I can’t say that it helped me. It surprised me a bit. Could I imagine a book about the Nyamata survivors at a time when fear ate away at me, when those around me felt blameworthy, when no one knew what path to take to live again? No, I thought the work might be a good thing. Basically, though, our jobs intersect: sitting on a bench at people’s sides, thinking about the questions to ask, listening to the words at work behind the stories, without neglecting the silences or the past, and following them wherever they lead.
* * *
MYSELF, HOWEVER, I didn’t want to sit by my children’s side to tell them the story of the genocide. That surprises you? It doesn’t surprise me. And yet that’s how it was. Before my parents’ funeral, it may still have been possible, while I was still very upset. In the years that followed the machetes, I did everything I could to find out where and how my papa and mama had been cut in Butare. The question preyed on my mind. It was like an obsession. I was traumatized, so to speak, although I hid it from people’s eyes. Then I received the news about the massacre of my family. I got the details and I wept. I went to Butare with my children and my sister Claudine to arrange the funeral service. We appealed to God. A great relief suddenly took hold of my heart. The trembling and deathly visions went away.
I finally calmed down. Gone were the evenings spent remembering the worst moments of suffering, of mourning the dead, of piling up rumors instead of facts. My heart was unburdened, as I told you, of anguish if not of fear. My confidence in others—I see that it is more or less ruined for good, but I have confidence in myself and in those I love. There was a time I had lost everything, when I felt I always needed to speak about the extermination, the loss, and the shame. You wrote those words. Courage returned, followed by my taste for life. I don’t want to be disappointed by existence anymore. So why would I let it disappoint my children? The scenes of the genocide are no longer so present that I feel compelled to tell my children about them. I don’t have the time. Why offer them sorrow? No, no, I don’t hide anything, but I don’t want to force on them the evil that has made me suffer.
Even if life has stopped for some people, it continues for the children. That’s something I learned from my parents. As I told you, we lived in a big, very loving family of two hundred people in Butare. As early as 1959, my parents were driven out, then again in the 1960s. My grandparents were killed, the cows eaten, the houses burned. That was the saga of the Tutsis. When my mama started telling us about their youth, explaining to us how badly the wicked Hutus had mistreated them, my papa interrupted her: “No, we mustn’t speak about it to the children. This evil has harmed us, but they must be protected. It might poison them.”
My parents pampered me in childhood. They surrounded me with love for life. Maybe I have tried to imitate them. I thought, the machetes killed my parents, not the strength they gave me. What the ears of my children must hear, they will hear elsewhere. As for myself, I must raise them as I was raised. I want life to stretch out far in front of them, without the blood. When a person has been the cause of bloody misdeeds against your family, and that person constantly comes up in adult conversations, children listen; they wonder why that terrible person is still living on their hill. The question infects their childhood with a sense of injustice, and they grow up with resentment. It’s a big thing to spoil their development in this way.
But I don’t hide anything from my children. I don’t evade their questions. In April, when they watch the shows on television, when they talk about them, I provide the explanations they ask for. Do they have questions? Not very many. Aurore was five years old at the time of the genocide, Gabin three, and I was pregnant with the third. All three have memories of the killings or of the hardship that came afterward: the exile in Bujumbura, the return to Nyamata, the poverty. They haven’t ever asked me a single question. No, not ever. Why, I don’t know. A photograph of my mama is sitting in the living room. Not once have they asked me details about her. There she is and they say nothing. Only the youngest ones, Carmen and Annelyse, who were born much later, have asked me questions: “Why don’t you have any parents?” I tell them about how my family was killed. “You ran away to Burundi, why?” I tell them how we escaped with our lives on the road to Bujumbura. They aren’t looking for details about the machetes or the Hutus.
