10/29/2005

Rwanda, proud of the stability it has achieved since the 1994 genocide, wants its citizens to come home. Niyikiza, 38, fled from Rwanda in 1994, but after 11 years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she is ready to come home, bringing five of her six children and a mute brother, who is 22. Sitting in a UN High Commissioner for Refugees transit center in Goma, DRC, she said: “I will go back to Rwanda to see how the situation is. If I find things are better, I will send some people to tell my husband to come.” Life in the eastern Congo, which is insecure, has been difficult, and she has heard that life may be better in Rwanda, where she has some land near the capital of Kigali. “I want to cultivate the land and to send my children to school because you can’t do anything if you do not go to school.”