I avoid browsing sites that show how topsy-turvy the world is. The vicious AIDS epidemic that has devastated so many lives, people killing one another all over the world, the flooding from tsunamis, acts of terrorism—it’s all pretty frightening. Myself, I think the speed of the internet and the like has a hand in the misfortunes. Young people take pleasure in sex videos, they marvel at the debauchery of the rich, and they believe the rumors spread by cults. I imagine that God is a bit jealous. He doesn’t appreciate being pitted against the fame and money here on earth. He is violently forcing us to return to His path. Luckily, the madness of technology hasn’t spread in Rwanda as much as it has elsewhere. We still devote ourselves to our faith without getting distracted by philosophical ideas that celebrate materialism.
I’m a happy Catholic. We are a devout and cheerful family, my mama, my brother, and I. My brother prays with all his heart in America. At my school, the nuns are overly strict in applying the rules; the prayer bells ring three times a day at specific times. But at home, prayers come in their own time whenever the mood takes you. I grew up with the joy of singing and prayer. At church, I sing in a choir, I dance during religious holidays. I’m involved in classes that explain the Gospels to uneducated people. The calm of Catholicism makes me glad. Catholics spend more time in communion than other believers. I admire the splendor of the faith: the icons move me deeply, as do the vestments of the priests, and the statues fill me with nostalgia. I know that in Europe young people boast about their disregard for religion. They consider their lives comfortable enough that they don’t have to believe; they think they have nothing more to gain but constraints. They find it funny to waste one’s time on faith. They delight in provocation. In reality, they are never satisfied; what they lack is always one step ahead of them. They suffer because of their indifference.
I grew up in a family steeped in the word of God. I know that God is everywhere. My papa was killed by the soldiers of the genocide because his time had come. I know that God was there, very much alive. He didn’t forget my papa. He invited him gladly into His kingdom because He forgets no one. Then He breathed strength into the inkotanyi in time for them to save those who were meant to be saved.1 I know that God saved my mama, my brother, and me for mysterious reasons. Not luck, or bravery, or virtue—it was God. Mama showed remarkable courage during those weeks of machetes, and Papa just as much with a man’s strength. Yet God took him from us. No one knows how to interpret that.
I understand people who struggle to keep faith in God after the attempt to exterminate the Tutsis. Each of us believes and thinks according to our own history. If people have seen their loved ones savagely cut down, if no comforting voices are left to teach them the Holy Scriptures, if they have no one to inspire trust in God in them again, it’s perfectly normal for them to want to turn their back on everything. Myself, I was lucky to be introduced to God by my mama, although she herself lost almost her entire family.
Thanks to her, I hold out hope that the culprits didn’t wield their machetes in cold blood, without madness, but that they were driven by a diabolic force. I believe that Satan’s cynicism was behind the machetes. I fear his tricks. Nonetheless, I still have my faith in human beings. It keeps me from stumbling when I’m shaken on my path by memories of my papa and my grandparents. Or when Mama’s grief overcomes me. My mama guides me through. She talks a lot about forgiveness, but not just any kind of forgiveness. She doesn’t pardon hastily. She obeys God, not some earthly authority. That was the good fortune I grew up with. My mama’s faith breathed joy into our house.
* * *
MY NAME IS Sandra Isimbi. It means “precious one,” like a precious stone. My mama’s name is Édith Uwanyiligira. She works in administration at the secondary school. My brother’s name is Bertrand, and he is currently studying on a campus in America, as I told you. My papa was killed in the Kabgayi region. We still don’t know how. It was May 29. The soldiers arrived in the courtyard where we had holed up. They found him in his hiding place and took him away.
We were living in a house in Ntarama in April 1994. As soon as the killers began their expeditions on the hill, we and many others took refuge in the marshes. My papa stood his ground along with a group of young men. Because he was a well-known teacher and the captain of the Nyamata soccer team, they followed him without batting an eye. The Hutus attacked them every day in greater and more deadly numbers. Finally, my papa decided to make for Kabgayi to hide his family with a younger brother at the Electrogas plant. We zigzagged through the bush and crossed the river. We slept under trees, we ate what we picked, and we drank the water on the leaves. Papa carried two-year-old Bertrand. Me, I traveled on Mama’s back because I was a five-month-old baby.
My mama told me the story. Once in Kabgayi, we lasted for several days in different hiding spots while the killings dragged on elsewhere. My mama was betrayed the first time by a neighbor woman, but without dire consequences because we managed to escape. The second time was fatal. The authorities showed boundless determination in their search for my papa. After they pushed him into a bus along with the other unlucky men, they tried to catch my mama. They were overzealous. The bus left. We never saw or heard anything more about my papa. No one ever came to our place with information. During the gaçaças, not one witness offered the smallest detail for us even to imagine what had happened. I have no interest in going back to help myself visualize the spot where they caught him. What good would it do? I don’t know where they took him.
