But they were not the only ones with the goal of protecting people from outside armies; there were many others: the Movement of Liberation from This, the Movement of Liberation from That; Patriotic Front for This, Patriotic Unity for That. Risto was shocked to learn that the army in his town was not part of the national army; the militia that ‘protected’ them was a rebel army. All the militias wanted to get rid of ‘the rebel army’, but they were rebels themselves, according to the national government in the capital city of Kinshasa. It was confusion, curse and chaos.
Bukavu had changed from a peaceful town with the joyful noise of happy children to a fearful town with the silence of fear and confusion pierced only by screams of mourning. The afternoon dances of children had changed to the thunder of soldiers’ footsteps chasing unhappy children. High-school and university students were seen as the troublemakers; they wanted to own their own history, to write it with their own blood, and so they became the targets of the rebel movement. They vowed never to allow the rebel movement to settle and rule, never to allow them to give the Congolese people instructions or to implement new policies. These students embarked on strikes and marches many times each month. They protested against foreign armies, against daily assassinations, and called for freedom of movement and freedom of speech. The more they marched, the more they got arrested and shot, the more they were forced to join the rebel army, and the more they diverted into the Mai-Mai movement.
Days became uncertain, and each dawn gave birth to new fear and pain. Gunfire became the evening song in the streets of Bukavu. Armed burglars in military uniforms took over from the police night-shift. They visited houses as if they owned the town; so many lives were taken each night. The newspapers were full of reports of missing teenagers, who had been taken from their streets and homes. Later they would be found in military uniform.
Risto’s parents decided to send him away to escape the situation in town. He had no choice; he would go to Bugobe, to his mother’s village, until things calmed down. But it felt like treason to leave Néné behind. Though their mouths spoke little of their relationship, their hearts’ beating depended on it. They could not bear a day without a glimpse of the other. But the order to leave the town was not one that Risto could defy. He packed his bag in tears, berating himself as a coward. He would leave behind half his heart to save his own skin; he wept as he waved goodbye to Néné.
Risto found Bugobe with a timid smile breaking out from between its grinding teeth. It had been a long time since he had visited his beloved village. His last visit had been a breathtaking one, and its memories were still fresh. Bugobe was the place where he had discovered the mystery of villages and their forests. He had heard invisible shadows talking, he had heard the voice of nature and the songs of silent nights. He could still see the face of his old friend Benny, the boy who knew the sleeping room of the moon and the different voices of the universe’s soul.
But as soon as he arrived, he realised the Bugobe he saw was different from the Bugobe he had known. He was surprised to be unmet and to walk alone on his way from the bus stop. Had they forgotten he was coming today? Usually when Risto visited Bugobe, many villagers waited for him, mostly young boys waiting for gifts. This time his gifts were lying in his bags. It wasn’t easy to walk and carry all his bags. Every now and again he stopped to rest. After he had stopped many times, he saw Benny coming towards him. He greeted Risto in a rush and took a few of his bags.
‘I was about to die with these things,’ said Risto, but Benny didn’t respond. He seemed preoccupied, quiet. They crossed the village, but to Risto’s surprise, he saw no children coming for the usual hugs and greetings. The few people they passed by greeted them hastily and passed in a hurry without handshaking, their smiles lasting no more than a few seconds. It seemed like the village wasn’t happy.
‘Are you well, Benny?’
‘No.’
‘Is that why you are so quiet today? Is there bad news?’
‘No,’ Benny answered.
‘I feel like the village is not happy, like there is something that is not going well here.’
‘People are very busy. You know, Risto, life has changed in the village. We only have life during the day; the night is something else.’
These words captured Risto’s attention. He stared at Benny. He knew Benny as the face of the village; whenever he smiled, the village smiled. Now the village was scowling. There was no sound of pestles pounding, or of young girls singing; everything was as quiet as midnight at a cemetery.
‘You see, it is only 2pm, but there is no one in the village. Everyone is out with their children; the whole family goes to get anything they can from their fields and farms to bring it back to be near their houses,’ said Benny quietly. ‘You know, the farms, those near the big forest on Donga and Mlangala, they are looted each evening by the militias.’ He took a breath and looked at Risto, waiting for a reaction. Risto tried to look unconcerned; he had seen a lot in town.
‘Do you know the militias?’ Benny asked.
‘No, I have only heard about them,’ Risto answered.
‘Huh! The militias!’ exclaimed Benny. ‘These people are looting our fields. They have invaded the Birava and Kidumbi villages. They are inhumane! They have looted families and raped the women and even the little girls! They have killed people and taken young girls into the forests as their wives.’
‘Are you sure of what you are saying?’ Risto’s face changed.
‘Risto, the militias are wild. People from those villages are in Bugobe as refugees. Many of them witnessed these horrors.’
Risto couldn’t believe his ears. There was no peace in either town or in the villages. He had run away from a war-zone into a battlefield!
‘So, the people of Bugobe … you are not afraid?’
