by Maggie Downs
We reach the small town of Nyamata. The moment I step off the bus, a handful of touts crowd around me, all shouting. “Miss, I take you to genocide church! Fair price!” “Lady, you want to see big grave?” I push through the crowd, the men scatter, and I am alone again.
I walk through the town and up a hillside to the place where the ghosts live. The church.
When the genocide began, many of Nyamata’s residents took refuge in the town’s Catholic church. Though the Tutsis padlocked themselves inside the church’s iron doors, the Hutu militia forced themselves inside. In this house of God, more than 10,000 people were slaughtered with rifles, machetes, sledgehammers, and grenades. The killing took two days.
The bodies of most victims—along with those of 35,000 others who were murdered in the area—have since been buried in two mass graves behind the church. Above the main entrance, a banner reads in Kinyarwanda: “If you had known me, and you had really known yourself, you would not have killed me.”
The building is filled with the victims’ clothing and the metallic scent of blood. Each pew is piled high with tattered, red-soaked fabric, while other pieces dangle from clotheslines strung across the room. The white altar cloth is stained with blood. The ceiling is scarred from bullets. A baptismal font has been a witness to more death than life.
The church basement has been converted into a catacomb, lined with racks of bones. Several shelves hold skulls. There are more shelves for femurs and another with arms.
In the room where the children hid, one brick wall is stained with blood. This is where the genocidaires tossed the tiny bodies against the wall. They didn’t even bother with machetes.
Whenever there’s a tragedy, I’ve noticed people speak in fragments: “I can’t even imagine …” “Such a shame …” I don’t speak here, but I feel fragmented, a Cubist painting of the spirit that has been dissected and reassembled. This place leaves me breathless and hollow, and I have to work to force air into my lungs again. But it’s hard. It’s hard to share the same air with the last breaths of the dead, breaths that were wrested from them.
It’s also hard to reconcile that as I walk the streets of Rwanda, I share the same air with the people who extracted these lives. The thought leaves me dizzy, and I reach for a wall, my fingertips brushing against the blood shed by people I’ll never know.
It is strange to feel untethered in a building where I am surrounded by solid things. Bone and stone and brick. The hard, compacted ground beneath my feet. The tin roof overhead. But I realize the things that make us human are so soft and viscous. Blood and fat and flesh. Mind and spirit. Intangible things. Things that never last, no matter how the lives are ended.
Before I leave, I notice an ID card on the floor, part of a display of the victims’ personal effects. The card is stained with dried spots of brown blood. When I peek at the name and photo, I see the man had the same birthday as my brother, May 25, 1965. Any of these ghosts could easily be mine. They could belong to any of us.
On the return to Kigali, I wonder what it would feel like to have a mom who died swiftly instead of seeping away over a period of ten years. Is it better to lose someone quickly? Or to have someone taken slowly? Is grief like peeling off a Band-Aid—better to get it over with?
A few years ago, I got into an argument with my best friend from college about our mothers. I don’t remember how it started, only that it ended with us trying to one-up the suffering of the other. She insisted that her mom’s three-year, ultimately fatal battle with breast cancer was worse than my mom’s extended death from Alzheimer’s. Of course, I argued Alzheimer’s was the cruelest of diseases.
“My mom was in pain,” she said.
“My mom doesn’t know she’s in pain,” I retaliated.
“At least you still have a mom around,” she said.
“But my mom doesn’t know who I am.”
“If I still had a mom, even if she didn’t know who I was, I would be grateful,” she said.
It’s not that simple, I thought. “I don’t know how to be a daughter to a woman who doesn’t know she’s a mother,” I said.
It was a dumb fight. Of course there’s no hierarchy of suffering, no way to measure the ripples that extend from loss. My friend and I both suffered. And we were both so blinded by our own grief that we bickered about which one of us had been hurt more. A fight that has no winner—and who wants to win that one anyway?
