“We met soldiers,” was Honorine Kavugho’s simple description of how she became one of the countless thousands of women who have been brutally raped.
Kavugho, a 33-year-old mother of eight, was traveling with some 30 people riding precariously atop a truck loaded with freight, when armed men ambushed the vehicle, killing most of its passengers.
“Soldiers were hiding in the bush and below a bridge. They stabbed me in my neck,” she said. “They took us to their bunker and we spent four days there. A child of two years was killed. They took our clothes and money.”
She was raped repeatedly for four days by a group of soldiers led, ironically, by a female commander named Chantal.
Once the soldiers had tired of her, she was released. Kavugho says Chantal told her she could “die at home”.
Kavugho didn’t die. But the reception she got at home was worse than death, she said.
“When I came home, my husband rejected me and my family rejected me,” she said. “I didn’t know if I was still alive.”
“He said he would never share anything with me ever again. He called me the wife of a soldier, rebels, criminals.”
Although the attack occurred in 2003, Kavugho has a constant reminder of the rape – the daughter she gave birth to afterwards. This daughter is the youngest of her children, all of whom have been raised on the streets.
To keep her family alive, Kavugho begs for handouts.
“Now they are starving,” she said.
If the violence she survived was not enough, Kavugho has been diagnosed with HIV, leaving her in despair.
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