Vagabond

by Mogoatlhe, Lerato

  The excitement I feel in Gatuna and on the way to Kigali turns into a flat line that I never recover from when I check into my hotel, the One Love Club. I choose it even though it’s way out of my budget because it’s also called Kwa Rasta. I imagine thumping raggae beats and a night spent on the dance floor. Needless to say, I have been to funeral wakes that had a more vibrant atmosphere.

  I’ve been wanting to visit Rwanda since watching Hotel Rwanda in 2004: The true story of the heroic Paul Rusesabagina and the refuge he gives Tutsi people at Hotel Mille Collines instead of leaving them to die at the hands of Hutu militia. The movie makes me think of the genocide beyond simply knowing about it. I was a child in 1994. After watching the movie and revisiting the genocide that happens when I’m still a kid, my heart can’t help but break over how sad it is that while I was high on the euphoria of Nelson Mandela becoming South Africa’s first black president, my age mates in Rwanda were bearing witness to the greatest atrocity of their time. It makes 1994 the best and worst of times in Africa. I’m here to know Rwanda through experience instead of only through the memory of its most horrific chapter.

  Destination Rwanda is still trying to establish itself beyond trekking mountain gorillas in the Virungas, and other than arts centres, museums and the market, there isn’t much I can do in the city except experience its social life.

  I make my first mistake within minutes of leaving the hotel when I start my day at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. The building looks like millions of dollars have been poured into it. The mansion with colonial architecture, stained glass windows and manicured rose gardens and flowers that dance to the morning breeze hides the horror it preserves. It’s set on a hill and offers sweeping views of the city. Its looks help me explore the memorial without feeling any of the emotions displayed by other visitors. I cushion my emotions by pretending that I’m at a multimedia art installation, watching and listening to videos of survivors recounting the experiences while looking at pictures of the departed. It’s curated history, and even as tears stream down their red faces, visitors stop to admire the windows and the view.

  At the mass graves at the back, I sidestep what lies underneath by choosing to focus on the dark purple cloth that covers the graves. Purple is my favourite colour.

  When I get to the name plaques of the murdered, their perfectly inscribed names allow me to further pretend that I’m at a show, even as sadness starts creeping up on me. It catches up with me at the children’s room. It’s the most personal room, showing pictures sourced from family albums next to their short biographies. David Mugiraneza, ten, wanted to be a doctor and enjoyed making people laugh. Ariana Umutoni was a four-year-old lover of cake, milk, singing and dancing. She was stabbed in her eyes until she died. Other than jogging with her dad, Nadia Channelle Ruterana, eight, also loved milk and chocolate. She was chopped with a machete. Fidele Ingabira, nine, was shot in the head. Sisters Irene and Uwamwezi Umutoni, six and seven, were killed when a grenade was thrown in their shower. They were daddy’s girls who loved fresh fruit and playing with a doll they shared. Patrick Gashuyi Shimwira, five, was best friends with his sister Alliane. He loved riding his bicycle and eating meat and eggs. Aurore Kirezi loved playing hide and seek with her big brother. She was burned alive with one-hundred and ten other people at Gikondo chapel. When the militia reached Hubert Kirenya’s house, the two-year-old watched his mother getting shot to death before the gun was turned on him. Thierry Ishimwe was too small for a nine-year-old. He was killed with a machete in his mother’s arms. Fillette Uwase, two, was a good girl and best friends with her dad. She was banged against a wall until she died. Fabrice Cyemeza loved his cat and eating rice with milk. His favourite person was his aunty. He was fifteen months old when he was killed at Muhoro church. Sister and brother Yvonne and Yves, five and three, were a daddy’s girl and a mommy’s boy. They were hacked with a machete at their grandmother’s house. I blink and refuse to let the tears fall.

  I never recover from the children’s room, and their dreams and habits follow me around town. I wonder if Patrick would still love cycling when I see a bicycle at a shop, and if Ariana’s favourite drink would still be milk when I pour it into my coffee at Bourbon coffee shop. It makes me suspicious of people I meet, and something as basic as paying for my Coke Light at Nakumatt opens a flood gate of questions in my mind: What makes people turn on each other so cruelly that an estimated eight hundred thousand of the population is wiped out in a hundred days? Are people genuinely friendly when they smile or are they simply moving on from the trauma in a way that Africans do, when we pick up the pieces and rebuild life after violence without stopping to heal our traumas, glossing over the surface with new buildings and slogans of being open for business?

