MARIE-CHANTAL: “On the path down below the field, all day you saw a long line of gatherers, backs bent beneath the burden of their fresh looting. They followed along like a thread of ants behind a food scrap.”
ÉLIE: In the evening, after the killings, there was time for friendship, and meeting friends brought us light hearts. We would chat about our days, we shared drinks, we ate. We no longer counted up what we had killed but what it would bring us. The killings had made us gossipy and greedy. We now argued only over sharing, especially plots of land and particularly banana groves. Everyone had to keep an eye on the choice banana plantations thick along the banks of the Akanyaru.
ALPHONSE: There were many banquets. On days of large-scale operations, the interahamwe and the soldiers from neighboring communes took priority in the looting. They heaped up new radios, fat cows, comfortable chairs, top-quality sheet metal. We locals shared what they left behind. The days of smaller operations were more profitable for us, since we found ourselves again with first pick. When our group went looting together, we got big rewards. The bounty made us forget about bickering. Sometimes we even had to buy the help of a van to carry everything.
Many suddenly grew rich, so rich they didn’t stop to count up. Standing by the wayside, they would hail the killers coming
back from looting, they’d propose a friendly drink, buy them endless Primus, share meat, and give away radios—to gull these people whom they left empty-handed. The rich were the most familiar with bargaining, since that was their trade from before. They were gathering in sheet metal and suchlike goods for future business.
Us, we felt carefree and contented. We did not haggle. We were not taxed by the commissioners. We drank very well with the money we were sniffing out. We ate the tastiest meat from the cows of those we had killed. We were pleased by the new sheet metal we were bringing home. We slept comfortably, thanks to good nourishment and the fatigue of the day.
IGNACE: The first evening the boss assembled us in Kibungo. He asked the team to form a circle. He demanded that, one by one, we put in the center all the money we had taken from our victims. He said, “No cheating.”
When he saw us so discouraged, he thought about it and spoke again in a kind voice. He explained that, the first time, we had to contribute to buy drink and celebrate together, but that afterward we would indeed each save up for himself. This promise gave us satisfaction. We popped some bottles by way of relief.
ADALBERT: Straggling killers let themselves wander away from eager ones so as to lay early hands on loot, but they did not become extra rich. In the evening the eager killers managed very well for themselves and retrieved what they had let escape. They knew they were tough.
At bottom, we didn’t care about what we accomplished in the marshes, only about what was important to us for our comfort: the stocks of sheet metal, the rounded-up cows, the piles of windows and other such goods. When we met a neighbor on a new
bike or waving around a radio, greed drove us on. We inspected roofs along the way. People could turn mean if they heard about some fertile land already snapped up behind their backs. They could turn meaner than in the marshes, even if they were no longer brandishing their machetes. Me, it so happens, I am strong and vigorous, I had made myself boss. It was a position with advantages for looting.
PANCRACE: After work we would tally up the profit. The money the Tutsis had tried to take with them under their clothes into death. The money of those who had offered it willingly, in hope of not suffering. The money from goods collected on the way home, and the sheet metal or utensils you could sell in the free-for-all, even at laughable prices. We hid rolls of franc notes in our pockets.
For example, if you snagged two bikes, you didn’t fuss about cashing one in. You sold it for a losing price, and then you bought drinks calmly.
We were drinking so much the price of drinks was multiplied by three—even by five, once. But the drinker didn’t care anymore, thanks to the money from looting.
Some farmers even hid Tutsis they knew for a certain price. After the Tutsis had coughed up all their savings, the farmers abandoned them to the arms of death, without paying them back, of course. Those were crooked deals.
JOSEPH-DÉSIRÉ: The authorities no longer had the ability to plan, to channel. Their orders fell on deaf ears. The massacres had become extraordinary, beyond all reason.
The keenest ones, when they killed, grabbed the possessions of the dead—they wanted everything, right away, not even stopping to finish off their victims. The looting excited them so
much, they needed no advice or encouragement. Their greed spread to those who followed, who went crazy in turn.
The poorest ones were excited by the spoils. And the wealthiest, too, because they had enough money to buy loot and stockpile it. Everyone supported these profitable killings.
