Dying to Live

by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga

  At around nine o’clock on that sunny morning, while we waited to find out why they would not let us advance, we heard two loud explosions from far off in the deserted camp. They were dynamiting the Zairean Armed Forces helicopter and the small malfunctioning Doctors without Borders airplane that was grounded at Tingi-Tingi, waiting for repairs. The soldiers from the former Rwandan army had resolved to destroy them to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. A few days earlier, while the Doctors without Borders plane was landing, its right wing had beheaded a woman carrying her baby on her back. The infant miraculously survived the accident, but I do not know if he survived what followed over the coming days. Tingi-Tingi was unmistakably home to every way of dying!

  The two explosions spread confusion in our ranks and were followed one hour later by shots from machine guns and mortars from the hills overlooking the Lubutu River valley where we were trapped. It was the RPA soldiers and rebels. Everyone was panicking, we had to break out of the impasse at all costs. Those who were closest to the bridge plunged straight at the Zairean army barrier. Anyone unfortunate enough to fall was trampled to death or pushed by the mass through the metal railings to end up in the river.

  The bridge was too jammed for all the people, overloaded with their luggage, to cross; including some like me, who were accompanied by young children. There was one other solution, but it was risky: jump into the river and try to reach the other side by a miracle! Followed by my son Ange-Claude, I decided I’d go first and jumped in with my luggage and the children’s. The water came up to my shoulders, but driven by fear, I managed to make it across. After dropping off my load, I went back to get the two girls, Claudine and Emmérence, waiting for me on the other side with their mother.

  How many tons of luggage and how many unfortunate refugees did the Lubutu swallow up during the half-hour-long crossing? How many babies drowned riding on the backs of their mothers, who, while crossing the river in water up to their necks, never realized that their babies were submerged?

  Once on the other side, there was no choice but to run as fast as possible, spurred by the sound of nearby explosions. It was in that moment of full flight that we lost track of our daughter Claudine. Her disappearance introduced an element of conflict into my already exhausted group, stretched to our limits by a sleepless night where we couldn’t afford to take even a moment to rest. Overcome by worry about Claudine, we could do absolutely nothing. Retracing our steps to see if she was dead or injured was impossible. Plowing on as fast as we could to see if she was ahead of us would only compound the problem if in fact she was behind us. We didn’t dare split into two groups in fear of losing track of each other, but also because no one person with their luggage could survive as we were all carrying things indispensable to the survival of each other.

  Seeing people bleeding from their wounds, hearing women and children crying after being separated from their families, the sound of explosions very close by, all of this helped us make up our minds to keep moving forward, reasoning that Claudine would have no other choice but to continue in the same direction as everybody else. We were lucky that there was only one road without any turnoffs. One thing on our minds was that Claudine had not eaten since the night before and it was already late in the day.

  As we continued to make our way along, we met people who had either found their lost loved ones or who had heard from somebody else that they had been seen somewhere in the front or in the back of the crowd. When we heard that Claudine had been seen somewhere behind us walking with a cousin who had recognized her in the crowd, we waited for her along the side of the road, eyes searching every passer-by, calling her name in the hopes of finding her. Just before nightfall, to our great relief, we saw her face emerge from the crowd. She was very tired and in desperate straits. But courageous as she had always been, she had not abandoned her luggage that contained some pans and biscuits. She was at the time barely eight years old.

  Night was falling, but we had to keep pushing on. People in the camp who had had previous military experience recommended we go another fifty kilometers before even thinking about taking a break, or else run the risk of being caught and killed. Despite our fatigue, there was no choice but to keep walking to try to reach the front ranks of the crowd; we were well aware that falling behind could be deadly.

  Not everyone was lucky enough to survive that day. In makeshift hospitals erected at Tingi-Tingi many people lay dying in their beds. Helpless, unable to move, the RPA and the rebels finished them off with bayonets. We saw people trying to escape carrying their still-connected IVs! The same fate awaited many thousands of others who were caught on the Lubutu bridge and executed and thrown into the river before the media finally arrived. Tingi-Tingi was one of several former Zairean territories where thousands of Hutu refugees died of starvation and disease or were massacred at the hands of Paul Kagame’s and Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s henchmen.

  By the morning of the second day, we were completely exhausted; people walked with their eyes closed due to lack of sleep. Children, adults, everyone was exhausted. After slurping down some sosoma gruel and eating some biscuits, we finally allowed ourselves a few hours to rest. We followed the same routine as the year before; while some walked, others slept or prepared a meal by the side of that infamous highway, be it day or night.

  Those who had lost members of their families called out their names in hopes of finding them. You had to shout with all your remaining strength to be heard, because almost everyone was calling out somebody’s name. To give the lost person a chance to recognize their names out of all the names being shouted, you had to also call out their parents’ names or their home commune in Rwanda.

