THE FIRST TIME

FULGENCE: First I cracked an old mama’s skull with a club. But she was already lying almost dead on the ground, so I did not feel death at the end of my arm. I went home that evening without even thinking about it.

Next day I cut down some alive and on their feet. It was the day of the massacre at the church, so, a very special day. Because of the uproar, I remember I began to strike without seeing who it was, taking pot luck with the crowd, so to speak. Our legs were much hampered by the crush, and our elbows kept bumping.

At one point I saw a gush of blood begin before my eyes, soaking the skin and clothes of a person about to fall—even in the dim light I saw it streaming down. I sensed it came from my machete. I looked at the blade, and it was wet. I took fright and wormed my way along to get out, not looking at the person anymore. I found myself outside, anxious to go home—I had done enough. That person I had just struck—it was a mama, and I felt too sick even in the poor light to finish her off.

 

PANCRACE: I don’t remember my first kill, because I did not identify that one person in the crowd. I just happened to start by killing several without seeing their faces. I mean, I was striking, and there was screaming, but it was on all sides, so it was a mixture of blows and cries coming in a tangle from everyone.

Still, I do remember the first person who looked at me at the moment of the deadly blow. Now that was something. The eyes of someone you kill are immortal, if they face you at the fatal instant. They have a terrible black color. They shake you more than the streams of blood and the death rattles, even in a great turmoil of dying. The eyes of the killed, for the killer, are his calamity if he looks into them. They are the blame of the person he kills.

 

ALPHONSE: It was before the decision about vast total killings. A group of Tutsis had retreated into the forest of Kintwi to resist. We spotted them behind clumps of trees—they were standing with stones and branches or tools. Grenades from some of our leaders showered onto them. Then came a big to-do. The Tutsis scattered, and we followed them. In the stampede an old man, not so sturdy anymore, was knocked down as he ran. He fell in front of me. I hacked him across his back with my inkota, a sharp blade for slaughtering cattle—I had snatched it up that morning.

A youth next to me helped out silently with his machete, as if the victim were his. When we heard the old man finish, my young colleague indicated to me that he had known him for a long time. His own house was just up the hill from the old man’s. He said he was well rid of him this way—you could see he was pleased. Me, I knew this old man by name, but I had heard nothing unpleasant about him. That evening I told my wife everything. She knew only routine details about him, we did not discuss it, and I went to sleep.

It had gone smoothly, with no need for me to struggle. Basically, that first time I was quite surprised by the speed of death, and also by the softness of the blow, if I may say so. I had never dealt out death before, never looked it in the face, never considered it. I had never tried it on a warm-blooded animal. Since I was well off, on wedding days or Christmas I used to pay a boy to kill the chickens behind the house—and just avoid all that mess.

 

JEAN-BAPTISTE: We were on a path coming back from the marshes. Some youths searched the house of a gentleman named Ababanganyingabo. They frowned on him because this Hutu from Gisenyi was known to consort with Tutsis and might well lend them a hand. They discovered he had helped some Tutsis getaway their cows—behind his house, in a pen, I think. They surrounded the man and pinned him down helpless. Then I heard my name.

They called me out because they knew I was married to a Tutsi. The news about Ababanganyingabo’s fix was spreading, people were waiting, all fired up because they had been killing. Someone said to the audience: “Jean-Baptiste, if you want to save the life of your wife Spéciose Mukandahunga, you have to cut this man right now. He is a cheater! Show us that you’re not that kind.” This person turned and ordered, “Bring me a blade.” Me, I had chosen my wife for love of her beauty; she was tall and very considerate, she was fond of me, and I felt great pain to think of losing her.

The crowd had grown. I seized the machete, I struck a first blow. When I saw the blood bubble up, I jumped back a step. Someone blocked me from behind and shoved me forward by both elbows. I closed my eyes in the brouhaha and I delivered a second blow like the first. It was done, people approved, they were satisfied and moved away. I drew back. I went off to sit on the bench of a small cabaret, I picked up a drink, I never looked back in that unhappy direction. Afterward I learned that the man had kept moving for two long hours before finishing.

Later on we got used to killing without so much dodging around.

 

PIO: I had killed chickens but never an animal the stoutness of a man, like a goat or a cow. The first person, I finished him off in a rush, not thinking anything of it, even though he was a neighbor, quite close on my hill.

