by Lisa Shannon
As he scrolls through his reports, I see file names and pictures in the lefthand margin of his screen. I zero in on the thumbnail photos scrawling by: severed heads and limbs, stacks of bodies. Part of me strains to see them, hoping to catch a clue about the massacre. The other half is relieved I can’t make out the details from across the desk, grateful my mind has been spared the gory imprint.
He grants us permission to return to Kaniola and arranges for a security-escort several days from now. Colonel Khan emphasizes, “If there is anything you see there that warrants our attention, anything our people can make improvements on, I hope you will do me the favor of reporting back to me.” He cannot, however, release the reports.
THE DELAY WHILE WAITING for the security-escort is perfect.
So, about singing “Kumbaya” with the people. Snarky swipes aside, there’s something that has bothered me all year. In my pursuit of Congo horror stories, there were a lot of questions I didn’t ask. Like who was lost. I didn’t even ask their names.
THERESE STEPS OUT of a cement building that’s covered in peeling paint, on a private compound in the village. It’s a Sunday, so few others are around. There is no grand reception, just a long hug with my first Congolese sister. She’s wearing the same yellow Sunday-best dress she did nearly a year and half ago. I present her with one of the only gifts that made it in my carry on bag: a green scarf in raw silk. Therese wraps it on her head. It happens to be the perfect complement to her favorite dress. Another translator is filling in, a staff lady who speaks fluent Mashi, Therese’s regional dialect. “Therese would like to know about your tribe, your clan.”
We talk for hours. I tell her all about my Catholic clan in Arkansas, my Protestant clan from Oklahoma, my immediate family, and my tribe of friends.
I ask about her family.
“I was singer in the church choir, and a greeter at church. My husband was prayer-group treasurer. We would come to the parish here to give reports on the groups. It was a two-and-a-half-hour walk, so it was a chance to be together. We fell in love.”
I ask about the time her husband was taken to cook for the Interahamwe.
“Some people told me he died, but I was not convinced. I felt he was still alive. I waited and waited until he came back. I had served the evening meal to my mother- and father-in-law when I heard a voice like my husband’s, greeting his parents. His father was astonished. He said, ‘Your voice is like Pascal’s voice. Who are you, man?’
“He said, ‘I am your son, Pascal.’
“I couldn’t imagine he had come back. I thought he was dead.
“He walked in. I hugged him. The children, who were already sleeping, got up. The youngest asked me, ‘Is he really my father?’
“I said, ‘Yes, he is your father.’
“We expressed our joy in dancing and singing.
“Before my husband went to the bush, he was not kind. He was lazy; he didn’t want to work. I was taking care of my husband and my children. But since he’s come back, he helps me feed the children. His mind has changed. He’s kind. When I go farming for other people, my husband goes as well. In the evening, I bring what I got, he brings what he earned, and we feed our children. I’m more happy now than before.”
“Can you tell me more about your little girl who died?” I ask.
“She was five years old. Children always bring happiness to parents. Each child has their own manner of acting. When I see what the two children are doing, helping me with housework, I always think about my first child. I imagine if she was still alive.
“She was kind; she loved her grandparents so much. She had the habit of bringing plates when I served food. She always served her grandparents first. She liked to serve others, to wash dishes after dinner.”
I interject, “We would call her a ‘little helper.’”
Therese says, “Nsemeru. Her name means ‘I love you.’”
WANDOLYN IS WAITING with her husband in a private room at the Women for Women Walungu center. Once we are settled, she blurts out, “I don’t want to talk about the event anymore.”
I smile and reassure her, “I just wanted to see you.”
After I left, Wandolyn spent nine months in a psychiatric ward, while the nuns cared for Nshobole. When Wandolyn was finally well enough to return home, the nuns had fallen in love with the little girl and wanted to keep her. “Of course I want the child with me, but she receives better care with the nuns. She eats better than my other children! And they will send her to school. We visit her once a month.”
I packed photos of the two of them together, but they were lost with my bag. Instead, I pull out my laptop and scroll through photos of their family, images of Wandolyn with Nshobole strapped to her back, panoramic views of Congo beyond them. Excited, Wandolyn and her husband point and smile, nostalgic for the time their daughter lived with their family.
GENEROSE BURSTS INTO TEARS when she sees me. “Karibu. Welcome.” She wears a beautiful sky-blue African dress. On her crutches, she leads me to her new, little wooden house, with its corrugated metal roof and bright blue trim. She stops at the front door, next to a tall tropical plant sprouting bold red flowers. She picks both blooms and presents them to me. “I grew the flowers for you, so someday, when you came back, I could give them to you.”
We tour the compound with her children in tow. Her youngest is over-the-moon enthusiastic, jumping and silly, exchanging funny faces with me. When we step inside, I’m tense. The house is not what we had agreed upon. It’s smaller than we discussed and the floors are not cement. They are bumpy with stones. I ask Maurice and Hortense pointed questions about what happened. Generose interrupts, “It is not their fault, Lisa. Prices went up after you left. But I bought the stones and filled the walls myself for around two hundred and forty dollars. I used the money I’ve raised from my business.”
