A couple of weeks ago I had a very moving experience that truly broke my heart.
I teach classes at a small college and have had a young woman from Africa as one of my students. She is very charming, articulate and pretty. I was chatting with her after class and asked where in Africa she came from. And sort of shyly she said Rwanda. She then told me her story of the nightmare.
Her parents were from different tribes. Her father Tutsi and her mother Hutu. She said for much of her life, it did not matter, that the two tribes got along. Then she said the nightmare began when Tutsis who had been living in Uganda started arriving in droves. When the massacre began, they broke into her family's house and in front of her ordered her father to kill her mother. He refused. They beat him to death and then killed her mother. She was raped and slashed and left for dead. Eventually she was found by relief workers and saw the nightmare in her town. She said there were bodies everywhere and the people living in the town were all strangers. She said then the reprisals against Tutsis came.
The only living relations she has left are members of her mother's family but they won't speak to her because she is half Tutsi. Catholic relief workers helped her come to this country and she is here on a student visa. She has been denied political asylum so now her greatest fear is what will happen when she graduates.
What a story...awful. But how is this poor young woman not being granted asylum?