"Despite all this, my parents never said a harsh word to us
about Hutu. Our Hutu neighbors were our friends. They never told us we had
reason to fear them, or that we should hate them. They never told us we were
ethnically inferior or superior. I was raised believing we were all equal human
beings. We were Rwandans. I
feel as if my childhood ended the night my mother told me that people wanted to
kill us for being Tutsi. For the first time I had a sense of “other.” When the
day began I innocently believed that I lived in a peaceful, secure world. There
was no “us” and no “them,” only “we.” Now that had changed forever."
Joseph Sebarenzi
from God Sleeps in Rwanda
