The Flower Plantation

by Nora Anne Brown

  One afternoon in August, when we were playing in the yard and listening to the radio with Fabrice, Beni whispered:

  “It is the President on the radio.” She removed her first block from the tower and placed it on the top.

  She was right. The President was giving a speech that was being broadcast live to the nation. Fabrice listened intently at the back door, absent-mindedly peeling potatoes; some of the peelings missed the bucket and landed on the ground.

  I concentrated on the game, carefully sliding out a piece in the middle and putting it up top. The President was talking about the importance of peace.

  Celeste was in the yard too, sweeping. The scritch-scratch of her broom made it difficult for Fabrice to hear, so he turned up the radio. But Celeste went on sweeping, louder and louder. Beni was taking her next block when Fabrice shouted at Celeste:

  “Be quiet!”

  Celeste didn't stop.

  Angry, Fabrice abandoned the potatoes, took the radio and went inside. His shouting caused Beni to tremble: the tower leant to one side but remained intact.

  “Sogokuru is worried,” said Beni anxiously. “Mama say so.”

  I took a piece near the bottom and positioned it on top.

  “Everyone at home is shouting. Data say there is trouble ahead.” Beni looked concerned. I wondered if I should be too.

  When the President had finished his speech, Fabrice turned off the radio. Celeste went inside and tuned it to another station. She began ironing Father's shirts, leaving the back door open.

  “These people say President does not want peace,” said Beni as she nudged one block but chose another, finding it harder with every move.

  From where I was sitting I could see Celeste nodding her head at what the radio presenters were saying. When it was my turn, I inched out a piece from the tower, which began to wobble precariously.

  Fabrice shouted from the kitchen:

  “Turn the radio off!”

  Celeste turned it up.

  Fabrice threw a pan on the floor, which made Beni and me jump and the tower crash to the ground.

  * * *

  As the months went by, despite their differences, Fabrice and Celeste still took care of the house, leaving Mother, without Sebazungu, in sole charge of the plantation. More and more of the gardeners decided to leave, which made Mother unhappy. One night, over dinner, she said to Father: “I don't know what I'm doing wrong. They just don't obey me any more. I have hardly any staff left.”

  “It's not your fault,” Father told her, clutching a tumbler of whisky. “Anyone and everyone are being recruited for training at the moment. God knows what's been planned behind closed doors.”

  I brushed my bare feet on the antelope skin and thought, “Training for what?” But Father switched subjects.

  “I've been reading that children who grow up in multilingual environments often have delayed speech.”

  “Oh please,” replied Mother, and cast him a withering look.

  “It might be worth looking into, Martha. Maybe England isn't such a bad idea, given all that's happening here.”

  There was something about Father's tone and remote expression that made me feel uncomfortable. It must have shown on my face, because the next thing he said was:

  “No reason to worry, Arthur. You'll be fine.”

  Why was I the only one who was going to be fine? I wanted to ask. Was I going to England? And what about Mother and Father and everyone else – were they going too?

  Just as I was thinking this, Fabrice rushed into the room.

  “Eh, bwana, you hear the radio?” he asked.

  “No,” replied Father.

  “So sawree, bwana. Ceasefire over. War starts again.”

  23

  Within weeks, most of the remaining gardeners were gone, leaving Mother to manage almost single-handedly a plantation that had once been tended by over a hundred workers. The fields quickly became full of weeds and dead flowers. The cargo planes that carried food supplies above the plantation would have seen nothing of the once perfectly ordered rows of flowers Mother was so proud of. Even her garden began to wilt and die. Her favourite roses turned from a brilliant, crisp yellow to a dull, soggy brown. The hydrangeas grew bushy and the grass long.

  When the gardeners stopped coming to work, their wives did too, which meant Mother had to find new ways of transporting the few flowers she rescued from the fields. Sales dwindled to almost nothing, and although she said her income wasn't vital, I could tell she resented the war preventing her from earning money of her own.

