Several people converged at the Kigali Public Library, Kacyiru on April 9, for an event titled "Café Littéraire” that entailed discussions about "Sans ciel ni terre, Paroles orphelines du génocide des Tutsi”, a French book by Hélène Dumas, a research fellow at the CNRS (Institut d’histoire du temps present).

The book translated as, "Without Heaven or Earth, Orphaned Words of the Tutsi Genocide,” hinges on 2,000 notebooks written by 105 orphans of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and survivors of the terror.

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The book attempts to write the history of the genocide from a child’s perspective, allowing the reader to see and hear the singular expression of a collective experience.

Aged between eight and twelve years old during the genocide, the youngsters recounted stories of their previous lives, highlighted as happy, then of their shock after joining primary school. After learning that they were Tutsi, they were bullied by their teachers and other students.

These orphans were invited in 2006 by the Association of Genocide Widows (AVEGA) to write their experiences of the genocide, in three stages (before, during, and after), in notebooks, in "a perspective of psychological catharsis (an expression of formerly repressed feelings to overcome problems associated with them) and testimonial.’ Some refer to themselves as "standing dead.”

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"I was helped by two Rwandans, we had to pay attention to each term used by the children, so as not to betray the language of their memories. There were psychological difficulties in this exercise, for me, but especially for my two surviving co-translators, confronted in each line with violence transcribed in its raw state. Far from being naive or evasive, these testimonies succeed in saying the unspeakable and inform us about what we, readers, are capable of reading or hearing,” Dumas said.

Dumas explained that the children narrated their parents’ concern, the violence against them, like a real hunt, with the presence of fierce dogs. In addition, the perpetrators claimed the support of God, their violence being blessed by a pastor.

"The Tutsi victims tried to protect themselves, but had nothing other than stones to throw. The children reveal their resentment and the doubt they had towards their God. In their notebooks, they told the cruel killing of their parents, in agonizing detail.”

The book demonstrates the true obstinacy of the perpetrators who staged cruel scenes and spared no one, neither the elderly, nor children and babies, nor even pregnant women, animalizing and dehumanizing the victims.

Women and little girls were raped to infect them with HIV/AIDS intentionally, and murderers referred to victims with dehumanizing terms, such as inyenzi (cockroaches. They gave Tutsi children offensive nicknames utwinzoka (little snakes) or amagi y’inzoka (snake eggs).

A survivor testified that at the age of six, she wanted to commit suicide by throwing herself into a lake.

According to Dumas, these voices allow one to see and hear the singular expression of a collective experience, as close as possible to the children’s words and the grain of the source. The idea is to carry these voices and make them known.

Louisa Lombard, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University in the US, who was part of the panel discussion at the event, explained that learning about what these children’s lives were, their parents, the personalities of their siblings, and how their parents helped them navigate what was becoming an increasingly dangerous world is very powerful and makes the account of what comes next.

"It doesn’t stop with the end of the genocide, the accounts continue and from any of these children’s survivors, their lives were not easy in the aftermath. Seeing how these children continued living after the effects of the genocide is hard to read, but important to read,” she stressed.

Some explained that while they were hiding in the fields, the small birds would chirp, surprised by humans living with them, however, these birds didn’t notice that as they chirped over their heads, they were alerting the killers to where they were hiding.

The children explained the violence they experienced during the genocide, hiding and trying to stay safe – they wrote in a very direct way, describing how they felt, and whom they were interacting with.

"What stood out about this book is that children wrote more about animals and plants, one girl described how the snakes were her friends while hiding during the genocide,” Lombard said.

An extract from Dumas’ book reads, "The snakes were our friends. We spent time in the holes they dug. We spent the night in the bushes where they inhabited. We ate their food. We licked the ground where they left their skins. We dug up the sweet potatoes like moles. We thought that we were related to them. They were good neighbors to us, while humans like us had abandoned us.”

During the event, Sandrine Umutoni, the Minister of State for Youth and Arts appreciated Dumas for taking the time and agreeing to be confronted with these emotions which are so strong because there are no filters for children’s emotions.

"We are not trying to make it look pretty, we say it the way it is and I think that is the beauty of the book. As Helen said, it is important to have the book in Kinyarwanda, and if one day someone dares to look for these authors, to see where they are today, I find it essential to see the progress they have made since these memoirs were done. Maybe that will allow us to have another dimension for this book,” Umutoni said.

Assumpta Ingabire, Director General of National Child Development Agency stressed that she collaborated with Dumas on the book when she was still working for the Ministry of Local Government, and assisted it to go beyond the archives.

"I would like to thank you, I read the book. You gave it to me in 2022. After the genocide, we had 33 orphanages with over 3,000 orphans, it was hard for Rwanda. After 2012, the government decided to close orphanages so that each of these children could find families. At that moment, the First Lady, Jeannette Kagame played a big role. We mobilized these families and today these children have grown up. We do not have orphanages today, we have some institutions that take in children with problems,” Ingabire said.

The English version of the book will be out in June with a different title, "Beyond Despair”. Hard copies of the book are available at Ikirezi Bookshop. Alternatively, one can order an electronic copy.