Clemantine Wamariya

Joyful Clemantine Wamariya is a Rwandan-American author, speaker, and human rights advocate. Born in Rwanda, she was forced to leave her home in Kigali and her parents at the age of six due to the Rwandan Genocide. She sought refuge with her extended family in the south of the country but was forced to flee again when the genocidaires targeted the family there. She and her older sister escaped the country and spent several years seeking refuge in Africa before being granted refugee asylum in the United States.

She settled with a family in the Chicago area and began formal schooling for the first time at the age of thirteen. She gained international attention in 2006 through an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which featured a surprise reunion with her parents. After graduating from Yale University, she pursued a career as a storyteller with engagements, including a TED talk. In 2018, she published a book recounting her life experiences, titled The Girl Who Smiled Beads. She is a 2019 recipient of the Alex Awards.

Wamariya was born in Rwanda and grew up in nine different countries thought east and southern Africa. Her father was a businessman in the taxi sector, and her mother was a nurse and gardener, growing fruit and flowers at the family's home. She also had a devoted nanny. The Rwandan Genocide began in April 1994, when Wamariya was six years old. The family began hearing loud noises from the gunfire, which her brother Pudi attributed to thunder, and they noticed that their neighbors were absent. 

Realizing the danger, she and her sister, Claire, were sent to the south of the country to live on her grandmother's farm. But that was also unsafe, and the family was targeted for killing. As the genocidaires knocked on the door, she and Claire were told by their grandmother to run away. By traveling at night, hiding during the day, and surviving on fruit, they escaped from the country and became refugees.

The first safe haven the sisters reached was a refugee camp in Burundi, but they were unable to settle in any one place for long. A combination of violence within the camps and a desire to find a location with a more prosperous outlook meant they spent many years traveling between camps. Over the next six years, they moved from Burundi to Zaire, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and eventually to South Africa. From there, in 2000, the sisters applied to the International Organization for Migration for assistance and were granted refugee visas to the United States.

Wamariya and her sisters were resettled by the Chicago branch of the refugee resettlement organization World Relief, which partnered with a family in the Chicago, Illinois, suburb of Kenilworth. Once settled in the US, Wamariya began attending school for the first time at the age of thirteen. She studied from the sixth grade at a local Christian school before moving to the New Trier High School in nearby Winnetka. After graduating from New Trier in 2008, she studied at Yale University and obtained a BA degree in Comparative Literature in 2014.