In truth, it came to me only afterward: I had taken the life of a neighbor. I mean, at the fatal instant I did not see in him what he had been before; I struck someone who was no longer either close or strange to me, who wasn’t exactly ordinary anymore, I’m saying like the people you meet every day. His features were indeed similar to those of the person I knew, but nothing firmly reminded me that I had lived beside him for a long time.

I am not sure you can truly understand me. I knew him by sight, without knowing him. He was the first victim I killed; my vision and my thinking had grown clouded.

 

ÉLIE: As a retired soldier, I had already killed two civilians during some protest agitation in 1992. The first one was a social worker from the Kanazi area. She was of pleasant reputation and modest renown. I shot an arrow wildly and hit her. I saw her fall, though I did not hear her cries because of the great distance between us. I about-faced and strode off in the opposite direction, seeing nothing of her last moments. Subsequently, I was penalized with a fine. I also heard distant admonitions from her family and threats of jail, but met with no troublesome consequences.

In 1994, during the killings in the marshes, I thought myself very lucky because I could use my former army gun. It’s one of our military traditions, to let a noncommissioned officer keep his weapon at the end of his career. Killing with a gun is a game compared to the machete, it’s not so close up.

 

ADALBERT: The first day, I did not bother to kill directly, because at the start my work was to shout orders and encouragement to the team. I was the boss. Here and there I threw a grenade into the tumult on the other side, but without experiencing the effects of death, except for the shrieks.

The first person I killed with a machete, I don’t remember the precise details. I was helping out at the church. I laid on big blows, I struck home on all sides, I felt the strain of effort but not of death—there was no personal pain in the commotion. Therefore the true first time worth telling from a lasting memory, for me, is when I killed two children, April 17.

That morning we were roaming around, looking to rout out Tutsis who might be hidden on plots of land in Rugazi. I came upon two children sitting in the corner of a house. They were keeping quiet as mice. I asked them to come out; they stood up, they wanted to show they were being good. I had them walk at the head of our group, to bring them back to the village square in Nyarunazi. It was time to go home, so my men and I set out, talking about our day.

As leader, I had recently been given a gun, besides the grenades. Walking along, without thinking, I decided to try it out. I put the two children side by side twenty meters away, I stood still, I shot twice at their backs. It was the first time in my life I had used a gun, because hunting is no longer customary in the Bugesera since the wild animals disappeared. For me, it was strange to see the children drop without a sound. It was almost pleasantly easy.

I walked on without bending over to check that they were really dead. I don’t even know if they were moved to a more suitable place and covered up.

Now, too often, I am seized by the memory of those children, shot straight out, like a joke.

 

IGNACE: We were scouring a field when someone shouted that a small troop of Tutsis was hiding in the black tinstone mines of Birombe, abandoned mines on the hill of Rusekera. The Tutsis’ trickery made us angry, and we went immediately on a raid and surrounded them. Those with grenades started throwing them at the Tutsis, to scatter them, but some had hidden inside the tunnels.

We knew it took thirty minutes to get to the end of the main gallery and back. It was too chancy in the darkness filled with those dangerous Tutsis. So we hacked up bushes and woodwork from deserted houses, blocked the gallery with this firewood, and lit the pile. The Tutsis died of smoke or burns, twenty-seven in number. It was April 22, I remember perfectly. It was my first deadly expedition and the most regrettable, because of the nastiness of the burns.

 

LÉOPORD: Since that morning people had begun getting up the courage to kill in the streets. You could hear gunshots on the summit of Kayumba hill: it was soldiers, driving a group of fugitives back toward the parish⁵ and church of Nyamata. This told us that the day would heat up. I took my machete, left the house, and went to the center of town. On this side and that, people were already giving chase.

At the marketplace I saw a man running toward me. He was coming down from Kayumba, all breathless and scared, looking only for escape, and he didn’t see me. I was heading up, and in passing, I gave him a machete blow at neck level, on the vulnerable vein. It came to me naturally, without thinking. Aiming was simple, since the gentleman did not fight back. He made no defensive move—he fell without shouting, without moaning. I felt nothing, just let him lie. I looked around; killing was going on every which way. I kept chasing after runaways all day long.

It was sweaty-hard and stimulating, like an unforeseen diversion. I did not even keep count. Not during the action, not afterward, since I knew it would be starting up again. I cannot tell you, sincerely, how many I killed, because I forgot some along the way.

This gentleman I killed at the marketplace, I can tell you the exact memory of it because he was the first. For others, it’s murky—I cannot keep track anymore in my memory. I considered them unimportant; at the time of those murders I didn’t even notice the tiny thing that would change me into a killer.