“Did they injure you in some way?” Mom would ask. “Do you have a wound?”
FIVE
THERE IS ONE DAY FROM MY EARLY CHILDHOOD that I will never forget: the day my mother locked herself in her bedroom and would not come out. I had never seen her disappear like that, and I didn’t understand what was wrong. Then my sister Princesse took me aside and explained: My favorite uncle, Rumenge, the officer who always brought me treats and new clothes, had been killed in one of the conflicts in the region.
“Mom’s heart is broken,” Princesse said.
When my mother finally emerged from her room the next day, it was as if all the joy had been drained from her body. She loved Rumenge deeply. There is an old photograph of Rumenge with Deborah and me, the only picture I have of him, or of Deborah. It’s also the only photo of my face from before the massacre. I don’t know my own face from back then. All of our family albums burned in the fiery attack. A friend of the family found this single remaining photo and sent it to us years after the tragedy—a little postcard from another world.
My mother was so sad when she lost Rumenge, she had no appetite. She became thin, and looked like a different person. She woke up every day worrying about frightening things that could happen to her other relatives. She spent her nights and days crying. She couldn’t focus. She seemed so far away from the rest of us, in her own world. My uncle had left some clothes at the house, and she took them out and sat with them for days. Princesse took over for her and ran the family, which was one of the many reasons I looked up to her.
Before my uncle died, he gave my mom a hundred dollars, which was a great deal of money at the time. But Mom didn’t want to buy anything with it because it was the last thing he had given her. She wanted to save it forever. A friend suggested that she use the money to start a small business, which would help the family and also keep her busy, so she could try to get past her grief. Mom gave it some thought and eventually decided to indeed use the money to help her family, which Rumenge would have liked.
And so, one day, she bought a refrigerator and started a little café in our home. She kept things like soft drinks and milk in the fridge, and sold them along with snacks. People started coming by regularly, sipping a drink, chatting. Our house got even busier. Later, she started trading cows. My mom was the original feminist. Selling cows and running businesses were considered jobs for men, but she did her own thing. She was a true trailblazer.
She once told me that around this time a song came to her in a dream. She loved writing and singing songs, but she had been so filled with sadness that she had lost the heart to sing. Then the lyrics came to her in bed one night: “You are not to spend your days worrying about tomorrow.” The song helped give her strength. She no longer woke up worrying about her relatives and what might happen to them. She focused instead on her new business—on inventory and profits—to help us all move ahead in life.
On the balmy evenings in our little café, we would play popular music on the radio, and Alex and I would dance for the customers. We loved dancing. It was one of our favorite forms of entertainment. We didn’t have laptops or cell phones like kids in America have today. We didn’t have birthday parties with gobs of goodie bags. We didn’t get stacks of presents to unwrap at Christmas. But we didn’t need a lot of material things to amuse ourselves. We had something better: dancing. We would dance and vigorously shake our butts and hips—twerking, basically. Where I come from, twerking is not sexualized the way it is in America. The boys sometimes do it better than the girls. Everyone does it. It’s wild and fun and freeing, not about sex.
As my mom found her footing, my dad seemed to struggle: He was often stressed and distracted, as my missing brother, Heritage, was always on his mind. Dad was frequently away from home, either trying to find Heritage or working. Sometimes he missed events in my life, like Proclamation Day, but our house was always so crowded with friends and relatives, I didn’t really notice. My father tried everything to locate Heritage and bring him home. He offered to buy his son back from the military with cows; he offered to take his son’s place, to no avail.
Dad was very protective of all his kids. He knew my brothers Chris and Alex could be kidnapped by the military, just like Heritage. And girls could be grabbed and raped. Rape is a serious weapon of war in Congo. Tens of thousands of women have been raped in civil war over the years.
