Epiphanie.

Birara’s 17 year old daughter has dreams of being a school teacher which are thwarted by discrimination against the Tutsi. She is one of the few Tutsi even allowed to attend classes at primary school, and despite being a top athletic runner, she deals with open persecution every day. But like her father and mother, Epiphanie keeps her head up and does her best to keep the community of Tutsi and Hutus together in relative peace. Epiphanie is caught between her desire to be a carefree teenager and the growing tension surrounding her. It’s a fragile peace, and as the Tutsi flee for their lives, Epiphanie realizes that not only is her childhood over, but she must fight for her life. She rallies to her father’s side as Birara leads the entire community in a full scale resistance against a large, well armed band of killers. Over the weeks that follow, Epiphanie sees dozens of her friends and family killed. By the end of the fighting, she is emaciated, weak and survives with her younger brother Marcel through shrewd strategies that she learned from her now deceased father. More than 20 years later, Epiphanie and Rwanda have tried to heal from the wounds of this genocide. She stays in the community where she experienced so much violence, raises a large family and deals with her losses with dignity and an absence of bitterness.