Vatican City, Mar 13, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- She begged and scrounged for food in the forest; she drank water from a stream with dead bodies in it; she wrapped grass on her feet in order to walk long distances in the hot sun in order to survive, facing starvation and malnourishment, all before the age of six.
Now, Mirreille Twayigira is a licensed medical doctor hoping not just to save lives, but to inspire young women worldwide – particularly those in her same situation – by showing them there’s hope, and that life is more than the tragedies they face.
While some might label her life “a tragic story” due to the suffering and loss she faced as a young child, Twayigira said others might choose to call it “a story of courage and perseverance.”
However, “I choose to call it a story of hope, a story of God…from ashes to beauty, (like) a beautiful stained glass window.”
Twayigira was among several speakers at the March 8 Voices of Faith women’s gathering in the Vatican, marking International Women’s Day.
First held in 2014, the VoF conference was established in response to Pope Francis’ call to “broaden the space within the Church for a more incisive feminine presence.”
Gathering women from around the world, this year’s VoF took place at the Vatican’s Casina Pio IV, headquarters of the Pontifical Academy for Sciences, and featured testimonies of women from around the world, including Syria and Burundi, who shared their stories of perseverance, highlighting the importance of building peace in a world filled with conflict.
In her testimony, Twayigira noted that when war broke out between Tutsis and members of the Hutu majority the government, leading to mass killings of the Tutsi tribe, she was just three years-old.
Although she doesn’t remember much about the war itself when it started, she remembers the day she got the news that her father had been killed.
“I remember being told that my father had been killed, his body being brought home wrapped in this blue tent,” she said, noting that she was too young to fully understand what was happening on the day of his burial.
Before the war, “we were a big, happy family. Our house was next to our grandparent’s house, so my sister and I used to spend our days with uncles and aunts…so it was a beautiful and happy childhood,” she said.
After her father’s death, however, this changed dramatically.
“My family knew that it was no longer safe for us, so they had to pack and leave,” she said, explaining that at first, they fled to another district of Rwanda, thinking they would be safe.
However, after just a short time her younger sister, who was just one-year-old at the time, got sick and, because her family didn’t have access to medicine or proper nourishment due to the war, she passed away.
After her sister’s death – which marked the second time she had lost a sibling, since an older sister had died before Twayigira was born – the family fled through Burundi to a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“In the camp I was a very happy kid,” she said, “but this all ended when I encountered more loss.”
While in the camp, her mother fell ill and “one night she was gone.” However, Twayigira said that despite the tragic death of her mother, “life had to go move on,” so she and her grandparents continued to move forward.
But just two years later, in 1996, they had to leave because of war in the DRC, which is when “I began to experience a life that is unimaginable,” she said, recalling how she had her grandparents fled the camp with bullets flying over their heads, and took refuge in the forest.
“We only survived by begging for food,” she said. Her grandparents begged from locals in nearby villages, and at times were given moldy bread to eat. When begging wasn’t enough, “we even had to eat roots from the forest.”
“I remember sometimes we had to drink water from rivers with dead bodies floating in it,” she said, noting that their situation had become one of the “survival of the fittest.”
They had long distances to walk going from village to village and in search of another camp, many times walking on rough terrain. When the weather was too hot for their bare feet, they bunched up grass and tied it to their feet in order to be able to walk.
“We escaped death from so many things: from hunger, bullets, drowning, wild animals, you name it. No child should go through what I went through. In fact, nobody should go through what I went through,” she said.
Eventually the family made their way to another refugee camp, “but life would not be better there,” she said. While there were some soldiers protecting them, they would take young boys and train them to fight, and would take girls either as companions for the night or, at times, as wives.
Most of the boys leave refugee camps “with some sort of trauma,” she said, noting that when it came to the girls, some got pregnant, and others were made to be servants.
“The only reason I survived this is because I was very little,” Twayigira said. Due to the ongoing war, she and her grandparents traveled to nearby Angola before eventually ending up back in the DRC for a period of time.