  Walking towards Kisangani, we were hopeful that we were finally going to arrive in a place with the necessary infrastructure—a port, an airport, means of communication—so that international organizations would be able to deliver the aid we needed. We also thought we’d be safe, since the Zairean Army headquarters was located there. But it was not to be. A hundred kilometers from our destination at the Pene-Tungu crossroads the road was again blocked for refugees! We weren’t going to be allowed to go to Kisangani. Once again, the excuse was that the authorities could not deal with such a large crowd in the city. In addition, they were afraid that the enemy would take advantage of the situation in order to infiltrate combatants through the lines. Zairean soldiers and former Rwandan Army soldiers guarding the crossroads forced us south towards the Lualaba River and the city of Ubundu. We left the Kabulimbo (the paved road linking Bukavu with Kisangani) to head down an old dirt track that you couldn’t really call a road. Most likely built back in the colonial era, the last car had probably driven down it in 1959, just before the country achieved independence!

  After a day and a half of walking, we reached the banks of the Lualaba River (upper part of the Congo). The river was unbelievably huge! It was the first time that most of the Rwandans had seen a river wider than a hundred meters. Fairly quiet at this point, the river was not frightening at first glance. But to think that we would one day have to cross it chilled us right to our marrow!

  In a replay of what had happened at Lubutu River, we were blocked at the bridge. A senior Zairean Army officer, whom we suspected of wanting to use the refugees as a bargaining chip in order to be accepted into the ranks of the rebel forces, had ordered the owners of all the canoes in the area to dock them on the other side of the river and had forbidden them to help us get across. The people of the eastern half of the city of Ubundu, which is built along both banks of the Lualaba, had fled as the refugees approached. They evacuated all their valuables, prioritizing the removal of their boats to the west bank. We were informed that we would have to stay where we were and wait for aid that was being organized in Kisangani, a hundred kilometers north.

  Strategically speaking, we were in a very dangerous place that the RPA and rebel forces could easily reach either by coming down the river from Kindu, where they had been for a while, or by taking
the same road we had from Tingi-Tingi.

  On our second day there, our former military people, with their weapons on their shoulders, began to appear in the encampment that we had thrown up along the river. Under pressure from the RPA and the rebels, they had abandoned their positions at Pene-Tungu on the road to Kisangani. We began to panic; we absolutely had to find some way across the Lualaba despite the orders of the Zairean Army. The more adventurous among us who could swim waded into the river, testing the current, and started training to see if they’d be able to cross if it came to that. Others began constructing rafts out of bamboo and vines growing along the banks of the river.

  Meanwhile, an Antonov aircraft from Kisangani, where the NGOs had hastily retreated after pulling out of Tingi-Tingi, managed to land on a patch of ground not far from our camp to distribute food (peas and biscuits), but was shunned by many who suspected it was nothing but a ploy to delay us until the arrival of the RPA and the rebels. The refugees had lost trust in everyone, especially the UNHCR, who, despite the obvious extermination of Hutu refugees, still held fast to its position that the refugees had to return to Rwanda.

  Even if the current wasn’t especially strong at that point on the river, you couldn’t take a raft or a canoe straight across to the other side. Before you could reach the opposite shore, the moving water would sweep you twenty or thirty meters downstream, and you had to work hard to guide the craft where you wanted it to go. After having built a huge raft, a dozen young Burundians took off across the river to the cheers of the refugees, who were amazed at the ingenuity with which the boat had been built and especially by the large number of passengers it could carry. Once out on the water, the enthusiastic young people began paddling. The raft sped away under our watchful and admiring eyes. As soon as it gained the channel, it began to follow the current, heading downstream. We thought the boys had chosen to land a little further downstream to avoid being searched by the Zairean soldiers waiting on the other side. But at some point, the raft began to turn around in circles! The poor boys had lost control. Further downstream, the river threw up sprays of water that formed a vapour cloud in the air. It was here that the famous Stanley Falls (now called Boyoma Falls) began, making this part of the Lualaba non-navigable. Under the helpless gaze of the refugees and accompanied by the sounds of their screams, the group of young Burundians was suddenly swallowed whole by the thick cloud, unable to resist the pull of the falls.

  This experience definitely put a damper on any more raft building, but was not the last of people’s efforts to cross the river. A few daring souls successfully swam across, tenaciously holding on to empty containers to stay afloat. A large number of canoes were moored in the marina on the other side of the Lualaba, and their owners, who had been forbidden to help us get across the river, looked on indifferently as refugees drowned to death. People who had managed to reach the other side offered them large sums of money to bring family members over. At about ten o’clock in the morning, the boatmen, attracted by the sums being offered, decided to begin ferrying refugees across the river.

  Since we weren’t carrying any local currency, which was in any case subject to massive fluctuations in value, payment was made in dollars, for those of us who were lucky enough to still have any. This was not trouble free, however, since the local people weren’t familiar with U.S. dollars and you had to explain their value before they’d accept them.

