ALPHONSE: For someone plodding up the slope of old age, that killing period was more backbreaking than stoop labor. Because we had to climb the hills and chase through the slime after the runaways. The legs especially took a beating.
At first the activity was less repetitive than sowing; it cheered us up, so to speak. Afterward it became the same every day. More than anything, we missed going home to eat at noon. At noon we often found ourselves deep in the marshes; that is why the midday meal and our usual afternoon naps were forbidden us by the authorities.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: No one was going to their fields anymore. Why dig in the dirt when we were harvesting without working, eating our fill without growing a thing? The only chore was to bury bananas in pits, out in abandoned banana groves, to allow the next batch of urwagwa to ferment. We became lazy. We did not bury the bodies—it was wasted effort—except, of course, if by bad luck a Tutsi was killed in his own field, which would bring a stench, dogs, and voracious animals.
ADALBERT: We roasted thick meat in the morning, and we roasted more meat in the evening. Anybody who once had eaten meat only at weddings, he found himself stuffed with it day after day.
Before, when we came home from the fields, we’d find almost nothing in the cooking pot, only our usual beans or sometimes
even just cassava gruel. When we got back from the marshes, in the cabarets of Kibungo we snapped up roast chickens, haunches of cow, and drinks to remedy our fatigue. We found women or children everywhere offering them to us for reasonable prices. And brochettes of goat meat, and cigarettes for those who wanted to try them.
We overflowed with life for this new job. We were not afraid of wearing ourselves out running around in the swamps. And if we turned lucky at work, we became happy. We abandoned the crops, the hoes, and the like. We talked no more among ourselves about farming. Worries let go of us.
PANCRACE: Cutting corn or bananas, it’s a smooth job, because ears of corn and hands of bananas are all the same—nothing troublesome there. Cutting in the marshes, that was more and more tiring, you know why. It was a similar motion but not a similar situation, it was more hazardous. A hectic job.
In the beginning the Tutsis were many and frightened and not very active—that made our work easier. When we could not catch the most agile of them, we fell back on the puny ones. But at the end only the strong and sly ones were left, and it got too hard. They gathered in little groups, very well hidden. They were picking up all the tricks of the marsh game creatures. When we arrived, too often we would get all mired up for nothing. Even the hunters grew discouraged. Plus, the marshes were rotting with bodies softening in the slime. These were piling up, stinking more and more, and we had to take care not to step in them.
That’s why our colleagues grew lazy. They turned their steps in another direction and waited for the signal to go home. They muttered about missing farm work, but they were a small number. Besides, not one of them put in a little hour clearing brush out in the front of his field. Those colleagues were grumbling just
because they were impatient to pop a Primus. They were thirsty for more than work. They were getting fed up with the marshes because they felt well off. It wasn’t longing for their hoes that made them bellyache, but laziness.
LÉOPORD: Killing was less wearisome than farming. In the marshes, we could lag around for hours looking for someone to slaughter without getting penalized. We could shelter from the sun and chat without feeling idle. The workday didn’t last as long as in the fields. We returned at three o’clock to have time for pillaging. We fell asleep every evening safe from care, no longer worried about drought. We forgot our torments as farmers. We gorged on vitamin-rich foods.
Some among us tasted pastries and sweets like candies for the first time in our lives. We got our supplies without paying, in the center of Nyamata, in shops where farmers had never gone before.
FULGENCE: Hunting in the swamps was more unpleasant than digging in the fields. On account of the commotion in the morning, the agitation of the intimidators, and the severity of the interahamwe. The changes in habits most of all. Agriculture is our real profession, not killing. On our plots of land, time and the weather know how to organize us with the seasons and sowing; each person cultivates at will what the field will give.
In the marshes, we felt bumped around, we found ourselves too crowded, too carefully penned in. The hubbub in other sectors sometimes bothered us. When the interahamwe noticed idlers, that could be serious. They would shout, “We came a long way to give you a hand, and you’re slopping around behind the papyrus!” They might yell insults and threats at us in their anger.
We felt far from home. We weren’t used to working at the call of a whistle, for going out and back.
But as to fatigue and bounty, it was better. During the growing season, if malaria fevers pin you to your bed, well, your wife or your children go to the fields for food and come home worn out. Or else your empty belly chases away your sleep.
During the killings, passing neighbors dropped off more food than you could fit in your pot—it overflowed at no cost to you. Meat became as common as cassava. Hutus had always felt cheated of cattle because they didn’t know how to raise them. They said cows didn’t taste good, but it was from scarcity. So, during the massacres they ate beef morning and evening, to their heart’s content.
IGNACE: One evening at the rough beginning, we came back late. We had spent the day running after the fugitives. We were tired.
But on the way back, we discovered another group of girls and boys. We pushed them along as prisoners to the judge’s house. He ordered that they be sliced up on the spot, in the dark. No one grumbled despite our weariness from an exhausting day. But afterward he assigned us ordinary schedules such as we were used to. That relieved us.
PIO: Farming is simpler, because it is our lifelong occupation. The hunts were more unpredictable. It was even more tiring on days of large-scale operations, patrolling so many kilometers behind the interahamwe, through the papyrus and mosquitoes.
But we can’t say we missed the fields. We were more at ease in this hunting work, because we had only to bend down to harvest food, sheet metal, and loot. Killing was a demanding but more gratifying activity. The proof: no one ever asked permission to go clear brush on his field, not even for a half-day.
ÉLIE: It was punishment to rummage through the papyrus all day long without coming back to eat at noon. The belly could gripe, and the calves, too, since they were soaking in mud. Still, we ate abundant meat each morning, we drank deep in the evening. That balanced things properly. The looting reinvigorated us more than any harvest could, and we stopped earlier in the day. This schedule in the marshes was more suitable, for the young and especially the old.
IGNACE: Killing could certainly be thirsty work, draining and often disgusting. Still, it was more productive than raising crops, especially for someone with a meager plot of land or barren soil. During the killings anyone with strong arms brought home as much as a merchant of quality. We could no longer count the panels of sheet metal we were piling up. The taxmen ignored us. The women were satisfied with everything we brought in. They stopped complaining.
For the simplest farmers, it was refreshing to leave the hoe in the yard. We got up rich, we went to bed with full bellies, we lived a life of plenty. Pillaging is more worthwhile than harvesting, because it profits everyone equally.
CLÉMENTINE: “The men left without knowing what their day’s weariness would be. But in any case they knew what they would collect along the way. They returned with tired but laughing faces, tossing out jokes to one another, as in seasons of bumper harvests. It was clear from their manner that they were leading an exciting life.
“For the women, life was restful above all. They abandoned the fields and marketplaces. There was no more need to plant, to shell beans, to walk to market. Simply seeking brought finding. When our columns of Hutu fugitives set out for Congo, they left
behind neglected fields where the brush had already eaten up several seasons of farm work.”
ALPHONSE: It was a grubby job but a job without worries about drought or spoiled crops, we can certainly say that. On his plot the farmer is never sure what the harvest will bring. One season he’ll see his sacks swollen, so his wife can carry them to market, and another season he’ll see them flapping thin. He’ll think about slinking away from the eyes of the taxmen. He’ll show an anxious and sometimes miserable face.
But in the Tutsis’ abandoned houses, we knew we’d find quantities of new goods. We started with the sheet metal, and the rest followed.
That time greatly improved our lives since we profited from everything we’d never had before. The daily Primus, the cow meat, the bikes, the radios, the sheet metal, the windows, everything. People said it was a lucky season, and that there would not be another.