There were United Nations peacekeepers in our region, but they did not really make me feel safe. They flirted inappropriately with my older sisters’ friends. One of the peacekeepers became romantically involved with one of Adele’s friends: He would take the girl out drinking, then take her back to the UN compound. He was a grown man, taking advantage of a teen girl. Growing up, the only white men I ever saw worked for either the UN or UNICEF. They wore uniforms and drove around in trucks and looked important. You wouldn’t approach them or try to talk to them. I equated white men with power and authority and thought America must be full of white men.
In 2002, when I was around eight years old, my father heard some heart-stopping news from a friend: Heritage had been spotted in the Congolese city of Bukavu, beaten up and brutalized. My dad went to find him and bring him home. Turned out, Heritage was in such bad shape that he was no longer of any use to the army, and the soldiers released him from their grip. He could have easily disappeared and died there. The army didn’t want to pay for a child soldier’s medical care.
When Heritage came home, he was in his teens, and he knew nothing but violence. When I saw him for the first time, he looked like a monster with a bloody face, a swollen eye. That is my first memory of my brother. I could barely bring myself to look at him and his scary eye. My mom and dad took him to get medical treatment, and he emerged all wrapped up in bandages like a mummy. Then my parents tucked him away in a bedroom in our home. They kept it very dark in there because the light hurt his eye. Sometimes I would peer into his room out of curiosity, but I was afraid of him.
Over time, as he began to recuperate physically, I grew to know him a little better. I learned that the soldiers who kidnapped him gave the kids guns and made them shoot people to prove they were good fighters. The military got the kids hooked on weed and alcohol to make them more compliant. Heritage had temper issues from his traumatic ordeal. After a few months at home, he went to live with a friend of the family in Burundi. My parents wanted to hide him away there. They didn’t want to take a chance that the army would come and snatch him again.
SIX
WAR WASN’T THE ONLY SOURCE OF TROUBLE in our lives. In the rainy season, the river would rise up and flood the streets, and we would have to leave home in a hurry. For some reason, the floods always happened in the middle of the night. We would hear the rushing roar of water coming, and my dad would lock up the house and get us all out of there to head for higher ground. Kiki would climb to safety at the top of the front gate. My first memory of being afraid in life was during one of those floods: I remember holding hands with one of my uncles and running as fast as I could uphill to escape the rising water. I ran so fast, it felt like my feet didn’t touch the ground.
My mom would soothe us. She was always a calming presence. In fact, she wrote a song for each of us kids with lyrics predicting a happy fate. My song says, “In all that God has made, you’re the most beautiful of all.” In my language, it sounds like this: “Muby’Imana yaremye byose, ntakindi cyiza kukurusha.”
I was born with dark skin, but in my culture, light skin is considered a sign of beauty, so Mom wrote in my song that I would become fairer skinned. In fact, I did. It embarrasses me to think that skin color should have anything to do with supposed beauty, but that is the culture. For a time, my nickname became “Mazobe,” a term for fair skin.
For my brother Alex, who was born small, my mom spun a song that he was kindhearted and genuine and would grow up to become strapping and tall. And indeed, he did grow into a handsome, muscular young man. For my sister Deborah, Mom wrote that she was so
beautiful, she would get at least one hundred cows when she wed. The song said that anyone with ninety-nine cows needn’t bother. I’m sure that prediction would have come true too.
In addition to the creative songs Mom wrote, she had an inherent sense of style, and she bought me the snazziest outfits. Sometimes she would pick fabrics of bright colors and patterns and take them to the tailor to have traditional cotton dresses made for me. Congo has some of the best, most fashionable tailors in the world. Other times she would buy outfits from more Western-style stores. For every major holiday—Christmas, Easter—I would get a new outfit for church. It was always an exciting day to get new clothes and new shoes for the holidays.
One year for Christmas, Mom bought me one of my favorite outfits—a pink polka-dot skirt and top with a matching collar. She bought Deborah the same outfit in blue. My brother Chris took us on a walk around the neighborhood, so we could show off our new clothes. We ended up coming home with two kids from the neighborhood, and they joined us for Christmas dinner. Once again, our doors were open.
