Clemantine Wamariya grew up the daughter of a wealthy businessman and a doting mother in Kigali, Rwanda but at age 6 she and her teenage sister, Claire, were sent to live with their grandmother to avoid the encroaching “conflict.” When the “conflict” came to their grandmother’s countryside farm the girls uprooted themselves again, spending the next 6 years are refugees across the African continent. The “conflict” Clemantine and Claire were fleeing was the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Claire’s solution to escaping all that was to make money, […]
I Am Somebody
In 1994, when Clemantine Wamariya was 6 years old, she and her 15-year-old sister Claire had to leave their family in Kigali, Rwanda, due to the “conflict.” The two girls spent the next 6 years as refugees, traveling through 7 African countries, having to learn new languages and find the means to survive, not knowing whether their parents and younger siblings were alive. In The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Clemantine Wamariya tries to come to terms not only with the upheaval and trauma of her […]