When it happens, no matter what safeguards are built in, Allison acknowledges, there will be fear…Allison says: “Things are calm just now but the people have seen how quickly that can change, and of course when the Hutu extremists return there will be a lot of anger and pain at what has been done. But although there is a Tutsi government that has international backing, there is also talk in the world’s press of the Hutu militias returning, and worries about what this will mean. Allison explains: “Their father always had the children prepared and when the trouble began he gave them – even the youngest who was 10 – their passports and told them to carry these, their address books and documents with them at all times and to be prepared to escape however they could if necessary. They were a family who learnt about living with fear and they have strong survival skills. I trust Jeff to know what to do if things get bad.”Since the day of genocide in 1994 and the three months of fighting and massacres which followed as the ruling Hutu regime attempted to eradicate the Tutsis fleeing over the border, Rwanda has been attempting to rebuild normal life. I do not feel that this is the way to live.”Yet Allison has heard over and over the dreadful stories of children being slaughtered, tales like that of Marie, a social worker, whose three youngest children were hacked to death after the Hutu neighbourhood militia had killed her husband And Jeff knows it too.

His father was killed in 1994 and he and the five other siblings, growing up as Tutsis under a Hutu regime, saw attacks on their kind in the parks in Kigali and knew of the youth groups of the militia chanting and shouting in the streets. But it wasn’t a decision about having a child with a Tutsi but with Jeff, and it seems the most natural thing in the world. We talked about it and made a decision which is about faith and optimism. Imagine how it would be to marry a man you love, to both want to express that love in the most natural way by giving birth to your own child, but never to do that because of what might happen. It is the only thing I have ever felt 100 per cent certain about.

Isn’t this a good enough reason for making a choice?”But what made her decide to have a child, knowing that the baby takes ethnicity from the father and will always be at risk in a country where anger and hostility is still a powerful force and where the brutality of civil war will never be forgotten? It was a hard decision, Allison acknowledges, but she explains: “I thought very hard about the implications of getting pregnant by someone who is a Tutsi I am not foolish. I knew that it would mean my child, and I as its mother, would live with a particular fear that you don’t normally expect to have. Different backgrounds make that interesting rather than difficult. Allison explains: “My mother knew nothing about Rwanda except what she had read in the papers and obviously she felt worried. She could see the risks and she hadn’t met Jeff so she didn’t have the faith in him that I do But now that he’s here they’ve met.