Like Elie Wiesel, Clemantine is a genocide survivor. In 1994, 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda. She was just 6 years old when she says she hid in a banana tree, listening to the screams coming from her grandparents' house as members of her family were murdered.
Clemantine and her 15-year-old sister, Claire, were left to fend for themselves. They say they hid for 100 terrifying days and then spent six years in refugee camps across Africa, always holding out hope that their parents survived and they would one day be reunited.
Clemantine and Claire moved to America in 2000, and the two sisters continued to search for their parents. One day, through a chance meeting at the home of an acquaintance, Clemantine and Claire got the news that their mother and father were both alive!
In a heartwarming surprise, Clemantine and Claire were reunited with their parents and two siblings they had never met on The Oprah Show. The family spent four days together in Chicago getting reacquainted. Clemantine says they sang and danced all night.
"It was everything that I had wished for for so long. I didn't know that I was going to see them, but I knew that we were going to be together one day," Clemantine says. "And that moment was everything."
Published 11/06/2006