  In no position to bargain, I accepted the first offer I received to transport my group of nine people, made up of my family, my sister Teresa’s family and my younger brother Athanase. But when we went to board the boat, which normally just had room for three passengers, we could only find enough space for eight people, the boatman and our luggage. Athanase was forced to stay behind, with a promise that he’d make it on the next trip.

  After forbidding us to move a muscle, the boatman, a man in his forties, took us out on the water with a smile of uncertainty! But despite being overloaded, we reached the other shore in about twenty minutes. After settling my family under a tree, I returned to the shore to wait for my brother. But each time the boatman returned with a load of passengers, he claimed not to have seen Athanase on the other side. It was a lie! He had surely asked him to pay for his trip, even though his fare had already been paid and my brother didn’t have a penny to his name.

  The next afternoon, with Athanase still stuck on the other side, I decided to risk paying another boatman to take me back. Hoping to come up with enough money to afford the crossing, Athanase had begun to sell the family’s clothes that were in the bag he was carrying, to the point that when I finally caught up with him, he had sold every last stitch! We were left with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Fortunately, like most of the refugees, I had gotten into the habit of wearing two or three pairs of pants to avoid finding myself naked if we were attacked and we didn’t have the opportunity to escape with our luggage.

  On the second day of the Lualaba crossings, when the local authorities discovered how many people had drowned due to the desperate measures taken to cross the river, they decided to charter a ferry to help all the remaining refugees cross to the left bank. The bad news was, there were new challenges awaiting us.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Massacres in the Eastern

  and Equatorial Provinces

  After crossing the Lualaba, my brother Athanase decided to travel on with a group of young people who were more mobile and could cover more ground than we could with our children (he eventually made it to Congo-Brazzaville and was repatriated to Rwanda by the HCR, where he still lives today). As for us, we walked with Thérèse and her family to the small village of Obilo, located not far from Ubundu. In Obilo there is a railway and a road that goes to Kisangani, about eighty kilometers to the north, providing a way around the unnavigable section of the river at Boyoma (Stanley) Falls. The local police ordered us to stop, refusing to let us continue on our journey to Kisangani, once again under the pretext of preventing us from bringing disorder into the city. They directed us to a site next to the road where we could build our huts. Our security teams once again ordered us to get organized according to our original administrative districts in Rwanda to help guard against enemy infiltration.

  We hoped we would be more or less safe in Obilo due to its proximity to Kisangani. It seemed unthinkable that the RPA soldiers and rebels could seize the third largest city in the country, capital of the eastern province, and home to the FAZ high command.

  However, on March 15, our hopes were shattered by a surprising development. Kisangani fell to the AFDLC without a fight. That meant we were now truly surrounded. Several crisis meetings were held in the camp to find a solution to the situation, as unexpected as it was alarming. For the first time, serious divisions appeared among the refugees. Two strongly opposed groups emerged: on the one side, the Interahamwe, men who had been soldiers in the FAR, and officials of the deposed government, on the other, the ordinary people, who did not feel that they shared responsibility for the 1994 genocide. Members of the latter group believed that the RPA would spare their lives once they were separated from the others. The proponents of this naive theory went so far as to recommend to those who wanted to join them to wear a white headband as a sign of surrender! They asked the first group to leave the camp quickly so that the great majority could be clearly viewed as “non-combatants,” hoping in this way to establish the camp as a “peace camp,” as they themselves had begun calling it. They then proposed to go and negotiate with the RPA and the rebels in Kisangani because according to them, the presence of NGOs and the media would discourage the enemy from killing them in plain sight of everyone. Two of the major proponents of this solution were André Kagimbangabo and Frédéric Karangwa, the former prefects of Cyangugu and Butare. Unfortunately, they were among the first to be brutally massacred at Kisangani a few days later.

  The alternative was to flee to the west. Apart from the road and the railway that linked Obilo and Kisangani, there was no other wa
y out, except for a narrow path through the forest used by hunters and gold miners, which the local people told us would eventually cross the road to Opala after many days of hiking, bypassing Kisangani. The prospect of walking through the jungle at the mercy of snakes, crocodiles, tsetse flies, mosquitoes and wild animals, without food or medicine, could hardly have been more enticing! Our choice was basically between two equally suicidal options.

  Most of the refugees decided to go to Kisangani and put themselves at the mercy of the RPA. They had no inkling of their fate, but overwhelmed by fatigue, hunger and disease, they simply did not have the strength to continue. A minority, composed mainly of young people in good physical condition and without family responsibilities, chose to risk dying in the forest rather than surrender.

  This was my preference as well, and I explained to my wife that even if the forest was dangerous, especially for our young children, at least we kept alive the possibility of eventually being saved, whereas if we decided to go to Kisangani, death was certain. Exhausted and overcome by the events, Françoise rejected my proposal, choosing to go to Kisangani. Throughout the evening, I tried to convince her, but in vain. The next morning, my decision was made. I told my wife that I would walk down the path into the jungle, whatever the consequences.