The Rwandan cabaret can be an authentic tavern, with a proper sign and a terrace, but is often a more humble combination of social club, bar, and general store. It might be nothing more than a few thatched huts in someone’s front yard or a one-room shop with no sign, a floor of beaten earth, cases of beer and soft drinks stacked against the back wall, and bottles and large cans of banana and sorghum beer lined up behind the counter. The shop might stock rice, potatoes, beans, cooking oil, fabrics, underwear, shampoo, batteries, and so forth. A sofa, a bench, and some stools sit around a low table just inside the door for rainy weather, and if it’s sunny, patrons move their seats outside.
After mornings in the fields, farmers put away their hoes and head for some socializing and refreshment, so the cabarets are busy in the afternoons. Real beer is expensive, but homebrew is available, even—for the temporarily strapped—by the swallow, through a long reed straw, from a container behind the counter. Brochettes of goat meat smoke appetizingly on grills in the back courtyard, and behind the counter Brochettes of goat meat smoke appetizingly on grills in the back courtyard, and patrons are welcome until late in the evening.—Translator’s note
Banana beer (urwagwa) is three times cheaper than ordinary beer and three times as potent, which explains its huge popularity on the hills, aside from the fact that it can be delicious. Bananas are buried for three days in a pit to overripen, after which the juice is pressed out and mixed with sorghum flour, left another three days to ferment, then strained and bottled. Urwagwa is more or less strong, tart, and harsh, depending on the time of year and the brewer’s expertise; when ready, it must be consumed within three days. It is drunk from a bottle with a single reed straw, which the buyer passes around to his drinking companions. During long droughts and when bananas are scarce, tipplers may fall back on ikigage, a sorghum beer that is less tasty but just as intoxicating.
The names of the killers are differentiated from those of other speakers by capital letters clan in the † “Those who attack together”: the Hutu extremist militias created by the Habyarimana clan in the early 1990s, trained by the Rwandan army and sometimes, locally, by French soldiers.
A cow of medium size, slender and sinewy, distinguished by splendid lyre-shaped horns and a small cervical hump similar to that of Indian cattle. Its coat is often beige or brindled gray, black, and white. Breeding Ankole cattle is the proud prerogative of the Tutsis, who raise them as a repository and sign of wealth rather than for human consumption. The communal herds that were almost wiped out in 1994, either slaughtered or rounded up and driven to Congo, have rebounded to their pre-1994 numbers.
This Tutsi organization was formed on the basis of exiled troops that organized in Uganda and other neighboring nations in 1988; it began military operations against the Rwandan Army in1990. On the opening day of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis, it launched a vast offensive and by July 4 took definitive control of the country, under the command of Paul Kagame, who later became president of the Republic of Rwanda. The RPF was subsequently reorganized into the regular Rwandan Army, currently engaged mainly in the Congolese region of Kivu.—Translator’s note
“Invincible”: the name given to the Tutsi rebels who organized in Uganda in 1988 and fought against Habyarimana’s dictatorship. They formed the basis of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda was dispatched in November 1993 to supervise the implementation of the Arusha peace accords, a cease-fire agreement signed in August of that year between the Rwandan government and the RPF in Arusha, Tanzania. Its initial strength of 2,500 men under the command of the Canadian Major General Roméo Dallaire dropped to 450 men on April 14, 1994, a week after the killings had begun. UNAMIR’s intervention consisted of protecting and evacuating expatriates and its own personnel. After French troops initiated and completed this controversial Operation Turquoise in June and July, which was said to be a humanitarian mission but which principally protected the exodus of Hutus to Congo, a new UN mission, UNAMIR II, arrived in August, three months after the end of the genocide.
This Belgian brand is the most popular beer in Rwanda. Brewed in Gisenyi, a city on the western border, across from Goma in Congo, it is sold only in one-liter bottles. Inexpensive, slightly bitter, with a normal alcoholic content, it is drunk lukewarm and straight from the bottle, nursed along in endless tiny sips. Mutzig (brewed in Burundi) and Amstel are two drab rivals of this champion brew. endless tiny sips. Mutzig (brewed in Burundi) and Amstel are two drab rivals of this champion brew.
These avian artists live in colonies; a single tree may hold dozens of nests. Each nest is harmoniously spherical, delicately suspended, and set swaying by the slightest breath of air—a masterpiece of weaving. A colony of several thousand weaverbirds reigns supreme in the trees around the penitentiary in Rilima.
The French terms for “survivor” distinguish between someone who has escaped from a calamity such as an earthquake, plane crash, or massacre, un rescapé, and someone who has survived disaster on a smaller or a more personal scale, un survivant. —Translator’s note.
Mouvement national révolutionnaire pour le développement, or National Revolutionary Movement for Development, founded in 1975. (In 1991 “revolutionary” was changed to “republican.”)
The Rwandan version of the ancient African game awele, as hard to win as it is easy to play. Igisoro is as popular in Rwanda as dominoes in Tunisia or chess in the Balkans.
Literally, “the flattened grass under the elders’ tree”; a tribal court that renders traditional justice. Faced with the collapse of its judiciary due to the death, flight, or complicity of so many judges during the genocide, the Rwandan government reactivated the gaçaças to speed up the trials of persons suspected of participation in the genocide and to involve Rwandan citizens in the collective work of assigning and admitting individual responsibility for the massacres. At the level of the hills and towns, the gaçaça arraigns the accused in the community where the crime took place, and the local population gives testimony or passes judgment under the supervision of more or less professional officers. This judicial undertaking began in the spring of 2002, and the many assemblies have produced controversial results.
People accused of genocide have been classified according to four categories of severity; those in the first category (ideologues, propagandists, high-ranking leaders, rapists, and well-known killers) may not be judged by gaçaças.