Reflections on sunday : Return, Prof Erlinder, you ain’t seen nopin’ yet!

When I saw how Peter Erlinder was singing the blues after his spell in one of these civilised coolers of Rwanda, I was filled with anger. I wish our government had a special prison for any Mwene Muzungu (Son of a White) who breaks the laws of this land. By “special” I mean a prison that is reminiscent of the prisons of colonial Rwanda, especially between 1930 and 1955. Those ancestor-cousins of our beloved Pete would have taught him what it meant to be in provisional detention. Belgian colonialists first built prisons in Rwanda in1930, as the popular name by which Kigali Central Prison goes, indicates. KCP in Kinyarwanda is known simply as ‘1930’. In reality, that number conspicuously inscribed on the front wall of the building refers to the date of its construction. But, since ‘dix-neuf cent trente’ (French for ‘nineteen thirty’) is cumbersome to some Rwandan tongues, many simply call it ‘Trente’. After Kigali prison, a few others were put up in provincial headquarters, but didn’t have the date inscribed on their front walls. In such areas, the prisons were thus not referred to by any name. If somebody was in prison, people’d tell you that he was “mu munyururu” (in prison) in Ruhengeri, Gisenyi, Shangugu (as Cyangugu was known then) or whatever provincial town it was in. While a prison was known as ‘umunyururu’, however, the word equally meant a prisoner. Yet, paradoxically, saying ‘umunyururu’ never meant a single prisoner. It meant many, most times as many as five! This is because, in truth, ‘umunyururu’ means ‘a chain’ (as Vil, a few pages from here, would tell you in reference to his spouse!) In a colonial prison in Rwanda, then, ‘chains’ were in a ‘chain’, perplexing the soberest of logical thinkers! The source of confusion lies in the fact that prisoners were chained together. And they were not just chained the way you put a dog on a chain leash, where you get a leather strap to gird its neck. Rather, a chain of considerable weight was put around the neck of a prisoner, after which another chain was attached to the one looping the neck of the next prisoner, on until they were five. That is how a prison is known as ‘a chain’ in Kinyarwanda but, of course, today it is a misnomer when you call one prisoner ‘umunuyururu’. In the colonial times, all the prisoners on one chain were ‘umunyururu’. Suppose our hallowed Erlinder had been our VIP guest in the days of our colonial masters! Our inamorato’s neck would have been ringed by a chain that boasted the biggest names in the Rwandan book of crime. He would have been sent to Ruhengeri, then home to the biggest hardliners in Rwanda. First on the chain: Rwicanyi, the unapologetic serial killer. Next: Gishimusi, whose insatiable appetite had led him to steal almost the entire herd of Rwandan cattle. Then would have followed our prized Peter who, for his unbending genocide denying zeal, would’ve had bestowed upon him the grand name of Ruterahamwe Rutagondwa. After Ruterahamwe, two other hardcore criminals’d’ve graced the remaining chain slots. Being averse to long names as an American, Peter’d have said: “Na, ain’t gonna take ’em names sa lang!” Our officials’d’ve granted him his wish and so, Rut Rutago it’d’ve been. He’d even have shortened that to ‘RR’. So, it’d’ve been as RR that he’d’ve been yanked up by the first of his chain-mates to wake up in the mornings. From their bed of a lice-infested dust floor, they’d’ve trooped to the nearest bush where, on cue, they’d all have turned left or right to pee or, if any of them wanted a long call, they’d have squatted. After that, in their chained Indian file, they’d have gone to the prison land with hoes and, again on cue, they’d have turned to their side to till the land. When the prison guard noticed that the ‘Rut Chain’ was not tilling the land fast like other ‘chains’, the fierce Rwandan prison guard’d’ve shouted: “Muzungu Chain, bare buttocks!”Time for ‘kiboko’, the infamous whip! So, ‘Muzungu Chain’ would’ve pulled down their black, coarse shorts and thrown themselves onto the ground, pulling up their ‘zebra shirts’, so called for their vertical lines of black and white. Imagine the abuses directed at slow-digger Rut from ‘chain-mates’ as they went for their lunch of weavil-infested beans and thin, bean soup! Still, that’d’ve been nothing for, before he was released on ill-health grounds, he’d’ve tasted the worst. That worst would have been the rest of them carrying around a ‘chain-mate’ who died early in the night of Friday, when the White prison director had gone on a hunting trip in Akagera Park! On returning on Sunday evening, Director Rutuku’d’ve been too zonked to identify the key to that particular chain, and he’d’ve gone off to hit the sack, leaving a litany of ‘Kutefurudomo’ and ‘Bilarifakin’ curses. And ‘Muzungu Chain’ would’ve been thrown out by other ‘chains’ to deal with the stench of their decomposed ‘mate’ – out in the freezing dark of the slopes of Mount Muhabura! ingina2@yahoo.co.uk