PANCRACE: During that killing season we rose earlier than usual, to eat lots of meat, and we went up to the soccer field at around nine or ten o’clock. The leaders would grumble about latecomers, and we would go off on the attack. Rule number one was to kill. There was no rule number two. It was an organization without complications.
PIO: We would wake up at six o’clock. We ate brochettes of grilled meat and nourishing food because of all the running we had to do. We met up in town, near the shops, and chatted with pals along the way to the soccer field. There they would give us orders about the killings and our itineraries for the day, and off we went, beating the bush, working our way down to the marshes. We formed a line to wade into the mud and the papyrus. Then we broke up into small bands of friends or acquaintances.
We got on fine, except for the days when there was a huge fuss, when interahamwe† reinforcements came in from the surrounding areas in motor vehicles to lead the bigger operations. Because those young hotheads ran us ragged on the job.
FULGENCE: On April 11 the municipal judge in Kibungo sent his messengers to gather the Hutus up there. Lots of interahamwe had
arrived in trucks and buses, all jostling and honking on the roads. It was like a city traffic jam.
The judge told everyone there that from then on we were to do nothing but kill Tutsis. Well, we understood: that was a final plan. The atmosphere had changed.
That day misinformed guys had come to the meeting without bringing a machete or some other cutting tool. The interahamwe lectured them: they said it would pass this once but had better not happen twice. They told them to arm themselves with branches and stones, to form barriers at the rear to cut off any escaping fugitives. Afterward everyone wound up a leader or a follower, but nobody ever forgot his machete again.
PANCRACE: The first day, a messenger from the municipal judge went house to house summoning us to a meeting right away. There the judge announced that the reason for the meeting was the killing of every Tutsi without exception. It was simply said, and it was simple to understand.
So the only questions were about the details of the operation. For example, how and when we had to begin, since we were not used to this activity, and where to begin, too, since the Tutsis had run off in all directions. There were even some guys who asked if there were any priorities. The judge answered sternly: “There is no need to ask how to begin. The only worthwhile plan is to start straight ahead into the bush, and right now, without hanging back anymore behind questions.”
ADALBERT: We sorted ourselves out on the soccer field. This team went up, that team went down, another team set out for a different swamp. The lucky ones could look around for chances to loot. At first the burgomaster, the subprefect, and the municipal councilors were coordinating all that, along with the soldiers or
retired policemen, thanks to their guns. In any case, if you owned a weapon, even an old grenade, you were pushed forward and found yourself in favor.
Later on the bravest young guys became leaders, the ones who gave orders without hesitation and strode eagerly along. Me, I made myself the leader for all the residents of Kibungo from the very first day. Previously I was leader of the church choir, so now I became a real leader, so to speak. The residents approved me without a hitch.
We liked being in our gang. We all agreed about the new activities, we decided on the spot where we would go to work, we helped one another out like comrades. If someone presented a little excuse, we would offer to take on his part of the job that one time. The organization was a bit casual, but it was respected and conscientious.
ALPHONSE: We would wake up, wash, eat, relieve ourselves, call to our neighbors, and go off in small scouting parties. We did not change our morning routines, except for the wake-up time, which could be earlier or later, depending on the events of the day before.
For breakfast, there was nothing fancy. Usually we ate what our wives prepared—a big meal, obviously. In the evening, it depended on how the day had gone. If many reinforcements from the neighboring hills had turned up, the leaders took advantage of having these attackers along to bring off more profitable hunting expeditions, surrounding the fugitives on all sides. It was double work, in a way. And in the evening, we had to gather again in town to eat meat together, show some friendship to the interahamwe, get on an easy footing with our colleagues from away, listen to the authorities’ announcements, and share the spoils.
But on days of ordinary expeditions, we did not hang out that
long at the marketplace cabaret, preferring to go home early or pop a Primus with buddies. We took advantage of these lulls to get some rest and quiet time.
The more reinforcements there were, the farther into the marshes the expeditions had to push, the more papyrus we had to plow through, the longer we had to race through the muck, machetes in hand, and the more tired we came home. All sweaty and dripping with slime. The outside reinforcements and their enthusiasm—that was the toughest pressure the organization put on us.
