Everyone is in a panic this morning at Marie-Chantal’s. The faces are solemn, attending the lamentations of the mistress of the house as she beseeches heaven for help. She denounces the wide range of evil spirits that have persecuted her over the years. Her daughter Fabiola does her best to calm Marie-Chantal down as inquisitive neighbors observe the drama from behind the hedgerow. Last night the family cow disappeared, its halter left lying at the foot of a tree. Someone had to have heard it galloping off. Certain of those present thought the cow must have returned to the rancher who sold it to her, but one of Marie-Chantal’s sons comes back empty-handed. He sets out again, this time with his brother, to scour the bush. Others insist that a curse must have driven the cow mad. But why the curse? Still others maintain that the apparent disappearance is merely meant to cover up a death due to negligence. (The one cow that each family receives as part of Rwanda’s agricultural reforms isn’t replaced in the case of mistreatment.) The most suspicious among them say that the animal was probably sold.
Nothing ever goes well in this house. Two days earlier it was a problem with one of her sons, who had to be taken to the clinic with severe stomach pains. Had he been poisoned? Not long before that, sheet metal broke off their roof during a rainstorm. No one in Nyamata complains more than Marie-Chantal. This has been going on for quite some time—since the end of the genocide.
She had married a teacher from a good family, a tall, strong, cheerful man who swiftly climbed the ranks of Habyarimana’s organization to become head of the party’s youth movement. She grew a taste for life among Gatare’s notables. She gloated over the timorous glances people cast at the wife of the interahamwe chief, Joseph-Désiré Bitero. She was seen strutting around during the killings, in the streets and at the maternity hospital where she worked. But then disaster hit. In less time than it takes to describe, she found herself barefoot on the road to the Congolese camps. And once she returned from exile, there she was: the wife of a horrible bastard, a woman who had shamelessly exploited her position. She was obliged to move to an adobe hut and take up the hoe to feed her children.
Nowadays, no one loiters at the church as much as Marie-Chantal in her bid for the priest’s pity. She faithfully frequents local charities, bemoans her misery in the clinic courtyard, and collects all the public assistance she can at the district offices. She wears her poverty on her clothes, a poverty verging on destitution. It would be an understatement to say that she remains ignorant of the discreet elegance of the poor as they go, dignity intact, to the market or a ceremony. She drags out her misfortune with the brazenness of someone incapable of sparing a thought for the women around her, including those women whose husbands were cut down in the marshes.
Her daughter Fabiola doesn’t follow in her footsteps. One hardly ever sees them together in central Nyamata. Instead, with her timid gait, she tries to fade into the background, even though she feels compassion for her mother and is quick to say so. She stands by Marie-Chantal, and clearly feels deeply grateful to her for having raised her through adversity.
The attitude of her son, Fabrice, makes it difficult to gauge his feelings. He doesn’t complain, never rebels, and asks for nothing. He makes himself scarce. Expelled from school, because, he says, tuition was too expensive for them at the time, he now refuses to join in farming the family land. At most he might lend a hand weeding or at harvesttime. He leaves the house early in the morning and returns only to eat at night. He is trying to make a go of it in Kigali, where he sometimes spends several weeks whenever he scrapes together enough to pay for the ticket. Otherwise, he wanders Nyamata. He doesn’t have the money for a Primus in the big cabarets like Heaven, Heroes, or Red Lion, where young people his age meet. He doesn’t care enough for urwagwa to be enticed by the dive bars. He hangs around on the main street dressed in his American shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. He shoots the breeze, takes on odd jobs here and there, and shows real grit, especially in restaurant work, where hiring comes just as fast as firing because the owners, often Tutsis, presumably don’t cut him many breaks. He sometimes goes to Nyamata’s concert venue or, more accurately, its dimly lit den, where, in sauna-like humidity, sports fans gather to watch the English Premier League. Fabrice loves soccer, although soccer hasn’t exactly reciprocated. On Sundays, he meets colleagues at the field when Bugesera FC has a match. With his powerful legs, exceptional quickness on the wing, nimble dribbling, and deft left foot, he probably would have had enough talent to be a standout for the Bugesera club, earning bonuses and savoring the applause, had he been able to participate in practice. He makes do playing intervillage matches in the Kanazi meadows.
He was five years old at the time of the killings, an age when childhood memories become engraved. Although he spent all his time closed up with his family in the yard of their house in Gatare, it is unfortunate that he keeps his memories to himself. He prefers to talk about the escape to Congo. What he remembers of it is quite surprising. He visits his father every month, but they never have more than five minutes to talk. It is difficult to know what he thinks of his father’s role as head of the interahamwe, or how he feels, for example, when someone mentions his actions in leading the attack at the church. How does he make sense of his father’s negationist self-defense at Rilima? Not once during our conversations does he reveal a hint of complicity with or reproach for his father. He is trying to draw out a thread among his childhood memories, something to hang on to from a time when his life was, to say the least, turned upside down. Like all other young Hutus, he has trouble understanding why others might be interested.