  My simple pleasure of people watching and walking the streets to drop in on strangers and start conversations feel like a performance. Even looking at mosques, which usually fills me with peace, feels forced. I hate that I’m in Rwanda to get over the genocide yet my mind fixates on it. I’m scared to raise my voice in case I trigger someone. I feel guilty for hours when I catch myself with my butter knife pointing at a waiter. When I go out to sample brochette – one of Kigali’s favourite things to eat – I decline joining a table of middle-aged men who invite me over to theirs. What if they were on the wrong side of the genocide and I associate with murderers?

  After my night at Kwa Rasta, I move to Discover Rwanda Youth Hostel in Kimihurura, so efficient that their website has their address and directions to get me there from the business district: From the Union Trade Centre building you will approach the Kigali Business Centre roundabout. Continue straight on from this roundabout and beat left to the traffic lights and take your first right hand turn onto the cobblestone road. Continue along this road for approximately eight hundred metres, pass the Trattoria bar and restaurant and as the road takes a sharp bend to the left, you will find Discover Rwanda on this corner.

  It has a more social atmosphere from overland travellers and backpackers who are on their way to trek silverback gorillas. Talk of experiencing the rare event takes over whenever the emotional effects of visiting the genocide memorial creep up. Still, the air is heavy. It gets darker for me when one of the residents takes his guitar to the garden, where he sings ‘Kumbaya My Lord’ over and over again, like he’s trying to heal his soul.

  Two nights in Kigali are enough for me to believe that Kigali doesn’t float my boat. My escape is to Gisenyi, on the shores of Lake Kivu.

  Like all trips around the country, this one is breathtaking. The thousand hills have an oceanic nature and everything looks green, like it has just rained. My faith in the existence of a God has been questionable lately. At best, I think of this mythical creator as an invisible superhero who lives in outer space; in Rwanda, I start thinking maybe there is a God after all because it’s the only way to explain the mesmerising beauty, the clear blue skies and the mystical atmosphere.

  My spirit becomes light again in Gisenyi from losing myself in its wide boulevards and my walks up steep roads flanked by banana trees. I’m smiling again, which last happened at Gatuna border, and even flirt with the uniforms who catch me stealing photographs of a military building. When I’m out for tea and chapati at a dingy café that smells like ammonia, I invite myself to people’s tables and ask them to teach me Kinyarwanda knowing very well that like Portuguese, it gets stuck in my tongue, which turns my language tutorials into a joke that’s on me. I order my meals of rice and fish, wali na samaki, in Swahili and invite other diners to my table; amusing them with stories of my war with border officials and indulging their instinct to help me add more words to my Swahili vocabulary by translating everything they say to English to let them know that I’m keeping up with the conversation.

  I radiate with happiness, as Remy, a man I meet at one of the restaurants, says. His left arm was amputated in the genocide but it doesn’t bother me. It makes me respect this nation’s ability to move on from horror without bitterness. When I
visit the centre where Remy works with other people disabled by the genocide, I refuse to join the basketball game that’s in session. ‘Oh my honeys,’ I say, ‘Don’t be fooled by this body that still has two of every limb; it can only walk, swim and dance.’

  I’m still bored, but it’s only because I feel restless without money to buy activities like cruises. There’s only so much walking and watching the sunset turn Lake Kivu gold that I can do without wanting to escape to a more adventurous place.

  I find it five kilometres from the beach when I see a signboard that says turning right will lead me to Goma in the DRC.

  ‘Bella, I know you and I’m telling you now that you better not get up to your usual kak when you are in Gisenyi,’ Heidi’s words ring in my mind. While Heidi lived in Nairobi, she travelled around East Africa auditioning participants for her TV show. But she never took time out to explore outside of the few hours she stole to trek gorillas in Kigali. She knows I’ll want to sneak into Goma without a visa for the fun of it. ‘I promise I will behave myself,’ I tell her, convinced that I will.

