In the novel After Before by British author Jemma Wayne, the protagonist is Emily, an immigrant survivor of the Rwandan Genocide who fled to the UK, and was inspired by Liliane and her own story. Jemma, 34, from London, came up with the idea for After Before. She met Liliane and was struck by her tragic and courageous story.
The genocide started after a plane carrying then President Juvenal Habyarimana - a Hutu - was shot down, killing everyone on board, on April 6 1994. Rwanda was then thrown into political unrest. Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and waged war on the Tutsi people. Liliane, who now lives in Kidlington, Oxfordshire was 15 at the time.
She tells how she climbed a tree for safety in the back garden of her uncle’s house in Kigali when it was ambushed by Hutu extremists. As Tutsis, Liliane’s family were all at risk, so she had been sent to live with her uncle for safety. But soon enough the entire family – Liliane and her father, four brothers, 16 cousins, grandmother and two uncles and aunts – were hiding out in same house. Liliane will forever be haunted by the day Hutu militants found them.
‘They had to search every house to take passports, they didn’t want anyone crossing the border’. ‘They came to attack us with machetes. I thought at least if I ran they might shoot me and I'd die quickly. ‘I was scared of the agony of the machete and bleeding slowly to death.’ ‘I saw them come through the house and so ran out of the window to the backyard, hoping my family would follow me. I was shaking so much because I was so terrified, so couldn’t run that fast or bear to look back.’
Seeing solace in her uncle’s avocado tree, Liliane hid and watched, praying her family would escape as well.
‘From the tree I could see everything that was going on in the house,’ she says quietly. I saw them all killed. Every single one of my family in front of my eyes. 'They pulled the bodies out and left them in the garden. I stayed in the tree for hours, not knowing what to do. I had nowhere to go and nowhere to go back to.’
Eventually, Liliane crawled down and ran to the nearest houses. ‘I started knocking on doors. Some people closed the door in my face, others screamed. One woman let me stay one night in her house.’
The following morning Liliane left again and was found by Hutu militants, who chased her. Running on instinct, she came to a pit in the ground and jumped in. ‘They surrounded it, screaming at me to get out,’ she says. ‘ I told them, “No, if you want to kill me the best place is here, do your business.” One jumped inside the pit, lifted me up. They didn’t kill me, though. I was very lucky. I think they took pity on me but I don't know why.’
Liliane found another family friend, a woman who took her in and looked after her until the war was over and for years afterwards.
The RPF, a trained Tutsi military group largely based in Uganda after, were able to enter Rwanda and slowly began take-over of the country. Only when the RPF had full control, did the genocide stop, in mid-July 1994.
Liliane grew up without a family or knowing a word of English, living in a country ravished by war and left in poverty and disarray.
In 2000, the family friend arranged for 20-year-old Liliane to be taken to France for a new and prosperous life, but arriving in London before connecting to France, Liliane was abandoned at Heathrow airport, with no idea where she was supposed to go and what she was supposed to do.
‘Authorities at the airport took me to a hotel nearby Heathrow where a translator talked to me as I could not speak a word of English,' she says.
‘A social worker put us in a house for six months whilst I claimed asylum. I went to school for two years, learnt English, made friends and started to rebuild my life.’ She applied to study at Oxford Brookes University in 2004.
‘I made friends with a woman from Congo because we could both speak French and she was going to Oxford and I told the people at the asylum hostel I was staying at that I wanted to go with her,’ she explains.
Her asylum came through in 2005 and she began her undergraduate International Relations and Politics degree in 2010, graduating in 2013. During her time in England Liliane found love with a Nigerian boyfriend who she credits for, ‘helping me find love and re-build my life.’
The couple have two daughters; Ariella, two, and Anastasia, five. Liliane also became heavily involved with SURF, of which she is now a trustee.
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