NINETEEN YEARS OLD
Son of Fulgence Bunani, Hutu prisoner
When I fish, I’m out the door in the evening. With farming, I’m up at five o’clock. It’s a little over a two-kilometer walk to the field. Mama joins me after housework around the yard. Our plot takes up some seven and a half acres in a place called Batsinda, near the river. When Papa’s strength set the pace for ours, the land gave in abundance. It yields plenty to those who put a lot of effort into it. I take a break once the sun begins beating down. I head home for lunch, rest while the sun lasts, and return to the field until 5:30 or 6:00. I get washed, I relax. If I scrape up enough, I buy myself a Primus, because it’s a treat. Otherwise, I have some urwagwa or sorghum porridge—that’s good, too. Our family makes them tasty.
Since Papa’s imprisonment, it’s been up to me to distill the bananas for the urwagwa. How? You select bunches of slightly bitter bananas, you add plantains, and you bury them four days. You take them out and mash them in a bucket with herbs. You grill the sorghum, you mix it with the juice for the fermentation, and you bury it again to contain the fumes. After a day’s wait, you pull out the tasty urwagwa that everyone craves. In our family, I don’t make decisions in place of my papa, because I was born a child with only my mama in front of me. But in the drink business, it’s me who speaks up and she who takes my side.
In the evenings, I go for walks around Nyarunazi, see pals, or get a shave. I’m asleep at nine o’clock unless a friend stops in to chat. Nothing but rest on Sundays. I’m a good Catholic but not so fervent. I pray for Papa before bed. I appeal to God again when I get up. One still wonders, though, how a good and all-powerful God could shut His eyes to such killings. I gladly attend mass but not every Sunday. Afterward, I stroll around Kibungo or else I wash clothes. I visit friends—I join them in their courtyards, or we meet along the way to shoot the breeze. We share our thoughts and bottles of beer.
There are no televisions in Kiganwa. In Nyamata, I don’t stay to watch; I couldn’t name my favorite programs. You won’t find a field for kicking the ball around, either, because farming has swallowed up all the flat plots of land. I listen to the Rwandan team’s matches on the radio. I root for all the national team’s players, Michel Ndahinduka in particular—he’s a dribbler from Nyamata. In his childhood he wore our jersey with the striker’s number nine. A friend owns a smartphone. We watch movies, but I’m not overeager to see how they end. We listen to music videos. Rwandan music makes me happy, of course, and the music of young people my age like Tom Close or Kitoko, especially dance music. Do I dance? Not enough time. And where would I? Every month I head to the Nyamata market to sell sweet potatoes, or cassava flour, or beans when prices bottom out. I take advantage of the trip to buy an outfit or a phone card and cheer on the Nyamata team with the others around the soccer field. Go to a cabaret? Never, I haven’t got the money. Listen to a band some night at the Black and White? I haven’t got polished shoes. When I visit the family in Kigali, we stroll the streets, we admire the new neighborhoods, and we share news about relatives we haven’t seen for a time. My cousins point out where prestigious people live. We obviously don’t go in anywhere; I’ve never stepped foot in a movie theater or an internet café. Anyway, I don’t know how to work the computer.
* * *
MY NAME MEANS “one always counts on friends.” My father’s the one who chose it. I was born in 1992, I don’t know the month. There are four of us children in the family. My father is called Fulgence Bunani. He lives in Rilima. He was first put in prison after we returned from Congo. Our country’s president pardoned him in the seventh year of his sentence. In 2010, a gaçaça trial sent him back again. We were disappointed beyond measure. Before that, he had proved himself a praiseworthy farmer, his business prospered, and the urwagwa trade filled his pockets.
My mama’s name is Jacqueline Mukamana. As a farmer, she holds her own on the family plot; she carries on quite capably with my papa away. I have stood by her on the parcel from the age of seventeen; basically, since my papa’s return to prison. I fish at night on the Akagera River. I didn’t leave school gladly. The first time I was expelled; I was in my third year of primary school—I was fifteen. I had a clever hand at math, and I saw myself in a premium job later on. But the principal called Mama in, demanding the minervals right there and then. She lowered her gaze. He warned her that with each payment we missed, he would send me home. Poverty led to more comings and goings; Mama could see that she was stuck. The land refused to give her good harvests. She handed me the hoe and asked me to be patient on the parcel.
In 2003, Papa was released with a long line of repentant prisoners. Once home, he took the hoe from my hands. The parcel produced in abundance, and the harvest paid the minervals. For two years, I returned to school, until the first semester of my fifth year. I had my sights set on studying crafts so I could learn a trade in town. Then my papa was taken back to prison in 2010. That was the end of school. At the penitentiary, he offered to sell a strip of land to cover tuition, but Mama decided that I would stay on in farming. I was a little angry. Not too much, though, since I knew that selling land would set off a family feud.
