NINETEEN YEARS OLD
Daughter of Innocent Rwililiza, Tutsi survivor
The semester ended well, safe from bad grades. I am excited about my vacation in Nyamata. Our family lives in the Kayumba neighborhood, on the other side of the high school. The breeze blows its cool air on the dust up there. It’s good. During vacations, I like giving my mama a hand with the cleaning work and preparing the meals. I continue playing basketball, the same as at school. I am often asked to play center, thanks to my long and slender build. I am not much of a dancer. I don’t feel so confident when I dance. At school, dance music is banned in our rooms, and in Nyamata, you don’t see attractive cabarets where you can dance without spending a tidy sum. I’m no worse off.
I visit my girlfriends. We meet up in the courtyard, at my place or theirs, and sometimes share a juice. They are all good friends from school, because that is where I spend most of my time. I wouldn’t say I have a best friend—I mean, a deeply trusted confidante. But we still talk without holding back. We watch movies on our smartphones. We all dislike American films. We can’t get enough of Nigerian soaps, with their love stories and especially the endless family squabbles. For my part, I don’t admire any celebrity in particular; I couldn’t give you a name that excites me, besides singers and soccer players, of course.
I have friends who are boys, like so many other girls. We see each other but our get-togethers aren’t so carefree, because of our parents, who pile on their endless warnings. We chat beside the houses, we stroll along the paths, we go off to quiet spots. Our walks sometimes take us to Nyamata’s main street to check out the stores and review the new fashions. I know most of the boys from primary school, the others are good neighbors. We tease each other, we joke around, and we like to talk about what is happening in our lives. I also go on walks with my brothers and sister. There are four of us children in all. We always get along. Their company cheers me up. We go to the market, to church—we even go down to the center of Nyamata if we catch news of something fun like a soccer match or a show at the Cultural Center. If we come across a little money, we order something to drink.
Nyamata is a quiet little town. Boredom doesn’t last for long. Unlike before, there are plenty of entertaining things to do—it’s nice. Sometimes we go to the internet café. I have opened a Facebook account, and I post photos to my timeline. My friends and I take pictures of one another striking elegant poses, which is quite the comedy. I like looking at everyone’s pictures. I chat online with classmates or former teachers. For example, an American woman from Boston has been writing to me, describing how life is good where she lives, too. We discuss videos we have seen, we share how surprised we are by all the turmoil in the world, and we express our convictions. People from my mother’s family scattered around Canada send me news about the Arctic cold they have over there. I listen to good music on YouTube and the like. I don’t go digging around in celebrities’ private lives as much as some other girls. But I do a little bit. Their love interests, their fashions, their quarrels—it’s tempting to find out those frivolous things. YouTube lets us listen to songs we don’t hear on the radio. We soak up all sorts of startling news about the world. We can see that it’s sensational, but that’s what attracts us. I don’t waste too much time on it, though. And anyway, I avoid fatal disasters, and I steer clear of terrorist attacks—they don’t interest me at all. Young people in America poke around on the internet for hours, but with us it isn’t for so long.
The teachers give us thirty minutes at school. They encourage us to do research on Google to document our work. I am in my third year at Maranyundo Girls School. It’s an American boarding school. Students come from everywhere. School makes me happy because we learn complex subjects, and because we can talk among us girls without the disruptions of the other sex. When I am on vacation, I only surf the internet when I have the money. It really adds up. I can go nearly a week without touching the keyboard.
I often browse sites about the genocide. It turns out that they aren’t very informative. I don’t linger very long. I am mostly interested in pictures. I am always eager for images of the genocide; my little girl’s memory let them all fade away, so for me, they never grow old. I feel sorry for people who can’t look at pictures to really understand the killings. Future generations won’t have these shocking images to fight against forgetting. Don’t the photos violate the victims’ privacy? I can’t say they don’t. Too bad if sensitive people feel offended that someone might see them in a shameful situation. Me, too—I might be seen full of fright in my hiding place, or see my first papa cut and thrown alive into a common grave. Don’t the photographs do an injustice to the women who hiked up their pagnes to their waists to run faster? The humiliation obviously adds to the pain of the memory. But I’m certain that photos refute more strongly than ceremonies the negationist words of people who aren’t the least bit disgusted by the killings. That’s my opinion.
* * *
MY NAME IS Ange Uwase. I don’t exactly know what it means; it’s pretty complicated. Born in Kigali, nineteen years ago, one year before the genocide. Afterward, I grew up in Nyamata, first in a small adobe home in Gasenga, a worthless, dingy neighborhood, if I may say so, then in this brick house in Kayumba. My first papa was killed during the genocide. My other papa’s name is Innocent Rwililiza; he teaches in Nyamata. He’s the one my mama chose to start a second family with. Her name is Épiphanie Kayitesi. She works a bit at the preschool, a lot on our land, and at home, of course.
I think the genocide was never very far from my childhood ears. I have always lived with this commotion. From the age of five, maybe before, I knew that people had been mistreated in a terrible event, but the words flew past without landing. When family acquaintances talked about it, or when my parents brought it up, I could see they were badly shaken. It set me to trembling, I kept my distance. The words frightened me too much for me to try to picture what they meant. The words drove me away. I refused to listen even when it was in secret, the way children usually like to listen to their parents’ private conversations.
In primary school, we youngsters didn’t speak about the genocide very much, and only in timid words. Who had lost their papas, their mamas, or their grandparents; who had no help, who was having a breakdown. We related all our worries without pressing too hard. There weren’t any quarrels yet. It was in the last year of primary school that our teacher began history lessons. We didn’t dare ask him many questions. We were too nervous to contradict him. Some students were interested in delving more deeply into things, others stayed silent—they kept to the side, as if they were sulking. Trouble snuck among the school benches without the teacher noticing.
We spoke about the genocide in our family. It was in the evenings, when everyone was settled in and the questions came thick and fast. Mama and Papa kept certain parts of the story out because of our age. When I was thirteen, I had the courage to ask more probing questions. I saved them for my mama. I always craved more details about my fate because I myself escaped the machete as an infant. In fact, I suffered during the genocide without knowing it. When did I first get this idea? I haven’t got a single memory from that time. But as far back as I could remember, I had always been bothered by something pretty significant that had supposedly happened to me. Mama answered my questions very well, with no hesitation. She told me how the two of us lived in a hiding place in Kigali after my first papa’s death, about the Arab neighbors who hid me during the day, where we took refuge at dusk, and how the fear returned every morning. Innocent told me about being hunted in the Kayumba forest. He didn’t mention every detail, only the most vivid ones for our education.
At times, we feel comfortable enough to speak about it at home. My brothers and sister get their curiosity piqued because they were born later. Our parents recount their experiences without beating about the bush. They say they want to transmit the true story of the Tutsis to our generation. Immaculée sometimes asks me personal questions even though she knows that I was a little baby at the time. If I know, I answer honestly. Things are calm in our living room. We exchange questions and explanations. Papa doesn’t care if he divulges survivors’ shameful secrets: he speaks in direct words of their filthy nakedness, of the children abandoned during their parents’ flight, of the ladies raped in front of people’s eyes. Our conversations aren’t rushed. I can talk about it with Mama for an entire day. I am curious about all the stories and to learn the details of people’s existence during the killings and how they escaped. I want to know the most unforgettable moments, how people constantly helped each other, their nighttime prayers together, the silence in their hiding places. I am always looking to pick up new information. The story of the marshes, the hunts in the forests, the hideout in Kigali. There’s no end to my questions.
Have I gone up to the Kayumba forest where my papa fled? No, and I haven’t visited the house of our Arab neighbors in Kigali, either. I keep from visiting those places, as well as the memorials. I keep away from public ceremonies. I avoid the hubbub of the crowds. I am afraid of the fainting spells, the people weeping, the dramatic gestures.
My brothers and sister and I talk openly. That hardly ever happens among young people. Sometimes it happens with friends by accident. What I mean is, if a person is suddenly in the grip of a crisis, we go off to the side to share our experiences and express our feelings. It’s a way of bringing out before the others’ eyes a bit of what each of us has been through. But we avoid going too deeply into private matters. With the children of the other ethnicity—I am thinking of girlfriends from school—we pass over all that, except during memorial visits. In that case, on the walk there, you choose careful words so as not to upset the other person.
I have Hutu girlfriends at school. Not one has ever come up to me to ask a simple question about how my family escaped the killings or about the existence I myself have had to endure. Why not? I think I know. Young Hutus know the details of the genocide. They learned them at school, they have listened to some of the radio programs. They have heard the melancholy songs. But they shy away from the questions they ought to ask their parents. The facts come out in fits and starts at home. They are afraid of learning what their parents’ involvement was, or they know the reason their papa was put in prison, but they have never heard their families confirm it. There are some who pretend to be ignorant but really know everything.
I know some young Hutus who reject the hate that slips into their families’ explanations. They put their trust in the teachers. Even so, they show less enthusiasm for information than the children of survivors. Their parents curb their curiosity. When they are together in the evenings, are those parents capable of describing how they plied the machete, or of divulging the darkest secrets of a neighbor’s death in the marshes? If so, is a Hutu child then capable of treating his father as someone wicked? No one has ever heard of such a thing.
Resentment unites the two camps of young Hutus and Tutsis, not a hunger for the truth. Young Hutus hate their schoolmates, whom they suspect of favoritism. A few of them are bold enough to say in front of everyone: “I’m going to be pulled out of school because there aren’t enough hands to work our land, while you get special privileges. The FARG pays the minervals at American schools so you can graduate without getting dirt on your hands.” Their Tutsi classmates answer back: “You, you live surrounded by your family’s strong arms, while orphans raise the hoe because the machetes cut their papas in the papyrus. They plow the earth for their brothers’ and sisters’ food. And on Sundays after church they have no one to visit because their family perished beneath the blades.” School life quells their anger but not their suspicions. Distrust lurks behind their friendly greetings; it never gives way. If poverty drives Hutus or Tutsis from school, they long for revenge. It’s understandable.
I don’t see the future as risky or chaotic, though. The farmers’ machetes no longer frighten anyone because people have gladly benefited from the policy of national reconciliation. Even still, while Hutus tend to appear kind, and to present an encouraging face, Tutsis continue to lecture their children to stay on their guard. I don’t know how many generations we will go through before young Tutsis and Hutus can laugh together in sincere friendship. I mean, without fearing a sudden awkwardness. Essentially, the future depends on God’s will.
* * *
NEITHER MAMA’S COURAGE nor her luck saved me; it was God’s mercy. It’s written in the Holy Scriptures that He created mankind. He has counted out the days of each of our lives. Mama survived because it wasn’t her time to go to heaven; my first papa was cut because he was called to go. Neither of them had done more good or more bad. I’m a faithful believer. In Nyamata, I pray at the Presbyterian church. At school, I go to the Catholic church because it is a Catholic school. I find God just as easily among Protestants as among Catholics. The genocide has no influence on my faith. Innocent people were killed, children suffered, poor people were cut, and yet it wasn’t due to God’s negligence. Nothing like that happens by accident or as punishment, or for want of love. Certain people had to die. God knew it because He knows everything.
Why didn’t He reach out a helping hand, why didn’t He strike the killers with lighting to stop them? It’s a question that everyone asks themselves. I often wonder. The question is part of God’s mystery. I survived thanks to God, while other innocent children were cut. It reinforces my faith in Him. I have heard that in terrible moments survivors renounced their faith. I can understand how they turned their backs on God. Questioning His existence is common sense when you are in the forest fleeing the machete from morning to night. Those believers really were trapped, pleading, their hands reaching out for help or a merciful sign that never came. There were some who begged to die as Christians, to kneel on dry land and say a short prayer, without being allowed even that much. Others chose to take refuge in churches, where slaughter awaited them, and still others were traumatized by the behavior of ringleader priests. Their anger is legitimate, and I could never condemn it.
In my heart of hearts, it isn’t something I share, because then the questions it raises end up tormenting me. Faith doesn’t reassure. It doesn’t soothe the anguish of having nearly been exterminated. The church isn’t there to make us forget such an extraordinary event. Believing in God to find some relief—that isn’t something that lasts. I honestly think that God saved me. Many survivors believe the same. Many Hutus believe that God helped them return alive from their exodus in order to begin a new life in peace. We pray. I sing in the choir at church and at school. I sing very well. Singing brings me joy. Exuberant guitars sweep us along behind synthesizers and drums. That offers hope, anyway.