Dying to Live

by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga

  In September, naively considering myself unaffected by the events of the previous months, I decided to return to Kigali, hoping I might resume teaching. Well aware that there were risks, I left my family behind.

  I left Cyangugu early in the morning in a World Food Programme (WFP) truck and arrived in Kigali late in the evening, after crossing several checkpoints under RPF control. People were detained at each of them. In all, five of the thirty persons with me in the truck were held at one checkpoint or another. As far as I know, none survived!

  Since squatters were occupying my house in Kigali, I had to stay with a friend who had returned before me. He warned me that I should be careful, since many Hutus had been kidnapped.

  I had two main objectives in returning to the capital. The first was to see if I could find out what had happened to my brother-in-law (Françoise’s brother), who had lived in Kigali before April 1994 and who had disappeared. His wife and three children, who had been evacuated to Cyangugu, had not heard from him and did not know if he was still alive. In Kigali, I learned that he had been killed in the most atrocious way by the RPF, forced to dig his own grave before being buried alive!

  I also wanted to see if it was possible to go back to teaching at the Lycée or to find another job, as I was aware there were a number of NGOs hiring people.

  I only stayed for three days. Kigali was a ghost town. Bullet holes in the walls of houses and power poles, broken windows, doors ripped off their hinges, holes in the sidewalks all testified to the fierce fighting that had preceded the capture of the city by the RPF.

  The capital had changed dramatically. In the streets and taxis, people looked paranoid and fearful. The languages spoken were English and Swahili or Kinyarwanda with an accent. The population of Kigali had totally changed in the space of just a few months. Eighty-five percent of its new inhabitants came from Burundi, Uganda, Zaire and Tanzania. The newcomers were former Tutsi refugees returning to the country in the wake of the change of power. Upon their arrival, they appropriated the homes of the Hutus now fleeing the capital. All over town you could see the word yarafashwe, meaning “already taken,” written with paint or charcoal on the walls of houses.

  After hearing about the disappearance of several Hutu intellectuals, some of whom I knew, I quickly realized that Kigali was no place to be and that I should leave the city as soon as possible. At the checkpoints on the road home I was asked why I was headed back to Cyangugu and I replied that I was going to look for my family.

  When I got home, I asked my wife to prepare the family for exile. We had no future in Rwanda. However, it was not going to be easy to leave the country since the RPF now controlled all the borders, preventing people from crossing and killing those who tried to flee.

  CHAPTER 2

  Refugee Life in the Camps

  of South Kivu

  The Rusizi River bridge connecting Cyangugu and Bukavu, Zaire was closed. There was no other way to leave the country; we’d have to cross Lake Kivu, closely guarded by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), as the Rwandan army was called after the seizure of power by the RPF. My older sister, who lived near the lake, proposed that we evacuate by pirogue, a canoe-like boat.

  On the morning of October 13, 1994, before I left, my mother asked me to kneel before her. A very devout Christian, she placed her hand on my head and recited a long prayer of farewell, at the end of which she told me to rise and go without fear, because God had assured her that my family and I would be safe. After wiping away the tears that flooded my face, I kissed her and left her for the last time. She passed away in December 2006 without us ever being reunited.

  We were down at the lake’s shore, ready to go, by 10 a.m. After checking that there were no RPA soldiers in sight, the boatmen pushed off towards Birava, about thirty kilometers from the Rwandan border, where a refugee camp had been set up. The crossing was particularly arduous. For one thing, it was the first time I had ever used this means of transport, for another, our little pirogue was violently buffeted by wave after wave, and lastly, we were in constant fear of being shot at by RPA soldiers who were determined to hunt down anyone trying to flee the country.

  Overcome with fear, my wife sang hymns and recited Hail Mary’s throughout the voyage. I was worried too, but tried to keep a calm exterior for the benefit of the others. I reassured my terrified children as best as I could, imploring them to trust me. Yet I knew that none of us (except the boatmen) could swim. If anything happened, every member of my family would sink like a stone!