However, with no improvement to the situation and no end to the war in sight, they again made their way to Angola for the second time. But when they arrived, “my grandma was very tired, and as for me, I was very malnourished.”
“You can imagine a big tummy and thin brown hair, and swollen cheeks and feet,” she said, describing herself as a young girl.
Twayigira recalled that her grandmother died shortly before they reached the refugee camp in Angola, and that had they not arrived when they did, “I was also almost gone.”
With just the two of them left, Twayigira explained that her grandfather eventually decided to travel to a different refugee camp in Zambia, because he heard they had a better school.
Despite such a long journey and so much loss, her grandfather moved again for no other reason “than to give his granddaughter a better education,” Twayigira said. She recalled that her grandfather “really believed in me so much. He never once said, ‘she’s just a girl, let me not waste my time on her.’”
After spending a few years in Zambia, the pair decided to make yet one more move, this time heading to a camp in Malawi that had better living conditions and even better schools. They arrived in September 2000.
Twayigira immediately enrolled in school once she arrived, making several new friends and, for the first time since they had left, was happy to have adequate food and shelter.
Being able to do well in her classes “would give me joy. Because at least I got to make some people proud, and I was very happy,” she said. Twayigira was eventually selected to join a Jesuit-run school, with all fees paid for by the Jesuit Refugee Service.
When she finished school in 2007, Twayigira’s grandfather fell ill, passing away just a few days after.
“I cried uncontrollably, badly, but life had to go on, and although I was in so much pain with the loss of my loved ones, it did not stop me from working hard,” she said, “because I knew that my future, it was not certain, I did not know what my future had, but I knew that my hard work would pay off.”
In 2009 she studied for the national final exam in Malawi, and finished among the top 6 students in the country. At the awards ceremony, the Chinese embassy offered a number of full-ride scholarships to study in China for the top students.
Twayigira was one of the students selected and, despite being a refugee with no citizenship status or passport, was able to get her paperwork in order with the help of the Jesuits at her school, a Catholic radio station and even the Malawian parliament.
She then moved to China and studied the language for a year before officially beginning classes in Chinese. She has since graduated and is currently working as a medical intern in Malawi.
While there were many times she wanted to give up along the way, Twayigira said she persisted, because at a certain point she realized that “God spared my life” not to keep it for herself, but because “there are people that I was meant to serve.”
“Before I went to China, I used to think I was just this girl with a tragic past…but when I got to China I realized that I’ve got a story to tell; a story of God and his love, a story that can change somebody’s life.”
As a doctor, Twayigira said she feels she can give even more. But in addition to her medical duties, she also looks for opportunities to speak in schools to try and “raise hope among the youth, especially refugee youth.”
She said that in the future, she hopes to work more directly with refugees, “because I believe I have a lot to share, having gone through what they’ve gone through.”
“Now this is my story…but unfortunately for many, theirs is just in the tragedy part,” she said, explaining that many refugee children don’t even have access to adequate housing let alone higher education.
Even those who do get a good education don’t necessarily have the same opportunities, Twayigira said, so “their hopes are just crushed.”
In order to change the situation, she said war itself has to end: “why not end all this violence, and I’m not talking about people from other countries coming in to invade our own countries, I mean why wait for an outsider to come to stop hurting, and killing?”
“Is the money or power at the expense of their blood really worth it? I don’t think so,” she said, adding that the only way to really resolve conflict is with “forgiveness, mercy and love.”
“Is there such humanity in us, or have we become robots?” she asked. “What is happening to innocent kids is completely unfair, and it needs to stop and I believe it starts from within us: from love, forgiveness and mercy.”
People in situations similar to hers need to know “that they are loved by God and people around them. They need to know that they matter, that there is hope for them, that they have a purpose in life,” she said, noting that this stems not only from having the basic needs met, but above all from education.
In an interview with CNA after her talk, Twayigira stressed the importance of education, saying it’s “really the key to everything, because if not educated, many girls don’t even know their value.”
