As a child, Louisville junior Roseline Twagiramariya was calm and constantly smiling.

But for a few years of her young life, that ever-present happiness was ripped away by war in her native country, Rwanda.

“I was young, but I knew that at any time, someone could kill me if they didn’t like my ethnicity,” she said.

When Twagiramariya was six, she said she, her mother and her infant sister hid in her father’s office on a high school campus for three days.

“At night, we could hear the screams of people dying,” she said. “I can’t describe the feeling of knowing it could have easily been us.”

Twagiramariya remembers her prayers; she promised to do her homework and listen to her parents if God kept them safe.

“There was nothing to smile about,” she said.

While they waited until it was safer to leave, her father, along with other able-bodied men, patrolled the area.

She said that at 10:30 one morning, as her father and his best friend patrolled, enemies invaded the campus area with a shoot-out. He ran one way, his friend ran another. And though he saw his friend’s body on the ground, he didn’t have time to grieve; he had to save himself.

“For three days, I thought my father was dead,” Twagiramariya said. “He thought we were, too.”

She said another patrolman told him no one inside the school survived. But they soon reunited and moved to Congo, in 1994, later to Senegal and to the U.S. in September 1998.

“I thought coming here would be paradise,” she said.

Twagiramariya wasn’t the average fifth grader. She spoke Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Wolof and French and was ahead in her math and science classes. In a few months, by watching movies with English subtitles and listening closely to her classmates, she learned the language.

“It was hard at first,” she said. “I didn’t look or speak the same. Kids would ask ignorant questions, but they didn’t know any better.”

Twagiramariya, a public relations and sociology double-major, plans to work abroad for nonprofit organizations and world causes.

“I feel like people turned their backs on my country,” she said. “There wasn’t enough attention and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Though she appreciates her past for making her stronger and more aware, she said she may never go back to Rwanda.

“My mind is still stuck in ‘94. That’s all I know.”

She is hesitant to reveal whether she is of Tutsi, Hutu or Twa heritage – the groups involved in the genocide.

“I stopped telling people years ago because that’s why the war reached such a point,” she said. “We’re all Rwandan and the moment people start thinking that way, we will never have civil war.”

On the Dean’s List since she came to Western, she’s focused on being successful on her own terms. With the pain behind her and her family beside her, she can smile again.