With the children all settled in school, I had to continue to work hard to support my family, including our parents, who remained in Africa, languishing in poverty. In fact, I had a moral obligation to provide for several households, so the money I earned was never enough.
In my cleaning business, I had to go through agencies to get contracts, since I couldn’t provide credible character of job references and apartment landlords and office building managers were therefore reluctant to deal directly with me. The ideal would of course have been to be able to teach high school. Shortly after my arrival in Canada, I started lobbying the ministry of immigration and cultural communities, which finally recognized my bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Rwanda. But, as I had not done my studies in Quebec, I couldn’t get a teaching license. It was recommended that I go back to university. In life, we must make choices. I wanted to go back to school, but returning to school at the same time as my children and my wife would mean neglecting the family’s financial needs. I chose to sacrifice for the others and continued exploring other possibilities. I got my heavy vehicle driver’s license. But when it came time to find a job as a trucker, I again encountered the problem of my lack of Canadian experience.
It is often comforting to compare ourselves to other people. When I see that immigrants with more education than I have are also unable to find work in their field, I wonder if what I am struggling for might be unachievable or if my expectations of what was possible in my new country were unrealistic.
Besides the struggle for economic integration, we often underestimate another—probably even more complex—struggle, that of cultural integration. Two distinctly different ways of living come into conflict within the same person, with sometimes very destructive consequences when it proves to be impossible to reconcile one’s culture of origin and the culture of the host country within oneself. After escaping all the violence of our native land together, this was ultimately the battle our marriage would prove unable to survive.
Epilogue
Thirteen years after the end of our ordeal, the memories of those dark years still come back to haunt me daily. The Rwandan tragedy took the lives of more than one million people, but it also broke the hearts of millions of others—Hutu, Tutsi or Twa—who probably will never completely recover from what they experienced. However, instead of nourishing my anger against those who inflicted so much suffering, I accept this experience as a great lesson in life that taught me humility and self-acceptance, courage and tenacity, love and respect for others, the importance of sharing and spirituality.
There were times during this terrible trial that I demanded more effort from my family than they were able to provide. One day, on the road to exile, with everyone completely exhausted, a family member asked me why I forced them to walk so fast as though I knew where we were going. Today, when I see my children flourishing, when I see that they managed to survive despite all the horrors they endured, I have the answer to this question. It was in the eyes of my starving children, suffering from a thousand ills, that I found the strength and the courage not to give up during the bitter struggle for survival. I was sure these innocent souls deserved better than death.
True to our saying at the time: “Anything is possible as long as one is still alive,” my children look at this experience philosophically, using it as a source of energy and inspiration to meet the challenges of their daily lives. It is now they who remind me of this saying when they sometimes see me discouraged by events.
If we were lucky enough to escape this descent into Hell, such was unfortunately not the case for many of our companions in misfortune whom death claimed deep in the heart of the forests of Zaire and the Congo. All these innocent victims deserve justice. The international community, which has recently recognized the existence of massacres against Hutu refugees in Zaire, should go even further and hold those responsible accountable for these crimes.
Refugees were not the only victims of this sad chapter in our history. I refer of course to all the Zaireans who were killed for helping us, but also to all the local people who happened to live on our path through Zaire and whose fields we ravaged and whose homes we looted. Despite the bad memories associated with these remote places, I would love to go back one day to be able to apologize on behalf of all the refugees for the wrongs we committed in spite of our better natures. Apologize, yes, but also thank all those who reached out to us, especially in Congo-Brazzaville, where the local people accepted us into their villages, took care of and fed us. To these generous and compassionate people we also owe a debt for our very survival.
Chronology
1890: The kingdom of Rwanda is annexed as a province of German East Africa. The majority of the population are Hutus but the Tutsi minority holds power. Rwanda also has another small minority known as Twa.
1924: The League of Nations (LN) grants Belgium, which has occupied the territory since the Germans were driven out in 1916, a mandate to administrate Rwanda. Like their predecessors, the Belgians rely on the Tutsi elite to impose colonial order.
1946: The United Nations (UN) transforms the Belgian mandate into a UN trusteeship.
1959: Peasant revolt led by Hutus, called “the social revolution,” against the Tutsi monarchy. The Tutsi royal family and many thousands of Tutsis leave Rwanda for Uganda and other neighbouring countries (Congo, Burundi, and Tanzania).
1961: Eighty percent of Rwandans vote to abolish the monarchy in a UN-supervised referendum. They also elect the Parmehutu party to govern the Republic of Rwanda.
1962: Independence of Rwanda on July 1, 1962.
1963-67: TheInyenziwars. Tutsi exiles from Uganda and Burundi, calling themselvesInyenzi,attack Rwanda in an effort to regain power. Violent reprisals against Tutsis in Rwanda ensue.
