In photo, Patricie Niyitegeka embraces Sister Vincenzina Dallai who helped Patricie after her husband and other family members were killed during the Rwandan genocide. The two reunited in Newfield last month.
A reunion took place recently in Newfield between two people who first encountered each other 17 years ago in Zaire.
Sister Vincenzina Dallai and Patricie Niyitegeka never expected to see each other again after a near death experience in the midst of the Rwanda genocide of 1994.
Sister Vincenzina, from Italy, is a member of the Daughters of Our Lady of Mercy, whose Provincial House is located in Newfield in Gloucester County. Having served in Central Africa for 18 years, Sister, for the past 13 years, has been ministering to the poor in Gonaives, Haiti.
In April of this year she received an unexpected email message from an African Rwandese woman she had met at a crucial moment in the history of Rwanda and Zaire.
It was the year 1994 and a violent and unrelenting genocide was taking place in Rwanda. Patricie Niyitegeka, traumatized by the loss of her husband, parents and 30 other family members who were brutally put to death in the Rwanda genocide, now left alone with her son Fidele, managed to flee from Rwanda, eventually seeking shelter and safety in a refugee camp in Zaire not too far from where Sister Vincenzina was stationed.
Patricie, pregnant and ill, was advised to have an abortion but she refused to consider it. Sister Vincenzina, learning of Patricie’s precarious situation, went to the camp.
Sister Vincenzina confronted the guards at the border and persuaded them to allow her to pass through to safety with Patricie and her small son. Sister then took them to a family who lived close to her own religious community. Here they would temporarily be safe.
When it came time for Patricie to deliver her baby, Sister Vincenzina once more faced the threats of the guards at the border and managed to get Patricie to a hospital maternity ward where her daughter, Josianna, was born. Mother and daughter then returned to the family with whom they were staying. But before long the situation became increasingly dangerous and Patricie and her children were no longer safe.
For the third time Sister Vincenzina intervened and secretly made arrangements for the little family to fly to Kenya where they would be safe. Refugees with nothing except the clothing on their backs, and no knowledge of what lay ahead, they were eager to set out, hoping that somehow they would be brought to safety. Sister Vincenzina entrusted them to God’s providence and the departure took place.
From that time on, the sister never heard anything from or about Patricie and her family — until that day in April when the email message reached her convent in Haiti. Not only was Patricie safe and sound but she and her family had eventually become United States refugees in their long search for freedom and safety.
Through the email communication Patricie learned that Sister Vincenzina would be in the United States visiting her community at Villa Rossello in Newfield. Patricie immediately made plans to see her again.
The joyful reunion took place on June 13. Patricie, accompanied by her two children, now 19 and 17, traveled from Boston and from Georgia to Newfield. In Patricie’s words, “It was a day of tears, joy, remembrance and hope!”
Looking at her children on that memorable day of reunion, Patricie summed up her blessings, saying, “Thanks to Sister Vincenzina’s loving concern for us, the Lord saved all three of us.”
Patricie now holds a master’s degree in biology from Harvard and is part of a research team frequently visiting her native land as a traveling professor of biology and research. Fidele, 19, will become a biology student at the University of Georgia in the fall. Josianna will soon complete high school in Atlanta, Ga., and go on to further her education.
Sister Vincenzina returned to the religious order’s mission in Haiti where she serves the poor.
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