Placidia Dusabe was 10 when she saw her family murdered in front of her. For three nights she was raped and beaten by armed men, then she was hacked with machetes and flung into a mass grave. For four days she lay among the dead and the dying.

“I was the first-born child and the only girl among seven. My six brothers were killed with my mother and my father,” she said.

“I was watching. I knew the killers.”

Tutsi rebel soldiers hauled Placidia from the mass grave. It was 18 months before she could walk: the machete wounds left long scars still stark against the muscle of her lower legs.

Placidia still cries when she talks of the genocide but thanks to British taxpayers' money from the Department for International Development she has begun to rebuild her life. At school dreams of becoming an accountant replace the nightmares.

On the family plot where Placidia still lives in Kabuga there is a new mud-brick house with a tin roof. She grows her own crops and has a cow that provides milk to drink and extra to sell.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president