the authorities had made a deliberate decision to encourage child-headed households rather than orphanages and foster homes,

“Children are often better off being responsible for themselves, especially in a very poor country like Rwanda, where we cannot afford to build nice orphanages. It is surprising how many adults will abuse people in some way or other if you give them power over someone weaker than they are, whether they are ill, or old or little kids.”

Research by the New York based group, Human Rights Watch, comes to the same regrettable conclusions, and not just about adult behavior in Africa, but elsewhere too. Grown ups routinely try to cheat orphans out of their rightful inheritance, such as the family home, and the authorities tend to side with adults against youngsters, especially when they are offered a bribe.

Gavin O’Sullivan, of the London School of Economics, has studied the impact of the orphan problem in poor, developing countries like Rwanda. “We should acknowledge children’s capacity to cope, against terrible odds, and we should empower them with legal rights and money to help them get schooling and food.”

I first met John-Pierre and his ‘family’ when I visited the Peace Village in September of 2004. He told me about SURF’s plans to build more simple homes for other orphans. In the following months my friends at Jubilee USA and I raised enough money for five houses.

When I returned to Kigali in November 2005 John-Pierre took me to a lush green hillside on the outskirts of Kigali and showed me the new homes. I was puzzled, however: there were eight little bungalows, not five.

“Did you find another donor?” I asked.
“No, we made your money go further,” he grinned. “Eight for the price of five. It turns out that for $4,500 we can build a four-bedroom house.”

In a world where contractors often tell us prices have gone up, making their original quoted cost is no longer realistic, this came as a pleasant surprise. It also made me determined to help SURF build more homes. Unlike most good causes, I am confident the money raised will go to buying building materials, not paying for the redesign of the charity logo and letterhead.

If you can help us, please send a donation to Jubilee Campaign USA, 9689 – C Main Street, Fairfax, VA 22031. Please state that the money is to be used for building houses in SURF’s Peace Village, and make checks payable to Jubilee Campaign.
www.survivors-fund.org.uk


Note to the editor: Melissa Musgrove (805-563 5050) and Becky Tinsley live in Santa Barbara. They do not work for SURF or Jubilee and they paid for their trip to Rwanda themselves.