‘No, no … we are far from them. They won’t come this side. Before they can arrive here, the soldiers of the new government will intercept them.’
‘So, you guys this side trust the rebel movement? How can you call it the new government?’
‘No, we don’t trust them. But they are the ones who came to rescue the people in those invaded villages. And they are the ones who control the region.’
‘Even so, they are killing people in town! They are looting homes. You know, I am running away from them, that is why I am here right now.’
Benny looked at Risto with surprise.
Soon they arrived home. No one was in the compound. Risto went behind the hut his grandmother used as a storeroom and came back with cassava. It was still wet and covered in black and white mould. He went back to the hut where he had dropped his luggage; the fire was hidden underneath hot ashes. This was one of the secrets of the village he knew from his last visit. He revived the fire and put the cassava on it. Benny sat on a stool outside.
‘Take this piece, man!’ He threw Benny some cassava that he had cooled after taking it from the fire.
‘You said you don’t trust the new government, the rebels. Why then do people from town send their children to join them?’ Benny asked, agitated.
‘No, people don’t send their boys, no!’
‘But that is what we heard on the provincial radio station.’
‘The radio station is run by the rebels; they say what pleases them! No one wants to join their army!’
‘Maybe you don’t know, Risto, but many young boys are joining the movement. Some of them are working at different posts in the nearby villages, on the road to Mwanga and Birava …’
‘You know, Benny, the truth hasn’t been told. From what I know, young boys are not joining the movement; they are being kidnapped and forced.’
Benny went very quiet, perhaps because of the news Risto had told him, or perhaps because he had trusted in the rebel movement. Maybe it was the chaotic state of both the town and the village that made him sick at heart. Risto examined his mind to check whether there was any exaggeration in the news he had given Benny, but all he had said was true. Thos
e young teenagers whom the rebel movement claimed were happy to serve the movement were morally and spiritually tortured. They didn’t join the army willingly; they were forced into it. And those who fled were in trouble. Risto had witnessed this in town; he had seen runaways caught in his street, and all their ribs broken by the beatings ordered by the commander of the battalion. The following day, the victim would often be found dead from his injuries.
It was getting late. The sun was on its way to its hut to sleep. Benny and Risto went to find the cattle nearby. They were being kept in a very large, enclosed compound with stagnant water all around.
‘Why do you have to keep the cattle enclosed?’ asked Risto.
‘We can’t go very far with them,’ said Benny, while throwing stones at a goat that didn’t want to respond to his calling. ‘Sorrow and fear have invaded the village, and made it small. We can’t go far to cultivate, we can’t go far to pasture our cattle. Those militias are very bad people. In the Birava and Kidumbi villages, they would loot whatever they found in the pastures and in the fields. If a shepherd said one word, he would be brutally killed. If a woman was found in the fields, she was raped by a dozen men. Imagine! Now we are afraid to go far from home. We have to stay near the village. Here at least it is safe.’
That evening, Risto’s grandmother arrived home much later than usual. She had gone with her friends and their children to harvest the fields near the Birava and Kidumbi villages. The crops were not yet mature, but the villagers feared that if they were left any longer in the fields, they would be harvested by the militia.
‘Everyone has heard what the militias are doing. They don’t leave anything for you if they enter your fields,’ she said. Risto ran into the kitchen to help her. She wanted to chase him out.
‘The kitchen is not for men, it is a place for women,’ she said. If Risto’s grandfather were to find him in the kitchen, he would be cross with his wife for allowing the boy to stay. But Risto insisted. He saw the heavy basket she carried, he saw that she was very tired.
There was a pot on each of the four fireplaces. Fireplaces were traditionally set in a triangle made with three stones, with burning wood beneath. His grandmother’s fireplaces were different; they were in pairs, two by two. Each pair of fireplaces combined had an odd number of stones – five each, instead of six, each sharing one stone. So the pots stood close together, almost scraping against each other.
Risto’s grandmother set up the mortar and pestle, wanting to pound cassava leaves. Risto took the pestle. ‘This isn’t a man’s work,’ she said again. He insisted again. Eventually she gave him one pestle, keeping two for herself. The mortar was very large. She started a song as the pounding started.
Pounding work was like a dance. Whenever people pounded cassava, or its leaves, or maize, the pounding work had a rhythm. The song went with the rhythm of the pestles. The pestles were like sticks and the mortar was a drum. Risto’s grandmother sang her endless songs in her dialect, Mashi. Eyes closed, pestles in hand, she sang recital melodies. Her songs freed fugitives from a heartless universe. They were like fishing nets picking up lost ancestral relics. The mortar awoke the spirits while the grandmother sang her lulling hymns. Her body boiled and sweated. Her litany navigated the epics of kingdoms; the history of the great Kivu fishermen came to life again; the silhouette of a hero hunter murmured.