  We finally arrived at our destination around two o’clock. Birava was a small village on Lake Kivu, about twenty kilometers north of Bukavu, with a panoramic view of the hills of Cyangugu prefecture and of Nkombo Island in Rwanda. It goes without saying that we would have preferred to be enjoying the view as tourists rather than as refugees.

  We had been lucky to avoid the Zairean customs agents, who usually descended upon new arrivals to separate them from their money and valuables, such as watches, shoes and radios. We had been warned about it before starting out and had thus managed to slip through: it was an old practice re-enacted every time one crossed the western border, even before the war.

  It wasn’t my first time in Zaire. I had been to Bukavu a number of times, just to walk around or to do some shopping in the luxurious stores owned by Indian traders. That was now a faraway memory.

  We ran across some familiar faces on the road to the camp, which helped to ease our fear of the unknown. Birava camp had been set up mainly to accommodate refugees arriving by way of Lake Kivu, particularly those who, like us, had fled after the end of Opération Turquoise and the closure of the land border by the RPA. Most of its inhabitants were from my hometown and I knew quite a few people. Plus, my sister Thérèse and her husband Joseph had already been there for a couple of weeks. These were all factors that eased our transition since we had people we could rely on for help.

  After registering with camp officials, we were given a tarpaulin with which to erect our tent. It was rectangular and blue, with the initials of the United Nations High Com­missioner for Refugees (UNHCR) printed in large characters. We were also given a few pieces of wood, some nails and allocated a piece of land where we could establish our new home. Our new life began. Going forward, we’d have to content ourselves with nine square meters of space and the few material possessions we still had.

  Two days after our arrival, we received our first rations, consisting of a few kilos of corn, beans, corn flour, oil and salt. That’s what was supposed to serve as our daily sustenance during our stay in the famous refugee camps. The children had trouble getting used to their new diet. It was painful chewing the dry kernels of corn and they couldn’t understand why we couldn’t have three meals a day, or why we didn’t have any bread, rice or meat!

  With hindsight, I can say that we were fortunate to have arrived when we did, in contrast to those who had arrived in July and August who had to deal with a number of challenges, such as disease, hunger and epidemics. We found ourselves in a well-organized camp, with an administrative structure and NGOs in place responsible for the distribution of food, supplies and medicine.

  Erected on land donated by the local parish and inhabited by about three thousand refugees, Birava camp was one of about thirty camps in the province of South Kivu. Their combined population was estimated at five hundred thousand people. Besides Birava, the largest were Kalehe, Katana, Kabira, Kashusha, Inera, Adi-Kivu, Nyakavogo, Panzi, Nyamirangwe, Nyangezi, Mudaka, Hombo I and II, Muku, Mushweshwe, Bideka (near Bukavu), Chimanga, (to the west), Kamanyola, Lubarika, Kanganiro and Luvingi (further south, in the Uvira region). In the province of North Kivu, there were also refugee camps near Goma, including Kahindo, Katale, Mugunga, Lac Vert and Kibumba. Those camps had twice as many people as the ones in South Kivu. Most of the camps had mixed populations; ordinary people alongside former Rwandan Armed Forces soldiers, militiamen and former Rwandan dignitaries. Among the refugees were also Burundian Hutus,
themselves having fled ethnic violence that had rocked their country for decades.

  Birava camp was run by the Spanish branch of Caritas, with Father Pablo as head coordinator. Each refugee camp was placed under the direct authority of a Zairean government appointee who was called the camp administrator and who was assisted by a representative elected by the refugees commonly known as the chef de camp. Along with the chef de service and the chef de quartier he was responsible for the camp’s daily management and served as an intermediary between the camp administrator, the NGOs and the refugees.

