Basile Nyirangamije speaks softly, almost in a whisper, thinking back to that night when all she loved was threatened by a knock on her front door.
A refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nyirangamije’s story begins in 1999 in the town of Goma in north Kivu where she lived with her husband and three young children.
A devout Catholic, Nyirangamije is a secondary school teacher who speaks five languages including English.
It was 9 p.m. and a group of military officers had arrived with some questions for her husband Charles.
He had been involved in reuniting children separated from their families during the Congo ethnic strife and civil war that ravaged villages and killed many of the family’s neighbors.
“They took him away and since that day I haven’t seen him,” Nyirangamije said.
The family lived in terror every day that the soldiers would return, hiding in the forest whenever they heard machine guns firing nearby.
“If you don’t have a husband in our country, you are unsafe,” she said.
Then one day the military officers came again, this time raping Basile and warning her if she was home the next time they came, they would kill her.
Having lost her father, who was killed by the military, she knew she had to leave Goma and find a new home for her family.
“Life was nothing,” Nyirangamije said. “When you are in peace, you can’t imagine what happens to others.”
With some financial assistance from the local priest, Nyirangamije and her children moved to Rutshuru, a town north of Goma, but soon learned from neighbors that some soldiers were looking for her.
It was time to move again, to travel by foot to Uganda, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo on the west.
“We walked for two days, taking food and spending the night in houses that were open if you had children,” she said. “Every day my heart stopped when I saw soldiers.”
Upon arriving in the capital city of Kampala, Nyirangamije went to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees for assistance.
She and her children were fortunate to live in a small house, and she began communicating with two brothers living in the United States, Thomas Fundi, a resident of Woodland, and Father Bernardin Mugabowakigeri, parochial vicar of St. John Parish in Quincy.
There were times over the next two years and nine months when Nyirangamije didn’t think she could pass the days. She had learned her life was not safe due to the fact that the border between Congo and Uganda was open.
So she prayed.
“I had to fix my life,” she said. “When you are in a bad situation, you call on God and God can help you.”
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights reviewed Nyirangamije’s case, and in January 2007 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops referred it on to Catholic Charities of Sacramento’s Refugee Resettlement Program, which would become her sponsor.
Elizabeth White, associate director of Catholic Charities of Sacramento, was given Nyirangamije’s case file.
“I am always humbled and amazed at the stories of people like Basile who leave everything in their homeland in search of a place of safety for their children and themselves,” White said. “It takes an extreme amount of faith, courage and perseverance.”
On March 14, White was at the Sacramento International Airport to greet Nyirangamije and her three children: Isabele, 19, Emmanuel, 17, and Irene, 10.
“It was a happy day,” Nyirangamije said. “When I met Beth I started my new life.”
Fundi, her anchor relative in the Refugee Resettlement Program, welcomed the family into his home in Woodland.
Since then, White has visited the family to ensure their adjustment to a new home and connected them with appropriate health care and other vital support services.
Nyirangamije has met every new challenge head on, including making sure her children are enrolled in schools, completing requirements for certification as a nursing assistant, training for a job in health care, and making plans to relocate in an affordable apartment for her family.
And one extraordinary day, in a communication from a former neighbor in the Congo, Nyirangamije learned her husband is alive and living in a refugee camp in Zimbabwe.
“I had prayed, ‘Show me if he is alive or he is dead. That is what I ask you only,’” she said. “When I heard the news, I thought it wasn’t possible. I was in heaven for one week.”
The couple now communicates with one another via e-mail and Nyirangamije said she knows one day they will see one another again.
On Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, Nyirangamije shared her story with students at St. Francis Catholic High School in Sacramento and accepted a donation from the school of $4,000 in behalf of Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Program.
Tanya Davis, St. Francis Christian service coordinator, said Nyirangamiji’s presentation to the student body was “a powerful testament to the need to stand for solidarity with those who are suffering.”
“The vast majority of our students have never had to leave their homes or lost their sense of security,” she said. “Basile’s honest account of leaving the Congo brought the refugee reality into our hearts, minds and consciousness.”
Each day Nyirangamije thanks God for her blessings, often waking up at 3 a.m. to pray.
She says that prayer at 3 a.m. is important “because it is when Jesus died on the cross.”
You say, ‘God, I put my life in your hands,” she said. “You think about other people and if you are able to help, you help.”

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