‘O, Grandmama, just pray, just sing, Grandmama,’ Risto whispered to the travelling soul of his grandmother. ‘You baptise my heart with sacred verses, priceless perfume.’ The ancestors travelled in his swelling veins. Then his grandmother’s girlhood songs echoed out: how shepherds danced on the mountaintop, how they had cooked banana and cassava over campfires, how the smoke had pierced her bones and flesh. The past was gone, but history lived on. His grandmother was the breath of history; its blood filled her veins. Her songs were living remnants of the ancestors resting in sacred shades.
She was lost in the world of her words. Then her voice changed, becoming sad and melancholic. She sang about her son who had died very young. He was bewitched by the jealous spirits of her neighbours. He was a pretty boy, whose smile was like sunshine. Then the bad spirits grew jealous of the treasured boy. His departure to an unknown world left his mother in pain and mourning. But he was at peace, the handsome boy. He rested in peace with his ancestors. Then she sang about the invaded villages. She asked why people with wild spirits wanted to invade them. She called for God and the ancestors to fight for them. Her songs rocked Risto in a bath of joy and sadness. She stopped singing only when the cassava leaves were ready to be put into the hot water boiling on the fireplace.
The deep voice of Risto’s grandfather rumbled outside; one could tell that he was still on his feet. Risto went outside to greet him. His grandfather took him into his hut and presented him with a kabehe with local banana juice inside it. He knew that Risto never drank beer. The old man took a swig from his own kabehe. He looked at Risto, then asked how his family was. Risto replied that the family was doing well.
His grandfather took another swig, and then tried to smile. ‘I heard that you had run away from town?’ he said. He tried to joke: ‘A man can’t run and leave his sisters behind, but you left yours.’ Then he grew solemn. ‘The situation of the country is very bad. Especially for us in the great Kivu. I am coming from the villages near Birava and Kidumbi. There is a thick cloud covering our horizon.’
The old man explained a lot of things. The peace that they had been living in was slowly ebbing away. Bringing it back would require many years, many generations, maybe. ‘In the other villages where I was, there are different taxes that the local population has to pay. One militia group comes to the market to take what it can as tax, another passes through the villages in the afternoon for another tax, another one at night for another tax, then another one comes to loot at night, and so on. It is impossible to live. It is bad, but worse for women. They don’t sleep in their houses at night anymore; they pass the night in the fields so that when the militias come, they just loot the houses and cattle. Otherwise …’
His grandfather didn’t finish this sentence, but Risto knew what he meant. The old man went on, ‘There is no peace in town or in the villages. We don’t know who is fighting whom, and who is protecting whom. All of them say that they protect the people even as they are carrying out crimes against the same people. But they won’t come this side. We will just look after our cattle and see how the days pass.’
. Chapter 4 .
The night in the village was not as peaceful as usual; the constant footsteps of people passing by stole Risto’s sleep away. When he blinked, he saw little sparks of light in the hut; it was morning. Benny came in from letting out the cattle.
‘Did you hear how people were moving up and down the whole night?’ he asked Risto.
‘Yes, where were they coming from?’
‘They were people from the villages near Birava and Balaga. They ran away from the militias.’
‘Did the militias attack them?’
‘No, but they received news that the militias were going to attack them last night.’ He changed his tone and opened the door of the little hut. ‘And you know, it is not only people from the villages that are coming here to Bugobe. I have heard that there is a bus bringing people from the town on its way.’
‘Are you sure, Benny?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who told you?’
‘A lorry arrived from the town early this morning. The news was given by the people who came with the lorry.’
Risto thought maybe he would see other boys from his town. He and Benny walked towards the bus stop. As they reached the small bumpy track that led to the bus stop, they saw a group of five people coming from the opposite direction, carrying luggage.
‘The girl on the left walks like someone I know,’ Risto said.
‘These are people from the village; you don’t know them,’ Benny replied, laughing.
‘I’m sure it is someone I know f
rom Bukavu town,’ Risto insisted.
‘No, these people are from this village; I know the one wearing the white top.’
They approached the group slowly. There was one young woman, one teenage girl and three boys. Suddenly Risto realised that the teenage girl was someone that he knew very well; it was Néné. His heart pounded with an excitement that he could not explain. He felt like running to give her a big hug, to hold her tight in his arms for a few minutes to let her feel his heartbeats. He wanted to tell all that he had always wished to tell her, how much he loved her. But again, he thought of what people would say, and this weakened his resolve.
Instead, as Néné approached, he wondered which was the right word to say, how to greet: should it be a kiss or a hug, a handshake or waving? He felt like the entire world was looking at him. Néné had a big bag on her head. She smiled as she saw him; he returned a shy smile.
‘What are you doing this side?’ Néné asked.
‘What are you coming to do this side?’ he replied.
As Risto finished introducing himself to the other people, he found himself before Néné, who had put her bag on the ground. Benny was talking to the others and answering their questions. Risto, in spite of his search for a moment to say all that he had in his heart for Néné, found himself once again speechless. His eyes had to speak the unsaid words of his heart. He would fix his eyes on Néné, then look aside as she bit her nails and smiled to herself.
The Great Agony & Pure Laughter of the Gods Page 5