1973: General Juvenal Habyarimana overthrows President Grégoire Kayibanda in a coup and takes power in Rwanda. He will serve as president until 1994.
October 1990: The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), created in 1987 by Tutsi exiles in Uganda and comprising members of the Ugandan Army, attacks northeastern Rwanda. Paul Kagame becomes head of the military wing of the RPF which then occupies part of the country, conducting guerrilla warfare and forcing hundreds of thousands of internal refugees to flee south near Kigali
August 1993: Signature of the Arusha Peace Accords between the Rwandan government and the RPF. The accords end fighting and provide for power sharing between the RPF, the governing MRND party and other opposition parties. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) is created to apply the accords.
April 6, 1994: Assassination by missile of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and their chiefs of staff as they return by plane from a regional summit in Dar es Salaam. Fighting resumes between the RPF and the Rwandan Armed Forces (Forces armées rwandaises – FAR) and masses of Rwandans are killed, largely Tutsis.
June 22, 1994: Opération Turquoise, approved by the UN Security Council, begins. This two-month intervention under French command is intended to create a “safe humanitarian zone” in southwest Rwanda.
July 17, 1994: After taking Kigali on July 4, the RPF goes on to take the towns of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi in the north, and proclaims a unilateral cease-fire. More than a million Hutus, including FAR soldiers and militias commonly known as the Interahamwe, flee Rwanda in fear of reprisals, the majority taking refuge in Kivu in eastern Zaire.
July 19, 1994: The Rwandan Patriotic Front forms a government and recruits some Hutu leaders from opposition parties. Paul Kagame is Vice President and Defence Minister, heading the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). Paul Kagame became President in 2000.
April 1995: The Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) attack the Hutu refugee camps in southwestern Rwanda and Birava camp in eastern Zaire, with hundreds of casualties.
October 13, 1996: Beginning of the rebellion of the Banyamulenge (Zairean Tutsis of Rwandan origin) in the province of South Kivu in eastern Zaire. Sup
ported by Rwandan, Burundian, and Ugandan troops, the Zairean rebels are joined by opponents of President Mobutu Sese Seko who then form the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo (AFDLC) led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila.
October-December 1996: The RPA and the rebels forcibly dismantle the Kivu camps. While the majority of Hutu refugees return to Rwanda, more than 300,000 of them flee into the interior of Zaire, nearly two-thirds of whom, according to some estimates, perish on the road during the following months, victims of disease, malnutrition and the systematic massacres perpetrated against them by the RPA and the forces of the ADFLC.
May 17, 1997: Following the rout of the Zairean Armed Forces (Forces armées zaïroises – FAZ) in the space of a few months, the AFDLC with the support of the Rwandan Patriotic Army captures Kinshasa and Kabila proclaims himself president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire.
June-October 1997: Civil war in Congo-Brazzaville, mainly concentrated in the capital, pitting militias of the two candidates in the next presidential election: Lissouba, the acting president, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, former head of state of the Congo (1979-1992). Helped by Angola, Sassou-Nguesso eventually prevails.
December 1998-December 1999: Resumption of conflict in Congo-Brazzaville, this time extending beyond Brazzaville. After a year of heavy fighting, government and anti-government militias reach an agreement on cessation of hostilities.
October 1, 2010: The UN publishes its Report on Mapping Human Rights Violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993-2003. This damning report confirms the nature and magnitude of the crimes against Rwandan Hutu refugees described in this book. It is written: “Thus the apparent systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide.” 1
1. For the full report, see the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: www.ohchr.org/en/Countries/AfricaRegion/Pages/RDCProjetMapping.aspx
Additionnal Readings
UMUTESI, Béatrice. Surviving the Slaughter, The Ordeal of Rwandan Refugees in Zaire. University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
FRENCH, Howard W. A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa. Vintage, 2005.
HERMAN, Edward S. and PETERSON, David. The Politics of Genocide. Monthly Review Press, 2010.
NON FICTION FROM BARAKA BOOKS
Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard
Robin Philpot (November 2013)
Slouching Towards Sirte, NATO’s War on Libya and Africa
Maximilian ForteGoing Too Far, Essays About America’s Nervous Breakdown
Ishmael Reed
Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media,
The Return of the Nigger Breakers
Ishmael Reed
America’s Gift, What the World Owes to the Americas and Their First Inhabitants
Käthe Roth and Denis Vaugeois
Trudeau’s Darkest Hour, War Measures in Time of Peace, October 1970
Guy Bouthillier and Édouard Cloutier, eds.
Inuit and Whalers on Baffin Island through German Eyes, Wilhelm Weike’s Arctic Journal and Letters
Ludger Müller-Wille and Bernd Gieseking (trans. by William Barr)
Dying to Live Page 13