• Biography and Artistic experience
• Kizito Mihigo and the genocide
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"I was told that I was born on the 25th of July 1981 in Kibeho, in the old province of Gikongoro situated in the south of Rwanda. Kibeho is one the most evangelised areas of our country. Its inhabitants were all practising Catholics. In Rwanda, the church of Kibeho, built in 1934 was among the Church’s main monuments, one of the best built in the country.

During the massacres of Tutsis in 1959, the church of Kibeho became one of the safest places, a sanctuary where Tutsis from all the neighbouring areas could hide without any fear of those who were seeking to kill them. This was the reason why the majority of Tutsis chose to stay and make Kibeho their home after those massacres. In 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide, more than 90% of Kibeho’s inhabitants were Tutsis.

My father BUGUZI Augustin, who was the director of Kibeho’s primary school and a former student of the first Christian schools of Save, was someone known to be very learned in the church. Word has it that he wanted to become a priest before he met my mother ILIBAGIZA Placidie who was also teaching at Kibeho’s primary school.
My parents gave me the last name of MIHIGO after my paternal grandfather who also carried that name; they gave me the first name Kizito, after one of the first Ugandan Martyrs.

In 1990 at the first attack of the R.P.F (the Rwandan Patriotic Front), Kibeho being geographically badly placed was among the regions least up to date about what was happening on the other part of the country, on the Rwandan-Ugandan border. The day after the attack, I happily went to my father telling him that our country had just been invaded by little insects called cockroaches, enemies of Rwanda. And as I was really convinced that was the case, I asked him to do all that was in his power to stop those ‘animals’ as they were called on the radio getting to our region.

My father, who was apparently fully up to date and who understood the situation much better than I did, started changing his attitude from then on. He became quieter, more thoughtful and much more spiritual. He, who usually went to mass on Sundays, started going every single day and we the children asked ourselves why.

In April 1994, even before the Rwandan president's plane was shot down, the inhabitants of Kibeho were all enveloped in fear. Schools had been closed for a few weeks; students who were ethnic Hutus were menacing their Tutsis classmates. All of a sudden our neighbours, who until then had been our good friends, started menacing my father and my mother telling them that their children were going to be killed in their eyes and that our cows were soon to be eaten. We children did not believe a word of that. It just seemed impossible that all these people who came to us often asking for something to eat or drink and who always left having eaten to their hearts content and satisfied their thirst would forget all that in a moment. So we thought they would protect us from that war of which rumours had already been circulating for a few months.

The morning of April 7th 1994 I met my father in the corridor of our house. He looked like he hadn’t had any sleep; his eyes were red just like they were at those times when he was angry about something. He went for a walk at the back of the house and when he came back and told us: “come and see what is happening on the hill in front of us” All the houses in front of us were burning and we asked ourselves who was capable of burning all those houses down at the same time as they were quite numerous. The fire was moving fast from one house to the next and my father ordered us to live our house empty handed and to go to the church of Kibeho, located at about 500 meters from our house. Once we arrived at the church, we were already traumatised by a multitude of people: men, women and children that were coming from all the neighbouring regions.

The church was full, the primary school too and people were already starting to occupy a neighbouring secondary school. My father was among the most looked for Tutsis of the region and he was afraid. I personally saw that.
He came to find us and asked us to leave and to go to our friends, a family in Runyinya one of the districts of Butare. My father stayed behind with his mother, my grandmother who at the time was too old to walk. He told us that if the situation became worst, he was going to take his bike and join us in Butare. We had to leave on foot and preferably not on main routes. We took the path to the forest and we walked along a river called Uwarunyerera.

