ALPHONSE HITIYAREMYE AND CONSOLÉE MUREKATETE

HUTU FARMERS

Parents of Jean-Pierre

ALPHONSE: When I was three, a mysterious illness killed my father; when I was ten, a fever carried off my mother. A relative gave me shelter in exchange for odd jobs. In my fourteenth year, the hoe held out its handle for me to find food. I didn’t finish primary school. That’s a drawback that persists to this day. A prosperous farmer adopted me as his son for my strength in the field. He gave me my chance in farming. I raised crops, I bought land, and I was happily wed to Consolée.

Before the genocide, we were somewhat well-to-do. We farmed two fertile parcels near the water. The banana plantation gave in abundance. It wasn’t every Hutu who owned cows like mine. The genocide drove us back into poverty. I spent seven years in Rilima. Consolée didn’t give up farming. She put her admirable energy into the harvests and the schoolwork for the children’s education. Porridge for meals, gathering wood, cleaning—it was difficult, but it wasn’t miserable. Which is why I say now, today, that if the children were knocked off course because of me, they still experienced a childhood with less suffering than mine.

CONSOLÉE: When we returned from Congo, everything set the children trembling. They were always on the alert. They stopped listening to instructions, and their minds deserted their lessons. When they were harassed with vengeful taunts on the way to school, they obviously asked me why. They reasoned as little ones do; they had lived in exile in the camps. It was risky explaining the actual causes to them. They might become discouraged at school or stand up to the survivor children to fight. So I sidestepped. I answered, “Be brave. The attacks won’t last. It’s just a bunch of derelict kids.” They heard the gossip on the hill, they learned the lessons about the genocide at school, and they seemed afraid. They grew bolder. They insisted on knowing why their papa remained in prison. They weren’t worried about the machetes or the reasons for the battles. The killings didn’t kindle their curiosity. They wanted to know what their papa had done wrong, his character, when he would be released. First I tried to protect them. I told them, “Be careful. The survivors have suffered to their very bones. They might want to do us harm. Thoughts of vengeance inflame them. Watch that you behave humbly.” Then I explained how we had been contaminated by the war. I explained the killings, the defeat, and our escape to Congo. Back then, we spoke of war. Over the years, we had gotten used to the word “war,” intambara, or “killing,” ubwicanyi. Basically, we didn’t really understand what the word “genocide” meant. We didn’t want to risk understanding. In our family, the children brought the word home from school.

ALPHONSE: One day, my eldest boy came to visit me. I handed him a piece of paper for my wife. In the message, I wrote, “I confess. It’s no use denying anymore.” Consolée wasn’t ignorant of my misdeeds. How could she be? In the morning, she saw me leave with the expeditions, in the front line ahead of my colleagues. And at night, I came home with my clothes stinking of blood and mud. She understood what I had confessed. She could speak to the children with honest words. Basically, the explanations the mamas gave their children depended on the conduct of the prisoners: If they denied all involvement in the killings, the mamas withheld every truth from their children. If they confessed a little to the judges, the mamas told the children a little—in other words, what the papas had agreed upon with the authorities. In our family, it was a big thing, thanks to Consolée.

CONSOLÉE: It’s different for the Tutsis. The people who experienced the machetes suffer from sadness, and from anger, too. They have no trouble giving details to back up their explanations. The parents speak forcefully of their sorrows to their children. Their memories don’t distort things much. The more you suffer injustice in life, the more you ask yourself the right questions, and the more you dig around for answers.

For the wrongdoers, the release from prison gives you the courage to speak. In Rilima, waiting in line with the other wives, we didn’t talk about our children. Each guilty family zigzagged in its own way. Today still, many wrongdoers fine-tune the lies about their time in Congo; they grumble, their fingers pointed at the survivors. Their children sulk. The children, like their parents, beat around the bush, claim they don’t know anything because there is nothing to know. But the truth lurks about. They bump against it because they listen to their classmates. They hear the gossip. During the gaçaças, so many children crawled through the grass like little bandits trying to slip their ears in among the public.

ALPHONSE: When I left, I was mended. Today, I help my wife with the children’s education, since it is above all their mama they listen to. I tell them bit by bit, at night after the meal or in the fields. No child has ever called me bad. But they feel blameworthy for what they hear. They get hung up and keep to the side if they come across young people their age. It upsets them deep down inside. It obviously troubles me to leave them that to inherit. Wouldn’t someone who doesn’t feel this way be dangerous?

CONSOLÉE: Do children in other families get angry with their parents? Who knows. I have seen some who ask forgiveness in their parents’ place. In our family, anyway, the children carry the burden of the genocide. The children learn about brutality from a young age. They hear stories of machetes drenched in blood. Gossip eats away at them, and poverty pens them in. They endure the work in the fields. We adults have ruined their innocence. Basically, they were denied a happy childhood. Young people from both ethnicities are connected in this way. I mean, the lack of innocence connects them.

We combined our strength to encourage them. Our children don’t smoke cannabis. When they go to the market to sell crops, they buy something for the family. They don’t waste; they put the money in their pocket. They don’t drink much Primus. You don’t see them rebelling. They sit with their family at church. You see them good-natured. They still seem timid, though. We can see they have been affected. They have been hindered at school. The best grades have eluded them. Jean-Pierre, for example, studied too hastily. He sacrificed the end-of-year prizes and the compliments they give the best students. Over time, we have learned to live with that. That’s how I raise them.