Amidst the havoc interspersed with paralyzing screams and gunfire, sophomore Théo Ntawiheba and two of his brothers had to hide, sequestered in any nook or space that uncloaked the slightest sense of safety. This game of hide-and-seek separated the lucky from those who weren’t. Ntawiheba’s parents and four of his siblings — as the 1994 Rwandan genocide revealed — were unlucky. Ntawiheba, born into a family of nine, belonged to a family of three by time he was one year old.

For Ntawiheba and his twenty-one-year-old and five-year-old brothers, a makeshift refugee camp on the outskirts of neighboring Tanzania became home after they narrowly escaped the ruthless slaughter. Marred by a harrowing mix of civil strife and bloodshed, Ntawiheba’s second and third birthdays were spent under this newfound shelter.

Two years after their arrival, as resources dwindled and the refugee population became increasingly taxing, the Tanzanian government ordered inhabitants of the refugee camp to return to Rwanda on grounds that it was safe. Fearful and skeptical, the majority resisted.

“Why would we [want to] go back to a country we left because of a war when we weren’t sure if it was peaceful enough?” said Ntawiheba.

Determined to evict the Rwandans, the Tanzanian government charged the army to forcefully expel them from their new home to one with a history drenched in conflict and suffering. As a result, commotion ensued. Exhausted pregnant mothers insisted they could walk no further and parentless children were abandoned. Amidst this uproar, Ntawiheba lost connection with his oldest brother.

“Families had to literally tie ropes around their family members so they didn’t lose them,” Ntawiheba recalled.

International Red Cross trucks picked up refugees and brought them to the Red Cross Center in Kenya. Ntawiheba and his seven-year-old brother were lucky enough to arrive at the Kenyan refugee camp, where they found their eldest brother.

Although this refugee camp was bigger and more established, life inside was particularly tough. The Kenyan government allocated land fit for approximately 10,000 people, but with the influx of refugees from war-ridden neighboring countries, the camp soon hosted 100,000 people. Civil war in Southern Sudan and violence in Uganda meant sharing resources with thousands of other refugees.

“I basically grew up in a refugee camp … I kind of got accustomed to being around refugees, I stopped seeing people as Rwandans or Ethiopians, I saw them as one huge family,” Ntawiheba said. “You’ve been through the same thing and you’re in a place where you’re not even in your own country [and you realize] we’re all in this together.”

“The good part about this [lifestyle] is that it pushes you out of your own comfort zone,” he added.

Amongst the Burundi, Congolese, Ugandan, Rwandan and Ethiopian refugees, hundreds of languages were spoken.

“You need a mode of communication, a common language to communicate. You are pushed out of your own self to go out and reach out to people because you need them and they need you,” Ntawiheba said. “You had to communicate, you had to be open.”

“To this day I don’t know if he’s alive. I don’t know what happened to him,” said Ntawiheba.

Ntawiheba and his younger brother were left to fend for themselves. They both went to school, but coming back home to no food made the days long, tough and often unbearable.

“The [United Nations] gave us food, corn, beans, sometimes rice if you were lucky [and] oil,” said Ntawiheba.

These ration cards, however, were not enough, especially if they were sold to get other foods and vegetables. Sometimes, toward the end of the month, Ntawiheba and his brother — with no more ration cards to spare — would go hungry.

“It kind of became a routine; we got used to it. The toughest part was to wake up in the morning and to go to school on an empty stomach,” Ntawiheba said.

The two couldn’t go to school at the same time, so Ntawiheba’s brother dropped out of school while Ntawiheba continued his education in the refugee camp. After eight years of primary school, Ntawiheba took the Kenyan National Exam for Primary School Education, an examination mandated by the government. Ntawiheba was first in the district and the first person from the refugee camp to ace the national exam. Ntawiheba earned a full-scholarship to a prestigious international school in Kenya’s capital. His brother, with the help of an English sponsor that Ntawiheba found, finished primary and then secondary school, and is now enrolled in college.