CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS IN RWANDA AND THE DISTRICT OF NYAMATA
1gaçaça : Named after “the flattened grass under the elders’ tree,” these tribal courts render 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 both 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. Those suspected of the gravest crimes (ideologues, propagandists, high-ranking leaders, rapists, and well-known killers) may not be judged by gaçaças.
INTRODUCTION
2cabaret : The Rwandan cabaret may be an authentic tavern, with a proper sign and terrace, but is often a more humble combination of social club, bar, and general store. It might be simply a few thatched huts in someone’s yard or a one-room shop with no sign, a floor of beaten earth, with cases of beer—especially Primus, a Belgian beer much prized in Rwanda—and soft drinks stacked against the back wall, and bottles and large cans of home-brewed banana and sorghum beer lined up behind the counter. The shop might stock a few groceries, some fabrics, household and hardware items, and so forth.
EARLY MORNING IN NYAMATA
Cassius Niyonsaba
3Memorial : Assuming that they would be the principal targets of Hutu violence, many Tutsi men fled to the hills when the 1994 genocide began. Women, children, and the elderly sought refuge in the churches that had always provided sanctuary in the past, but there they were horribly butchered, and two of those churches, at Nyamata and N’tarama, have been designated as genocide memorial sites.
4interahamwe (“Those who attack together”) : These Hutu extremist militias, created by the Habyarimana clan in the early 1990s, were trained by the Rwandan army and sometimes received additional instruction from French soldiers. Their chief weapons were gleaming new machetes supplied in the thousands by government officials and the army. Tens of thousands of these activists recruited, trained, and led the citizen killers of the genocide.
THE BIG AND LITTLE MARKETS
Jeannette Ayinkamiye
5corrugated metal : In Machete Season, Hatzfeld devotes an entire chapter to corrugated metal, which the Belgians brought to Rwanda after World War I to use as roofing for colonial buildings. With time, this material became the roofing of choice for even the most modest dwelling, the terre-tôle, or “sheet metal adobe.” Used as a unit of measure (a house “of ten sheets”) and of exchange (a nanny goat costs two sheets), sheet metal is the only element of a house villagers cannot make themselves, for rainy Rwanda does not provide thatching material. A dismantled roof is easily transported, and in 1994, sheet metal pillaged from Tutsi houses and then abandoned by exhausted Hutus fleeing into exile in Congo was sometimes collected by Tutsi survivors struggling to rebuild their homes.
THE BUGESERA ROAD
Francine Niyitegeka
6awalé : Also called igisoro in Rwanda (and familiar to American children as mancala), awalé belongs to a worldwide family of games played on a board with a series of holes usually arranged in two or four rows. The strategy of these “sowing games” is based on picking up all the seeds in a hole, then sowing them one at a time until one player has captured all the seeds in play.
7inkotanyi of the RPF : Known as “The Invincible,” these Tutsi rebels were essentially exiled troops who organized in Uganda and other neighboring nations in 1988 to fight Habyarimana’s dictatorship. They formed the basis of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and began military operations against the Rwandan Army in 1990. On the opening day of the 1994 genocide, the RPF 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.
AT THE WIDOWS’ CORNER
Angélique Mukamanzi
8sitatunga : This antelope of amphibian habits has an oily, water-repellent coat of chocolate or grayish brown, striped with white in the male. Its slender, splayed-out hoofs allow it to run swiftly through mire, but make its gait on dry land somewhat ungainly. The sitatunga feeds at dawn and dusk on papyrus leaves, and in case of danger can hide for hours, submerged in water with only its nose showing.
BICYCLE-TAXIS UNDER AN ACACIA
Innocent Rwililiza
9Boda-boda : Part of the African bicycle culture, the Boda-boda taxis began in the 1960s and ’70s on the Kenyan-Ugandan border, where there was a no-man’s-land between the border posts that people could cross without the paperwork required for motor vehicles. Bicycle owners would shout “Boda-boda” (border to border) to attract customers for their Indian or Chinese bicycles equipped with locally made cushions and carriers for customers and goods.
10Arusha Accords : The Arusha Peace Agreement was a set of five accords signed in August 1993 in Arusha, Tanzania, which—temporarily—ended the civil war between the Rwandan government and the RPF. The implementation of the powersharing agreements of this cease-fire collapsed with the assassination of Habyarimana that unleashed the Rwandan genocide.
A SECRET FLIGHT
Odette Mukamusoni
11boyeste : A girl domestic servant, the boyeste is the female equivalent of the traditional “boy.”
12turquoise soldiers : The United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda was dispatched in November 1993 to supervise the implementation of the Arusha Peace Agreement, but 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 their own 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.
13Christian name : Every Rwandan baby is given a personal Rwandan name at birth, and when old enough to be baptized, receives a Western Christian first name.
A CLARIFICATION ALONG THE WAY
Berthe Mwanankabandi
14The testimony of these last is the subject of the author’s book, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak.
TWILIGHT AT LA PERMANENCE
Sylvie Umubyeyi
15gonolek : The gonolek, a bird with a remarkably sonorous call, is quite common on the hills of Rwanda. It has a scarlet belly, a jet-black cloak, and wears a jaunty yellow cap.
*Author’s notes are distinguished from the translator’s by a bold typeface.