After a few kilometres with my sisters and my mother who were carrying my little brother on her back, some Hutus saw us traversing the valley. Among them, there were teachers who were colleagues of my parents, the educational inspector of our district as well as our district’s horticulturist. They were seating on the hills surrounding us; I believe they were waiting for a signal to go and kill people who were in the church. They saw us and they came down from those hills shouting: “It’s the wealthy, it’s the wealthy; they should not escape us” and we ran in different directions. My mother had my little brother on her back and was therefore not able to run. She hid in a pit next to the river. I met my sisters, one by one after a few kilometres in the forest. At one time we were convinced my mother had been killed. In fact, my mother spent the rest of that day in that pit, the night as well.

The following day, she joined us in Butare and we cried together. She told us that people who were hunting for us had been very close to that pit searching everywhere for us. A few hours after her arrival, we saw the church of Kibeho burning and from far we could hear gunshots. It was the first time we heard the sound of a gunshot and in the midst of all that chaos we were asking ourselves what was becoming of our father… he had told us that if the situation was to get worse, he would jump on his bike and join us in Butare. We spent the whole night all eyes and all ears, waiting for dad and his bike.
At about 10.00am, we heard “induru”, screaming in the neighbourhood where we were staying. After a few minutes, gunshots followed. The sound of gunshots was so close to our house that we could hear and feel their reverberations in our hearts.

We were all trembling. Mom asked us all to say our prayers but nobody could manage as we just weren’t able to concentrate. We took our rosaries in our hands but we couldn’t do anything with them. We decided to leave our house running. I took the radio, my sisters took some clothes and other people took the suitcase and all that was portable, but I can assure you that no one even managed to run more than 500 metres with those items.

There was a long queue of Hutus who were asking us for money, they wanted everything that we had, or they were going to kill us. There were also a few Twas with them. About a dozen Tutsis from that village were killed there and then.

Once we had given them all we had, they took us to the centre of Karama, still in the district of Butare and they told us that the massacres had come to an end. We nearly believed them as we had spent more than two weeks in that centre. There was a multitude of people in that centre and we were just waiting for the killers to come for us. I believe however that they had been afraid to come for us as there were quite a number of us in that centre. Nights, we were attacked by a small number of armed Hutus but every single time, we fought them and sent them away. My family and I, we slept in a parish hall between the church and the school. We were so many in that hall that I sometimes chose to go and sleep outside despite the danger.

People slept on top of each other, piled up like bags of charcoal. When we wanted to go out during the night we had no choice but to walk over people. A child wanted to go and pee, they told him to walk over people and to go and pee in the window…. He came back in pieces. They threw him a grenade through the window. Those who were sleeping next to the window were all injured. At the moment, I didn’t notice a thing as I was underneath people. I was suffocated, I couldn’t breathe properly but at least I was saved from that danger.

We spent a dozen days at that parish centre of Karama and the 19th of April was the day they had been waiting for.  The whole army of Butare district, I believe the whole police force, all the gendarmerie came and bombarded us. They were throwing bombs as well as grenades in the halls as we were shouting trying to take the injured checking whether a family member had been hit. The Interahamwes entered halls to cut people’s heads off. Every person who stepped outside was directly shot at by soldiers outside. A very courageous man called Ildefonse ordered all the men who were in our hall to step outside and to die fighting. Only women and children were to remain in the hall. Ildefonse was the first to step outside, his head exploded right in front of the door and his spilt blood flowed towards us inside the hall. The Interahamwes entered the hall, they cut people in pieces, they cut many people in pieces, but they did not cut me up or my mother or my sisters. We were very dirty, everyone was very dirty, all covered in blood; I think they couldn’t tell the living or the wounded from the dead or anymore.   