  In 1995, at the request of the UNHCR, the camps were placed under military control to ensure the safety of refugees and humanitarian personnel and prevent the camps from being turned into training camps. The mission of law enforcement was entrusted to a force supervised by the UN through the UNHCR, called the Zairean Contingent for Security in the Camps, or simply “contingent” in the language of the refugees. Its members were all recruited from the private guard of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. “Contingent” or not, the word will long remain etched in the minds of all Rwandans who had the misfortune to live in these camps of misery in eastern Zaire.

  Even before the creation of this notorious force, refugees were confined to the camps. Anyone who dared to go out for one reason or another was immediately set upon by Zairean soldiers, who after a sharp “Telema, maboko likolo” (“halt, put your hands up”), would ask you to show an infinitely long list of possible identification papers. If you showed your identity card, they’d ask for your baptism card. They could even go so far as to demand receipts for the bank notes in your possession! We were never sufficiently in order to be able to pass through a checkpoint without being stripped of all our belongings.

  With the establishment of the Zairean Contingent, the foxes were into the henhouse. The soldiers took advantage of their camp patrols to commit atrocities: torture, imprisonment, rape and even murder. They had more than enough pretexts to facilitate their crimes. For example, if they wanted to commit a rape, they’d take a woman away to supposedly check if she was hiding grenades under her clothes! All under the helpless gaze of her husband.

  People had to be extremely creative to deal with all the difficulties that the situation presented, including finding ways to supplement the diet that the World Food Programme itself considered insufficient, supplying only sixty percent of the daily requirement. Some refugees opened small shops selling everyday necessities while others worked in the fields of local farmers. But only a small percentage of the camp population was involved in these tenuous occupations, most were idle. In general, people who had been farmers in Rwanda fared better than those who had been bureaucrats or intellectuals, unaccustomed as they were to the hard life and working in the fields.

  Women spent their days cooking corn and beans, which was very demanding of both time and wood. The men played igisoro (a traditional African board game also known as awélé) or drank locally-brewed banana wine if they could afford it.

  It was the children who paid the steepest price. Chased out of their schools starting in 1990 by the war in northern Rwanda and then in April 1994 in the rest of the country, those fortunate enough to still be with their parents did not enjoy their basic rights to food and security, and even less to education. The government of Zaire, unfortunately with the support of the UNHCR, avoided establishing long-term projects in the camps, especially schools, in the hopes that the refugees would quickly repatriate to Rwanda. The UNHCR also feared that schools might serve as recruitment centers for the Interahamwe and former soldiers from the defeated Rwandan Armed Forces. Children were thus left to fend for themselves without supervision. In spite of this, we were able to set up a clandestine network of itinerant classes in tents, which succeeded in teaching some basic computing skills. In Birava we were assisted by the NGO Caritas Spain and were able to occupy the mornings of some school-aged kids.

  When I arrived at Birava in October 1994, I met up with a former university colleague and childhood friend, Athanase, who had been fortunate to find a job teaching at Nyamokola Institute, a local private school. A psychologist by training, he taught psychology and history. Uncomfortable teaching history, he offered me the course. The school management agreed, but we had to share the salary of a single teacher, or seventy dollars per month. We were paid in U.S. dollars, as the local currency fluctuated a great deal and had lost people’s confidence. In addition to our wage, we were given a house near the camp, fully equipped with water and electricity, which we also shared. Athanase’s family consisted of two adults and three children, like mine. Each family occupied two rooms, and a living room served as a common room. It was obviously much better than living in a tent. In addition, we continued receiving rations as refugees.

  Taking advantage of the house and sheds, Athanase and I started a small banana-wine brewery. I had learned the technique as a child from my parents, who owned a plantation and produced a lot of wine. So, when our chores were done (we weren’t that busy), we’d roam the hills buying bananas from the farmers. We’d carry them long distances on our heads, something that we would never have done back in our old lives, since that kind of labour was reserved for the very poor! Our wives helped sometimes, transporting bananas and preparing the fermentation yeasts. We sold our final product to camp resellers or directly to the local people, who greatly appreciated the high quality wine made by Rwandan refugees.