  “Come on, Arthur, we're going to town,” she said one Tuesday in late February. We hadn't been to town since before Christmas, so I was surprised, though not disappointed to hear that we were going. I was fed up of sitting round the house waiting for the fighting to end.

  The pickup was by the cutting shed, with flowers in the back that Mother had picked by herself. It wasn't full the way it used to be, and the flowers weren't as fresh or as brightly coloured either, but they still looked pretty.

  “Run and get Thomas,” she said, Thomas being one of the few remaining gardeners who still came to work when he could.

  I found him, tall and even thinner than usual, in the field behind the cutting shed. He was weeding. Like the flowers, he had a withered, unhealthy look about him.

  “Hello, Arthur,” he said.

  I pointed to the pickup and motioned for him to follow.

  “Oya,” he said quietly: he would not come.

  Returning to Mother I shook my head, clapped for Romeo, and the two of us got in. But as Mother started the engine, Fabrice came out from the yard, waving his arms in the air and shouting.

  “Whatever now?” said Mother, turning off the engine and opening the door.

  “Madame,” he said. “Where you go?”

  “To town.”

  “Eh, Madame. No. The road is dangerous.”

  “The road is fine. Now get back to work. Arthur and I will be back for dinner.”

  “Madame—”

  Mother turned on the ignition and revved the engine. It had been repaired, so the gears no longer crunched and the exhaust no longer scraped. The smell of smoke and manure through the dashboard had disappeared.

  As we drove out of the plantation, I looked back in the side mirror to see Thomas chewing worriedly on his tobacco, Fabrice tutting and Celeste sucking her teeth and shaking her head.

  Mother didn't drive quite as quickly as she used to. It was a cloudy day, and the track was more murky brown than orange; the lush green countryside was now the colour of straw. The drab reds and pinks of the flowers in the back streaked past the burnt-out landscape. It seemed that when I hadn't been looking the colours of Rwanda had changed.

  The road was even worse than usual – the wet season and trucks full of soldiers had created even bigger potholes. I wondered why no one had thought to fill them in the way they used to. Where were the men with their shovels and hands stretched out?

  “Hold on tight, boy,” called Mother as we hit the narrowest section of the road on a tight bend, with a huge pothole in the middle. But Mother didn't call, “Here comes the fun!” – instead Mother swore under her breath and fought with the steering wheel. The pickup was at such an angle that two of the buckets fell out the back, scattering flowers on the road like at a funeral procession. The buckets tumbled down the steep bank and out of sight.

  There were no women to look back on with enormous bundles of wood on their heads and babies on their backs. There was hardly anyone to be seen anywhere except the odd tired-looking farmer standing by the roadside with a spear or bow and arrow.

  The steep road to Gisenyi was much quieter than normal too. Instead of the huge lorries that swayed from side to side there were newer ones with white circles and red crosses on them that shed grain onto the tarmac. There were no boda-bodas laden with families and goats, no matatus bursting with passengers.

  At the side of the road, where the prisoners in orange un
iforms used to plough, there were now rows and rows of tents – small towns erected out of blue tarpaulin. The eucalyptus trees had been stripped bare for firewood, and the small children we passed had heads so big they resembled the lollipops Mother used to buy me at the shop in town.

  Halfway to Gisenyi we saw men with spears standing in the road. They had made a barricade out of two oil drums and a long tree branch.

  “What now?” sighed Mother, slowing the car to a halt and winding down her window. “What is it?” she asked the approaching man who pointed his spear into the pickup. He didn't look like someone who wanted to do us harm. He looked like one of the farmers we'd passed on the track.

  “Pasiporo,” he said.

  Mother rummaged in her handbag, then gave up with a shrug, saying: “I haven't got it.”

  The man had a good look at me, and then at the flowers in the back. I wasn't sure what he was looking for. I wasn't sure he knew either.

  Mother pulled out a chequebook and waved it out the window.

  “Here,” she said, and thrust it in his hand. When she saw him trying to read it upside down she rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. But the chequebook seemed to please the man, who gave it back to Mother and nodded to the others that they could let us through. They lifted the branch and Mother put her foot down, irritated by the whole affair.

  We descended into Gisenyi, where we wound round the lake to the border with Zaire. The schoolchildren in their khaki shorts weren't there: soldiers in scruffy khaki uniforms had replaced them. Under these uniforms the soldiers wore bright T-shirts and hats that were falling to pieces. Some of them didn't look much older than me.

  The foam-mattress shops were closed, and the decaying buildings in every colour of ice cream looked worse than ever. Crowds of people trudged towards the border. The petrol station had a sign up that read “Pas d'huile” and swung with a squeak in the breeze.

  On our way to the post office we saw Madame Dubois with two suitcases getting into the back of a truck with lots of other white people. I wanted to ask where she was going and who was going to look after her topiary hedge. I knew things must be pretty bad if Madame Dubois was leaving.

  At the post office Mother didn't attempt to negotiate the storm drain: it was clear that it was closed – the doors were shut and the windows boarded up. The shop for Americans and Europeans was shut too – which I thought would make Mother angry, but she just kept driving, taking in the closed-up town with all the people passing through, Nyiragongo looming above them.

  The market was deserted: no haggling, big-bosomed women or bleating goats. The boda-boda drivers were nowhere to be seen. On a street corner I saw Sebazungu talking to a policeman. He saw the pickup and Mother saw him, but it was as if they were invisible to each other. Even the hotel car park, usually full of 4x4s, was empty.

  “Give me a hand with the buckets, Arthur,” said Mother after she'd parked. The beggar with his wood carvings wasn't there that day. As we lifted the buckets out of the back of the pickup, Mr Umuhoza came out of the hotel.

  “Madame,” he said. “I'm sorry. No flowers today. We have no guests.”

  Mother let out a deep sigh, and I put the buckets back in the truck.

  “Do you still have coffee?”

  “That we have,” said Mr Umuhoza laughing, and he led us to the lounge.

  Dr Sadler was the only other person around. There were no men in safari jackets, no big-bottomed women in shorts and long socks – not even the lady with the pineapple hair. Dr Sadler looked even more crumpled than usual.

  “Hello, Martha,” he said wearily.

  “Edward,” Mother said, then pressed her cheek against his and sat down opposite him. Coffee was served.

  “And hello, Arthur.” Dr Sadler gave a wan smile. He didn't ask me if I had any words that day. I sat next to Mother. “How are you both?”

  “We're fine.”

  Dr Sadler raised an eyebrow.

  “You do realize this is only going to get worse, don't you?” Mother sipped her coffee. “They're saying more than half a million people have already fled the country, with thousands buried in mass graves.”

  “Do you believe it?” Mother asked.

  “Just look around. No food or fuel. Those who aren't dead already will be soon, if the conditions of those camps is anything to go by. You should get out while you can.”

  “Oh, don't you start,” said Mother. “Albert's been on about that for months. He's decided we should go back to England and have Arthur grow up surrounded only by English speakers – he thinks it will help him to talk.”

  “I suspect that's unlikely.”

  “I agree, and besides, we're not leaving. I'm not just going to abandon all we've worked so hard for.”

  I didn't want to hear any more about Father wanting to send me to school in England. I couldn't understand why he'd suddenly want to send me to the place that had made him so unhappy as a boy.

  “You may not have a choice, Martha. Some of the French and Americans have been rounded up already.”

  “Well, that's typical of the French,” said Mother. “We're staying put. The fighting is mostly in the towns. There won't be any bother at the plantation, I'm certain of that.”

  Dr Sadler raised his shoulders.

  “If what I hear is true, it may not be long until the RPF storm Kigali. Which means the government will soon be gone and anarchy will rule. Who knows what might happen.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mother, still sipping her coffee. Obviously Mother knew what anarchy meant, unlike me.

