PANCRACE: I think that women are guided by their husbands. When a husband goes out in the morning to kill and comes home in the evening with food, if the wife lights the fire under the cooking pot, then it is because she supports him in the traditional way. My wife did not lecture me, she did not turn away from me in bed. She reproached me only on those days when I overdid it.
FULGENCE: The women showered us sometimes with advice, sometimes with reproaches. Some women showed pity for their Tutsi neighbors and tried to hide them for a few days. But if they were caught, the women did not risk anything except getting their husbands in trouble. My wife scolded me several times—she warned me I might well lose my head in the marshes. I told her that these killings could no longer be stopped. She asked me above all to keep my mouth shut.
PIO: In the Rwandan family, the man is the first one responsible for right and wrong actions, in the eyes of the authorities and neighbors. If a woman wanted to hide Tutsi acquaintances, she had to get permission from her husband, because if she was found out, of course he was the one condemned by his neighbors to cut those acquaintances with his own hand, in public, right in front of his house. It was a punishment of some importance. It was a
big thing to cut a person with whom you had shared years both good and bad.
The women were less deciding, they were less punishable, they were less active. They were in the second rank in that activity of genocide.
But really, in the Tutsi camp it was quite the opposite. The killings were more serious for the wives than for the husbands, if in addition they were raped at the end and saw their little ones get cut before their eyes.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: It is a country custom that women do not concern themselves with any bothersome task of cutting. The machete is for a man’s work. This was as true for the farming as for the killing.
So during the killings, the women continued to prepare the meals in the morning, and during the rest of the day they went looting. They were storing up goods instead of crops, so they were not unhappy. They didn’t complain because they knew that in any case the operation was intended to succeed completely. They dared not show any sign of disagreement with the men’s brutality, not even the simple gesture of a mama’s kindness.
In Ntarama I do not know of a single Hutu woman who hid away a little Tutsi child to save it from the massacre of its family. Not even a toddler wrapped in a cloth or a nursling unrecognizable to her neighbors because of its tender age. Not one woman on the whole hill cheated in the way of a rescue, not even for a short moment of trying.
ADALBERT: The women led a more ordinary life. They housecleaned, they tended to the cooking, they looted the surrounding area, they gossiped and haggled in town. There were fierce wives
who wanted to march off on expeditions and help with the killing, but they were prevented by the organizers, who lectured them that a woman’s place was not in the marshes. I know one case of a woman who bloodied her hands out there, a too quick-tempered woman who wanted a reputation for herself.
Still, if women happened to come upon some Tutsis hidden in an abandoned house, that was different.
MARIE-CHANTAL: “When my husband came home in the evenings, I knew the disturbing gossip, I knew he was a boss, but I asked him nothing. He left the blades outside. He no longer showed the slightest temper anymore in the house, he spoke of the Good Lord. He was cheerful with the children, he brought back little presents and words of encouragement, and that pleased me.
“I don’t know of any wife who whispered against her husband during the massacres. Jealous wives, mocking wives, dangerous wives—even if they did not kill directly, they fanned the burning zeal of their husbands. They weighed the loot, they compared the spoils. Desire fired them up in those circumstances.
“There were also men who proved more charitable toward the Tutsis than their wives, even with their machetes in hand. A person’s wickedness depends on the heart, not the sex.”
JEAN-BAPTISTE: During the killings, much jealousy spilled from the mouths of our women because of the constant talk about the Tutsi women’s slender figures, their smooth skin thanks to drinking milk, and so on. When those envious women came upon a Tutsi searching for food in the forest, they called their neighbors to taunt her for crawling around that way all slovenly. Sometimes women shoved a neighbor to the bottom of the hill and threw her bodily into the waters of the Nyabarongo.
ALPHONSE: My wife would tell me, “Listen, really, going every day, every day, it’s too much. These filthy things should be stopped,” and suchlike recommendations I ignored.
One evening she scolded me, “Alphonse, be careful. Everything you are doing will have accursed consequences, because it is not normal and passes all humanity. So much blood provokes a fate beyond our lives. We are going toward damnation.” Around the end she refused to share the bed, she slept on the ground, she said, “You are cutting so many, you cannot count them anymore. I am afraid of this foul thing. You are turning into an animal, and I won’t sleep with an animal.”
IGNACE: I did not hear many women protesting against Tutsis being raped. They knew this work of killing fiercely heated up the men in the marshes. They agreed on this, except of course if the men did their dirty sex work near the houses.
Any wife who wished to tag along on the hunting raids got sent back by her husband, who asked her to mind the house and see to the looting.
ÉLIE: It was impossible for the women to squabble with their men over those killings and the foolish sex matters. After all, they themselves had to go looting, too, to deal with hunger, since the crops were being neglected. The men, the women—no upset came between them during the killings. The men went out to kill, the women went out to pillage; the women sold, the men drank; it was the same as with farming.
LÉOPORD: The women vied with one another in ferocity toward the Tutsi women and children that they might flush out in an abandoned house. But their most remarkable enterprise was fighting over the fabrics and the trousers. After the expeditions
they scavenged and stripped the dead. If a victim was still panting, they dealt a mortal blow with some hand tool or turned their backs and abandoned the dying to their last sighs—as they pleased.
PANCRACE: In a war, you kill someone who fights you or promises you harm. In killings of this kind, you kill the Tutsi woman you used to listen to the radio with, or the kind lady who put medicinal plants on your wounds, or your sister who was married to a Tutsi. Or even, for some unlucky devils, your own Tutsi wife and your children, by general demand. You slaughter the woman same as the man. That is the difference, which changes everything.
FULGENCE: The Hutu women imprisoned at Rilima are more fragile than the men, because they are never visited and fed by their husbands or their brothers. Many of them were denounced by envious people, to get the possessions of their dead husbands. They know themselves to be rejected by the past and the present. Which is why they are more reluctant to admit their crimes. When they have done what they have done, they keep silent.
CHRISTINE: “Today I worry about that, because many Hutu women have soaked their hands in the blood of genocide. Men are more liable to kill and to reconcile than women. Men forget more quickly, they share the killings and the drinks more easily. Women do not yield in the same way, they keep more memories.
“But I also know of good women, Hutus, who do not dare show compassion for fear of being accused in their turn.”
CLÉMENTINE: “The men came home from the marshes with savage faces. They behaved brusquely and glowered at the least little household problem. The women viewed their brutality with
fear. A few viewed them with anger and muttered against their bloody deeds, especially those like me who had been married to Tutsis they had killed. But most of them said they were content with everything brought back from the killings—like the sacks of beans, the clothing, the money. They went themselves to collect sheet metal and household utensils overlooked by looting husbands.
“Neighbor women asked me how I could have let myself be impregnated by a cockroach. They’d warn me not to hope for anything for my husband, since their men were firmly resolved to kill everyone. They advised me to teach my son that he hadn’t had a Tutsi father, that he was a full-blooded Hutu, because if he ever let his tongue slip later on, it would be deadly for him.
“In Nyamata the midwives returned to their jobs at the maternity hospital after the slaughter as though they had not seen any bloody marks upon the walls. They even snagged their last pay before leaving for Congo.
“On the hill of Kibungo not a single woman took in the child of a Tutsi neighbor who had gone to his death. Not one woman mixed a nursling in with her own brood. Not even for money. Not even in a forest hideout. Because the women did not want to be scolded by their husbands, if the men came home punished by a fine for that misdeed.”