The road is nearly empty of vehicles now, but there are people in the fields and along the road. The driver tells me few buses are running because it is Umuganda, a mandatory community service day held on the last Saturday of every month throughout the country. Each neighborhood selects a project, like painting houses, picking up litter, or preparing the fields for crops, and everybody between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five participates.
Umuganda has a long history in Rwanda, but after the genocide it was implemented by the government with the purpose of uniting Hutu and Tutsi neighbors and fostering a sense of community. It is a reconciliation.
Rwanda is, after all, a small country that has no death penalty. When convicted genocidaires are released from prison, as more and more are every year, many of them return to the village or city where they lived prior to the genocide. So the person who slaughtered your family might be your next-door neighbor.
My mother always told me forgiveness was one of the most important life skills a person could cultivate. I don’t know if I have that much forgiveness in me.
A FEW DAYS LATER, I AM AT MY HOSTEL IN KIGALI WHEN the power goes out. For a long minute, it feels like someone hit pause on the city. Music halts. The ceiling fan makes one last, slow swish. Everything is still.
I feel my way down the hallways and onto the patio, where others have gathered. I hear the match strike before I see the quivering light of a citronella candle. All of us encircle the flame.
From this perch on a normal night, it’s possible to see all the way down the sweeping hillsides of this neighborhood, past the mansions where the ambassadors live, out to where the houses are smaller, the living quarters denser and more modest. But tonight a velvet drape is dropped from the sky. The lights are blotted out, each home erased. It is an even, inky darkness, the great equalizer.
Someone to my left clunks a bottle on the wooden patio table and announces that it is waragi, a Ugandan gin distilled from bananas. There are seven of us regulars at the hostel, now crowded around this one rickety table. We don’t know each other well, but the waragi promises that we are about to become friends.
“The power isn’t coming on anytime soon,” says Shannon, who has lived in Rwanda longer than any of us. “We might as well drink.”
The bottle is passed around clockwise, no glasses. When it gets to me, I tip the bottle to my mouth and feel as though I’ve been punched in the throat. The waragi is harsh and astringent, the taste as bitter as the smell of rubbing alcohol. When I wheeze, Shannon slides a warm bottle of grape Fanta my way as a chaser. Next time around I anticipate the sting, and the drink doesn’t burn as much.
Almost two hours later, the power bursts on with the rude force of a party crasher. The lights are intrusive, but they help us see that the liquor is nearly gone.
We walk arm in arm up the street, hail a taxi, and pile into it. My grasp of the area is fair, because I take long, looping morning walks, but we drive through a part of the city I’ve never seen before. We arrive at a locals’ club called Pasadena.
The club is crowded and humid. Condensation slides down the mirrors on the walls. I don’t see people as much as a vibrant kaleidoscope of high heels, stretchy minidresses, shiny shirts, and tight pants.
Someone offers me a martini, and what I receive isn’t related in any kingdom, class, or phylum to any martini I’ve ever known, but I sip it anyway. The DJ plays throbbing Nigerian reggae, mashed up with Prince, Shakira, and Chaka Khan, and I dance for hours. The room pulses with energy, the air musky and sweet.
I am still upright a
nd swaying when I begin to fall asleep. My head bobs, and I can’t force my eyes to stay open. I have to go. My friends, however, have more stamina. They decide to stay.
Outside, the air is December cool. Goose bumps stipple my arms. It has rained since we entered the club, and the rugged, potholed road glitters with puddles. Thickets of bushes and trees are obscured by a pea soup of fog.
There are no cabs in sight, and I don’t trust a motorcycle taxi in these weather conditions. Plus I am disoriented in this part of town, enough to where I can’t even point to the direction of the hostel. I don’t know how to get home.
Just then a sizable man in a nice suit taps me on the shoulder and offers me a ride in his posh SUV.
“How much?”
“No charge,” he says.
The man must feel my skepticism, because he introduces himself as the owner of the club. His face is round, his smile kind.
“You are my customer,” he explains. “It’s my responsibility to make sure you get home safe.”