My family was Christian, and we went to church every Sunday. The service lasted all day long and involved lots of singing and clapping. Church was a major part of our community. Our people were close-knit, and everyone knew everyone’s business: If you ever skipped services on a Sunday, people would ask, “Why weren’t you in church?”
Another big part of our community—and a personal favorite of mine—was an elaborate dance procession performed by the neighborhood kids. It was a glamorous reenactment of a wedding, with a “bride and groom” surrounded by dancing girls and drumming boys. The boys made the drums from empty tin cans of Nido, a powdered milk drink made by Nestlé. To create the drums, the boys stretched thick plastic bags tightly across the tops of the cans, securing the bags with rubber bands. They used different sizes of cans, with each size creating a unique sound. The kids in the neighborhood all knew one another, and they raised money for the event, which was held several times a year. At the end of each performance, they hosted a reception, serving rice and beans, and Fanta and Coke in glass bottles.
I couldn’t wait to be old enough to participate. The kids would spend weeks choreographing the event and making up songs, and I would attend the rehearsals, dreaming of a day when I could be a dancer in the procession. I watched my sister Adele and her fabulous friends, wanting to be like them. On the day of the event, the kids—twelve dancing girls and eight drumming boys—would march and twirl through the streets of the neighborhood, around twenty blocks in all, while families lined up to watch. The bride and groom would walk along at the center of the procession, with six girls in front and six in back, and rows of boys on each side. The girls wore black T-shirts and bright, short wrap skirts to accentuate their butts, with spandex shorts underneath, stretchy and flexible for twerking. It was always sunny and hot, and everyone worked up a sweat. It was like a big moving concert. No one really knows how the tradition got started, but different neighborhoods each had their own processions. It was a way for kids to entertain themselves.
Finally, when I was ten years old, I got to take part in the fun. The kids made me the bride, which was embarrassing because that meant I would be paired with a boy as my groom. At that point in my life, I thought, Ewww, boys! My brothers and sisters teased me during the practice sessions, where I sat with my groom, a boy named Merewe, while the dancing girls learned their routines. I didn’t want to be the bride; I wanted to dance. My brothers made my life a living nightmare with their taunting.
“Sandra, you might end up marrying that boy one day!” Alex said.
I worried that if he kept saying it, it might turn out to be true. However, on the upside, my mom bought me a beautiful light-blue dress to wear for the performance. It was silky and puffy, like a dress for a princess, with a sash that tied in the back.
On the day of the performance, my dad drove me to the starting point of the procession in his car, and my groom, Merewe, came to take my hand. I was embarrassed and also laughing so hard, I was about to cry. Merewe was nervous too. I didn’t talk to him at all. In fact I barely looked at him. I didn’t want anyone to think I liked him. As we began our slow march through the neighborhood streets, I felt jittery about being the center of attention, but also kind of thrilled. My groom and I walked side by side, silently—our job was to look cute. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I wanted to impress our audience, and the older girls who danced.
That was in April 2004, around Easter time. It would be my first and last procession. I never got to be a dancer because a couple months later, we would be fleeing Uvira.
Most of the girls who danced around me that day later died in the massacre.
SEVEN
IN JUNE 2004, THE TENSIONS TOWARD MY people escalated quickly. The Congolese kids at school were calling me Rwandan all the time, dubbing me a foreigner, repeating what they had heard at home.
“You’re Rwandan!” they would yell.
I would give them my standard reply. “I’m not. I’ve never been there.”
Some teachers were even warning us during class, implying that trouble was coming. My parents heard rumors at work. My father tried hard to shelter us, but he couldn’t control what we heard at school or on the street. All signs pointed to another interrupted year.
I was busy getting ready for school one morning when Dad left and returned home in a yellow minivan, with a stranger at the wheel. Dad came hurrying into the house, a worried look on his face. He was wearing black dress pants and a black shirt and looked as if he might be going somewhere special, perhaps for work. Then again, he was always dressed up, so I wasn’t sure if anything was wrong or not. I had finished getting dressed for school, and was preparing to head out with Alex. Chris and Adele had already left for their school, which was a few miles away. Princesse was at home with us; she was a senior that year and had been preparing for the national exam to earn her diploma.
