Weisel had a story to tell, she wrote, and if he was brave enough to tell it, then she too would find the courage to tell her story.Ĭlemantine’s essay was one of just 50 winners chosen from some 50,000 submissions to Oprah Winfrey’s National High School Essay Contest. The assignment struck a chord with Clemantine. Then in high school, she and her classmates were given the assignment to read Night, by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, and write an essay about why the book was important. As Clemantine tells it, that story was closed up tight inside her, too painful to talk about.īut as she progressed through junior high school, Clemantine became aware that her story was not an isolated one, and that there were other bloody chapters in human history. Caldwell didn’t know much about the specifics of Clemantine’s story. Miller’s best friend, Liz Thomas, had sponsored Clemantine as she immigrated and had taken her into her family. Paul Caldwell first heard about Clemantine from Mary Alice Miller, chair of the board of the Youth Choral Theater of Chicago where he is artistic director. It’s a sad and happy story that helps me sing while I try to show the audience how powerful this song can be.” ~Sunshine Harris, North Coast Singers Youth Chorus, age 10 Two Degrees of Separation When I sing it, I can really put myself in the little girl's shoes. “I think that ‘Beneath the African Sky’ is a beautiful piece. A year later, working through several international organizations, the sisters finally find out that their parents have also survived the genocide. In 2000, the International Organization for Migration helps the sisters immigrate to the United States. People are dying all around them, but they survive. There they are swept into a sea of refugees with no immediate access to shelter, food, or other supplies.įor the next six years, Clemantine and her sister shuttle between refugee camps in seven African countries, always looking for their parents and siblings. They crawl and hide and walk, finally arriving at a refugee camp in neighboring Burundi.

Now alone, the girls wander through the countryside. As the death squads draw near, Clemantine and Claire crawl out the bedroom window and run into a maize field.

Clemantine and her 15-year-old sister Claire escape to their grandparents’ home in the Rwandan countryside. Decades of tension between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis erupts and Hutu militia groups begin to sweep through villages butchering any Tutsi that they encounter. She describes an idyllic childhood, climbing trees with friends and inventing imaginary games. Six-year-old Clemantine Wamariya is living in Kigali with her mother and father and her three siblings. The story that inspired the song begins in Rwanda in 1994.

Across the vast eternal sky lyrics