  If I get in trouble in DRC, I will have to call the embassy and our ambassador and his wife Khanyi, the Mashimbyes, know me from our social life. They will know that I do it from boredom instead of a tale I’ll spin to get out of trouble. So, no, I’m not going to Goma. Yet here I am walking past the beach front mansions to the border gate. I wait my turn to walk through the revolving gate and hand my passport over to be stamped out of Rwanda, secure in the knowledge that the country’s strict adherence to regulations and Pan-African immigration policy of issuing visas on arrival for most Africans will not betray me.

  I walk to the DRC side of the compound and join the line of people waiting to get their passports stamped. When my turn comes, I give the uniform my passport with the declaration that I don’t have a visa in French. ‘No problem at all, mademoiselle,’ he says, ‘Our embassy in Kigali will not give you any trouble at all, and you’ll find me here when you return so I can welcome you to our country.’

  As much as I want to visit DRC, the visa costs more than US$100. It’s money I don’t have. Or, as I rant to Siki, ‘It’s a fucking war zone, friend.’ The least they can do is stop charging an arm and a leg to visit. ‘My friend, I just want to spend a few hours in Goma to get a story that goes beyond the conflict in the area, and I’m broke. Please do me a favour,’ I tell the uniform. He refuses.

  ‘Darling Jean Pierre,’ I say, changing tack to flirt. ‘The truth is DRC has the best pagne in the world, and I want to shop.’ He’s wearing a shirt with an orange and blue print. ‘I want to dress as well as the Congolese people.’ It’s still a no from him. I pretend to walk back to Rwanda and find a spot where I can keep my eye on Jean Pierre without him seeing me. When he leaves the counter, I walk behind one of the women who move freely around the border selling bananas and avocados from metal bowl on their heads. My plan works until I get to the exit. I mill among the mobile money traders and boys who sell SIM cards and airtime, plotting my way into Goma. This side of town is deserted. The few buildings are closed and there are no people around other than the vendors. A uniform comes over to ask me what I’m doing. ‘Nothing sir, just looking for money,’ I say and go back to Rwanda.

  Take two of my trip to Goma happens a few days later when I discover Rubavu crossing at the other side of Gisenyi. Instead of reasoning with uniforms, I blend in with the masses of people pushing trolleys with fruit and vegetables. This is the DRC of my imagination; with snazzy dresses and women with pagne hanging loosely on their hips. The immigration office is crammed into a small yard with trucks and cars and melts into a street lined with vendors and restaurants. There’s a butchery, kiosks, tailors and girls squatting next to buckets that overflow with palm oil. The ground is wet and muddy; it makes the man dressed in a white bazin tunic embossed with gold threads and matching slim-cut pants all the more resplendent.

  More people pour onto the street from narrow alleys between houses. Out on the main road, Goma stops being the tragic town where, according to an Al-Jazeera special, two hundred women and girls were gang raped by the militia eight months ago. This afternoon, it’s just another African city. People run errands, a shop that sells mopeds displays their shiny goods on the veranda. The streets blare with zouk music from giant speakers outside some of the shops. I pop into one that sells pagne and bazin and shake it up with a tailor who works outside it. I’m still debating if I should get a matatu to nowhere in particular when a truck with UN peacekeepers cruises by. Another one follows it; all soldiers have guns in their hands. I backtrack to the street with the immigration office and turn left into an alley that takes me through shacks that are jumbled together. Kids chase a worn leather soccer ball around, and a trickle of people walk towards Mount Nyiragongo. It becomes my new plan: I’ll sit at its foot in honour of the privilege of knowing Goma through its sounds, sights and people instead of tragic news reports. Except, when I walk past the military compound, I spot a soldier at a watch-tower, scouting the area with binoculars and a machine gun. It’s my cue to go back to Gisenyi.

  When I leave for Kigali on Valentine’s Day, the ATM’s don’t work, and I go to the bank to see if I can get money by any means necessary. I don’t, but the gentleman who is trying to help me gives me a rose and a chocolate, and money to go back to Kigali, where I make a decision that will haunt me for years. I go to the genocide memorial in Ntarama, thirty kilometres south of the capital city.

  The Catholic church is one of the seven genocide memorials in the country. It’s a beautilful day to be out. There’s a cool breeze and the sound of chirping birds mingles with the laughter from children at their school playground. The church yard has large, manicured gardens; it would be a lovely spot for a reading picnic.

  The interior is horrific.

