Charlotte Wilson (VSO)

Charlotte Wilson (4 June 1973 – 28 December 2000) was a British volunteer teacher working with the organisation Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) in Rwanda. She was murdered in Burundi in December 2000 by the National Forces of Liberation (Palipehutu-FNL or FNL), a Hutu rebel group, along with her Burundian fiancé and nineteen others travelling from Kigali to Bujumbura. The incident became known as the Titanic Express massacre, named after the bus service on which the victims were travelling.

Charlotte grew up in the town of Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire and attended Sheredes, the local comprehensive school. Her father died of leukaemia when she was six years old, leaving her alone with her mother Margot, brother Richard and sister Catherine. She was in a position of some responsibility as the eldest. She went on to Imperial College, London where she studied biochemistry and later gained a PhD in molecular biology. Charlotte lived in Paris for a time, and also made several visits to Africa during her time at university.

In 1999, having recently finished her PhD, during which time she had been a volunteer with St. John Ambulance in Hammersmith, Charlotte made the decision to become a volunteer science teacher with VSO. She was posted to the village of Shyogwe, near Gitarama in southern Rwanda, one of 23 in the second wave of volunteers sent by VSO, who had recently opened a programme to help rebuild the country shattered by the 1994 genocide. Charlotte enjoyed her time in Rwanda and integrated well into the local community, despite having to teach in French and being one of only a handful of white people in the area.

In late 2000, Charlotte met and fell in love with Richard Ndereyimana, a Burundian who had been in Rwanda since 1997, first as a Dominican monk and later as a teacher. A few weeks later the couple decided to get engaged. They spent Christmas together with other volunteers by Lake Kivu, then decided to travel to Bujumubura, the Burundian capital to meet with Richard's family, despite the fact that the whole of Burundi, and particularly rural areas, was in a state of civil war and out of bounds to VSO volunteers.

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