In the hall, I was with my four sisters, my mother and my little brother. None of us was cut up during the massacres that lasted three hours, from midday to 3.00pm. We regard this as a real miracle from God. At 3.00pm, they said they didn’t have any bullets left. All the soldiers left and only the mercenaries stayed behind with their clubs and machetes. We decided to step outside. We were telling ourselves that they were going to cut us up with machetes and beat us with their clubs but that at a given moment they would get tired. That is what happened. We went outside amongst the machetes, blood everywhere, they cut up whoever they pleased and I kept running, walking over the dead and the injured. Where was my mother, I did not have a clue… where were my sisters, no idea. I was to find out later, at that moment only my own life counted. I walked over someone who didn’t have legs anymore. He had hips, arms and a head, but no legs. He told me: Please do not walk over me. I looked at him and I continued running and this time in tears…
I did not know what to do, I did not know where to go, and I didn’t really understand what was going on in the world. I was convinced that the entire world was living through the same situation. I didn’t know that was impossible especially so suddenly.

Thus I separated myself from my family and I followed a group of Tutsis that were running away. We ran and ran, they were saying that we were heading for Burundi but no one knew the way. We traversed valleys and running we arrived in one valley where armed Hutus were waiting for us, if you had something to give them they let you go telling you that you would still be caught ahead. That was just the case, every 100 meters we found a different group waiting for us. We left Karama; we were a group of about 500 people and when we arrived at Nyakizu, the neighbouring borough there were only about 10 of us left. The following day, I met some people that I knew in the valley of Nyakizu. I was an altar boy in the church of Kibeho; I served priests every morning during Mass. In the valley of Nyakizu, early in the morning, I met a group of Hutus, among them there was a priest I served every day at Kibeho. He said: “I know this boy, he is from Kibeho, his father has already been killed and this boy here is the most handsome boy that’s left for us” then a soldier who was with him said: “In that case we will have to kill him as dessert”. They commanded me to sit down next to a river, while waiting for them to finish dealing with the group I was with so that they could kill me last as dessert. I was sitting with an old woman who was also to be killed as desert. They killed everyone in the group I had been in apart from two girls whom they spared because those girls were to go home with them, so they said.

A few minutes later, a big group of Tutsis arrived. In that group there was my mother and my sisters, I saw them. Among the people in that group, there was a man who still had some money. That man would implore them saying: “Please do not kill me, spare my life and I will give you everything”. While they were all distracted by that man, I shot off and ran up the hill. While I was running away, a soldier kept shooting at me but I was not hit, no bullet touched me... Nowadays, I see this in action movies.

I walked for three days and three nights in order to get to Burundi, just like all the other Tutsis coming from Karama. Arrived in Burundi another battle started: crying, surviving all alone and destitute in a foreign country and looking for members of my family that could still be alive and doing all these things all on my own. Only the UNHCR could help me, but it was too busy.  

Two weeks after my arrival in Burundi, I was reunited with the first relative: my mother and with her my little brother who at the time wasn’t even a year old yet. They had been taken to another refugee camp that was a few kilometres from the one where I was. I went there, found them and I stayed with them. A few days later, someone told me that he had seen my sister in Matongo, another refugee camp at the other side of the country (Burundi). I went there; it took me two days walking and I was reunited with my eldest sister Consolée. We took a UNHCR’s lorry and we came back to Mureke to rejoin my mother and my brother. The following day, I heard that my two little sisters had just arrived in Mparamirundi, a refugee camp near the border; I was then reunited with them. They have also lived through some things… only, I am not sure they are ready to talk about them. I was thus reunited with all my family members apart from my father of course. I met people who were in Kibeho at the time the church was bombarded and they told me that my father had been killed apart by a group of Hutus led by a doctor from Kibeho called MUTAZIHANA.

Mutazihana had a daughter who was a very good friend of mine. We studied together at Kibeho’s primary school. I was told that it was her father who had killed mine and I felt all the love I had for her transform into a terrible hatred. I hated everyone who was Hutu as well as all the people whose parents were of mixed ethnics.

I think that me too I was capable of murder when I was in Burundi. I wanted to enrol into the RPF army in order to revenge my dad. I was too young however as they did not accept 12 year old boys. I was hanging out with Burundians soldiers, I’d tell them what I had been through and I’d share with them my plan for revenging my dad. They supported me those soldiers, would you believe. I asked them to teach me how to use a bayonet, a grenade and a gun, they thought me all of that.

