Jared
Coleman, #103
Today we will be interviewing a
victim of the Rwandan genocide!
Reporter:
Hello my name is
Maggie and I will be your interviewer of today’s interviews.
Victim: Hello
Maggie!
Reporter:
Can you tell us
your name as our first question of today’s interview.
Victim:
Yes I can, my
name is Helen.
Reporter:
Hello Helen.
Would you like to tell us the first thing you had seen of your villages’
genocide?
Victim:
Yes, I remember
looking up to this hill across the river, and had seen somebody actually with a
machete cutting somebody to pieces.
Reporter: And how did you respond to this?
Victim...I realized that I should turn
around and run back home before they had saw me. And that’s what I did.
Reporter: How did you keep yourself safe
from the killers that invade your village?
Victim: We had gone to a close friend of
ours and had him hide us in his secret room.
Reporter: And how many people were hidden
with you?
Victim: There were seven of us girls.
Reporter: WOW!!!!!
Reporter: So where was this secret room
at?
Victim:
Actually the
room was a hidden bathroom, and that’s where we had stayed.
Reporter: How big was this bathroom?
Victim:
It was measured
about three feet by four feet.
Reporter: And how many days did you stay
in this tiny bathroom for?
Victim: We had stayed in the bathroom
for 91 days.
Reporter: That’s a lot of days!
Reporter:
So how did you
move around this tiny room then?
Victim:
We had took
turns standing and stretching, and sometimes at night when some of us couldn’t
take much more of it we had went into a larger room that was adjacent to the
bathroom.
Reporter:
How come you
didn’t just stay in the larger room?
Victim:
Because it was
more dangerous in the larger room then the bathroom was.
Reporter: Why would you say it was more
dangerous?
Victim: Because there were killers
lurking just outside a window that was located in the larger room.
Reporter:
So how did you
manage not being caught?
Victim: We wouldn’t stand up or talk
when we where stretching in the larger room.
Reporter: How
often would you say they were searching the village where the seven of you
where located at?
Victim: They were always searching, all the
time! It was always intense, intense, intense for us.
Reporter: Had anyone seen you girls arrive at
the pastor’s house?
Victim: Actually several people might have
seen us arrive at his house.
Reporter: Did you girls ever leave the house,
and come back later to confuse your trail?
Victim: No, we didn’t think about doing this until a
few days later.
Reporter: How come a few days later?
Victim: Because after a few days, dozens of
Hutus arrived at the house, trying to find us and kill us.
Reporter: When did you realize they were coming?
Victim: There’s a little window in the
bathroom. And I went up and I looked through the curtains. And I saw people
running, running...inside the pastors house looking to find us.
Reporter: How did you feel when you saw them?
Victim: I had never been so scared in my
life. I remember it was like, life swept
out of your body in a second. I became so dry instantly, and I couldn't even
find saliva to swallow.
Reporter: So did they end up finding you girls
in the bathroom?
Victim: No thank god for that.
Reporter: So what did you do until you came out
of the bathroom?
Victim: We had stayed for eighty more days in
that bathroom until we walked out and had left our village.
Reporter: Did you find anyone else who survived?
Victim: Still till this day we haven’t seen
anyone else.
Reporter: Wow, that was amazing information you gave to
us today…I would like to thank you for coming here today and sharing this with
us.
Victim: Yes
thank you for having me come here today. Now I have to leave to catch my
flight…thanks again.
