Instead, he was pressed into service by health officials to work in the hospital treating Hutu soldiers from the front.
There are an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 Hutu soldiers in northeastern Congo and another 10,000 in the south, the reports claims.
"Those who were able followed the Hutu soldiers in the hope they would be protected," she said.
"Hutu soldiers took my mother outside," Rose told me, "stripped off her clothes and raped her with a machete."
When he asks a young boy why his thumb was cut off by a Hutu soldier, the boy replies, "I don't know."
Others, however, said they would have turned around sooner but the Hutu soldiers who were leading the march would not permit it.
We were forced by the Hutu soldiers to do it.
There is no way to guarantee the food will not reach the Hutu soldiers and thus fuel the conflict rather than helping refugees.
For weeks, former Hutu soldiers and militiamen have been discouraging Rwandans in the camps from leaving.
In Rwanda, the memories of the massacres carried out by Hutu soldiers like these are difficult to avoid.