I was telling myself that if ever the RPF was to take power; in our country they were to be no more Hutus or any children whose parents were of mixed ethnic. I hated them as well. I didn’t trust people anymore, and I had become very mean. Thank God I was in Burundi at the time, if I had been in Rwanda at that moment, I could have killed a lot of people. In fact if only in my thoughts, I killed many and I ask God for forgiveness about that feeling of hatred and vengeance I had in those moments.

July 1994 the RPF liberated the country and we went back home. At the time, they were not a lot of Hutus in the country, fortunately.
I was at the time very busy looking for a beautiful accommodation in Kigali in which to house my family so that I could then leave for the army, the RPF. I tried to enrol in the army at the camp of Gashora in Bugesera, the only camp that was still accepting children (Kadogo). There, I met my uncle who had been in the army for a long time; he gave me two good whippings on my buttocks and instructed me to return home. I returned to my family angry from Bugesera to Kigali by foot. A few months after, schools reopened, I finished my sixth year and I had an immense hatred for Hutu children. When a Hutu child spoke to me, I beat him and so I beat many innocent children just like that.

In 1995, after my sixth year of primary school I sat an entrance exam for the seminary of Butare, a seminary where future priests are trained. I had promised my father that I would go to that seminary; he had told me that it was the best educational institution in the country. Having passed the entrance exam, I left for the seminary. At the time I had no desire to become a priest, I was going to the seminary only because it was my father’s educational institution of choice and I wanted to remember his first choice for me. Otherwise, I was full of hatred for everything about priests and the Church. Once at the seminary, I fell in love with two things that are presently indispensable in my life: SACRED MUSIC and KARATE. I was completely taken by the compositions of Kigali’s choir interpreted by the seminarians, and outside school hours I took delight in doing Karate with the seminary’s Karate group.

We had mass every morning. My daily prayer every time that the priest elevated the bread and the wine was: “Lord, make me a great composer, make me a singer of your glory. Help me to celebrate you and to be famous in this sacred area. Make me someone very strong in liturgical chants and that all of Rwanda may be able to benefit from my compositions. Lord, allow my compositions to touch the hearts of every Rwandan, just like those chants of seminarians touched my life. Lord, allow my chants to earn me your love as well as that of people”. Then I said to God: “Lord, help me to become great at Karate that I can become the captain of the seminary’s karate group one day.”

During my first year at the seminary, I composed more than 50 compositions and some where already being sung at the seminary.  In the second year, being the chapel’s organist at the seminary, I founded the ‘Mélomane’ choir, the seminary’s permanent choir. With one of my compositions, that same choir won the national competition of choirs.

In that choir, there was the son of the educational inspector’s of the district of Kibeho and the son of the Kibeho’s horticulturist, the men who wanted to kill us on the 7th of April. I thought these boys to sing every single day; I am telling you honestly that these two faces that were there daily in front of me helped me greatly in accepting a number of things in my life. They thought me that one could give up hatred in order to be able to sing well for God.
They helped me to eradicate that bitter feeling that had colonised my heart already for some years. Those two boys don’t know it but amongst them I learnt to forgive, I forgave and I feel happier, calmer, freer and above all closer to God. For me, forgiveness is a grace which comes only from God, a grace for which we can both ask and receive especially in those times when we find ourselves struggling to be Christians worthy of the name... in those times when we want to love, a love without limits.
They really knew how to sing those two boys and I didn’t want to get rid of them. In the end, one of them became my successor; he led that choir after I left the seminary.

In 1997, during a recollection in the seminary, I remembered that when I was on the path to Burundi, I had promised God that If  I was spared, I wasn’t going to sin anymore and that I was going to consecrate myself to doing something that would glorify his name all the days of my life. It was thus in 1997 that I took the decision to consecrate myself entirely to the organ and to composing and interpreting liturgical songs and so I consecrated myself to becoming God’s artist.