To go to the Bugesera from Kigali, you take a wide avenue, always deafening and congested, that zigzags along to the highway to Tanzania. As you pass the last gas station, thronged with long-distance taxi drivers, moneychangers, awalé-players,6 and cigarette women, you leave the asphalt behind to turn south on a rutted dirt road. Emerging from the last suburbs of the capital, the track runs through villages that become few and far between, past schools and churches perched on hillocks that shrink away as the miles go by.
The grayish-yellow road gradually turns ocher, then enters landscapes tinted saffron, crimson, or purple at the whim of the changing sunlight. Far from the dazzling green of the tea hills of Cyangugu and the luxuriant verdure of Kibuye’s tropical forests, the road winds through hills and valleys of clay and dusty scrub. Fields of beans and yams alternate with raggedy-leafed banana groves. You brake for herds of nonchalant cattle, prodded by kids who don’t even come up to their rumps; pass processions of women walking with basins of manioc on their heads and babies slung on their backs; encounter the odd van and minibuses called Dubais, their shock absorbers sagging beneath the overload of passengers.
At the end of a footbridge spanning the muddy waters of the Nyabarongo River, a group of travelers sit slumped on cloth bundles, waiting for rides from the passing vehicles. On both sides of the bridge, as far as the eye can see, myriads of sacred ibises peck among the purple gallinules and pin-tailed black sand grouse floating amid the reeds. Beyond stretches the Bugesera, and here begins the district of Nyamata.
The area is bordered by three marshland waterways: to the north and east, the Nyabarongo, flanked by the bogs of Butamwa; on the west, the Akanyaru River, running through the swamps of Nyamwiza; to the south, Lake Cyohoha and the Murago Marshes. These muddy valleys, carpeted with papyrus and giant water lilies, crisscross the fifteen hills of Nyamata.
At the entrance to the commune, a cord stretched across the road marks the military checkpoint. The road then moves off into a landscape of red and green: the red-ocher of laterite that from now on will cling to skin, clothing, and floors; the pale green of banana farms, papyrus, shrubs, and brushwood. The houses of the first village you come to, Kanzenze, are of rammed clay and sheet metal. Across from two warehouses, three cabarets—which are the Rwandan equivalent of the Ivoirian maquis or the terrasses of Congo—form the heart of local public life.
On the right, a barely passable road climbs through an acacia forest to the heights of Kibungo. Farther along, a path descends toward the school in Cyugaro, which will be mentioned often in these accounts as a place of refuge. Going lower still, the track reaches the Nyamwiza Marshes described by Jeannette. Parakeets and West African gray parrots with hooked beaks call to one another among the foliage.
The village of Kibungo has not welcomed a car in ages. The deputy public prosecutor, the local councilman, and the district secretary of the department of education go there on their official motorcycles. A few shopkeepers, stock breeders, the primary school principal and teachers ride bicycles, which are usually laden with crates and jerry cans. Everyone else—women returning from the market, teenagers let out of school, members of the parish choir, farmers going to sell a goat or a sack of produce—walks through the forest in an endless column. At one last fork, those on foot scale a shortcut up a dry stone stream bed and rejoin the cyclists at the first adobe houses.
In the village square, a woman is sitting on a bench, leaning back against her house. Her name is Francine Niyitegeka. She smiles and introduces her infant, Bonfils, cradled in her arms. Her niece, Clémentine, is at her side. Francine is wearing a green floral pagne and a matching turban around her hair. Even from a distance, her beauty is remarkable, and looking closer, you see that her every gesture is imbued with exquisite grace. She is preparing to walk to the health center, twelve or thirteen miles away, because her baby is suffering from a brutal attack of malaria. The appearance of a foreign automobile, an unexpected godsend on this torrid afternoon, prompts her to overcome her shyness. She laughs and, like a good African, trades the initial interview for a round-trip by car to the clinic. On the first day she evokes her memories in snatches, sparingly, describing tragedy with delicate ellipses. As the interviews progress, her wariness vanishes; often she even becomes chatty, and at times quite merry.