This is the math of a traveler: Is it safer to risk slick and curvy streets on the back of a moto taxi in severely reduced visibility? Or put myself inside a stranger’s car? As I run the calculations in my head, the man opens the door and gestures for me to get inside.
Defying everything my mother ever taught me, I opt for the SUV. It is dark. I buckle the seat belt, and the man locks the doors. I stare out the window as we drive off.
On the road, we make small talk. He asks how I enjoyed the club. I tell him the music was great, and I loved the festive crowd. He’s proud. He tells me he named the place in honor of his brother.
We are now in my neighborhood, driving past the embassies, consulates, and ministry offices of Avenue de la Gendarmerie. The streets are a blank slate. It’s long past midnight but not quite day.
“Your brother’s name was Pasadena?”
No, he says. Of course not.
Years ago, he says, his brother visited California. When he returned to Kigali, he talked at length about the loveliness of Pasadena. The flowers. The kind people. The quick and easy smiles. He said it was the most beautiful place on earth. Violence broke out shortly after the brother’s return. The brother was one of the million Rwandans murdered during the genocide.
We reach the metal fence that surrounds the hostel. I tell the man that I live in California, not too far from Pasadena. He pulls to the side of the road, and he puts the vehicle in park.
“And?” He looks at me, eager but anxious. “Is it as wonderful as my brother says?” When I pause, he grips my face in his big, calloused hands. His fingers tremble, and his eyes search mine. “Does the name honor his memory?”
I am sober now.
To me Pasadena is congested highways, chain restaurants, and parking tickets. I’ve purchased bath bombs from Lush, and I’ve sampled craft beer at a shiny bar whose name I don’t remember. There are flowers, but they’ve always looked so phony.
I have taken Pasadena for granted; I do not take this man and his experience for granted. I’m here to say what needs to be true, to help fill the empty spaces, and to offer this man what he has already given me—the tiniest quivering light in the darkness. A way home. And so I look the man in the eye.
“It’s the most beautiful place on earth.”
THE MAN AT THE TOURISM OFFICE IN KIGALI ASKS WHAT day I’d prefer for my gorilla trek, the next item on my list of things to do for Mom. I purposely choose a Sunday, because this already feels like something holy.
The Sunday of my trek is drizzly, and the Virungas are swathed in mist as fine as cotton candy. Parc National des Volcans is sandwiched near the Rwandan border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a majestic landscape carpeted with flowers and lush greenery and a horizon dominated by volcanoes. The hum of birds and insects acts as a choir.
The last remaining mountain gorillas on earth call this place home, so gorilla treks are tightly regulated by the government. There are ten gorilla families available to visit, and just eight people are permitted to visit each family per day. Some families are far, and several hours of grueling hiking are required to reach them. Others are near the base of the mountains and not difficult to locate. The families are tracked daily, so every guide has a pretty good indication of where to go.
I don’t mind working for this, so when all the trekkers are sorted into groups, I say I’m up for a hike. My only request is that I’d like to see babies, which the rangers can’t promise. However, I’m hopeful. And when I’m separated into my group, the guide’s name is Faith.
We are accompanied by armed rangers because, even though the treks are considered to be safe, there is the potential for danger: namely poachers, interaction with wild animals other than gorillas, and the rebel groups that exist along the border of the DRC. This is also the same land where naturalist Dian Fossey, who researched these endangered animals and wrote Gorillas in the Mist, was murdered by unknown assailants.
The hike is difficult. I’m given my own machete, and we slog through knee-high mud and thick tangles of stinging nettles. My clothes aren’t thick, and I am tagged, poked, snagged by thorns, even as I try to slice my way through branches and vines. When the climb gets particularly steep, I use the machete to carve steps into the mud. And when the mountain grows too steep for that, I climb on all fours, gorilla-style, clinging to bamboo stalks to keep myself from sliding away. When I stand again, my boots are heavy and feel as though they’ve been dipped in molasses.
