Father reunites with 2-year-old daughter lost in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide

Jeanette Chiapello, originally named Beata Nyirambabazi was taken to Italy for adoption during the genocide as she was taken for an orphan.

According to the Guardian, the last time Leonard Sebarinda saw his daughter was when she was 2 two years. Chiapello’s mother, a Tutsi, had taken her and other siblings to shelter at the Nyamata Catholic church hopefully for safe keeping.

But Hutu attackers came, throwing grenades and spears into the church, killing about 10,000 of those cowering inside.

Fortunately, Villagers reportedly found Chiapello alive among the piles of bodies, with her mother, and two siblings lying dead nearby. She was taken to a local orphanage to be cared for.

At that time, Chiapello’s father had been hiding in a different location his three other children. He spent days searching for the rest of his family and eventually found Chiapello at the orphanage, alongside hundreds of children who had lost their families.

Leonard Sebarinda told the Eastern African that “I confirmed that she was indeed my Beata. She even smiled at me when I saw her.

“I left her there to plan on how I was going to get her out of the orphanage so that I could take care of her together with her siblings who had survived. I left the orphanage with plans of coming back.”

However, before her father returned, Chiapello had been taken to Italy where she was registered as one of the orphans up for adoption. That marked the beginning of the disaffection.

The Guardian reports that some 92 children returned to Rwanda from Italy in 1997 after the intervention of the UN, but others stayed in Italy despite personal appeals for their return from Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, to the Italian government.

The Newspaper says one of Chiapello’s brothers, Vincent Twizeyimana, began searching for her about 10 years ago. He approached the orphanage where she had lived in Rwanda, and managed to get some pictures of her and eventually her name and email address.

Initially, she rejected her brother’s advances, saying she was an orphan and could not be the person Twizeyimana was looking for.

However, earlier this year, Chiapello reached out to her brother through Facebook. The Guardian says a DNA test confirmed they were family.

Subsequently, Chiapello travelled to Ntarama in Bugesera district with her Italian husband to meet her family earlier this month, where she was welcomed with a traditional ceremony.

According to reports, she only knows a few words of Kinyarwanda, the language of her area, but spoke to her relatives through a translator about her life in an orphanage and subsequent adoption by an Italian family.

Chiapello said “It took me until when I was an adult to start reflecting on my African roots and biological parents.”

Father reunites with 2-year-old daughter lost in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide

A 70-year-old father and his daughter have finally been able to reunite

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