However, with a good education women learn that “okay, I’m not worthless and someone can’t just come and step on my foot. I am somebody,” she said, adding that a proper education helps women to step into decision making positions where they can change things.
“I believe that once a girl is educated, that means you’re actually educating the whole family. Because a woman, you raise your children, they’re with you all the time, you know that whatever they get is what you teach them,” she said.
“So if a woman is educated that means the whole family will get quality advice from their mothers. So educating a girl is actually educating the whole country.”
Twayigira said she was happy to be able to speak at the Vatican, since the event was streamed live. She voiced her hope that people can hear her story “and not just feel sorry for me, but also see ways they can help other people like me to get a better education or a safe place, or open their homes to refugees like me.”
She said she also hopes other young women and girls from around the world will be able to see and hear her story, and to know that “it’s all possible…I believe that I’m a pillar of hope for them.”
She said one of her hopes coming out of the conference is not only to encourage young women in her situation to have hope, but also that the people who have the power and resources to change things will see that they “can actually do something under-privileged people like I was.”
“Their actions can change somebody’s life for the better, never to be the same,” she said.
[…]
Finally, some common sense out of the Vatican. It is indeed time for a cease-fire and for peace.
Ukraine will undoubtedly have to give up the Donbass and Crimea, but that is the best and most organic solution in these circumstances. The peoples of those regions are already spiritually alienated from the Kiev regime–and rightly so.
May they now attain political/geographical independence from Ukraine and therefore from Ukraine’s overlords in the US.
Jews remember the Holocaust. Ukraine remembers the Holodomor. Zelensky, Ukraine’s Jewish president, remembers both. No sane and decent person would want to be subject to the perpetrators of ether horror. Stalin’s forced mass starvation that killed seven million Ukrainians was followed up by Russian colonization. Putin, who glorifies Stalin, now pretends that these colonists were always there and that he must conquer the rest of Ukraine to protect them. Pope Francis has been calling for cease fires and negotiations since the war began. I remember an interview with him where he was asked why he did not speak more forcefully against Putin. The pope replied that everyone knows who started this war but he wanted to let the Russians save face if they stopped it.
The holodomor was carried out by Stalin’s Jewish henchman Lazar Kaganovich. Many Russian Jews favored the Holodomor–seeing in it revenge against the goyim of Ukraine. Stalin was a philo-semite throughout the bulk of his career. His Russia even had laws punishing anti-semitism with death. The rape of Germany was encouraged by Jewish propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg.
Putin has not glorified Stalin–but, yes, he does honor the Russian army because it defended Russia, was essential to defeating Nazism, and liberated the eastern camps.
Putin is liberating Eastern and Southern Ukraine from malevolent thugs masquerading as Ukrainian patriots.
Sure. All of Russia’s numerous crimes against humanity are singularly traceable to Jews, none of it to atheistic “Christians”.
Your use of “overlords” suuggests you are not disinterested but clearly pro-Russian.
Nothing you said was remotely true. It seems to indicate you have simply swallowed the Russian propaganda line.
it SHOULD be a flag of surrender…Ukraine is outnumbered and should know when to quit.
Ukraine’s Holodomor was indeed perpetrated by a paranoid Stalin dealing with starvation and growing rebellion throughout the Soviet Union due to collectivization and consequent failure of Russia’s grain crops. Fear of losing Ukraine the politburo decided on extermination of the Ukrainian people [the Irish potato famine exacerbated by British arrogance and greed is a milder comparison]. When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR 1942 many Ukrainians turned to Germany, Hitler stupidly still considered them subhumans. Nevertheless many Ukrainians fought alongside the Germans. The wounds are so deep that it would take a miracle for reconciliation, Putin’s decision to invade and this current war makes that virtually impossible.
On the other hand Zelenskiy is a corrupt dictator. US funds have poured into Ukraine with little if any accountability. War in Ukraine and the continued support of a Ukrainian victory, whatever that is supposed to be, seems beyond any realistic assessment. Only continued suffering and enormous casualties. Negotiation and compromise are the apparent solution. On this I support Pope Francis. Chris Albrecht’s assessment for a negotiated settlement is probably the right one.
