Dying to Live

A Rwandan Family's Five-Year Flight Across the Congo

Livre numérique

Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga was a history teacher in Kigali when he was forced to flee to the neighbouring Congo (Zaïre) with his wife and three children. Thus began a harrowing five-year voyage of 9781926824789 low ressurvival during which they travelled thousands of kilometers on foot from one refugee camp to another. Lacking food and water, they were often robbed, sometimes raped but were constantly pursued and bombed by shadowy Rwandan-backed armed soldiers with sophisticated weapons and aerial surveillance information. He and his family were among the more than three hundred thousand refugees who, for the most part, did not survive to tell their story.

Dying To Live is an ode to the human capacity to survive against all odds. Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga brilliantly and touchingly tells a story that has been silenced for too long. It will help restore the humanity and the right to mourn to hundreds of thousands of Rwandans dispersed throughout the world.

Table des matières

Table des matières
Dying to Live 1
Table of Contents 7
List of Illustrations and Maps 8
Preface / In a time of war, God help the non-combatants! 9
Acronyms 13
Prologue 15
1. Rwanda Put to Fire and the Sword 17
2. Refugee Life in the Camps of South Kivu 25
3. The Rout of the Kivu Refugees 41
4. Tingi-Tingi or Misery Row 71
5. Destruction of Tingi-Tingi 85
6. The Massacres in the Eastern and Equatorial Provinces 99
Objective: Kinshasa 106
Ikela, the last encounter with the FAZ 108
The killings at Boende and Ingende 109
Wendji Secli: The end of the world 110
7. Changing Sexual Sensibilities and Moresin the Refugee Camps 119
8. Congo-Brazzaville: Another Country, Another War 127
9. From Cameroon to Canada: The Slow and Difficult Return to Normal Life 153
Epilogue 165
Chronology 167
Additional Reading 171

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