Our Lady of the Nile

by Scholastique Mukasonga

  Ever since the lycée opened, no one in Nyaminombe had seen a car like the one Frida arrived in. It was very long and low-slung, bright red, with a soft top that had been seen to fold and unfold without anyone touching it. There were only two seats. Both driver and passenger reclined in them as if in bed. It made a noise like thunder, leaping forward in a cloud of red dust. For a moment, it looked as if it would ram the gate and knock Sister Gertrude, Gloriosa, and Modesta flying, but it stopped short, with a hellish screech, right at the foot of the flagpole.

  Out stepped a man of a certain age, wearing a three-piece suit (with a floral-patterned waistcoat), large dark glasses with gold-tinted frames, and a crocodile-skin belt with matching shoes. He opened the passenger door and helped Frida extricate herself from the seat in which she was half embedded. Frida smoothed out the creases in her dress, which was as red as the car, and it flared like an umbrella. Beneath her little scarf of purple silk, you could see her brutally straightened hair, stiff, starched, and shimmering in the sun like the asphalt used to resurface some of Kigali’s streets not that long ago.

  The sports car’s driver addressed Sister Gertrude in Swahili (ignoring Gloriosa and Modesta): “I am His Excellency Jean-Baptiste Balimba, the Ambassador of Zaire. I have an appointment with the Mother Superior. Take me to her immediately.”

  Shocked that anyone would speak to her in that tone, and in Swahili no less, Sister Gertrude hesitated for a moment, but seeing how the man seemed determined to force an entrance, she felt compelled to lead the way.

  “Wait for me in the hall,” she told Frida. “I’ll sort this out, I won’t be long.”

  Gloriosa had pointedly marched out of the gate to greet the nine seniors who were just getting out of a minibus.

  “There’s our quota,” she said, watching as a small truck pulled up, sagging beneath the weight of a wobbly pyramid of barrels and badly stacked cardboard boxes. “See, Modesta, nothing will ever stop the Tutsi from their trafficking: even when they take their daughters back to school, they need to make it worth their while. They unload the goods at the Nyaminombe store, but whose store is it? A Tutsi’s, of course; apparently some distant relative of Veronica’s father, who himself has a business in Kigali. Oh, she’s something, that Veronica; believes she’s so beautiful, she’ll end up selling herself. And Virginia, her friend, who thinks she’s the most intelligent girl in the lycée, simply because all the white teachers dote on her. You know what she’s called? Mutamuriza, ‘Don’t Make Her Cry’! Well, I certainly know how to make her do exactly that. Two Tutsi for twenty pupils is the quota, and because of that I know some real Rwandan girls of the majority people, the people of the hoe, friends of mine, who didn’t get a place in high school. As my father likes to tell me, we’ll really have to get rid of these quotas one day, it’s a Belgian thing!”

  Gloriosa’s rant was accompanied by little coughs of approval on the part of Modesta, but when she started to lavish overly affectionate hugs of courtesy on the two Tutsi, Modesta moved away.

  “The tighter you embrace those snakes,” said Gloriosa, once Veronica and Virginia had walked off, “the more you suffocate them, but you, Modesta, you’re scared to be mistaken for your half sisters; you sure look like them, and yet I have to put up with you hanging around with me.”

  “You know I’m your friend.”

  “Better for you, then, that you always stay my friend,” said Gloriosa, hooting with laughter.

  At sundown, the clanging bell and the creaking of the closing gates solemnly ushered in the start of the new school year. The monitors had already led the girls to their various dormitories. The seniors were entitled to certain privileges. Their dormitory was divided into alcoves to give each girl some privacy – all relative, since the only thing that separated them from the corridor, where the monitor did her rounds, was a thin green curtain that the sister could pull open at any moment. And although this partitioning of beds, which they called “rooms,” was presented by Mother Superior as an example of the progress and emancipation the girls could enjoy thanks to the education provided by the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, not everyone appreciated it. Late-night gossip and whispers were hushed. Above all, how could a girl sleep on her own? At home, the mothers made sure the younger girls shared a bed or a mat with the older girls. Are sisters really sisters if they don’t fall asleep all squashed together? And how can true friendships form without the exchange of confidences on a shared mat? The lycée girls had a hard time falling asleep in their solitary alcoves. They’d listen out for their neighbors’ breathing behind the partition, and that reassured them a little. In the tenth-grade dormitory, Sister Gertrude refused to let the boarders move their beds together. “We’re at the lycée, here, not at home,” she said. “We sleep alone, each in her own bed, like civilized folk.”

