Voyages & Aventures: 3/4 Visite au Rwanda - 20 ans après notre départ

3/4 Chemin des souvenirs...

3.1 - Imbabazi, la maison de feu Roz Carr, notre voisine à Mudende, près de Gisenyi

=> Photo d'archive...

Rosamond Carr was born in 1912 in South Orange, NJ; she traded in her life as a fashion illustrator and New York City socialite to follow her husband, dashing British hunter and explorer Kenneth Carr, to what was then the Belgian Congo. The marriage did not last, but Roz’s love for the country and its people was kindled. She bought a plantation of her own in the tiny neighboring country of Rwanda and created a remarkable life for herself there – a life filled with romance and adventure, untold hardships and personal loss, political upheaval and civil wars, and a life that was dedicated, in large part, to the Rwandan people. From the beginning, she helped people by distributing medicine for small ailments, administering first aid and paying school fees for children.

Le jardin où nous venions voir les danseurs et prendre un "thé et des scones" avec Roz, certains dimanches après-midi...

Roz Carr was the longest-living foreign resident in Rwanda and the last of the foreign plantation owners. She witnessed the decline and fall of colonialism in Africa and the emergence of new and struggling African states. She sailed up the Congo River and camped in Pygmy villages. She survived civil wars, revolutions, and one of the greatest human tragedies of our time, the Rwanda genocide of 1994.

Rosamond Carr passed away on September 29, 2006 at Imbabazi, the home she loved for more than 50 years; she was 94 years old.

In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, at the age of 82, Rosamond Carr (known to her friends as Roz) founded an orphanage on her flower plantation in the foothills of the Virunga volcanoes. The orphanage is called Imbabazi, which means “a place where you will receive all the love and care a mother would give.”

She wrote a book “Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda”