NINETEEN YEARS OLD
Daughter of Joseph-Désiré Bitero, Hutu prisoner
You know Gatare, the teachers’ neighborhood in Nyamata. That’s where I was born. We lived there in the first house built in brick because my papa aspired to be a prominent person. In reality, I grew up near Kanazi, in a cob-walled place, the one with the rusted sheet metal you see along the road, where our family settled after we returned from Congo. Not a single memory has stuck with me from our escape to the Congolese camp. I was a little girl. I can recite like a schoolgirl the twists and turns of the panicked journey they talk about, the camps that opened their arms to us at the foot of the volcano. I have forgotten personal details, except that we ate a lot of cookies and that we were surrounded by black lava everywhere we looked. I think we children went to the outdoor preschool, we played with traditional balls made of banana leaves. We lived in plastic-sheet tents—I’ve seen them in photos.
I remember many aggravations from after we returned to Nyamata because I endured them throughout my childhood. Papa had gone off to prison, and Mama raised the hoe from morning to night. We were forbidden from entering the neighbors’ yards. We had to entertain ourselves within our enclosure, without dillydallying along the way. We made do by ourselves. I jumped rope, I played soccer with my brothers. Since then, my fondness for soccer has always stayed with me. I am skillful at playing; I watch the matches when I can. What holidays or ceremonies do I remember? Dancing at an uncle’s wedding was memorable. Yes, there’s that, because it was our first visit. I also won’t forget the Sunday of my confirmation, when I wore a white dress like so many other girls.
We were thrilled by the mass at Christmas every year. We put aside our worn-out clothes. We went to church in fine order, then continued the vigil at home. My mama served quite extraordinary meals, like rice with grilled sweet potatoes and gravy. No one invited us, not even our aunt from Nyamata, who was a well-to-do nurse. The days of the Nativity, we weren’t allowed to have fun with the families next door. Joy made itself scarce. Danger loomed everywhere. Neighbors hurled all kinds of threats and grumbled about revenge. We were too little to measure the actual malice of the neighborhood folks. We avoided them.
Our whole ethnicity has gotten a terrible reputation, but in our family, we know we are seen as worse than the others. We pay for sins we didn’t commit. And there is no way to fight back because it has to do with Papa. It’s uncomfortable to admit and unthinkable to complain. Anyway, complain to whom? We keep it inside, the sadness in the soul.
Years ago, my mama was a nurse’s aide at the Nyamata maternity clinic. Since Congo, though, she farms to survive. She works the hoe but makes no profit from the land. It’s obvious that farming disgusts her. When she despairs, she gives up the hoe. She has headaches. When a child annoys her or when a neighbor offends her, or when a drought lasts, her troubles become so overwhelming we have to take her to the hospital for psychiatric care. I feel endlessly sorry for Mama. Myself, I don’t suffer from anxiety, but her difficulties pain me all the same.
We children are the only ones who stand by her. No relatives come to her aid, as tradition says they should, not even with little gifts or small sums of money. We no longer see our relatives. Some didn’t come back from Congo, others chose to stay in Gitarama without ever returning to Nyamata, and, of course, most are just as needy as we are. They steer clear of our parcel. People in our family don’t love each other like before. In Africa, if you find yourself without a family, it’s a big thing. The same goes for acquaintances. They no longer sneak away a few minutes to stop in, especially if the rains are short or some misfortune is hanging over their homes. My papa’s former colleagues don’t dare drop by to say hello. His death sentence frightens them. Basically, people fear nasty looks if they come to our door. They finagled their penance, they humble themselves before the gaze of the authorities, and they fear being suspected of negationism. We manage on our own. Once you have been abandoned by everyone, you get used to not expecting the mutual support that tradition demands.
* * *
MY NAME IS Fabiola Mukayishimire. It means “thanks be to God.” I am nineteen years old. When I was a little girl, the rumors vexed me without my ever imagining what really happened. When I was more grown up, I insisted on knowing why Papa was never coming back. Mama lied: He had left for a faraway voyage. He works nonstop for a successful company. He is going to bring the whole family to the new place where he lives. Fabrice and I continued to worry. Since we repeated the questions about Papa’s extraordinary absence, she finally admitted that he was in prison. I was seven years old. We asked why he had been imprisoned, and she replied that they kept him there like nearly all the papas from the hills. Why? She weaved her way through explanations.
It was at primary school that I began to understand. During history lessons, classmates from the other ethnicity questioned the teachers about what had happened. The teachers explained the killings. Did my classmates turn around to look at me? I don’t remember anything surprising. Wickedness never touched me at school in Kanazi. The pupils didn’t know very much about my papa because we had been in Nyamata during the events. I’m not sure if this is also how it was for my older brother Fabrice. Anyway, I myself was never pestered with nasty words. I learned about the ethnic conflict in class. I found out some information about the killings, and later about the escape to Congo, the trials of the ones who confessed. The teachers delivered their lesson without adding personal details about the culprits or the dead. No mention of names or relatives. We didn’t talk about it at home. We turned the dial on the radio to avoid the commemorative programs. That was a rough time for us. I was brought to the memorial site with my school. I heard witness accounts during the ceremonies. Which ones? The stories about the people burned in the church. The people thrown into pits, the looted houses, the expeditions in places like the Nyamwiza marshes.
My brother and I connected all that with Papa’s punishment. One morning, point-blank, I asked my mama if Papa had done something terrible. She told me that he hadn’t killed anyone. I persisted with the stubbornness of a little girl. She explained that he had kept his machete from the blood, but that he had been a famous guide. We lived that way for a long time, without really knowing if Papa wielded his machete or not. The rumors flew; with Papa gone, they kept us from digging too deep. When a child ponders things with no adult to support her, she feels uneasy and she loses trust. In other words, she stops listening. In 2003, we heard that the other children’s papas were leaving prison in a long line of pardoned men. We wondered why Papa wasn’t one of them. But really, we wondered why, if Papa hadn’t killed with his blade, he had been given the death penalty.
