The Convoy

by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, Chloë Sommer (Narrator)

On the 18th of June 1994, weeks before the end of the massacres in which hundreds of thousands of her fellow Tutsi, Rwanda's Bantu-speaking ethnic group, were slaughtered by the Hutu, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse and her mother were fortunate to find a safe passage out of Rwanda with a convoy of children organised by a Swiss humanitarian organisation.

Fifteen years later, after rebuilding her life and becoming a successful novelist, Mairesse is ready to begin the long process of reconstructing her incomplete memories of the escape. Beginning with the BBC team, which told the story of the convoy, then by talking to aid workers, journalists, fellow escapees and consulting many archives, she pieces together personal accounts and records to make coherent the forces at work in Rwanda at the time of the genocide.

Genres: Africa

Audible Audio

Published February 27, 2025

About the author

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born in Rwanda in 1979. She survived the genocide against the Tutsi people and in 1994 moved to France, where she still lives, to study political science. She has published novels and poetry.

Reviews

[Priya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a memoir of the author's escape from the genocide of Tutsi people in Rwanda in the year 1994. At 15, she managed to sneak into a rescue convoy being operated by a Swiss organization and this is the journey of not only how she made her way out but also her survival after that and her attempts to learn more about the fate of her fellow survivors.
Learning that there was news footage showing her and her mother in the convoy spurred her to look for it and that led to a question of who should such footage belong to and who is most entitled to tell the story? Her dogged efforts to present the horrific occurrence in the right light are interspersed with her search for photo and video footage of her own escape. She talks about how the media distorted facts and how she wanted to set the facts before the public so they could know the truth.

It is a very informative book and also very personal, highlighting the trauma of the genocide and telling of what came after for those who managed to escape through the life story of the author herself.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually don’t know where to start reviewing this book. It’s the authors story about how at the age of 15 she escaped the Rwandan massacres of 1994 alongside her mother. Also about her life during the massacre and her life since her escape and her subsequent searches for information about the massacre and the children saved by the convoys. The convoy Mairesse and her mother joined, organised by a Swiss humanitarian organisation, was supposed to be for children under 12. It was only 15 years after her escape that Mairesse felt able to start writing down both her own, and others, first hand accounts about the atrocity. In 2020 using her own memories and research she put this nonfiction story together.

Briefly, the Rwandan genocide, during the Rwandan War, took place from 7 April to 19 July 1994, during which time it was estimated that 800,000 Tutsi were murdered. In hiding with her mother, Mairesse closely avoided death and rape, the latter by a man likely living with HIV which in itself was a death sentence for most at that time. Mairesse’s mother was Rwandan and her father Polish but she spoke French and cleverly used that to persuade her potential killers that her father was French, which likely saved their lives. After their escape they ended up in northern France. Mairesse’s mother soon returned to their homeland looking for family and friends but Mairesse stayed in France. She later met and married a Frenchman, Yann, who encouraged her to find out more about her escape and her life in Rwanda.

I remember with horror the genocide as shown on UK television at that time. People murdering their fellow countrymen due only to their ethnicity. However, I don’t remember ever thinking it was biased in anyway - the power of the media is very scary! This was obviously not going to be an easy read but I was surprised how emotional it made me feel, particularly the effect that the whole thing had on Beata’s life since. Mairesse is a survivor, a strong resilient and determined woman but regardless no one should ever have to go through what she did. A powerful and informing read.
See separate post for #Giveaway

[PJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, one of the pleasures of reading is to broaden my awareness and appreciation of the world around me. To push myself beyond my comfort zone. This can be found within the fiction genre, but is more impactful in the real world of non-fiction and none more so than that of memoirs.

With The Convoy, I was taken way beyond my comfort zone. I felt distress, anger and horror as I absorbed myself in Beata’s personal account of the genocide atrocities of 1994 in her home country of Rwanda, and the impact on her both then and now. It was almost too difficult to read.
And then I felt great annoyance with myself. There I was, sitting reading of her terror in my centrally heated room, with the comfort of knowing that I had shelter, I had access to all sorts of food and drink, and vitally, I was safe. Safe to leave the comfort of my home and return without putting my life at extreme risk or those around me, or to not return at all.

So, I kept reading. Kept getting ever more distressed, angered and horrified as Beate took me on her personal journey. Her struggles not just to move on from the horror of those few weeks as a 15-year-old, 25 years previous, but also for the failure of the world to fully appreciate what it meant for those impacted, those who survived, the mental and physical trauma of herself and those other victims. Examples of that failure were subtly presented. An example was her highlighting the news headlines vying for top spot. There was the ending of apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s presidency and the football World Cup. Yes, but really significant given they were at the cost of Rwanda’s trauma.

Thank you Beate for opening my eyes, for allowing me in to your personal tragedy and that of your country. And thank you for presenting it in such a was as to give me a belief that in adversity, there is hope and good in this world of ours, sometime and somewhere.

This is as hard to read as they come but I would highly recommend you face the challenge.

[Angi Plant · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thoughts
This is the type of book that you read and don’t where to start.
Because it’s nonfiction it’s hard to be objective when it’s someone else’s life. In parts this book broke me for real, knowing that the person in it was going through things that the media in this country didn’t report equally or honestly. I missed a lot of news going on in this era and only found out about it much later. Or from people who know/knew people caught up in the realities of this.
Beata has given a very honest and account of the life she has pieced together. It moved me several times. If you’re a nonfiction reader I’m sure it will move you, too. I’d urge you to read this book and find out about some of the things that people go through, that we don’t usually hear about or comprehend.
With thanks to Anne Cater, the publisher and the author.

[Fatguyreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was 15 at the height of the genocide against the Tutsi people in Rwanda. And in am effort to escape and amid the horrifying violence, she and her mother moved from place to place, until finally they secured a place on a convoy to safety.

This is her story, which she put together after rebuilding her life in France. And the story of others who witnessed the depravity of hundreds of thousands of killings over just three months.

It's an important story. It's incredibly powerful and deeply moving.

It's an intimate and profound story of survival and healing. Written in beautiful, clear prose, it's a shocking story, but it's also an unforgettable tale of hope.

4 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.

[Steve Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I was reading this I kept thinking it could have been so much better. So much unnecessary stuff about how she got her information and details like lists of names. Start at page 78, read her story and then quit before she goes back into inane details.
There is nothing in there as to WHY this massacre happened.

[Ceri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a raw depiction of the horrors of the Rwandan genocide…so much so that I found it difficult to be a able to read more than a few pages at a time. Thought provoking as-well on the concept of who owns photographs.

As a downside would be helpful to understand more around the political landscape by explaining a little about what led to the genocide.

[julie young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir of the authors escape from the horrific genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Her determination to find out as much information as possible about this shocking time makes this raw, compelling, heart breaking read.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be a heartbreaking one at times. Its a memoir, and I did enjoy it. I never knew mich about this at all so was enlightening

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always feel a certain amount of apprehension when starting to review a memoir. It is, afterall, someone else's personal story, not really my place to disect or interrogate. That weight is amplified somewhat having finished reading The Convoy, which is, in essence, the story of the author's attempt to reclaim her own history. To be able to articulate not only what she went through in the months leading up to the escape of her and her mother from Rwanda in June 1994, but the journey that she went on trying to locate some photographs that she had been told existed in which they both appeared. A testament to her place in the tragedy, and a chance to reconnect with the memories from that time.

This is not a retelling of genocide. In The Convoy, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse does not simply recount historical facts, not does she seek to portray the bruatlity of the situation or place readers in the midst of the violence that was enacted upon the Tutsi community. That is not to say that this doesn't form part of the author's story. It does. She was witness to the violence inflicted upon, and the slaughter of, her neighbours, and a victim of the threat from the Hutu militia, and there are scenes in which there is no denying how close she came to being a victim herself, or the potential for consequences had she not been quick witted and perhaps even luck had not been on her side. The book combines not only the author's testimony of her experiences at the time, but largely of her time spent in trying to find evidence of the evacuation of hundreds of young Tutsi children with the support of an aid agency.

This is, at times, a difficult book to read, as it should be. It is not a book that should make the reader feel necessarily comfortable. Most of the violence is off the page, but the consequences of the actions of the militia are not sanitised to such an extent that you can ignore them. If you are looking for a warts and all story of the three months over which this wave of murder occurred, then there will be many you can draw upon. This is a survivor's story, a thought provoking tale of how the author fought to obtain information about her fellow evacuees, and her desire to track down the ever elusive images that she had been told existed. And it raises some very important questions over the question of identity and to whom the images, if they exist, should really belong. From the loss of archival footage from the BBC, to the reluctance of certain agencies to allow her to access images that, morally and the power of GDPR legislation, she should have every right to see, I have nothing but admiration for Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse's resilience and determination in seeking a conclusion.

What struck me most in this book was how, with a twist of narrative, or the omission of some very critical information, the portrayal of what happened in Rwanda can be so easily changed. I can't deny that, as a late teen as I was back in '94, the situation largely passed me by. It is only in later years that I have really become aware of what happened. but, as the author rightly points out, had I watched the news at the time, there is a chance I may have been presented with what was perceived to be a war of two sides, rather than the systematic slaughter of the Tutsi people. Certainly in the author's adopted home of France, the narrative pointed to equal blame, driven by political allegiances and bias. It is a scary parallel to current times and a sad indictment of the human race that we still cannot learn from the past.

Given the violence that informs the author's past, I actually found this quite a hopeful story. Yes, the author is one of the fortunate survivors of a clear attempt to completely eradicate the Tutsi people from Rwanda. There is no denying or getting away from that tragedy or the emotional impact of it, be it upon those who experienced it up close, or those, as in the case of journalists who were there simply as witnesses to the unfolding violence. Whilst there is a damnation of those who sought to rewrite history, or to deny the survivors their past, there are many moments of joy and hope that change the tone of the book.

The ability of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse to slowly reclaim her history through her research, and to be able to share that with many of the other child evacuees, to create a new community of the convoy children, gives status and power to their stories. By sharing her own story in this way, I feel as though I have a much better, more informed, understanding of what happened in 1994. It is a powerful and important read, and one that will make you stop and think about the motivations and bias that can inform the way the media will portray their version of the 'truth' to the rest of the world, something that perhaps has never been more important with the rise of anti-social media and 'fake news'. A book and a history I will be thinking about for some time.

[Fiona Band · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Convoy incredibly powerful and not because it set out to explain the history or politics of the Rwandan genocide, but because it doesn’t. Instead, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse tells her story through memory, reflection, and a personal quest to locate a video clip of herself and her mother as they crossed into safety.

What lingered with me most were two threads: her reflections on the globalised news cycle, and her commentary on the role of photographers versus their photographs. She shows how globalisation created a news cycle too fleeting to give the genocide the attention it deserved, yet also how that same globalisation has allowed her to build a community of survivors. Growing up in South Africa, the defining African historical event I studied was Nelson Mandela’s election, and it was only much later — through an art exhibition — that I engaged meaningfully with Rwanda’s history.

As a budding photographer, I was unsettled at first by her criticism of the way photographers engaged with victims, and how little they seemed to grasp the importance of their images for the people depicted. But in the end, I understood, and I am grateful to have engaged with her perspective.