The Gallery
All text and photographs copyright of Our Forgotten Children
Rwanda
The first thing you notice in Rwanda is there's hardly anyone here over 40. Ten years on from the genocide, people are anxious to put the memory behind them. But a stroll through the streets of Kigali brings you face to face with an inescapable fact: Rwanda has lost almost an entire generation.
During those catastrophic twelve weeks in the summer of 1994, the Noel de Nyundo Orphanage in Gisenyi took in more than a thousand children whose parents had been systematically murdered.
Since then, dozens of new orphanages have sprung up to cope with the endless tide of toddlers now orphaned by malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. At the Cite Nazareth near Mbare, an orphanage funded by the Catholic Church, one is struck by the overwhelming sense of order: the dormitories and classrooms are clean and spacious, the children uniformly obedient and polite.
At Noel de Nyundo, by contrast, it's a daily struggle to survive, but the goals are equally high. "We want to make it possible for every child to attend university," says Athanasie Nyirabagesera, the orphanage director. As she starts to list the individual achievements of her charges, her soft voice is drowned out by the sound of uncontrollable laughter. School is out for the day.
As we leave, another 'inescapable fact' emerges. In contrast to other strife-torn countries, the walls here are not scarred with bullet holes; there are no relics of battle to be seen, no sign of over-grown bombsites. For the killing in Rwanda was done by hand - by machetes and axes, meat cleavers and kitchen knives. No other war in modern times has literally spilled so much blood.