  The walls are still stained with the blood of forty-five thousand who were killed while hiding in the house of God, given over to the militia by their priest. The victims’ clothes are on the pews and their shoes are piled in one of the corners. The altar has a machete and more clothes lying around it, a rosary and picture of the virgin Mary and Jesus. It’s dark and putrid, and light seeps through holes left by grenades. I follow the steps down to a small room with white-tiled floors and walls. There’s a glass chamber shaped like a pyramid with a rosary, bangles and a mouldy identity card. My heart is cold, my mind clinical as I dutifully note the details like a diligent journalist.

  The old man who works here asks if I need company. ‘I’m fine,’ I say, and make my way to the two mass graves at the back. ‘You can go inside if you want,’ he lets me know. This will prove to be my undoing. For now, with my notebook and pen in hand, I walk down nine steps. Lace and plain white cloth embroidered with a purple cross and purple ribbons covers the coffins. There are notes and letters with messages of remembrance and lists with names of some of the people who were killed and buried here: Rosalie Kabagwiza, Uwamriya Venerande, Uwizeye Mathieu, Uwimbabazi Rose, Mukayitesi Francois, Nyirigira Jean Bosco, Manzi Gele, Mahoro Senga, and Umuhire Giselle. I write, and climb down three steps to the right, where wood coffins are stacked on steel rails. One of them has Gakwaya Francois scribbled in black marker. My mind starts putting together a story I want to sell to a newspaper. I feel nothing and think in word count, headlines and blurbs.

  The second grave has four bunks, three per row. They’re stacked with skulls that have cracks from machetes and broken bones. Some remains look like the killer bashed people against metal spikes and other bodies are charred. There are skulls with cracked foreheads, skulls without jaws, skulls that have been broken into halves and others sporting holes that are as a big as a fist. A sign hanging over one of the remains remembers Ngenzi Emmanuel and Mukankwiye Patrice. I package my story – I’ll call it ‘Nine steps to hell’ and my introduction will be delayed as I describe the remains before delving into the genocide and ending with its aftermath. ‘Make the reader recoil with horror,’ I write next to my descriptions of
the grave. I don’t believe in crying over history, no matter how harrowing, so what happens next shocks me: I collapse into a fit of tears and screams that make the gardener tap on the window to check if I’m fine. I can’t breathe and I can’t stand up. I’m not crying for the dead – they’re gone. I’m crying from the guilt of reducing their life into a show-and-tell.

  How dare I say ‘never again’ when Darfur is a killing field and Mogadishu still in flames sparked by the conflict that started in 1991 and is currently fuelled by al-Shabaab’s bombing sprees? I’m worse than the militia because, unlike them, I pretend that I care about the lives they took away. Yet when I leave the mass grave I will go back to my life as usual, burying my despair in new, happy memories: I’m a sham, and my tears a performance put on to appease my guilt.

  I compose myself and keep my eyes on the concrete pavement when I meet the gardener, and I tell the three guides that we don’t have to talk any more as I had requested when I arrived: I’ll only be collecting their stories of terror and survival, and asking them emotionally loaded questions to take them back to April 1994. Then, I will leave them with their ghosts while I go back to my life.

  When I get back to Kigali, I pop aspirins to quieten the lava bubbling in my head, then pack my bags to flee to Kampala to bury my guilt with its night life and waragi.

  April 2011

  My savings are depleted and I’m spending faster than I’m earning. I need a steady pay cheque to raise funds before getting back on the road. I leave Kampala by bus, stopping in Dar es Salaam for two days to visit my friend Tshepo, Violet’s husband, for our long overdue catch up as members of a small but growing tribe of black South Africans who choose Africa before other parts of the world.

  I arrive in Dar at night and decide to sleep at YWCA before moving to his house for the rest of my stay. When the dala dala conductor asks for my fare, I look for my purse in my bags and under seats. I’ve been robbed and my phone is gone as well so I can’t call Tshepo. I check into YWCA and go to the taxi drivers who work along Maktaba street to ask for a phone to call my mom and ask her to send money via Western Union. One of them offers me a place to stay at his house overnight, but I want to be alone. He pays for my room and gives me a lift to Tshepo’s the next day. I make my way back to South Africa by bus, retracing my well-worn routes to Lusaka and then Harare, where I get a bus to Pretoria and, in my mind, back to life as it was before my travels.