IGNACE: We’d gather in a crowd of about a thousand on the soccer field, head out into the bush along with one or two hundred hunters, all led by two or three gentlemen with guns, soldiers or intimidators. At the muddy edge of the first clumps of papyrus, we separated into teams of acquaintances.
Those who wanted to chat, chatted. Those who wanted to dawdle, dawdled—if they could avoid being noticed. Those who wanted to sing, sang. We didn’t choose special songs to raise our spirits, no patriotic airs like the ones on the radio, no mean or mocking words about the Tutsis. We didn’t need encouraging verses, we just naturally turned to traditional songs we liked. So we were marching choirs.
In the bogs, you had to hunt and kill only up till the last whistle. Sometimes a gunshot replaced the whistle—that would be the sole surprise of the day.
ÉLIE: The intimidators made the plans and whipped up enthusiasm; the shopkeepers paid and provided transportation; the farmers prowled and pillaged. For the killings, though, everybody had to show up blade in hand and pitch in for a decent stretch of work.
People would bristle only when the leaders announced compulsory collections of money to pay the men who went to help out in neighboring sectors. Folks grumbled especially about collections organized to give bonuses to interahamwe from nearby areas.
As for us, we frowned on those big operations, finding it more profitable for everyone to stick to his own backyard. We knew those who came long distances expected large rewards. Deep down, we didn’t like them; we preferred handling things ourselves.
Concerning the business of the killings and compensations, people from the different hills did not have a sharing turn of mind.
LÉOPORD: I was the junior official in charge of killing for the unit in Muyange. It was something new for me, of course. So I got up earlier than those around me to review the preparations. I would whistle for assembly, hurry along the laggards, scold the slugabeds, count up the missing, check on the reasons for absence, and pass on the instructions. If a meeting of organizers produced a reprimand or an announcement, I delivered it directly. I gave the signal to set out.
The people of Kibungo, Kanzenze, and Ntarama would gather on the Kibungo soccer field. The people of Muyange and Karambo assembled in front of the Pentecostal church of Maranyundo. If there were brochettes there, we ate. If there were orders, we listened and got going.
Usually we had to go through the bush on foot—that is why we got up earlier than our colleagues in Kibungo. During that time, however, there were many vehicles on the road. The drivers were obliging and offered free rides in the backs of their trucks, and certain merchants increased the giveaway round-trips,
so you could find a spot in a commercial van or an army bus. It depended on your rank or your luck.
ÉLIE: We had to work fast, and we got no time off, especially not Sundays—we had to finish up. We canceled all ceremonies. Everyone was hired at the same level for a single job—to crush all the cockroaches. The intimidators gave us only one objective and only one way to achieve it. Anyone who detected something irregular, he brought it up quietly; anyone needing a dispensation, the same. I don’t know how it was organized in other regions—in ours it was rudimentary.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: When you get right down to it, it is a gross exaggeration to say we organized ourselves up on the hills. The plane came down April 6. A very small number of local Hutus went straight for retaliation. But most waited four days in their houses and in the nearest cabarets, listening to the radio, watching Tutsis flee, chatting and joking without planning a thing.
On April 10 the burgomaster in a pressed suit and all the authorities gathered us together. They lectured us, they threatened in advance anyone who bungled the job, and the killings began without much planning. The only regulation was to keep going till the end, maintain a satisfactory pace, spare no one, and loot what we found. It was impossible to screw up.
IGNACE: After the plane crash, we no longer worried about who had followed the teachings of the presidential party or the teachings of a rival party. We forgot all quarrels, and who had fallen out with whom in the past. We kept only one idea in the pot.
We no longer asked who had trained with guns and gained useful knowhow in a militia, or whose hands had never left a hoe. We had work to do, and we were doing our best. We didn’t
care one way or the other who preferred to take his orders from the burgomaster, the interahamwe, or our well-known municipal judge. We obeyed on all sides, and we found satisfaction in that.
Suddenly Hutus of every kind were patriotic brothers without any partisan discord. We were through playing around with political words. We were no longer in our each-to-his-own mood. We were doing a job to order. We were lining up behind everyone’s enthusiasm. We gathered into teams on the soccer field and went out hunting as kindred spirits.