  The girls were asked to put on their uniforms and walk to the chapel two-by-two for Mother Superior and Father Herménégilde’s welcome speeches. They sat on the chapel pews, and those girls who didn’t yet have uniforms, or had forgotten them, were relegated to the last pews at the back.

  Mother Superior and Father Herménégilde appeared suddenly from behind the altar, bowed before the tabernacle and turned to face the pupils. They stood in silence for a while. Father Herménégilde’s paternal smile fell on each new face – they’d seated the newcomers in the front row.

  Finally, Mother Superior spoke. She welcomed all the pupils, especially those attending the lycée for the first time. She reminded everyone that the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile was founded to train the country’s female elite, that those fortunate enough to be there, seated before her, had a duty to become role models for all Rwandan women: not simply to be good wives and mothers, but also good citizens and good Christians – the one not being possible without the other. Women also had a great role to play in the emancipation of the Rwandan people, and it was the girls of the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile who had been chosen to spearhead women’s advancement. But she firmly reminded the lycée girls that in the meantime, before they became drivers of change, they must obey the lycée’s rules to the letter, with the slightest infringement being severely punished. She also made one thing clear: the only language permitted within the grounds of the lycée was French, except in Kinyarwanda classes of course, but only in class, and nowhere else. Once they married men in positions of high office (and why shouldn’t some of the girls end up holding such positions too?), they would be required to use French as their main language. And above all, it was forbidden to utter a single word of Swahili in the lycée, which had been placed under the patronage of the Virgin Mary, for it was a deplorable language, that of the followers of Muhammad. She then wished all the girls a good and studious year, and called on Our Lady of the Nile to bless them.

  Father Herménégilde made a long and rambling speech, in which he posited that the people of the hoe who had cleared the huge and hitherto impenetrable forests that covered Rwanda had finally freed themselves from nine hundred years of Hamitic domination. As a humble priest of the indigenous clergy, he himself had contributed, albeit modestly (though he was prepared to share this confidence with them that evening), to the social revolution that had abolished serfdom and drudgery. He may not have been a signatory to the 1957 Bahutu Manifesto, but he had been one of its principal instigators (although he didn’t wish to boast): the ideas and demands laid out within it were his. And so he called upon his audience of beautiful young women, so full of promise, who would one day grow into great ladies, to always remember the race they belonged to, the majority race, the sole native one that …

  Mother Superior, who was rather frightened by this outpouring of eloquence, cut off the orator with a single look.

  “And. And now,” stammered Father Herménégilde, “I will bless you, and may you receive the protection of Our Lady of the Nile, she who watches over us from so close to our lycée, at the birthplace of that great river.”

  School Days

  The firs
t week of the school year nearly always coincided with the start of the rainy season. If the rains were late, Father Herménégilde would ask the pupils to go and offer a bouquet to Our Lady of the Nile, on Sunday after Mass. They’d pick flowers under the anxious, watchful eye of Sister Bursar, who fretted that the girls would destroy her garden, then off they went to lay the wreath at the statue’s feet, next to the spring that never ran dry. Most of the time, there was no need for this pilgrimage. A blast of ceaseless thunder rolling and grumbling from the valley meant the rains were on their way. A dark sky, darker than the bottom of an old stockpot, poured down torrents of rain as the children of Nyaminombe celebrated, dancing and squealing with joy.