My children aren’t ones to poke around in family history. Maybe they don’t want to make me sad. In any case, they see that, unlike before, I no longer get up from bed with grim visions in my eyes. With their childhood lucidity, they probably steer clear of the words that might hurt me. It’s a bit unclear. I imagine that the history doesn’t interest them, as simple as that. They think that it’s a disagreement among adults, and it can only cause them trouble. Maybe they sidestep because of their papa.
My husband is very traumatized. He is a highly regarded teacher: his expertise is valued as far away as South Africa. The genocide devastated him. He hates bringing it up. If he speaks of it, he feels emotions he can do nothing to control. Wickedness rises before his eyes. His words come rushing out, he threatens all the Hutus, and his lips stir up the anger that his heart only whispers. His movements are unpredictable. He becomes someone else, thrashing about in the throes of a psychological disorder. During the commemorations, he drinks and smokes. As soon as he gets home, we have to be quiet. He sits down lifeless in a corner of the house. He no longer has time for the children. He stops speaking. The children stay away from him. I don’t know if they are frightened of him, if they worry for him. We don’t discuss it. It’s a burden. We steer clear. The genocide pushes us to accept what we thought would be impossible to accept. We draw from a mysterious force to keep going.
* * *
THIS REFUSAL TO bring up the genocide happened without my thinking about it. No, you’re mistaken—religion didn’t enter into it. I have always prayed with the same sincerity. Nowadays, it’s with the Pentecostals. I discovered the Temple of Zion during my time in Tanzania because their parish was located next door. When I came back to Nyamata, I stuck with them. Before that, I belonged to the Catholic Church—nothing bad to say about it. I didn’t leave over theological differences or because of the pastors. Here’s the reason: In a Catholic mass, you sometimes find yourself elsewhere—you return to other thoughts, often sad ones. You drift off into grim memories. Fervor doesn’t sweep you along the way it does with the Pentecostals. The music and the sermons carry you away. We sing, we listen. Rejoicing helps us commune with God.
The Pentecostal Church has changed my behavior. An example? I used to drink beer. I would drink after service. I could spend much too much time drinking with acquaintances in secluded places. I wouldn’t enter a cabaret with just anyone; with two or three friends, then I had the courage. Before the genocide, I wouldn’t even have had a sip. That came later. Despair closed in around me, and minor marriage problems wore me down, as they do so many others. I looked for places to hide. Here in Rwanda, a man who drinks makes a lot of friends. A woman, too. It’s not a happy thing, not even pleasant; it’s comforting. You didn’t notice? Because I know how to control myself, like all Rwandan women. So you start habits that aren’t good. You distract yourself with things that aren’t very respectable. No examples! Nowadays, I do both. I drink a little bit of beer, only when I feel like it, and I pray and sing as much as I like, whenever I like.
Religion supports me in raising the children. It helps me to hold them close. I didn’t convince them to believe. I brought them along several Sundays, and just like that, they were full of enthusiasm. They sing in the choir, they devote their time to the associations. They’re happy at the church. You heard him, my son playing electric organ on Sunday. Their vacations are taken up with church activities. That’s how they build their confidence despite their worries.
It’s not only at church. My children are filled with enthusiasm for many different educational and recreational activities at school. They go to youth clubs, music, computers, and movies—they are very open-minded. No ar
guments or rude remarks when it comes to chores at home. It was through their activities at school that they got their education about the genocide, the same as their education about AIDS prevention or drugs. They assemble to talk, they visit the memorials, they watch the documentaries. They receive an education about the genocide outside of the family.
The children who have seen the worst, like my three eldest, will never get over it. But I think they are at ease; I don’t notice any fear in them, anyway. Life doesn’t trouble them. They don’t close their hearts. In my work, I have been enormously involved with children traumatized by the genocide. You saw me searching for them in the bush. I loved this work deeply. Oftentimes, a child’s trauma comes to him from having a keener and more precocious intelligence than his peers do. The more intelligent he is, the more it will make him suffer.
