trusting life

instilled in his children a great love for classic literature and learning. Laetitia’s mother came from an affluent background and was exceptionally street smart. “She was and still is a strong-willed woman who was not afraid of anything or anyone, even when things got very slaughtered by Tutsi extremists. “It’s a small country and lack of education is so high that they knew who went to school and who was educated,” Laetitia says. So, when Laetitia was just 6-years-old, her father could not return to his family and her mother would make a scary,” says Aline. Laetitia’s mother and father were a perfect match—except for one thing. They came from two different ethnic backgrounds.

Dating back to the 15th century, Burundi was ruled by an ethnic group named the Tutsi, of which Laetitia’s mother descends. In the early 1960s, Belgian colonists began occupying the country and pitting another ethic group, the Hutu’s [of which her father belonged], against the Tutsi. Years of political unrest erupted and while the Hutu took power by force in neighboring Rwanda, a Hutu uprising in Burundi failed. Considering the brutal civil wars between the Tutsi and Hutu, it’s a miracle in itself that Laetitia’s parents married at all.

In the early 1970’s, Laetitia’s father accepted an opportunity to pursue a graduate degree at a college in France. “He was only supposed to be there two years,” Laetitia recalls. Shortly after his departure, educated Hutu’s like Laetitia’s father were being hunted down and brave decision to take her children to France in order to save their lives, too.

Fleeing

In the months that followed her father’s exodus to France, life in Burundi became increasingly hostile and violent. Laetitia’s mother and three children took refuge at her grandmother’s house. “We were children and we didn’t know how bad it was,” Laetitia says. But things were about to get a lot worse.

In 1971, Laetitia’s mother decided to take a brief vacation to visit her husband in France. Full-blown war broke out when she was gone. She raced home [“she was safe to come back because she belonged to the Tutsi, the group who was in power,” Laetitia explains] and decided enough was enough. She wanted her family out of there.

Over a period of two years, she tried desperately to get her children passports so the entire family could be together once again in France. “They denied her three separate times,” says Laetitia. “They wanted my father to come back and get us. In a way, we were like hostages because they knew he would have to come back and sign the papers.”

Instead, Laetitia’s mother gathered her children and a few belongings and fled in November 1973. That’s where we find 6-year-old Laetitia running for her life through the night. The family headed for Rwanda, a neighboring country to the north. Rwanda was also often on the cusp of civil war, but the Hutu were in power there and Laetitia’s mother felt she had a better chance of securing passports for her children.

The family checked into a cheap hotel. Everyday, Laetitia’s mother would leave 7-year-old Jean-Claude, 6-year-old Laetitia and 3-year-old Nadine alone while she went to the embassy. “We didn’t have any games, maybe one toy for each of us,” Laetitia recalls. “She would close the door and leave us there with food.” Sometimes she would be gone for hours with no success to speak of.

A family friend named P. Claver Mahungiro, who had recently returned from France to his native Rwanda, found out that Laetitia’s mother was in Kigali and that she could use some help. He contacted her and offered her a place to stay for as long as she needed. And if Laetitia’s story wasn’t already dramatic enough, it was about to take a scary and serendipitous turn.

France

The family set out early one morning to go meet P. Claver a couple blocks away from the hotel. Laetitia’s mother was holding Laetitia’s hand and carrying her sister in the other. Her older brother was following behind. As the women crossed the street, a car started slowly down the road. Laetitia’s mother called out to her brother to stay on the other side of the street. “But he thought she was telling him to come even though a car was getting close,” Laetitia recalls. “He kept coming and the car ended up hitting him. My mom fainted right away. I was holding my sister’s hand. And my brother, he was under the car and he was crying and saying my mother’s name.”

As Laetitia tells the story, her eyes brim with tears until they tumble over, rolling down her cheeks like raindrops on a window. “My mother came to maybe because she could hear my brother’s voice like an echo. The woman who hit him was very pregnant and luckily not going fast. She took my mother and brother to the doctor.” This accident happened so close to the place Laetitia and her family was supposed to meet P. Claver it was no surprise that he ended up being one of the bystanders in the crowd. “He took us and we eventually reunited with my mother later,” Laetitia recalls.

Amazingly, Jean-Claude survived the accident without any serious injury. And it turned out the woman who hit him was the very person the family needed to get them their passports. “I know, this sounds unbelievable,” Laetitia says breaking into a grin. “But we’re talking about a country where it’s about connections and who you know. It’s not every woman who will be driving a car [in 1973’s Africa]. It’s somebody’s wife.”