  For the seniors, lycée life held no further mysteries. They no longer jumped at the noises that woke them each morning: the groan of the gates being opened, the clanging of the school bell, and the whistles the monitors blew as they walked through the dormitories prodding the girls who were slow to rise. Godelive was always the last to get up, whining about wanting to leave the lycée, how she wasn’t cut out for studying. Modesta and Immaculée did their best to encourage her, reminding her that Christmas break was approaching, that it was her last year; finally, they would end up yanking her forcibly out of bed. Quickly, they had to take off their nighties, wrap themselves in one of the two large towels that Sister Bursar had given out at the start of the year, tie it under one armpit, then run to the washroom, jostling to reach one of the faucets (showers were taken in the evening). Thanks to her sturdy build, Gloriosa was always the first to lean over the rushing water: everyone else had to make way for her, no matter what. Ablutions over, there was barely enough time to slip into the blue uniform and head to the refectory for tea and porridge. Virginia would swallow it with her eyes shut, forcing herself to think of the delicious ikivuguto buttermilk her mother prepared for her each morning during vacation.

  She pushed away the little cup filled with powdered sugar, which the other girls fought over so viciously, despite some of them having their own supply, which they poured into their cups to make a sugary gruel. Sugar, a rare commodity in the hills, tasted horribly bitter to Virginia. When she entered sixth grade, she’d never seen as much sugar as she saw here in the cups placed on each of the breakfast tables. She thought of her younger sisters. If only she could bring them the contents of that little cup! Virginia could already imagine the outline of their lips, all white with sugar. She decided to discreetly purloin a few pinches of the precious powder that filled the little cup. It wasn’t easy, because this coveted treat was very closely watched. What’s more, being Tutsi, Virginia received the cup last, and there were only a few grains of sugar remaining at the bottom. She carefully scooped them up with her teaspoon, and instead of pouring the sugar into her bowl, slipped it furtively into one of the pockets of her uniform as quickly as possible. She emptied her pocket every night, and by the end of term she’d managed to fill half an envelope. But Dorothée, who sat next to her, saw what she was up to, and just before breaking for vacation, she said:

  “You’re a thief. I’m going to tell on you.”

  “Me, a thief?”

  “Yes, you steal sugar every morning. You think I don’t notice. You want to sell it back home in the countryside, at the market, during vacation.”

  “It’s for my little sisters. There’s no sugar in the countryside. Don’t tell on me.”

  “Perhaps we can make a deal. You’re top of the class in French. If you write my next essay, I won’t say a thing.”

  “Let me take the sugar for my little sisters.”

  “If you write my essays for the rest of the year.”

  “I’ll do it, I swear, for the rest of the year.”

  The teacher was amazed at Dorothée’s sudden progress. He suspected some kind of cheating was going on but didn’t care to find out more. From then on, Dorothée’s grades in French were the best in the class.

  The bell clanged again. Lessons were about to start: French, Math, Religion, Health and Hygiene, History, Geography, Physics, Physical Education, English, Kinyarwanda, Sewing, French, Cooking, History, Geography, Physics, Health and Hygiene, Math, Religion, Cooking, English, Sewing, French, Religion, Physical Education, French …

  The days wore on.

  There were only two Rwandans on the entire teaching staff of the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile: Sister Lydwine, and the Kinyarwanda teacher, naturally. Sister Lydwine taught History and Geography, but she made a clear distinction between the two subjects: History meant Europe, and Geography, Africa. Sister Lydwine was passionate about the Middle Ages. Her classes were all about castles, keeps, arrow slits, machicolations, drawbridges, and bartizans. Knights set off on crusades, with the Pope’s blessing, to liberate Jerusalem and massacre the Saracens, while others fought duels with lances for the eyes of ladies wearing pointy hats. Sister Lydwine talked of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, and Richard the Lionheart. “I’ve seen them in movies!” said Veronica, unable to contain herself.

  “Will you please be quiet!” said Sister Lydwine crossly. “They lived a very long time ago, before your ancestors had even set foot in Rwanda.”

