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lacked nothing and had surplus of everything, but we stayed<br />
hungry all day and went to bed on empty stomachs. With each<br />
passing day, my hope waned. I was pregnant but starving. I<br />
particularly remember craving milk so much when my<br />
pregnancy was six months old and there was no milk for me<br />
because we didn’t have money to get any.<br />
My father-in-law had many cows, and whenever I heard one<br />
mooing, I cried because I could not control my craving for milk.<br />
How futile human nature is! To deny a pregnant woman a glass<br />
of milk because you want to punish her? That was a rude<br />
awakening I had to learn to live with. Unlike in my father’s home<br />
where I grew up, where everyone was welcome, I had to adjust<br />
my expectations to a very bare minimum. This new reality was<br />
incredibly depressing for me. We literally almost starved to<br />
death in that house. Looking back, it seems to me that those<br />
were the beginnings of the spiritual, emotional and physical<br />
labor pains we were yet to suffer as a nation. The stage was<br />
being set for the gruesome deaths and traumatic experiences<br />
we were about to encounter that would change our lives as<br />
Rwandans forever.<br />
Before the genocide, as my husband, my starving unborn baby<br />
and I were holed up in the boy’s quarter my father-in-law had<br />
kept us in as if intending to bury us alive, my womanly instincts<br />
went into overdrive. I needed to feed, so I occasionally just went<br />
out, with no particular plan, to look for food. In those days, there<br />
were many avocado trees along the road near home. When we<br />
could not bear the hunger, I waited for the sun to go down in<br />
the evenings, veiled my face and walked a considerable distance<br />
along the main road, picking the avocados that fell off the trees.<br />
I would rush home to serve them with water. And that was how<br />
I survived, day and night.<br />
I looked around and realized somewhat painfully that those we<br />
loved and trusted had betrayed and abandoned us. I had been<br />
alienated from my friends and family because of the political<br />
strain in the country at the time. The fact that I had done the<br />
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