  “The people are angry, Martha, and one doesn't have to look too far back in history to see just what can happen in this country when the people decide to take matters into their own hands.” I thought about Celeste's story of men killing one another with machetes and bows and arrows. Was the same about to happen again?

  24

  Nothing improved over the next six months. Planes carrying emergency rations flew over the plantation more frequently, and the blue tarpaulin camps grew bigger and bigger. Dr Sadler, who visited only from time to time, said that almost a million people had fled the country.

  Fabrice told Mother stories of fighting and killings in the hillsides: it seemed the troubles were no longer confined to town. But still she believed we were safe. I doubted whether Mother was right. There were days when Celeste was too frightened to come to work, but Mother carried on as though nothing was wrong.

  One evening I went to Father's study and tuned the radio to the station they'd banned me from listening to. Father called it the “Vampire Radio”. Sitting in the dark I leant back in his chair and listened to the young, cool hosts broadcasting from Kigali. The African rock music they played was raucous and loud, but I didn't care. They told rude jokes about Tutsis, casually calling them “cockroaches”.

  “No one should think twice about stamping them to death and watching their guts ooze out. Tutsis have always been evil,” they said. I thought about Beni and hoped she wasn't listening. “We the Hutus are innocent.”

  When the lights of Father's car came up the drive, I switched the radio off: he would be angry if he caught me listening to the Hutu station – and I didn't want that.

  At the dinner table he said to Mother: “Have you thought any more about…” but instead of finishing his sentence he lowered his chin a little, raised his eyebrows and glanced between Mother and me. I knew he was discreetly trying to ask Mother about England.

  “Edward doesn't see the merit in it,” said Mother with tight lips and a slight shake of her head that meant: “This isn't the time to discuss it.”

  I was annoyed. Why didn't I have a say in the matter? Like so many other things that were happening, it didn't make sense.

  It was hard to sit through the rest of the dinner. Mother ate with a vacant stare, and Father, who looked exhausted, kept letting out deep sighs. He told us that peace had been agreed and that the war would come to an end. He didn't sound pleased, nor did Mother.


  “Maybe life will get back to normal around here,” she said, unconvinced.

  “We'll see,” said Father, pushing his half-eaten plate of dry rice and beans away.

  When Fabrice collected the plates, Father told him about the peace agreement, and Fabrice bowed his head and said: “Thank you, bwana. Now God may sleep in Rwanda again.”

  The candle on the table flickered out, and a moment later burned to life again. That flame was the final flicker of light I would know in Rwanda. Fabrice's hope of peace was about to be extinguished for ever.

  * * *

  In November, soldiers in blue helmets arrived. They walked around town with their guns slung low. Father told me they were there to make sure the fighting stopped, but not to fight themselves. They looked different from the other soldiers. Their uniforms were smart: blue neckerchiefs, polished boots, ironed T-shirts and trousers. Their weapons were clean and their bodies strong. Father said they came from Belgium and Canada – Bangladesh and Ghana too. I took down the atlas from the bookcase and found all those countries on the map. I was amazed that soldiers had come from so far to help Rwanda.

  Before Christmas I learnt from reading the newspaper that the President still hadn't signed the peace agreement he'd approved in August. That seemed strange. By the New Year the RPF was threatening to break the ceasefire if the President didn't sign soon, and by February people were rioting again in the streets.

  By the time I was fourteen and March had turned into April, the President still hadn't signed. Joseph called the time between August and April “igihirahiro”, which meant “hesitation” and “uncertainty”. Every night he would listen to the Vampire Radio in the yard, then sniff and rub his eyes before turning it off and staring into the star-filled sky.

  * * *

  On 6th April I was woken, as usual, by the sound of Joseph's boots as he walked down the side of the house and through the garden towards home. He didn't whistle – his silence gave a feeling of eeriness to the damp morning air.