Justice defines a Christian perspective to war. Analyzing the interests of a beleaguered Ukraine, a concerned West, Russia, a settlement granting Ukraine universal sovereignty satisfies Western interests, achieves Ukraine independence, its freedom of association with the West, grants Russia its strategic interests in Crimea and the Donbas, limits its expansionist capacity.
Russia invaded Ukraine and has killed a huge number of innocent people including children and has also kidnapped innumerable children and has taken them to Russia for enslavement and brainwashing. And you and the Pope say, hey, just negotiate and compromise.
Unfortunately you both have a lot of Putin-appeasing colleagues in the Republican Party, which is why I have abandoned it.
It is true that the Catholic Church has been persecuted by Russia even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Priests and sisters arrested, many murdered. Similarly according to Catholic sources during the Ukraine war under Russian occupation. My comments are directed at a possible solution to the conflict, not appeasement. Limiting Russia to the Donbas and Crimea, and the withdrawal from all other territory is a reasonable compromise.
This is one of the hairy chestnut from the left. Do YOU have sons you want to sacrifice in a foreign war? Many of us with sons will opt out of that one. Republicans are NOT Putin appeasers, nor is Trump a Putin lover, which is yet another DEM slander accepted by credulous followers of the left. Republicans ARE however, concerned about ACCOUNTABILITY for where our aid money is being spent. WE are concerned that OUR soldiers not be killed in a war which at this moment in time should more rightfully be the responsibility of Europe. Maybe if western NATO countries spent fewer dollars on social freebies for it’s citizens and MORE on their military, they would be able to make their NATO payments and protect themselves instead of dragging us into their own continental altercations.What Republicans dont want is yet another endless war conducted on a timid social services basis. Thats good for our enemies and ALWAYS bad for us.
For example, we are now going to build a port for GAZA???? REALLY??? Brilliant!! (sarcasm).Suppose we actually return to the past war model and have a war where we pound our enemies into the ground?? Instead of slapping them with kid gloves, instead of rebuilding their infrastructure, which would never had been destroyed in the first place had they behaved like actual human beings. While I am at it, I observe some of our OWN infrastructure could afford to be rebuilt with that money, instead of funding wars which should be fought by others—the principals involved. “Republicans, they dont want to fight other people’s wars!!!” Whew!! That quite an accusation!! NOT.
LJ, you’re among the few who speak common sense.
I say we should return to a country based on our Constitution. Our Constitution states that only Congress can declare war. To fund a conflict anywhere in the world is to participate in an undeclared war. This madness needs to stop. Korea was a “police action” and not a war declared by our Congress. Viet Nam which killed 50,000 soldiers was not a war declared by Congress. If we as Americans believe an armed war is in our national interest, then let a president petition Congress to declare war. The madness needs to stop. If anyone here has not noticed, we now have a government that operates almost wholly by fiat and not accoding to our Constitution. That’s not a democracy; that’s anarchy and totalitarianism.
I’m amazed you can say this with a straight face while Putin’s armies tried to assassinate Archbishop Shevchuk, kidnap Catholic priests, burn and confiscate Catholic churches, rape Catholic women, and place Catholic children in reeducation centers to beat their language, culture and faith out of them. The Church was always free to operate in Zelenskyy’s Ukraine; it is practically an underground institution in Putin’s Russia.
Correction, Germany invaded the Soviet Union June of 1941.
Could anyone imagine Christ weighing in on issues pertaining to the Roman empire, or Herod’s administrative acts as an agent of the Romans, or what the governor of Judea was up to? Yet the Vicar of Christ seems to think that he’s just another Caesar. I think not. He should stick to the salvation of souls and the Faithful conforming their wills to God will.
Popes have intervened in the affairs of nations and empires throughout the church’s history. There are papal nuncios around the world. Saint Pius X tried to head off world war I and his successor Benedict XV tried to arrange peace talks. Saint John Paul II made things hot for the Soviet Union. Corruption? Zalenski lives in bunkers, Putin stays in palaces. Billion dollar yachts are for Russian oligarchs. Trying to expose Putin’s vast wealth has gotten a lot of people murdered. The overwhelming priority on spending for Ukraine right now is on artillery ammunition which is either bought from third parties or diverted from our own scanty production.