CLAUDINE’S MUDUGUDU
What star led me up such a steep, gully-filled path? I had no idea that it would take me past Berthe’s house and then on to Claudine’s at the top of the hill. A lucky star, that much is for sure, because it was by purest good fortune that I made the acquaintance of Berthe Mwanankabandi and Claudine Kayitesi in that remote setting up there in the bush. They were twenty years old; a childhood friendship united them. The machetes had killed their families. Since then, they had taught themselves how to farm their plots. A pack of children crowded their courtyards: orphans from around the area whom a humanitarian organization had placed in their care. Berthe had also given birth to two babies “born on the sly.” Claudine raised her little five-year-old daughter, born in Congo during her abduction.
It was always a pleasure to chat with them during my stays. In the beginning, however, although they never appeared hostile, they took no interest in what might become of their words. They indulged in conversation because they couldn’t imagine the writing of a book and still less the intention behind it. Their curiosity awoke little by little, each in its own way. Always hospitable, they became warmhearted; diligent in the beginning, they strove to be more detailed in their accounts. The impulsive and more distrustful Berthe often responded brusquely. Claudine seemed more fatalistic, ironic, with her occasionally caustic remarks, even if she was no less desperate than Berthe. They sought a way to get more involved. They began to think about what the questions and answers taught them about themselves.
One afternoon, Berthe came to tell me: “Sometimes sleep draws me back into the marshes. I see all those people again, their blood-soaked bodies stretched out in the sludge. I see my parents in dreams, my little sisters and acquaintances. I see the living, who resemble the dead. Everything seems normal and calm. It’s good. I’m with those who sleep as gently as the dead. When I wake up, a terrible anguish, or sorrow, is there to greet me, as if I had visited the house of the dead.”
Fate separated the two women. Berthe moved into a house with her sister in Ntarama’s mudugudu at the bottom of the road. One evening, she said: “Deep down, I succumb to a kind of hatred, a fear. Having a husband, living happily as a family—I just don’t see it … For an orphan survivor, choosing the right husband is a torment. If he has no problems and doesn’t understand you, it’s no good; if he understands you but has too many problems himself, it’s no better … I have suffered through too much to risk living with a husband who can’t console me when I’m inconsolable. I prefer the anxieties of a woman alone, and giving birth on the sly, obviously, because no woman can give that up.”
She is restless, undertakes various projects, which she abandons just as quickly. When the drought-hardened earth wears her down, she drops her tools and takes the bus for Kigali to look for odd jobs as a nurse’s aide or salesperson.
Claudine moved farther, three kilometers away, to the Kanzenze mudugudu, where she and her new husband, Damascène Bizima, could be nearer to his plot of land. She described their wedding as follows: “It was a grand affair. The choristers opened the ceremony dressed in their decorated pagnes. I wore the three traditional dresses and my husband hid his hands in elegant white gloves. The church provided its courtyard and tablecloths. Three vans brought the wedding party, along with Fanta sodas, sorghum wine, and cases of Primus, of course. Our fete lasted three unbelievable days.”
Her life follows the rhythms of farming, the routines of her very happy family, and the calendar of church events, with which she stays enthusiastically busy. Not so long ago, however, she made an admission as she talked to me about her life: “Yes, calm has settled in. I have beautiful children, a relatively fertile field, and a nice husband to support me. A few years ago, after the killings, when you met me for the first time, I was a simple girl with stray children all around me. I had nothing except drudgery and bad thoughts. Since then, my husband has turned me into a family lady—I never could have imagined. In the mornings, courage takes me by the hand. Life offers me its smiles and I owe it my thanks for not having abandoned me in the marshes. But still, for me, the chance to become someone has passed. All the questions you ask me—you won’t ever hear answers from the real Claudine, because I’ve pretty much lost my love of myself. I’ve known the filth of animals, I’ve seen the ferocity of the hyena and worse still—because animals are never as vile as that. I was called an insect. I was forced by a brutal man. I was taken away, out there, to a place about which nothing can be said. But the worst is still there walking in front of me. My heart will always hold suspicions. It knows all too well that destiny can break its promises.”
