RIGHTS-RWANDA: A Life Spanning Continents, Genocide – And an Orphanage

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Fawzia Sheikh

KIGALI, Aug 16 2005 (IPS) - Petite, soft-spoken and all of 93 years old, Rosamond Carr might not – at first glance – appear a likely candidate for heading up an orphanage in an especially poor and strife-torn corner of Africa.

Yet, this is precisely what she has done. Eleven years ago, Carr founded Imbabazi in the western Rwandan town of Gisenyi, in response to the genocide which took place during 1994 (the word "imbabazi" translates to "a place where you can receive the love of a mother"). At the time, she had just 6,000 dollars to her name – half of which was used to turn an old drying house for pyrethrum (a natural insecticide) into a home for the children.

Upwards of 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically-moderate Hutus were killed during the genocide. "The kids we got, most of them had seen their parents killed," says Carr.

The orphanage received its first eight charges at the end of 1994, eventually housing more than 100. Many of the children who came to stay have since been reunited with aunts, uncles and grandparents, says Carr, but Imbabazi has continued to function as a children’s shelter. It now provides care for 122 children.

Amiel Ngabo, executive secretary for Gisenyi province, describes Carr as "irreplaceable". However, Carr feels the time has come for her to hand over the reins of Imbabazi.

"I’m too old…and I’m always tired," she said during an interview in her white-gated cottage on the shores of Lake Kivu – a home filled with framed photographs of children.

Government plans on finding someone to take over Imbabazi, but Ngabo says that in the long term it would prefer children to live with families – be it their own or in foster homes.

"We have to equip the community: they know better, they can be trusted better," adds Anne Gahongayire, secretary-general of the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.

Before coming to Africa, the American-born Carr worked as a fashion illustrator for department store catalogues, and lived in New York. During the 1930s she married Kenneth Carr, a British citizen 24 years her senior who she describes as a "a big-game hunter and a very good photographer". Carr had traveled extensively and owned coffee plantations in Uganda.

In 1949, the couple traveled to the Congo (later renamed Zaire, then the Democratic Republic of Congo – or DRC).

"When we came, we crossed from (the Congolese capital) Kinshasa, then Leopoldville, and came up the Congo River to Gisenyi, to the Kivu area. I woke up in the morning and saw the lake. It was before independence," recalls Carr.

Four years later they divorced, and Rosamond Carr moved to Rwanda where she tackled a variety of jobs to make ends meet: everything from running a pyrethrum plantation to managing the Palm Beach Hotel in Gisenyi.

While Kenneth Carr had resisted having children, his wife longed for them. She contemplated the idea of returning to the United States to remarry and start a family, but at the age of 40 decided she was too old to do so.

A proposal from another British suitor was turned down, because he wanted to leave Africa. "I was really in love with the life, not in love with anybody," said Carr. "I could have had lovers – as many as I wanted – but all of the men here that seemed the nicest were married."

In the end, though, she did gain a family: "I had spent my whole life wanting children, so I got my first children when I was 82."

Carr endured what she describes as the "tough war" of the early 1990s in which the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), mainly composed of Tutsis, tried to overthrow Rwanda’s Hutu-dominated government. She was forced to flee the country during the 1994 killings, after which the RPF seized power – prompting many perpetrators of the genocide to cross into Zaire, from which they attempted to destabilize Rwanda.

"The worst for me was the children in danger all the time. The guns never stopped.even in ’98," said Carr. This was the year in which Rwanda began supporting rebels opposed to DRC President Laurent Kabila, after he failed to expel Hutu militants who had participated in the genocide.

Imbabazi was established at a time when few safe havens for children existed.

"Local people liked her," says Aloys Kaberuka, coordinator of a non-governmental organisation in Gisenyi. "She loves children."

He says that when Rwandans approached her, saying "’I came to obtain some food for my children’ or ‘I can’t find school fees for my children,’ Madame Carr helped them." She also offered the parents work on her farm.

American actress Sigourney Weaver, who traveled to Rwanda to film the 1988 production ‘Gorillas in the Mist’, made the first-ever donation to Imbabazi – a sum of 1,000 dollars.

The film was based on the life of Dian Fossey, a conservationist who was murdered in Rwanda, allegedly by poachers, after spending more than a decade working to protect the endangered mountain gorillas of Central Africa. Last month, Weaver returned to Rwanda to film a documentary entitled ‘Gorillas Revisited’. This film, which also features Carr, gives an update on the current situation of the primates.

Carr’s experiences are also detailed in her 1999 autobiography, ‘Land of a Thousand Hills’.