  In April 1995, while we were gradually setting up our new life, the situation suddenly deteriorated.

  The remnants of the former regime who fled to Zaire after the RPF victory had not lost all hope of returning to Rwanda. Towards the end of 1994, the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and Interahamwe began to reorganize and conduct raids into Rwanda. Most of these operations were run out of the Birava camp, with its easy access to Rwanda over Lake Kivu, whose long shores were indefensible by the RPA. As a result, the camp had become a thorn in the side of the new Rwandan government, which decided to move on the camp to put an end to the acts of sabotage and theft being perpetrated by the raiders.

  On April 11, 1995, I was on my way home around 10 p.m. when I heard a number of explosions coming from different directions in the camp, about 100 meters away. Mortars, grenades, assault rifles: the ground trembled as if shaken by an earthquake.

  Inside the house, everyone was panicked. We all lay on the floor, fearful that grenades would be tossed in through the windows. The attack lasted about forty minutes, after which we heard the sound of outboard motors starting and then slowly moving away. The assailants disappeared after having done the dirty job they had come to do.

  When the explosions stopped, Athanase and I headed over to the camp to find out what had happened. A horrible sight awaited us. Charred bodies were scattered on the ground, arms and legs strewn about, injured people screaming in pain, calling for help.... The camp had come under heavy-weapon attack by the Rwandan Patriotic Army, determined to inflict the greatest number of casualties upon the three thousand refugees who lived there. Fearing the return of the attackers, many people fled the camp during the night.

  In the midst of the chaos, the wounded were quickly gathered in the courtyard of the small camp infirmary and given first aid by the medical staff. The most seriously affected were taken to the camp in Adi-Kivu, where there was a sort of general hospital for the region’s refugees, some thirty kilometers from Birava.

  It was only in the early hours of the morning that we could actually measure the extent of damage caused by the attack. A number of bodies were mangled beyond recognition. After counting heads, arms and legs, we arrived at a total of thirty-eight dead. Hundreds had been injured.

  Then it was time to bury the dead. I remember taking the initiative to handle the remains with my bare hands and calling on the bravest among us to come and help me. It was difficult: people were not only afraid to look at the pieces of human flesh scattered around, but were even more frightened to touch them. Gradually, a team of ten men was formed t
o sort and wrap the bloody bodies in mats of woven straw. Sometimes we had no choice but to wrap a head, two arms, two legs and a few shreds of flesh together without being sure that the parts belonged to the same person. The burial took place in the afternoon, after journalists and dignitaries of the former Rwandan regime had visited the site.

  As the Birava camp came under fire during the night, people in other camps in the region, especially Kashusha, Inera and Adi-Kivu thought, as they listened to the explosions from a distance, that Rwanda had been attacked and that it was the refugees who had launched the assault. Rumours of an imminent attack had been circulating for a long time. The inhabitants of the camps began singing the national anthem, Rwanda Rwacu. Though it was the middle of the night, the bars reopened, and people began to celebrate their imminent return to Rwanda! They cheered each explosion, never realizing that it was the poor Birava refugees who were dying. It was only in the morning that joy turned into tears and bitterness when they learned the sad truth.

  News of the events rapidly appeared in media around the world, but, apart from some timid criticisms by the Mobutu government, nobody condemned the Rwandan government, which denied any involvement and asserted that the killings were the work of the Interahamwe and former soldiers of the FAR. The government also took the opportunity to reiterate its months-old demand that Zaire repatriate the “bloodthirsty refugees” or move them further away from the border. At the same time, Mobutu’s hold on power began to unravel, due partly to the president’s failing health, but also to widespread social unrest among Zaireans, languishing in poverty and for whom the government no longer existed.

  The episode thus yielded positive gains for the new Rwanda government and its allies, whose ambitions went beyond the security concerns directly related to the events to include the potential reconquest of eastern Zaire and control of the region’s enormous wealth.