Sometimes Solange wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me what she's been dreaming about, or that she wants to go to the toilet. But of course then we have to go outside, so I try to persuade her to go back to sleep.

Our house is at the top of a steep hill, next to several other houses, with a small latrine. It has two rooms. In the back room, where we sleep, I keep our food in old rice sacks and our clean clothes in plastic bags that are hanging above the floor, so they don't get wet when the rain comes through the hole in the roof. Even in daytime, our bedroom is very dark, so first thing I light a paraffin lamp. Then we take our shoes out of a plastic bag and either Claudette or I will climb down the hill with jerry cans to get some water from the pump. It is heavy carrying them back, and when it is raining the ground gets muddy, so you can slip all over the path. When we've got water we make porridge, which we eat out of plastic mugs, sitting around the table in the front room.

Then Claudette goes to school while I clear up. I wash the mugs, then sweep and scrub the floor. Of course, Solange has to help too, and she can be very noisy, as she copies me, shouting and laughing and brushing away. She can be quite a handful, and she wants to be carried all the time. Sometimes I wish she would stop chattering and making so much noise. But she is our little sister and we love her very much. We are so pleased not to be separated from her. Really, I am Solange's mother now.

Our father was killed in the genocide nine years ago, so we have no memory of him. We do not know how he was killed. But we do know terrible things happened to people in Rwanda in the genocide. Our mother began to get very sick after she gave birth to Solange. For a long time, months maybe, she was lying in the bed in which we now sleep. Claudette and I looked after her. She would breast-feed Solange, but we would change her nappies. On her good days, our mother would sit in the doorway in the afternoons and talk to our neighbours, or even visit them. I am glad she only had to go to hospital for the last few weeks of her life.

Now my 10-year-old brother, Beaufirs Rukumdo, is being looked after by our grandparents. Our father's family wanted to sell our house, but Claudette and I said we would stay here and look after ourselves. She and I take it in turns to go to school, one of us going in the morning and the other in the afternoon, so we can look after Solange. Claudette is very good at school - she came second in her class. I came 18th out of 30. Because of Solange I don't think I'll be able to go to secondary school myself, but I hope that Claudette can go.

While Claudette is at school I give Solange a bath. I take the basin outside, pour in the water, and Solange jumps in. I wash her hair and give her ears and her nails a good scrub while she splashes around. After I have dried her on my knee, I rub Vaseline into her skin, like my mother showed me.

Annunciata, a social worker, gives us flour for porridge, rice and some other dried foods. She is from a charity called Uyisenga [supported by the Survivors Fund and the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund]. In the afternoon, I peel some potatoes or cook rice with cassava for the main meal of our day, which we eat about two o'clock, when Claudette comes home and before I go to school. Late afternoon we may play cards together, or I go down to the road and buy vegetables. Sometimes I go to the petrol station, where I buy two litres of paraffin. Solange often comes too, and she makes me carry her on my back for most of the way. Then I make a funnel, and pour some of the paraffin into empty Fanta bottles. I sell them at the bottom of the path to our house, for 20 Rwandan francs [about 2p]. The money I earn pays for our soap and vegetables.

Sometimes Solange chatters so much I try to persuade her to go to bed early with a biscuit. But mostly I am so tired, we go to bed at the same time. It is better if we do all go to bed together, because we don't waste our paraffin by lighting the lamp. Every night I think about my mother as I lie in bed. I miss her so much. She told us that we should be brave and we must look after our brother and little sister. She told us we should have no fear because God would look after us. We can see that is true: today, two years after she died, we are coping just fine.