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EUGENIE
In her seat beside the Center’s doorway that opens onto the street, Eugenie bends over her sewing machine, hammering stitches into a pillow case seam. Periodically she straightens her back and gazes out into the street’s noise.
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At home, cooking in the settling night, Eugenie occasionally gazes off in a similar silence. The weathered cement on which she’s placed the charcoal stove is what remains of her husband’s childhood home, which was destroyed during the 1994 genocide.
“Everyone had to find a place where they could hide themselves. So [my husband] ran away to the catholic church near here. Good enough, he was not killed. He was one of the few that survived from that church.” Her husband had 5 brothers: 3 were killed. |
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The home Eugenie and her husband rebuilt on his childhood home’s foundations is smaller and doesn’t fill the past’s skeleton. The exposed foundations remain as one of the daily reminders of 1994’s relentlessly pervasive scars. Other scars are seared—deeply—into body and mind.
“I lost my mother, my father, and my five brothers in the genocide. Only my sister and I survived. My sister, they were counting her as dead during the genocide. Because she was having even the pang here (demonstrates slicing, hitting action on forehead). They cut all her body and they threw her in a flowing river. But because she used to be stubborn and learned how to swim, she survived when she was in the water. And she became okay but her whole body is cut, full of scars.” |
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As Eugenie cooks in the courtyard, children knock around a football behind her. One of those children is Eugenie’s only child: Boris, a lanky and quiet boy in primary 6. When darkness has fully fallen and the football lays still, Boris silently retreats to watch a football match on the TV that sits in the corner beneath his parents’ wedding gourd.
Eugenie pulls the last pot off of the coals and serves Boris and herself a meal of ibishyimbo, umuceri, dodo, and amata. They flip the channel from football to footage of President Kagame giving a campaign speech. Eugenie eats and watches, nodding quietly.
Written and photographed by Meade Inglis.
Interviews translated from Kinyarwanda to English by Mary Nyangoma.