I am saying that Popes ought to stay out of politics. That the bailiwick of Catholic laymen. They can pontificate about Christian virtuous living but the specifics ought to be left to the laity. This Pope can hardly get his theology right but geopolitics is certainly not his area of expertise.
Actually, St. Pope John Paul II didn’t “make things [literally] hot for the Soviet Union.” Instead, he counseled Poland on a different path, which in the precise circumstances (!) of the 1980s, enabled the dismantling of the Soviet Union with almost zero shots being fired (I think limited mostly to Estonia and maybe a dozen fatalities).
From the back bleachers, four points to ponder:
FIRST, said John Paul II:
“Instead, it [the world after the geographic concessions at Yalta] has been overcome by the non-violent commitment of people [Polish Solidarity] who, while always refusing to yield to the force of power, succeeded time after time in finding effective ways of bearing witness to the truth. This disarmed the adversary, since violence always needs to justify itself through deceit, and to appear, however falsely, to be defending a right or responding to a threat posed by others” (Centesimus Annus, CA, 1991, n. 23).
Are the “circumstances” today in Ukraine anywhere near equivalent to Poland and the world in the 1980s? Or, instead, more like the Sudetenland in 1938: Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” at Munich? Or, something else?
SECOND, about the Holy See engaging in temporal matters beyond its competence or direct commission and responsibility:
Yes, “[t]he Church has no models to present, models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework [circumstances] of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another.” (CA n. 43, citing Gaudium et Spes n. 36). And, yet, is moral witness adavailability doomed to be gagged in the back room?
THIRD, for the United States, is the precarious choice whether we have the chops to resist, both at the same time, Russian expansionism in Europe and Chinese expansionism in the Pacific? Lessons from recent European history might teach us something about a two-front war.
FOURTH, and then there’s the question whether mutually respected mediators, if there are any, still include a Vatican which signed “not the best possible deal [!]” for the Church itself in China, and which by studied ambiguity seems to many to have surrendered its grip on moral clarity.
Editorially harmonizing of “polarities” doesn’t really get at the presence of real evil in the world.
Concerning the expression “putting the heat on the Soviets” was meant to mean the communist leaders were in political hot water so I apologize for the confusion. Still the reference was to the political involvement of Saint John Paul II which in no way suggests any violent methods. There was plenty of potential for violence on the communist side both in Poland and the USSR. I will discuss Peter D Beaulieu’s list of possible historical comparisons tomorrow . He as usual is very through but still misses several very relevant periods and influences that relate very much to today. God bless.
Unfortunately, due to history beyond his control, the Pope wears two hats-head of State and head of Church and he must juggle both at same time! 😰James Connor
I hardly consider the Vatican as a State and the Pope as a Head of State – no more than Christ would be the Head of any State. When the leader of our Church insinuates himself into politics, it usually means that we have serious mission drift going on. I know one thing for certain: I am not a citizen of the Vatican and the Pope is not my temporal leader. The Pope is Christ’s Vicar and Christ was not, is not nor ever will be the head of any State.
More careless language from PF. I am under the impression that “white flag” is universally interpreted as surrender.
Vatican “damage control department” on call again.
It’s embarrassing/infuriating.
Cleo, you are under the wrong impression. The white flag signals a parley for various purposes. I could cite many examples from many conflicts. For example, in both world wars brief truces were arranged to tend each others wounded and evacuate them. This was possible if the opponent was sane and minimally civilized but otherwise no. With Germans this was possible if the foe were ordinary line units but definitely not so with SS fanatics.
It appears that his expertise is deficient not only in matters of meteorology but in international relations as well. Who can forget his embrace of Communist China?
Less interviews.
JJR – Oh. Thanks for the correction.