She leads us around to the backyard, bursting with pride at her cassava liquor distillery. “I sell only the best,” she boasts, explaining the distillation process. I’m not sure how I feel about keeping the local men liquored up, but her pride is contagious. “I wanted to have some for you to taste, but I sell out after only one day. I can make two batches per month, for a profit of seventy dollars per month.”
Considering the fact that most families here live on US$20 per month, I’m impressed. She’s making enough to send her kids to school, buy plenty of food, grow veggies in the back, and bit by bit improve her house. A woman joins us and shakes my hand. Generose nods, raising her eyebrows as she introduces her. “She is among the ones who help.”
An employee? This little house is her new empire!
Inside, we pull the curtains closed and wait for the neighbors and children to disperse, so we can talk privately. It’s dusk and we talk by candlelight. I ask about her son.
“He was a child I loved so much,” she tells me. “The fact that he is the only one who refused to eat a part of me marked my heart.”
“What was your son like?” I ask.
“He was nine years old, in third grade. He loved to play soccer and to go fishing on his grandparents’ compound. He loved to create cars with banana leaves or to make paper airplanes. He liked to provoke others. He took a toad and put it in his friend’s bag. So we were called to the school to justify his behavior. The first thing he used to ask when he came home was, ‘Where is the food?’ If there was no food, he would get angry with everyone in the house, ‘Why is the food not ready?’ Or ‘Why don’t you put salt on the fish? Is the problem poverty, or what?’ Or ‘You prepare vegetables every day. I don’t want vegetables. When I visit my aunt, she makes meat. Why don’t you prepare meat?’”
Maurice and I laugh and I say, “Quite a fiery little man.”
But Generose looks blankly at the wall.
“Do you remember the last thing you said to your child?”
“What I remember is the last speech he gave to the killer.”
“What did he say?” I ask.
“To his fath
er’s killer, he said, ‘I do not accept to eat a part of my mother.’
“They said, ‘Then we are going to kill you.’
“He said, ‘If you kill me, kill me. But I will not eat a part of my mother.’”
Generose spaces out, slowly rocking back and forth, while Maurice translates, “They said, ‘Then you better pray, because you are going to die.’
“He said, ‘You’re asking me to pray to God? Why? I do not love you. I am angry with you. How can I pray to God when I have such a bad heart against you?’”
We are quiet for a moment. Then I ask her, “What did the soldiers say?”
“They said nothing. They shot him. I heard the sound of many bullets, but what I saw was the one that entered here.” She points to the middle of her forehead.
“What was his name?”
“Lucien.”
“And your husband?”
“Claude.”
“How did you meet your husband?” I ask.
“My husband was ill, and he came to the hospital where I was a nurse. In treating him, the love began between us. I loved him first because he was handsome. Second, because he gave me advice. After the treatment, he left the hospital, but after two days, he came back to visit me. In one week, he came back with his father to bring a hen as a sign of thanks. After that, he began the habit of visiting. He did this for two years. After two years, he decided to come see my parents.
“There was a great ceremony. My husband’s family brought my parents two cows and six goats. We went to the priest so he could bless us. Afterward, we organized a big party.”
“What was he like as a person, a man, a husband?” I ask.
“The type of husband I dreamed of since I was a child. Someone very tall, who’s not a drunk and doesn’t smoke. When I met him, he had all these qualities, and I said, ‘This is the man.’
“As a husband, he was responsible. As the father of my children, he was responsible up to the end of his life. He had a habit. When I was very tired he would say, ‘Today, it is not your chore. I will prepare food for the whole family. ’ He prepared eggs and rice. That was his dish. This created a problem with his family. They said, ‘How can a man prepare food for his wife? This must be a problem of witchcraft.’
“But there was no witchcraft. Only love.
“We say when you love one another very much, you don’t have a long life. Sometimes I have candidates, men who come and would like me to be with them, but when I remember the love my husband had for me and I know those men have their own wives, I say, ‘No. You can’t give me love as given by my husband. You only want to joke with me. No. No.’”
“I have one last question,” I tell her. It has been on my mind for a year. “My father didn’t die in a violent way. He had cancer. But when I think of him, the first thing that comes to mind is the way he would slowly run his finger around the edge of his coffee cup while we would talk for hours. I miss that.” His habit used to annoy me when he was alive. But when I think of it now, I remember it like the slow hum of a Tibetan singing prayer bowl. “What do you miss about your husband?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “When I was pregnant, very heavy with a baby, my husband would wash my body. It was very intimate.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Salt
WHY? THAT’S THE burning question I’ve had for years.
I have a unique opportunity to talk with one of the very few people who might have the answer. I’m sitting down with a former Interahamwe rebel who is staying at the child soldier rehabilitation center. André walks into the empty boys’ dorm, which is lined with wooden bunk beds and barred windows. I’m surprised. He is a chubby-cheeked seventeen-year-old in jeans and a T-shirt—and he’s Congolese. He carries himself with the mild, respectful manner common to boys who have been through serious military training.