CLÉMENTINE: “The ragged poor who’d had nothing were all at once getting their hands on a sheet metal roof, clothes, kitchen utensils, and sometimes an abandoned field if they scrambled fast enough. Comfort reached out to them.
“There were even tramps who gave up wandering. Suddenly their arms were just as strong as everyone else’s. They grew rich before they knew what was happening. They took advantage of their hoarded spoils to pick themselves out a rich wife, someone they would never have dared to mix with before. Thanks to the killings, they now enjoyed great esteem in a woman’s eyes.”
VALERIE: “After the plane crash, interahamwe came prowling around the maternity hospital, machetes in hand. The first day of the killings some soldiers arrived. They said, ‘If you give us money, we will keep them from coming in.’ They demanded exactly two hundred thousand francs. We had hardly any money left, because the white sisters had carried it all off in the armored vehicles of the UNAMIR. But there were many of us—women giving birth, midwives, and mothers who had come seeking refuge because it was the Sainte-Marthe Maternity Hospital. We took up a collection, we got the whole sum together, we paid.
“The next day they came and wanted the same contribution. Some even insisted on Swiss money. We paid, thanks to women who had hidden wads of bills in their clothes.
“The third day we could no longer pay such a sum. The soldiers said it didn’t matter anymore, because they could no longer do anything for us. Right after they left, the interahamwe came.
There were a lot of them, because they knew this Swiss maternity hospital was richly equipped with sacks of grain, spring mattresses, distilled water, and quality medicines. First they gathered up absolutely everything they found, then they killed everyone they met, sparing no one; finally they searched the bodies of the well-to-do women, to be sure they had overlooked nothing.”
LÉOPORD: We began the day by killing, we ended the day by looting. It was the rule to kill going out and to loot coming back. We killed in teams, but we looted every man for himself or in small groups of friends. Except for drinks and cows, which we enjoyed sharing. And the plots of land, of course, they were discussed with the organizers. As district leader, I had gotten a huge fertile plot, which I counted on planting when it was all over.
Those who killed a lot had less time to pillage, but since they were feared, they would catch up because of their power. No one wound up ahead, no one wound up robbed.
Anyone who couldn’t loot because he had to be absent, or because he felt tired from all he had done, could send his wife. You would see wives rummaging through houses. They ventured even into the marshes to get the belongings of the unfortunate women who had just been killed. People would steal anything—bowls, pieces of cloth, jugs, religious images, wedding pictures—from anywhere, from the houses, from the schools, from the dead.
They stole blood-soaked clothing that they were not afraid to wash. They stole stashes of money from underwear. Not in the church, though, because of the rotting bodies forgotten after the massacre on the first day.
ALPHONSE: Some killers claimed girls in the marshes; that satisfied them and made them neglect the looting. They figured they’d catch up the next day.
As for savings, our lives were not as carefully calculated as before. Bargaining became less serious, numbers flew happily around. Abundance relieved us of our petty problems. Some old-timers muttered that this looting was spinning our minds in a sinister direction, that the future would set a trap for us. But looking at those wonderful first fruits, who could listen to them?
ADALBERT: In town we would recount the exploits of the day. Some exaggerated their score, hoping to get a more fertile plot eventually or a field in a better location. Spirits heated up fiercely on the subject of land left vacant by those who had been killed. As soon as someone identified by name a farmer cut in the marshes, we palavered over his land that evening. We kept up a possessive attitude.
Even though we were not farming anymore, we still worried about our families’ future.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: If the inkotanyi had not taken over the country and put us to flight, we would have killed one another after the death of the last Tutsi—that’s how hooked we were by the madness of dividing up their land. We could no longer stop ourselves from wielding the machete, it brought us so much profit.
It was clear that after our victory, life would be truly rearranged. The obedient ones would no longer obey the authorities as before, accepting poverty and riches the usual way. They had tasted comfort and overflowing plenty. They were sated with their own willfulness. They felt fat with new strength and insolence. They had cast off obedience and the inconveniences of poverty. Greed had corrupted us.