Obama did nothing when Russia invaded the Krim. Biden offered Zelenski asylum but he stayed in Kiev to fight for his nation’s freedom. It’s a miracle that he is still alive.
Corrupt means nothing anymore in politics. If Russia wins Ukraine, Putin will invade more European nations and we have Eastern European countries under Russian dictatorship again or war against Europe including Nato members or WWIII. Putin needs to be defeated now. Zelenski is a freedom fighter against communist Russia and the freedom of the world. May God bless Ukraine and President Zelenski.
Russia is not a communist nation. Russia believes in private property and is friendly to Christianity. Their military even has a Cathedral in honor of the Resurrected Christ.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=russia%27s+military+cathedral&mid=25F7952CF66DECF7820C25F7952CF66DECF7820C&FORM=VIRE
By contrast, Zelensky represents the trashy Judeo-Western culture of globo-homo (in all senses of that word), transgenderism (see for instance, the Ukie army “spokesperson”), pornography, sexual “freedom”, hedonism, atheism/agnosticism, child trafficking, wokeism, liberal “democracy”, usury, graft, and all manner of corruption–and (lousy) Starbucks coffee.
When the war is over, this clown will no doubt flee to one of his villas and live the high life.
I wish we did not have THAT cathedral. Speaking as an iconographer, it is truly dreadful – I mean the concept and its execution.
It is the war or a natural evil (Putin etc.) and unnatural evil (Biden etc). I give those names as mere representations of different kinds of evil. The first does not destroy the primary building blocks of humanity: the notions of man and woman as such. The second seeks to destroy those blocks. Dugin, an ideologist of Putin, ecstatically speaks of “the fairy nuclear Apocalypse” as “an ultimate purification” while gender ideologists work on creating bloodless chaos.
Hence, we have two possibilities, or an ancient chaos of a total straightforward destruction and the new, more sophisticated way of destruction, where there is nothing certain, even “gender”.
Personally, I prefer a natural evil to an in natural evil but both are Antichrist so we (Christians) cannot join either.
Even if one believes in (which I emphatically do not) the justice of Ukraine’s cause, Catholic ethical doctrine does not believe in fighting to the last man (or, nowadays, non-binary entity?). At a certain point, it is clear that one side has the upper hand and that a nation must ask for peace terms, for the sake of their own citizenry.
Russia is winning. They captured Bakhmut, crushed the Ukie counteroffensive, and now they have captured Avdiivka. They have neutralized every western supplied “game-changer”–from HIMARS to the Abrams tank.
Yes, they take their time in war as they do in chess. But they are not interested in the propaganda war–only in the facts on the ground and the eventual result, which will come very soon when the reserve army of 300, 000 is unleashed!
That is what a tough, persistent, martial nation does.
Drink the bitter waters of defeat, O ye forces of Antichrist!
“against communist Russia”
This is funny.
if you would have lived in the Eastern nations of Europe under the Russion oppression for 40 years and East Germany behind the wall under Putin the top agent of the KGB communist rule you would not think it is funny at all. A dangerous thing that young people do not know history.
I was born in the USSR )).
You give Putin too much significance (at that time in Germany).
Speaking of history, I found it funny that you call the current Russia “communist” while the USSR fell apart in 1991.
Putin wants to restore the evil power of the USSR. He has anyone in his way who is opposing him killed. We have the testimony of those who escaped in tunnels under the wall that they built. I was born in Germany.
The Pontiff Francis, who has committed himself to thwarting justice when his friends are exposed as sex abusers (such as “Rev.” Julio Grassi from his earlier days in Argentina, and “Rev.” Rupnik, to bring us up to date), has publicly appealed for “a just and lasting peace.”
That is, he appeals to tyrants for what he refuses to the victims of his friends.
For the sake of insurance, he ought not be standing outside under cloud-cover, lest lightning strike.
As King of a tiny utopia, snuggled inside the EU and NATO, complete with a clown army and countless treasures, take my advice…
Long live dialogue. Human beings are privileged to be journeying through life in an era of dialogue and more dialogue.