In 2002, André was at school when the Interahamwe showed up to “recruit.” They forcibly took every boy in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. He was eleven years old.
André lived as a member of the Interahamwe for six years. “Life in the forest was very, very hard,” he tells me. “It was not possible to wash with soap. We had to eat food without salt. It was impossible to eat food prepared in pans, to have clothes. We had hair everywhere on our bodies. We ate tree roots. We passed many years without seeing anyone in society.”
I ask, “If Interahamwe rebels could have normal lives once they leave the militia, how many would simply walk away?”
“If you leave, you are killed. If there was really a possibility, if they had authorization to go home, maybe eighty out of a hundred would accept. Easily.”
For a boy who never finished fifth grade, he is as close to the mark as any Washington policy wonk. Those I have spoken to estimate would-be Interahamwe deserters at around 70 percent.
“The other twenty—why would they stay?” I ask.
“The twenty are afraid of judgment. They recognize they have killed a lot of people in Rwanda. One person may have killed more than a hundred persons in Rwanda, so they say, ‘Instead of going back to my country, I prefer to shoot myself and die here in the forest.’”
The Interahamwe are responsible for the most sadistic violence in Eastern Congo. But perhaps worse, this force of six to eight thousand provides the excuse for other militias to exist—and terrorize—in the name of protecting civilians from the Interahamwe. The combined presence of these militias has cost 5.4 million mostly innocent civilian lives. But how many die-hard Rwandan genocidaires lead the militia, while effectively holding their fellow FDLR combatants hostage? I’m not often shocked, but I’m skin-burning astonished when I learn fewer than one hundred set the agenda, and in turn, fuel instability throughout Eastern Congo and by extension central Africa.
Fifteen years into this mess and the international community still has no plan to deal with the Interahamwe.
But there’s still something I don’t get. I ask André, “Why kill the villagers? Why torture them? One woman I know, they cut off her leg and fed it to her children. They cut out villagers’ eyes or nose. Why? What’s the logic?”
André bites his lip. “What you heard about, it is true. This is only to show the hard conditions in which the Interahamwe live. Even a child of ten years old—or less—was raped. I saw with my own eyes victims of cutting—breasts, nose, mouth. It is only to show the Interahamwe are no longer persons like us. They are like animals.”
“It’s because Interahamwe are bitter for being stuck in the forest?” I ask. “It’s like revenge on humanity?”
“That’s it. A kind of revenge. How can some people spend a good life when others spend a bad life in the forest?”
“How many people do you think you’ve killed?” I ask him.
“When we talk in terms of killing, I was under orders. We were sent to ask for money. To ask for salt. Because salt was precious. Whenever you do not have salt and you do not give us money, I have orders to kill you. And really, I killed.”
Because salt was precious.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Hidden Face
ALEJANDRO GREETS US anxiously. He has been calling around, trying to track down the only UN guy who was stationed here in Kaniola at the time of the massacre. But it’s turned out there is no such person; none of the foreign UN officials stationed in Walungu at that time is still in Congo. So Alejandro has taken the initiative of asking local UN staffers if they know anything about it. Frankly, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. I’m only looking for a few details that weren’t included in the report, plus the names of anyone affected. Alejandro has run into another roadblock. “Everyone is acting very strange. Even the cleaning lady, when I ask her, is like this.” He imitates her by hemming and hawing, avoiding our eyes. No one will talk.
“Of course, I want to help you,” he says. “But now I want to know why everyone is acting this way!”
Alejandro calls for another UN staff member, Joseph. He is a short local man, reserved
and precise, who speaks better English than almost any Congolese person I’ve met. He worked closely with Major Vikram and Major Kaycee. I chat him up about Major Vikram, mentioning the emails we exchanged about that day. Joseph is evasive. “I think I remember something like that in 2005.”
“No, this was in May.”
“I don’t know. Talk with others maybe.”
“If Major Kaycee and Major Vikram went to the site of that attack, you would have gone with them,” I say. “Right?”
“I would go with them, of course.”
“Surely if you were there, if you saw seventeen dead bodies, you would remember, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe,” he answers. “I don’t remember when exactly. Maybe if you look at the daily security reports. . . .”
When did this turn into an interrogation scene? I didn’t come here looking for intrigue. I just want to know if the people I met that day are okay. “I don’t understand why this is so secret. It was an international news story. So what’s the big deal? I just want a few more details about what happened.”
“Do you have clearance?” Joseph asks.
“Of course,” I tell him. “The Pakistani Battalion is taking us to Kaniola.”
Alejandro jumps in. “I have told you, you are free to talk with them.”
Joseph sticks to his guns. “Do you have written permission?”
“No,” I fess up.
Alejandro pushes him. “You are free! Help these people help your country!”
Joseph is growing frustrated. “Look at the report. I think you will find . . . especially in that spot—”
Alejandro cuts him off. “Yes, but as we say in my country, these are cold words. You are a living, breathing person! You were there!”