  Africa had no history, because Africans could neither read nor write before the missionaries opened their schools. Besides, it was the Europeans who had discovered Africa and dragged it into history. And if there had been any kings in Rwanda, it was better to forget them, for the country was now a Republic. Africa had mountains, volcanoes, rivers, lakes, deserts, forests, and even a few cities. It was just a question of memorizing their names and finding them on the map: Kilimanjaro, Tamanrasset, Karisimbi, Timbuktu, Tanganyika, Muhabura, Fouta Djallon, Kivu, Ouagadougou. But there was a kind of large lizard in the middle. Sister Lydwine lowered her voice and, casting suspicious glances at the hallway, explained that Africa was breaking in two, and that one day Rwanda would find itself by the sea, though on which side of the continent, left or right, she really couldn’t say. To her chagrin, the whole class erupted into laughter. Clearly the whites never stopped coming up with far-fetched tales to scare the poor Africans.

  Monsieur Van der Putten was the math teacher. His pupils had never heard him utter a single word of French. He communicated with his class only through numbers (French numbers, he couldn’t get around that) and above all by covering the blackboard with algebraic formulas or drawing geometrical shapes in every color of chalk. However, he did hold long conversations with Brother Auxile in a dialect that must have belonged to one of the Belgian tribes. But when he addressed Mother Superior, it was apparently in a slightly different dialect. Visibly annoyed, Mother Superior answered him in French, articulating every syllable. Monsieur Van der Putten walked off mumbling (in his incomprehensible dialect) words that were perhaps not quite as rude as they seemed to the listener.

  Religious Studies was obviously Father Herménégilde’s domain. Using proverbs, he demonstrated how Rwandans had always worshipped a single God, a God named Imana who was like a twin brother to Yahweh, the Hebrews’ God in the Bible. The ancient Rwandans were already Christians without realizing it, and so they waited impatiently for the missionaries to arrive and baptize them, except that the devil got there first and corrupted their innocence. Wearing the mask of Ryangombe, he induced them into nocturnal orgies where countless demons took possession of their bodies and their souls, forcing them into obscene utterances and the committing of acts that decency forbade him from specifying in the presence of such chaste young ladies. Father Herménégilde crossed himself several times as he pronounced the cursed name of Ryangombe.

  Happy the teacher fortunate enough to teach in Rwanda! There are no calmer, more obedient, more attentive pupils than Rwandan pupils. The lycée of Our Lady of the Nile illustrated these wise words perfectly, except for one class, that of Miss South, the English teacher, where there reigned, not quite chaos, but a certain agitation. It’s true that the lycée girls didn’t really understand why they were obliged to learn a language no one spoke anywhere in Rwanda, although
you might overhear a little in Kigali, spoken by a few Pakistani immigrants recently arrived from Uganda, or (and this was a good indication of what kind of language it was) by Protestant pastors who, as Father Herménégilde liked to point out, forbade worship of the Virgin Mary. There was little about Miss South’s physique or behavior to make the language of Shakespeare appealing. She was a tall woman, dry and abrasive, with short hair except for one long strand – which she was forever trying to tame – that flapped against her oval glasses. She always wore a blue pleated skirt, faded from repeated washing, and a blouse with a pale-lilac floral print that was buttoned all the way to the neck. She’d clatter into class, fling her beat-up leather bag on the table, pull out a sheaf of papers, then stumble around the classroom, bumping into desks, as she handed them out. The pupils stared at her intently, cheeks resting on their right palms, waiting for the fall that never came. During the lesson, she would recite rather than read the stenciled text, before getting the class to repeat in unison what she had just said. The pupils wondered aloud whether she was blind, crazy, or drunk. Frida said she was drunk, confidently claiming that the English drink very strong spirits from dawn till dusk, spirits that were much stronger than urwarwa, like Johnnie Walker, which her ambassador friend had given her to taste, and which made her giddy. Sometimes Miss South tried to get the class to sing:

  My bonnie lies over the ocean

  My bonnie lies over the sea …

  But this raised such a cacophony that the teacher from the class next door rushed in to restore a little quiet. “At last!” sighed the pupils.

  It was the third year that French teachers had been working at Our Lady of the Nile. When Mother Superior received the Minister’s letter announcing that three Frenchmen would be arriving at the school as volunteer teachers, the news filled her with worry. She confided her misgivings and fears about these young men to Father Herménégilde: they were clearly inexperienced, since the letter specified they were coming in their capacity as “volunteers on active national service,” one of those odd expressions the French are so fond of inventing.