None of that matters when we encounter the gorilla. He’s just there, sitting on his haunches in a little clearing, surrounded by bushes. He’s close enough that I can hear him breathe and smell the musk of his fur.
Then there are gorillas everywhere, eating, playing, climbing. Some of them frolic and run. Others are preoccupied with food. One gorilla snaps a thorny vine, the same kind I had trouble chopping with a machete, and plucks off all the berries.
This is the Umubano family, which means “neighborliness” or “living together,” comprised of more than a dozen members. It’s an ironic name since this family was initially part of another group, Amahoro. As Charles the silverback grew older, he challenged the more mature silverback in his family, and he eventually left with two females to start his own group.
I’m delighted to see babies, lovable black bundles of fuzz. Just like human infants, these babies don’t entirely know how to control their limbs yet, so every movement is equally awkward and hilarious. One baby scratches his head and tips over. Another tries to swing from one tree to another and doesn’t make it, crashing into the bushes.
Then I watch mama gorillas nurture their young, with babies on their backs or nestled in the crook of an arm. One of the adult gorillas flattens the foliage into a nest and places her baby there to rest. When the child is good and comfortable, the mama perches nearby where she can keep watch.
I see all this, and even as I marvel at the gorillas, I also think, Nope. Not me. I recall the children I met in Argentina, how much I wanted to protect them, but here I waver. I don’t know if I’m capable of caring for a child this way; I don’t know if I have the capacity for selflessness. I’m the machete wielder, not the nurturer. I am hard where I should be tender.
My only instinct is the one that tells me to stay calm as Charles the silverback swaggers past me. He places one enormous hand, as large as a baseball mitt, on my shoulder. Faith whispers, “Don’t move,” and Charles continues moving forward. Then he pauses at the edge of a clearing that looks over the mountain below and surveys the landscape.
Neatly side by side, the gorilla and I gaze past the skinny trees, the scruffy bushes, the thorny, creeping vines, down the ragged green hills. Wispy clouds shift past us. My forearms are streaked in mud, scrapes, and dried blood, but my muscles are relaxed; the discomfort I experienced getting here has dissipated. There is no sound but my own heartbeat. I hesitate to blink, too afraid of breaking the stillness and the sanctity of this moment.
Do I even ne
ed to tell you I feel alive?
IT’S MY FINAL DAY IN RWANDA. MY BACKPACK IS CRAMMED all the way to the top with gifts for my family—necklaces made with paper beads, hand-sewn dolls, a small chess set that looked so pretty in the shadows of the market but is actually just a square of floor tile and some lumps of plastic.
There’s only one thing left to do: teach my final class. I’ve recently introduced them to the game of bingo—we play using boards that I’ve made with English vocabulary words, and the students cover the squares with rusty bottle caps.
When class ends, a few students offer to take me out. We board a bus to a nearby neighborhood, then walk down a dirt lane to a small restaurant.
The building is slender, barely large enough to hold the kitchen’s few burners. All the tables are located outside, on a dirt patio surrounded by wooden fences and tarps with beer advertisements. I am the only non-Rwandan. The other customers stare.
At the table, one student pulls a pack of Uno cards from her pocket and asks if I can show them how to play.
I shuffle the cards and deal seven to each woman, just as a waitress arrives. Liberé orders several large beers and plates of French fries, mizuzu (fried plantains), and goat brochettes (skewers) for the table. We play an open hand.
All the vocabulary words my class worked so hard to learn seem to come together in this game: color words, directions, numbers. I have to explain the concept of a “wild” card, and there’s a little bit of confusion over “skip”—which my students only know as the physical movement of hopping. Otherwise, they’ve got it.
Our food arrives, and the fries sizzle and pop with oil. We continue playing Uno, laughing and discarding onto the plastic table, the cards now greasy with thumbprints. It’s early, but the sky is already a steely gray.
We draw a small crowd with our game. The server looks over our shoulders and makes suggestions for what to discard. A couple of other people pull up chairs and watch, laughing whenever one of us shatters the night with a scream of “UNO!”