Gray cranes, with their trumpeting calls, are the first to announce that nighttime is over in the neighborhood of Gatare. Like big green parrots, turacos with impressive white crests soon add their squawking, and sunrise will not be long now. In the morning mist appear woolly necked storks on the wing and patrolling pelicans, gliding hesitantly above the ponds. Some goats then demand to leave their pens of branches nestled against the houses, and the new day gets underway when the cattle disappear one by one, or in small herds, into the bush of Kayumba, prodded by the long staves of bare-chested boys in jackets too big for them.
Lined with mud dwellings, the last lanes and alleys on the upper slopes of the neighborhood straggle along toward some wasteland with a soccer field at one end, which also marks the end of the main street of Nyamata. Muddy in the rainy season and heat-warped in dry weather, this field equipped with cast-iron goal posts never discourages the players of all ages who come and go throughout the day. In the lower section of Gatare there is a scattering of more solidly constructed houses, the homes of many teachers, shopkeepers, and magistrates.
There Édith Uwanyiligira presides over a brick guesthouse in the shade of a small grove of mango and papaya trees. The large courtyard in the rear is invaded from dawn to dusk by a whole swarm of local kids who line up single file, between the kitchen hut and the small shanty for the household help, to fill their jerry cans with water at the only working faucet in the neighborhood. The children gather in this courtyard at mealtimes, attracted by a big-bellied cooking pot that simmers all day, fed by the wheelbarrows of vegetables fetched from the market by the proprietress.
From the veranda you can hear, on the right, the songs of the large-beaked tomakos and the dovelike, linden green couroucous perched in the trees. Across the way are dilapidated clay and straw houses, small gardens planted with beans, and some deep ditches where straw and dried mud are formed into bricks. Chickens wander about; washing hangs from branches and hedges.
A road, quickly thronged with pedestrians, bicyclists, and lucky moped riders, runs past the yellow town hall surrounded by its high flowering hedge. In the courtyard, local officials in white shirts talk with villagers looking to get papers stamped. In the parking lot sit the mayor’s all-terrain van, the tractor that collects the town trash, and a crowd of bicycles and mopeds leaning in clusters against the avocado trees.
The town hall is where Innocent Rwililiza works, and a few hundred yards away is the austerely furnished office of Sylvie Umubyeyi.
Sylvie Umubyeyi is a social worker, and thus the first person whom I come to know in Nyamata. After learning in Kigali that some child survivors are living in little “families” in the bush around the marshes in the Nyamata area, I go to see Sylvie to ask her if I might manage to meet these children. Skeptical, or suspicious, she does not want to help a foreigner make such direct contact with them. On my way back to Kigali, however, I run into Sylvie at the entrance to the Memorial,3 where we chat for a moment, and this chance encounter seems to change her mind. Without any explanation, she promptly suggests that I come along in her van while she visits some banana groves. She introduces me to Jeannette Ayinkamiye, a teenage farmer who takes care of some abandoned children, with whom we spend a morning talking. Sylvie takes me up into the hills several times, and she also agrees to talk about herself, cautiously at first, then willingly and regularly. She is enthralling, and so I decide to focus on the hills of Nyamata.
During my next visit, Sylvie asks Innocent Rwililiza to lend a hand; he, too, turns out to be an attentive and understanding companion. Both of them become guides and friends, without whom all these expeditions into the hills and meetings with survivors would not be possible.
On many occasions they both prove to be invaluable and skilled interpreters as well. I must point out that these accounts are given in three languages: Kinyarwanda, the native tongue of the farmers; Rwandan French, the second language of the other witnesses and the translators; and standard French. The Rwandan French—which appropriates French vocabulary magnificently—faithfully captures certain thoughts and descriptions, and has been carefully respected, although it does lead to a few surprising and surely excusable linguistic formulations.
Leaving the town, the road turns left, entering the grounds of what was once the parish church. This church was the only architecturally modern building in the town, but today its gaping walls and pock-marked roof show the damage left by exploding grenades. The Vatican Curia made plans several times to restore the church and reopen it for religious services, but the inhabitants of Nyamata decided to keep it in its present state and build one of the region’s two memorials there. For this was the site of the first massacre of a crowd of five thousand people, which turned loose the hunters of men throughout the Bugesera.
Within the church park, goats browse on bushes, watched over by a twelve-year-old boy. He sits in the shade of a tree, a switch in his hand, a soccer ball at his feet, chatting with the caretaker of the Memorial. His name is Cassius Niyonsaba. He can be found every day of the week hanging out at the church, which is halfway between his school and the home of his Aunt Thérèse. He comes here occasionally to kick the ball around with a pal. At times he is surrounded by his goats, as today, while at others he sits alone on the low wall behind the church, staring at a burial vault. Slicing through his frizzy hair, a deep scar runs the entire length of his skull.