Memories of a real hero from the front of the Tr—caire box

Date Published: {J}

There are moments in life that just humble you and leave you wondering if you really have the remotest clue what it’s all about.One such moment regularly comes to mind; a boiling hot afternoon in early 2004, sitting in a mud-walled hut, deep in the Rwandan bush with Josienne Umumarashavu, a twelve year old girl with the biggest smile a face could ever muster.

Not that Josienne had much reason to smile – this was ten years after the genocide in Rwanda and she was just two years old when the Hutus came and murdered her father, dumping his body into the open latrine that still stood to one side of their modest home.

That year, Josienne was the face on the Trócaire box, photographed by my then-colleague Noel Gavin, a photographer with The Star.She was suitably unfazed by it all – not because The Star didn’t feature prominently on her radar – but because she wanted to help Trócaire raise money because the Irish relief agency had helped Josienne and her family rebuild their own shattered lives.

The Rwandan genocide was one of the most barbaric bloodlettings in history – between 800,000 and one million people butchered to death in 100 days, bodies dumped on the sides of the roads, thousands butchered in church grounds where they sought safety.

Josienne lives a rough 45 minute drive outside the town of Gitarama, deep into the densely afforested terrain with her mother Genevieve and her two surviving siblings.

Three of Josienne's siblings were murdered with their father but the other two escaped with their mother into the bush. Their only crime was that they were Tutsis and their Hutu neighbours – who called them cockroaches – were given free licence to kill them at will.The lucky ones were shot; those who were slashed to death by machete died more slowly and more painfully.

But after the genocide in 1994, Trócaire provided counseling for Josienne's family to help them to cope with the loss of their father and brother. Four years before our visit, Josienne's mother, G

enevieve, joined Cocaf, a Trócaire-funded agriculture project, and became part of a savings and loan scheme that helped her to slowly invest in her farm, grow food, sell crops, buy livestock and eventually rebuild her life and provide for her family.

They proudly showed off their thriving farm with cows, sheep, goats – and even a pig. Since then, her mother has expanded her farm to support the family.

And now, thanks to the support the family received from Trocaire, Josienne attends secondary school.

The ambitious 18-year-old hopes to go to university to study financial management and computer studies.

Back in 2004, her book was the bible and she was inseparable from it. We sat in her most basic of homes, asking her pointless questions and taking her picture. And she responded quietly, talking eloquently of the part that Trócaire played in her rehabilitation.

Of course there are many Irish aid agencies like GOAL, Bóthar, Concern and others who do equally fine work for the world’s poor in the most extraordinary of circumstances – but I only ever met one lady who’d been on the cover of the Trócaire box.

And all the time you just wondered if you could ever sleep again if you’d been through what Josienne and her family had been through, let alone entertain the naive questions of white men from somewhere called Ireland in the baking midday sun.

But Josienne knew one thing about Ireland – it was where Trócaire came from and this year again her photograph appears among the literature that dropped in through your letterbox for the Trócaire Lenten fast.

Take a look at her now as she prepares for university – and take pride that this shattered life was rebuilt thanks to the pennies of Irish children who gave up sweets in the run-up to Easter.

And know for sure that a little really can make a whole lot of difference after all.

For more, read page 13 of this week's Connacht Tribune.