Every year on May 29, our family tries to go through what happened. It’s painful not to know anything. Whenever we hear that a family is digging up a loved one’s bones found in some remote place and that they are burying him with Christian care, I can see how moved Mama is by the ceremony. I know that she talks to herself about it every night before sleep overtakes her. She often says that the mystery of her husband’s death is what eats away at her the most. The despair never leaves her.
When I was a little girl, I knew that my papa wasn’t at home, I mean, I knew that he had been killed during the genocide. It wasn’t something I thought about very much. In all honesty, I avoided it. Occasionally, I heard stories about the killings at home. They were startling and faraway. Mama would answer questions about the death of her loved ones. She seemed willing: she showed no signs of sadness; she didn’t dwell. Visitors and friends shared their misfortunes. My brother, Bertrand, and I could hear them. But after having seen the terrifying films on television, I didn’t hang around to listen to their conversations. Basically, I was satisfied with simple questions about my papa, and my mama would tell me.
I was eleven years old, I think, when I had my revelation about the genocide. How? I don’t remember now. I think that one day I pricked up my ears to what was being said. Mama was giving details and descriptions of the killings to some people stopping by. I couldn’t understand. It rattled around in my brain—imagining neighbors running after us Tutsis, machetes in their hands. Can a child even grasp it at first? I thought the words were only meant to strike fear in us—I mean, to punish the ears of the disobedient children who secretly listened in.
I told Mama my worries. Her expression was calm. She said, “The time has come to speak to you directly.” She explained how the expeditions unfolded, how the people were cut, how the corpses took the place of the living in the dark water and in the thickets. She later told me about our family, about the muddy marshes below Ntarama, our frantic escape through the bush to Kabgayi, as I said, and the wandering without end or hope along the paths back to Ntarama. She told me about her lost relatives. I went with her to the edge of the marshes. She was very distraught. Since she didn’t want us to see her like that, she stayed silent to save us the shock. With a group of survivors or at the parish, she could grieve with flowing tears. In front of her children, she hid her aching heart.
* * *
I HAVE A trusted friend—we’re very close. She is a survivor, obviously. She mourns her papa and her grandpa
rents, like me. Her mama has remarried. The FARG helps her shoulder the cost of school. The two of us talk about the genocide, but we never exaggerate our misfortunes, because plenty of young people suffer more than us from loneliness. A lot of them lead grueling lives in the fields. My friend comes from a different region. We tell each other our feelings as well as our thoughts. We share a survivor’s past but one without personal memories—we were too little. We try to imagine ourselves at the time, how things must have been for us, what our families lived through. Often, though, we forget all that and discuss the happy surprises of the present. The circle of flirty boys, whom we rate and make fun of. Then something comes up that pushes us to continue our survivors’ talk. Basically, we help each other avoid harmful bouts of loneliness.
I am active in associations of young survivors. At school, there are a dozen of us, all with FARG scholarships, who make up a local branch. It’s a school for girls from well-to-do families where we don’t have the right to mention our ethnicity. We meet without anyone knowing. The school officials have expressed their disapproval, especially when the FARG has been late with our minervals. They sound off indignantly in front of everyone, and the other students are quick to chime in. That stings. Some students reproach us for being given special treatment because of the FARG. They say, “You girls, you don’t have to worry about your exams because they’ll pay the minervals no matter what, even if you don’t get good grades.” And we tell them, “You’re absolutely right. If you’d had the good fortune of seeing your father cut before your very own eyes, you wouldn’t be worried about grades or anything else.”
Me, I’m happy to be helped by the FARG. I don’t feel embarrassed by it. The nasty things certain schoolmates say still vex me, though. I know survivor children saddled with grief who have to work the fields; they don’t receive any aid because they were born just after the killings. They stumble through life because their families have lost faith in everything. I have accepted being a survivor. It doesn’t bother me. Day after day I should have died under the machete. Even if I wasn’t fully conscious of it at five months old, I still feel very much like a survivor since, miraculously, I came out alive. The mean words people say sometimes tear me apart, or certain words give me a start. I’m not the only one. Which is why young Tutsis like us share our experiences with one another. We discuss witness accounts we have heard, and we help each other in order to raise survivors’ hopes.
I know only the stories about the Tutsis that my mama has told me. Long ago, they were noble and tall, wise, with good manners, even when poor. They lived surrounded by cow herds. They gave freely, they were quite considerate and generous—among one another, anyway. The Hutus showed themselves to be farmers of incredible strength, capable of amazing feats. They would fertilize their fields and sow them in a single day. They have always envied the Tutsis’ cattle, which, on top of that, do damage by trampling on their crops. Hutus don’t see how they can trust Tutsis, and Tutsis feel the same way. When Hutus disagree with Tutsis, they don’t offer an explanation, they growl grumbling words.
Those who steeped their hands in blood can no longer flaunt their strength in the same way. Their faces have become mean and suspicious. I have noticed it in people who come back from prison. I am talking about the ones who plied the machete, not about their children or wives. The ex-prisoners cast nasty looks at us, as if they were still blaming the survivors for not being dead instead of blaming themselves for what they did. I don’t panic at the sight of machetes; nothing dangerous is in store. And yet I’m afraid of those nasty looks in a way that I can’t explain. Obviously, children of the killers sometimes try to be nice. They don’t look at us as their parents do because they never raised the machete. Can they imagine what we lived through? I don’t think so.