Claudine was sixteen years old at the time of the killings, just a year younger than her daughter Nadine is now.
CLAUDINE KAYITESI
TUTSI FARMER
Nadine’s mother
As a child, I made my way to school in bare feet. All the little ones went shoeless to church on Sunday mornings. Today, they wear shoes from an early age, but they walk without parents. Their parents have either been cut or punished, or they conceal their trauma in the dark corner of a courtyard, or they never leave the bottle in the cabaret. Drought sometimes so cracks the earth that it drives women to Kigali alone. You remember Berthe. Whenever the rain runs short, she rushes off to the city, leaving her children in the mudugudu. She offers her services in hospital wards or shops in search of a little money for food. Nowadays, it’s very lucky for a child to grow up with two actual parents—two people who have their health and freedom.
There are vagrant children wandering about who fear no one. You see them smoking cannabis at the edge of the bush. They sometimes stand in the middle of the road with their cigarette. You make a remark, and they clear off without taking the trouble to run. You can see that nothing frightens them. They have known the wickedness of adults since preschool; they have grown up in their elders’ lies. They dare to say whatever they like, and they don’t care if they do something wrong. What’s the use of distinguishing between good and evil when you have been given evil from the time you were born.
We parents are getting older, and we are weighed down by dreadful memories. We accept the unacceptable, we feign reconciliation. As I told you, we cannot abandon our nature forever. One doesn’t live merely on the health benefits of beans. We long to experience something before we die. Fate has camped out at our door and we have gotten used to it. But a lot of children stumble.
I spent my childhood in farming. My parents made a good life from their field. Since they were born Tutsi, they raised handsome cows and goats for the healthy milk. I took care of my brothers and sisters. The courtyard chores were mine, which lessened my mama’s burdens. She devoted herself to the hoe. I lent a hand with weeding, and I used a long staff to watch over the animals with other children my age. Our eyes lit up when we saw the herds. Seeing the big-horned animals peacefully eating in the bush stirred our Tutsi pride. The elders intervened in quarrels under the acacia trees. It was good. We could grow up feeling safe. Our papa’s and mama’s kind help shouldered us up. Those you call “uncles” and “aunts” kept watch.
I received a basic education. My parents took me i
n hand, and the neighbors, like everywhere in Africa, stepped in to set me right whenever it was needed. The teachers told us what to do. It was carefree, except, of course, for the ethnic fears. Then everything changed; you know why. Now, many children lack a mother’s arms in which they can forget their worries. They don’t heed advice. They prefer to fend for themselves as they have learned to do alone. If the papa did wrong, if he served a long sentence, it’s difficult for a child to understand the meaning of respect. If the parents are dead or traumatized, family authority slips away. Around here, neighbors are powerless, and the priests and teachers simply swallow the government’s instructions.
We are living through a fairly chaotic century. Technology kindles greed and encourages one to lie. With the internet, television, and sex videos, nothing is hidden from the children anymore. That’s true for all the children in the world. It’s riskier, though, for children without parents. They don’t know where to find a shoulder to rest their troubled heads. They are never disciplined by an adult’s stern voice, and nothing stops them from throwing themselves onto the internet. They go out looking for any kind of entertainment to escape their dark thoughts. They turn to video-game zombies and monsters to keep them company.
* * *
IT’S NO SECRET that Nadine is more difficult than I was. She would be even worse if she hadn’t chosen the path of the church. I started to talk to her about the genocide when she was thirteen. Until then, she didn’t know what had occurred. At least, that’s what I thought. She didn’t ask a single question. I decided not to upset her. I didn’t want to go up to her and say, “There was a genocide. Here’s how it happened to our family.” I waited patiently for her questions to come. She started to ask me why I didn’t have a papa or mama. What had they done to disappear? She had probably already talked about it with her schoolmates.
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