My dad told us to wait and not go anywhere. He went into a bedroom with my mom and they talked in hushed whispers. Then they walked out together.
“Sandra, you need to pack,” Dad said.
We would be leaving home again.
I went to my room and took off my school uniform so I wouldn’t soil it on our trip. Then I pulled out a big copper-colored suitcase with buckles that locked on top. The first thing I packed was my pale-blue dress from the dance procession. It was the most useless thing to take to a refugee camp, of course. And I knew I probably wouldn’t wear it, but still, I wanted it with me. In fact, I wanted all of my fanciest clothes with me, so I packed my church clothes. I was ten years old, and it was the first time I was really old enough to pack for myself. I was quite proud of my packing decisions. I helped Deborah pack too, and she also wanted her prettiest, most impractical outfits.
My parents had no time to supervise our efforts. They said we needed to leave immediately. My dad asked our neighbors—who were not members of our tribe and did not need to flee—to get an urgent message to Chris and Adele to leave school and head for the mountains to stay with our grandparents. We all figured it was just another temporary exodus. We had to leave my pet monkey, Kiki, behind, but I assumed I would be back soon.
Thus we began the journey that is forever seared in my mind. We crammed into the yellow van. I sat by the window in the second row, with Deborah, Princesse, and Heritage next to me. Heritage had recently returned home from Burundi, looking much healthier.
Mom sat with two neighbors in the back. Dad sat up front with the driver. Weaving through the streets of Uvira, we watched people frantically trying to get out of the city. Desperate people knocked on our vehicle when we slowed down, begging to get inside.
“I’m sorry, there’s no space,” my father called to them.
I sat there, dazed, thinking we might be away from home longer than usual this time.
We drove for about forty-five minutes, with Dad discussing different routes with Mom and the driver. Then suddenly we were stoppe
d at a checkpoint, or rather, an ambush. A blockade of chairs, benches, and tables lay across the road, and men stood there with guns, forcing us to stop. On the side of the road, a mob of angry Congolese people stood—men, women, and children. They wore mostly civilian clothes, although some had military-style pants. They carried machetes, knives, and rifles.
The crowd rushed toward us and began shaking the minivan. We braced ourselves. It felt as if the van might tip over. We had mattresses and suitcases tied to the top of the vehicle, and the attackers tore them down and stole them. We hurried to lock the doors and tried to close the windows, but the windows were stuck open—the vehicle was rusty and old, ready to fall apart. People reached in, grabbing at us. They ripped our watches off our wrists. I had always known that many Congolese people disliked us, but I had never seen such hate on people’s faces.
Even little kids were shaking the van angrily. Why are these kids so furious? I thought. They don’t even know us. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought children were supposed to respect their elders, but they were throwing rocks and sand at all of us, my parents included. We tried to dodge the rocks flying at our heads. Some of the kids had guns. People were spitting at us. Deborah and I were crying, and my parents looked defenseless.
Then the driver got out of the van, took the keys, and walked away, leaving us there to be attacked. He was Congolese, and I think he drove us there on purpose. I wondered how we could ever escape. Princesse put her arms around Deborah and me, holding us close.
Amid the chaos, a grown man—he appeared to be in his forties—marched up to the van, looking like he wanted to kill us. He reached in through the window and punched Deborah in the face. Completely shocked and in pain, she began wailing. I couldn’t fathom it. Why would a man punch a six-year-old child in the face? I cried hysterically too, and Princesse tried to calm us down. I wondered what Deborah was thinking. She was probably wondering: Why aren’t my mom and dad protecting me? My parents were helpless. They were trying to calm Heritage, who was having a breakdown—no doubt the result of post-traumatic stress from his time as a child soldier. He wanted to get out of the van and fight with people. My parents were trying to keep him inside.
How Dare the Sun Rise Page 4