* * *
FOR A YOUNG PERSON, you’re better off being born in a family of survivors, since so many young Hutus have been contaminated by their parents’ actions. They grow up with shame or bad thoughts. Myself, I grew up without my papa. Sadness didn’t forget me. But good fortune decided that I would be surrounded by the love of my mama, Édith, and Bertrand. I am cradled with kindness, buoyed by the presence of friends. I don’t feel ashamed of anything, neither of my father’s death nor of my illness. I am loved; nothing bad weighs on me, like resentment or remorse. But poor young Hutus grow up without the affectionate arms of a peaceful family. Why can’t they overcome the obstacles? They lead an unhealthy existence, troubled by wary looks and silences. Some have lost their papas in prison or in Congo from malaria without a soul to comfort them.
I know a classmate from primary school whose papa is still in Rilima. He jumps whenever the genocide is mentioned, out of fear that someone will bring up his papa. Even though his skinny little boy’s legs weren’t even strong enough to hold him at the time, he still feels tainted today. He is constantly saying that, despite his regular visits to his papa in prison, he wants to be at the forefront of Rwanda’s rebuilding. He is the only young Hutu who is willing to talk.
Other Hutus are as ashamed as he is, and as silent. It is impossible to know what they keep hidden. They never show themselves vulnerable, and they don’t want to take comfort or to give it. Then there are those who go along with their parents, especially if their papa is living in prison. They fear making his time there worse. I have a schoolmate whose papa turns out to have been a notorious ringleader during the genocide. He refuses to criticize him. He has chosen family loyalty over his parents’ disapproval.
I can’t imagine Hutu family life at all. I have never eaten with a Hutu family. It must be degrading to talk about all this with them. What kind of person is going to tell their children stories about the hunts through the swamps over an evening meal? I have never heard a young Hutu get angry about what his parents tell him. Hutus feel too intimidated to come up to a girl like me, someone whose papa was killed, to share their anxieties. The ones who make a show of doubting the genocide watch the truth go by as if it were a movie. They don’t find it shocking. The only thing that disturbs them is their own poverty.
Genocide is now my country’s history. I have a passion for telling and hearing about it. Not every week, but when the opportunity arises. Plus, people who are sympathetic sometimes do you a good turn for telling them about it—they offer little rewards. I like to state my opinions as a survivor, especially in front of young Hutus. Even if our discussions don’t go back and forth, I make sure they know what I lost because of their parents’ crimes. I’m not embarrassed to say what we have been through. I teach them a lesson so that they never take pride in any of it. When a group of people has seen itself almost exterminated, it never feels out of harm’s way. Some criminals have brought back a wickedness from prison like the one they took with them when they went in. Watch out: don’t listen to people who claim that the page is turned. Too many ex-killers out there are merely faking it. Human beings never shake off the experience of living like animals.
I would sincerely like to forgive them for the harm they caused us. I would like to. It’s all mixed up in my heart. As a child, there were times when I couldn’t handle living alongside Hutus. As soon as I thought about my papa, hate tightened its grip. I buried it deep inside me. That was melancholy. I thought only about revenge, I imagined the details. I felt humiliated. I thought about the faces of the people I love, about their trust betrayed, about my own face, the gaze of a young happy girl, of a Christian. In other words, these kinds of bad thoughts brought me low. Time is a good preacher. My mama has encouraged in me the example of the Bible’s forgiveness, and I try hard to follow a peaceful path.
Simply put, those are the events of my childhood.
ERNESTINE’S MURDER
It happens on Friday, April 15, at the church in Ntarama, in the middle of a eucalyptus forest. From the moment the radio announces President Juvénal Habyarimana’s assassination, Tutsi families from the nearest hills—Kibungo, Nyarunazi, and Kanzenze—rush to take refuge inside the church en
closure, for, with each pogrom over the past fifty years, they have continued to believe that they would find protection within the walls of God.
At around eleven o’clock in the morning, whatever illusions they have vanish along with the men escaping into the forest and bush, men too poorly armed to defend themselves against those making their way up the hill: a column of soldiers and interahamwe ahead of a horde of farmers, brandishing machetes, axes, spades, and all sorts of other implements. The farmers have been brought by truck from Nyamata, about twenty kilometers away, or led on foot from their fields through the woods. The soldiers use grenades to breach the walls of the church courtyard. They surge forward weapons-first, hurling themselves on the families huddled in the grass. Then they storm inside. They cut down anything that moves: the elderly, women, and the children whose mothers haven’t already left them behind. They hack until their arms ache, transforming over the next few hours a mass of people into heaps of corpses. When they finally withdraw in the afternoon, the killers leave in their wake about five thousand dead and several hundred dying, whom they return to finish off at the same time the following day. Some people survive, most often shielded from the blades by the corpses fallen on top of them.
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