A few days after the accident, the family headed to France with passports in hand and happily reunited with Laetitia’s dad. The next five years were filled with love, learning at top schools and a peace the family had never experienced together. Laetitia began to trust that her life was on the right track. “We always felt that if something happened in our lives, Imana [God] always protected us by putting us on the safe side,” Laetitia says. “So when I say I learned to trust life and Imana, no matter how desperate a situation seems, I speak from experience, numerous of them.”

But her parents felt a pull back to Africa. Laetitia’s father envisioned running for Burundi’s president. Her mother wished to have more children. Friends assured the couple that tensions had eased in their home country and it was safe to return. So they did.

Farewell For Good

As Laetitia entered 5th grade, the family moved to Rwanda. Three years later, they decided to go back to Burundi and had three more children. Laetitia’s father also began cultivating a campaign for president. “He knew he wouldn’t win but he also knew that if he ran, he would take votes away from a candidate he didn’t want to win,” Laetitia explains. “I’m sure he also felt like he owed this to some of his fellow friends who died in the 1972 civil war. He always felt guilty for surviving.”

In the years that followed, Burundi continued to have ethnic conflicts in cycles. “It was never completely peaceful,” Laetitia says. But during this time, Laetitia continued her education, graduated from college, eventually got married, had a son named Yann and ended up working for Catholic Relief Services, a US humanitarian agency. Still, she says, there were many times she couldn’t sleep at night. “I’d hear shootings all the time, every night. Many friends and relatives died in the most atrocious way,” she says. “Things like that had become normal and acceptable but when I was sitting in my house and thinking about life as a human being, it was honestly not true living.”

Laetitia also began wondering how growing up in that environment would affect her son. “As much as you can live in that survival type of life, you then think of your child. I thought it was ok if I die, but was it ok for me to decide that for my son?”

The answer was no. Coincidentally, at the same time, her parents were deciding that Burundi was no longer safe for the rest of their children, now teenagers, either. They sent them to school in Burkina-Faso in western Africa, where they applied for the refugee status. Four months later, calling the situation in Burundi hopeless, Laetitia and her son joined them, leaving her parents behind in Burundi forever.

At just 28-years-old, Laetitia was now charged with taking care of her own son, plus her brothers and sisters, while continuing to work for Catholic Relief Services.

“I know I was too young to be a ‘parent’ of such diverse age groups and I’m sure I made many mistakes,” she says. “However, my goal is always about doing the best with what I have and understanding that I’m human.”

But if you ask one of her sisters, Laetitia mothered her siblings lovingly and gracefully. “For about five years, she filled the very big shoes of two parents on her own and did this without losing her sense of self, her sense of dignity and her bigger place in the community,” says Aline. “I think we turned out okay, partly because of the way she raised us in the absence of our parents.” finding a new home

During her time in Burkina-Faso, Laetitia dreamed of something brighter for herself and her family. She applied for refugee resettlement to come to the United States where she knew opportunities for her son and brothers and sisters would be greatest. Although she knew lots of people in the United States already, Laetitia chose not to pick a new location based on that.

“I didn’t want to be a burden to them,” she recalls. So, in the fall of 1998, the group packed their bags for a place called Fargo.

Laetitia and her family were the first Burundian refugees to come to Fargo. “I always say Fargo picked me,” she says, half-jokingly. She was the only one who spoke English fluently and she acted as a liaison between her family and their new community for the first few months.

“I’d never heard of Fargo before,” she says. “My brother Jean-Claude had seen the movie and I was really glad I had not seen the movie knowing what I know now!”

Amy Scott, a former case management supervisor for Lutheran Social Services, met Laetitia at the Fargo airport as she arrived with her family as refugees from

Burundi. “I remember being impressed by her energetic presence, command of the English language and her calm demeanor despite landing in an unfamiliar country and being greeted by total strangers,” Amy says.

Aline says she and her siblings were thrilled and worried at the same time when they found out that they were going to Fargo. “In our wildest dreams, we could not have foreseen that this is where life would take us,” Aline says. “As a family, we took this as an opportunity to see what was out there, and a once in a lifetime chance to rebuild our lives given the fact that our birth place offered little hopes for a safe future.”

Laetitia helped her younger siblings dive into school while she found work as a case worker with Lutheran Social Services. Her husband joined her a short time later [they have since divorced] and they had a daughter, Coley. “If she weren't my mom, I wish she was,” says Coley, now 9-years-old. “She's a great person to live with and to her siblings she's very responsible and dedicated to what she does.”

Over the next decade, Laetitia’s tumultuous history faded away. Her siblings moved on to college and successful careers as architects and pharmacists. Laetitia eventually became the Family Involvement Coordinator and Cultural Liaison with SENDCAA Head Start Early Head Start program, a job she maintains today.