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Story by Karen Homer
Photography by Jon Warren

	Rwanda's estimated 65,000 child-headed households remain a bitter legacy five years after the 1994 genocide. World Vision is caring for many of these 300,000 orphaned children.
Mournful memories: Philippe, 10, witnessed the slaying of his uncle and grandfather and buried his mother -- all before he turned 8. Experts estimate that 80 percent of Rwanda's 3.75 million children suffered a severe traumatic event during the genocide and its aftermath.

"Get back to the house and stay there!" Philippe, 10, yells to his brother Ayirwanda, 5, who is clambering down the steep hillside to the valley floor where Philippe is harvesting sweet potatoes. "Guard the house until Alphonsine comes home."

Banished to the family's mud hut, Ayirwanda whimpers quietly. His sister, Alphonsine, 15, left at dawn to sell charcoal in the market, taking along 8-year-old brother, Barirwanda. Philippe and Alphonse, 13, are busy cultivating. Abandoned again, in a tantrum rage Ayirwanda beats his sole companion -- a limp, sock doll -- against the hut's door frame. Frustrated, he slumps down near the mound that marks his mother's grave and tearfully awaits Alphonsine's return.

Ayirwanda literally means "What's happening in Rwanda?" -- a fitting name for a child christened in 1994, the year decades-old tensions between Hutus and Tutsis boiled over again in this country. With their hoes and machetes, in less than 100 days Hutu government forces and militia killed at least 500,000 people -- mostly Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus -- in a state-organized massacre. The genocide was not the largest in history, but it may have been the quickest. By comparison, the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust at a rate of 2,700 people per day.

Boys will be boys: (From left) Alphonse, 13, Barirwanda, 8, Philippe, 10, and Ayirwanda, 5, make the most of sister Alphonsine's trip to the market, goofing off and rolling banana-leaf cigarettes. The boys alternate between doing chores and being bored.

Ayirwanda's father, Pascal, was among those who died in Butare, a town in south-central Rwanda. He didn't come home one night after the fighting broke out. The family never saw him again. His widow, Josepha, and their five children fled to an uncle's home in Gikongoro, a town 15 miles north of Butare. For two years, Josepha supported her family by growing bananas and sweet potatoes. When her uncle died, she took over his two-room mud hut and plot of fertile land. Then problems began again.

"My mother refused to sell a piece of our land to a neighbor. He said he would get it 'one way or another,'" Alphonsine says. Land is scarce and highly coveted in Rwanda, Africa's most densely populated country. Ninety-three percent of the 7 million people here earn their living through subsistence agriculture. Bitter conflicts over property rights often divide families and communities.

A few days following the neighbor's threat, Josepha died suddenly after eating at another neighbor's home. "She was poisoned," Alphonsine says sadly, gazing at her mother's photo on a faded identity card -- the children's only memento. They buried Josepha, 38, a few feet from the house.

Continued: Mother, provider, and protector at age 13