Last Saturday when I stopped at a roadside near a sprawling estate popularly known as Camp Zaïre, in the Gikondo area of Kigali, I saw a lady eying me and got confused.
Last Saturday when I stopped at a roadside near a sprawling estate popularly known as Camp Zaïre, in the Gikondo area of Kigali, I saw a lady eying me and got confused.
I know I am beyond the age where I can attract any fancy, so I examined my clothes and myself to see if everything was in order. As far as I could tell, all was well. So, I approached the lady to see if she’d seen me anywhere.
"So, how is Kanyeshyamba?” she asked, as a way of introducing herself.
And everything fell in place. To me as a Rwandan, that is very normal. But imagine what a non-Rwandan would make of it! I am sure they’d expect her to have reminded me her name, when we’d met, where and with whom else.
Yet by that question alone, I knew she was Germaine (whom I’ll call GG from hence) and that she and her friend had met me in ‘Think Tank’ when I was with Kanyeshyamba and other friends. So, I explained that Kanyeshyamba was fine and offered to call him over so that the three of us could sit somewhere and chat, to which she readily consented.
Before we could proceed, however, we passed through a car washing bay where I picked a gentleman who could wash the car. We then went to a small restaurant nearby, where we found Kanyeshyamba already settled in.
When I handed the car key to the ‘washing’ gentleman to take it, the two asked if I knew him well enough to trust him with the car.
I didn’t know him at all, so I called the gentleman back: "Nsigira indangamuntu, sha, in case you are a criminal!” I was asking him rather impolitely to leave his identity card in my custody, and everybody laughed about it.
But we broke into even more uncontrollable guffaws when he gave me his answer: "Oya, bhoss, I am not a criminal, otherwise I’d be in Kongo or Trente!”
It may be clear that he was claiming innocence of crimes since he was not in the jungles of D.R. Congo or in prison, but what was interesting was that he could joke about it. And that we, too, could all – yes, including our lady guest – laugh about it.
Anyway, he went off without handing in his identity card and, of course, later faithfully brought it back sparklingly clean. I wouldn’t advise anybody to trust a total stranger with a car, but in Rwanda it is done practically every day!
Kanyeshyamba and I had met GG all right, but we did not know much about her.
However, when we asked to know a few details about her background, we were left in awe of the indescribable immensity of the strength of some Rwandans.
GG was born in Butare in 1981, which means that in 1994 she had barely broken into teen age.
The southern town of Butare is near the Rwanda-Burundi border and it could have been relatively easy to sneak into Burundi during the 1994 genocide. Unfortunately, the area gave everybody a false sense of safety because genocide broke out late there.
It will be recalled that the préfet (provincial leader then) of the area was able to hold off the Interahamwe and FAR soldiers until later when he was killed. It is then that hell broke loose. In the ensuing mayhem, GG’s father was tortured in front of the whole family and then killed a most horrifying de
ath. And worse was yet to come, if worse there can be. Even as the father’s body lay there in the typical one-roomed, round hut of the village, the Interahamwe came back.
They plucked the mother from one corner where she was cowering with the children, put her in the centre of the hut and gang-raped her until she was unconscious.
After their macabre pre-occupation, the génocidaires went off "for a rest”, promising the "small cockroaches even worse”. ‘Luckily’ (for lack of an appropriate word), the kids were able to revive their mother before morning and she managed to hobble along with them across the border and into Burundi.
When the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) – It was ‘Rwandese’ then, not the preferred ‘Rwandan’ of today – stopped genocide, it was able to organise a return of these refugees and to resettle them.
Today, GG’s mother has been resettled in Bugesera, but she is like a zombie and has never regained her balance.
GG and her siblings are scattered around Bugesera and Kigali and even those who are still young have completely failed to study, even if there is a government organisation that caters for the education of genocide survivors.
The old ones like GG are scratching out a living in different ways but, having secured no education, can hardly make ends meet.
Still, when you meet any of them, and myriad other such Rwandans, they’ll laugh with you. And you with them, if you know their story. It’s the cynics in Western air-conditioned offices denying the 1994 genocide that kill their laughter.
Why can’t they confess ignorance, humble themselves and be educated, if Rwanda interests them so?