* * *
I FIRST HEARD about the war when we were in Congo. I was a little boy. We lived two years in the Masisi camp, next to the volcano. My papa distilled and sold his drink, my mama sold her strength in the Congolese women’s fields. I went with her because preschool was rare. I don’t remember any tough times in Congo. It was good for a child; we children played. Except at the end, when everyone was mistreated. The soldiers fired their artillery shells, and it was an awful tumult of bloody panic and fear. We left the camp sprinting; we trekked in columns for days to Gisenyi. Trucks transported us to the district, where we walked to our hill in Kiganwa. The house stood in a sorry state, with no sheet metal on the roof and broken windows. Scrub was eating away the land. Papa didn’t last more than two weeks at home. The soldiers came, tied his arms, and took him away to the penitentiary with his colleagues from the hill.
Mama went down alone to clear the plot of brush. She started planting what to eat. The Tutsi neighbors glared at us, of course, and many hurled threats. The way to school could be full of dread. It was risking shame to get too close to a prisoner’s kid. It wasn’t easy going to Nyarunazi or Kibungo. We dodged stones as well as insults. When trouble lurked, we walked behind the bushes, following in each other’s steps. Sometimes, when we couldn’t avoid going through the center of Nyarunazi, survivors pitted children against each other. Their words made war between us. I had to put up with it—I couldn’t very well change papas.
When neighbors talked about Congo at evening gatherings, the little one that I was perked up his ears. I might even ask them for details. If the questions seemed valid, and not too demanding, the neighbors offered answers. This was in the evening. Later, in the black of night, my childish imagination would lead me back to the commotion of the camp and frighten me in the midst of machetes with a dance of threatening faces. It all happened in another world. Then I waited for the faces to return from where they’d come.
Like any child deprived of his papa, I wanted to know why mine wasn’t coming home. Mama said a few words about the killings, but she didn’t explain my papa’s captivity. I listened carefully to the rumors. The first thing I heard was that a lot of people had been cut in Ntarama, in Kibungo, and everywhere else. I followed the radio programs. I listened to tearful music and commentaries. I went with a cousin to visit the memorial.
The marshes, though, never. I don’t have a single colleague whom I’d dare suggest it to. I haven’t had the opportunity to go with someone meticulous with the facts. I lack a decent education to talk about the genocide openly with friends. In Kiganwa, we barely mention it; we don’t have the curiosity or the time. We make passing remarks about what we hear on the radio, and rumors are all one gets from casual conversations, at the cabaret, or on the way to work. But families share nothing of their private thoughts. At school, they teach the extermination. The lessons are meant to be general, emptied of accusations. Among Tutsi schoolmates, though, there’s no hide-and-seek. They attack you if you set about talking like that.
The truth has found its place as I’ve left childhood behind. Now I’m familiar with the history I hear during the commemorations. But as I said, it’s different with explanations in the family. I’ve questioned Mama about Papa. She said that he’s the only one who can provide satisfactory answers about the genocide. She refuses to answer in his place. She’s a loyal wife. She’s not spendthrift or blameworthy. She fears the traditional anger a husband feels when confronted with a bad wife; she refuses to make his imprisonment worse. She never gets angry with him.
In Rilima, Papa received a sentence of twelve years; he stayed for seven. I don’t know if the punishment makes up for his misdeeds. How could I know? When he left in 2003, he didn’t explain things directly; he didn’t address his wrongdoing. He told us that he had acknowledged sins of genocide at his trial, that he had received a pardon in return. Sometimes he told us about his prisoner routine, about his duties and chores, how he and his colleagues had gotten through those years in prison. Then he described the miracle of his release.
Still, he never sat me down on a bench in the yard to share his opinion of the killings with me. He returned to running the parcel and the cabaret without bothering about explanations. He showed himself to be a remarkable farmer again. The house’s veranda, he built that. He planted a banana grove, he distilled his renowned urwagwa. It’s impossible to figure out the thoughts of a father after he has spent seven years in prison. Before the killings, people said he was very devout. He read from the Bible wearing the deacon’s robe, and he preached as the priest’s replacement at less important masses. After he was freed, he didn’t miss church a single Sunday. But it’s hard to know now if he prays with any fervor.
I felt some frustration, of course. It’s complicated having a papa who has just left prison. Shortly after that, in 2010, I went to sit in the grass at the gaçaça courts. I listened to the trials without flinching. We heard a lot of unexpected information. One acquaintance would accuse another, “You were in an expedition that Sunday. I saw you in the marshes below Nyarunazi.” Or, “You’re the one who struck my sister with your machete. Everyone saw you.” The witnesses’ accounts poured out. People accused the criminals; we learned who had done wrong on which day in which place. I heard my papa answer questions and listened to him describe several of his expeditions. It was agonizing.
When the trials ended, I was wary of learning more. I only wanted to hear the facts from my papa’s lips. I’m not sure now—it’s a bit confused. Maybe I just wasn’t curious anymore. A child doesn’t want to hear everything his papa has to say. In any case, on the last day of the gaçaça, they gave him a life sentence because of the business with Ernestine and her baby boy. They tied him up and took him to Rilima right there and then.