That’s just the life we children lived: in dread of knowing what happened and what was going to happen to our papa. Fabrice, too, started questioning again. When nothing was going right at home—for example when sickness came, when drought ate away the land—we exchanged restless or comforting words. We shared our thoughts: Why isn’t Papa here? Is he ever coming back? And if Papa was here, how our lives would improve. That’s how we spoke to each other in difficult times.
* * *
MY PAPA’S NAME is Joseph-Désiré Bitero. He used to teach at the Nyamata school. They said he was jovial and very mild-mannered. Everyone knows his name in Nyamata because he led the young interahamwe in Habyarimana’s party. I was too young to attend his trial in 1996, when he received the death sentence. I know that afterward people testified against him during the gaçaças, but I didn’t go to listen. The first time I visited him in Rilima? I was in my fifth year of primary school, eleven years old.
It was good to see my papa. He seemed kind, very strong, affectionate. He showed he was a good papa. Did I ask him any questions? Does a little girl dare ask a personal question of her prisoner father? Even now, at nineteen years old, I keep from asking him about his past doings. I go to Rilima when I can, on weekends, otherwise during school vacations. Sometimes I take a bike-taxi, and sometimes my brothers rent a bicycle and bring me along. The route takes several hours; we hold out hope for a five-minute chat. If the crowd jostling to get in is too big, the guards cut two minutes off the visits.
Papa asks how things are going at school. We exchange quick bits of news. I ask him if his health is as he would like it to be. At the prison, things are a mess. Visitors poke their ears into our conversations; we don’t have the chance to talk privately with Papa. He always has a smile for me. He never mentions the genocide. He used to speak a little about the gaçaças, about the steps he was taking, about the letters he was writing to the high court in order to have the decision overturned. He hinted at changes in people’s attitudes. We don’t speak about it anymore. No, he has never picked up his pen to write me the truth: “Listen, Fabiola, you are grown up enough to understand, this is why I have been punished…” No. I think it’s too beneath him. He and his conscience fight over his past. He writes to encourage us to grow up brave. He believes that God is going to lend a hand in his release. In Rilima, he devotes himself to God, he implores us to give Him thanks, and he sings hallelujahs at the top of his lungs, which rise up into the sky. He shows his repentance. He tries to raise our spirits. He insists that we study without distractions at school.
* * *
I AM A boarder in my second-to-last year at the secondary school in Gitarama. It’s a scientific institution, where I study mathematics, economics, and geography. I get up and shower at four-thirty, study at five o’clock. At six we gather to clean the grounds, and lessons start at seven, last until two o’clock, then lunchtime. In the afternoon, we amuse ourselves with various activities like sports and television. At seven o’clock, study, followed by the evening meal. On weekends, we are given more time for recreation—soccer, which I play without fail, and music. We rehearse songs in chorus, we watch movies. Myself, I’m fond of videos of love songs. I really enjoy romantic shows, like Indian series. The actors I admire the most are Indian, because they play romantic roles. They show affection and a good education, and they never shout impolite things at each other. They love with passion and they dress with style. I stay away from war stories, like violent American films.
The school makes computers available, which allow us to learn about computer science and the internet. I’ve created a Facebook profile, which doesn’t have a lot of friends yet. I’m not as active as the other girls, only on the sly. Anyway, at school we are forbidden to waste our time on it, and I don’t have the pocket money to break the rules at an internet café. I have a lot of school friends. Like normal girls, we talk about everything, about ourselves, our futures, our fashion obsessions, our secret whims and private thoughts, and boys, of course, because it’s a coed school. The boys show off and strut around; we make fun of them without their noticing. We never bring up our parents.
No one talks about the genocide at school. We’re boarders—we don’t know one another’s families, and there is no mention of ethnicities. Thanks to the long road separating us from Nyamata, no one has heard of Joseph-Désiré Bitero. We don’t quarrel. I know that careless words might offend one friend of mine, so I prefer not to risk troubling her with secrets. Not a single Tutsi student has ever come up to me to talk about the genocide, even by accident.
In Kanazi, I stayed silent around schoolmates. When I’m in groups, I try not to stand out, I throw myself into fun activities so as to forget the past. Sometimes I think about my mama, who lives alone farming to feed the family. The constant search for money bends a mama’s back. It upsets me more at school than it does at home. My mind drifts off into nostalgic thoughts. Worries lose me points on my exams. In my school, survivor children receive aid from the FARG, the Genocide Survivors Support and Assistance Fund.1 It pays the minervals when the need arises. Life is meant to be easier for those students than it is for me, despite the deaths they have suffered through. Everyone can see that they grow up more comfortably. They feel innocent, they aren’t ashamed of their loved ones. They know that others view them more positively than me. I’m nostalgic for an optimistic life.
So I pray like everyone else. I had a Catholic baptism. I beg the dear Lord to improve my family’s hard existence. At church, I avoid choir and charitable activities but not God. I have been devout ever since I was very little. I have never dreamt of giving it up, I have never faltered. I pray for Rwandan unity and for my papa to be released very soon. God knew what was happening on the hills, but He provided human beings with the intelligence to choose between Good and Evil. He gave them the ability to recognize sin and to determine their own actions. The priests at church use veiled words to evoke the extermination. They speak about it in terms of morality. They console their flock, people who have lost so much or who have been mired in misfortune. They also preach against the genocidal ideology of the former government’s decrees. At school, young people avoid sharing their thoughts about God. If someone brings up the problem of Evil in one of our conversations, we are careful not to blame Him. We fear God.