Dying to Live

by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga

  A few miles from Obilo on the road heading north, the refugee column split in two. Some continued towards Kisangani, while others turned off into the dark forest on a trail covered with dew in that morning in March. I left the road and walked into the woods with my daughter Claudine following behind me, crying. After about twenty meters I heard the voice of our son Ange-Claude. His face covered with tears, he begged me to stop and wait a few minutes, to give him one last chance of convincing his mother, who had stayed behind with Emmérence, to join us. The minutes spent sitting with Claudine on the grass by the roadside were extremely difficult for me. I wondered how I could allow my family to separate as tears streamed down my cheeks. Moments later, Ange-Claude came back to tell us that he had succeeded in persuading his mother to come with us. Thank God, we continued the journey together, even if Françoise, at the end of her rope, could no longer bring herself to walk at a brisk pace. Under the circumstances, however, I held back from asking her to make an extra effort! Despite the risks, we adopted her pace.

  Even on the path we had taken to evade our killers in Kisangani, we still risked being ambushed by them. It was therefore recommended to walk quietly and speak French or Swahili to impersonate Zaireans. People tore up whatever documents they had that could identify them as Rwandans, such as identity cards and diplomas. However, these precautions were largely ineffective, since our odour is identifiable and we have a distinct body profile. People like me who had young children susceptible to crying were forced to walk at the back of the group to avoid revealing the presence of the group.

  After three days of walking in the dark and muddy forest, we reached the dusty Kisangani-Opala road where we encountered the FAZ, in total disarray after the fall of their stronghold.

  The massacres in Kisangani

  The refugees who had chosen to go to Kisangani hoped to make it to the town before the RPA and the rebels caught up with them in the forest, out of sight of any witnesses. Unfortunately, they were not so lucky. Overcome by exhaustion, some could not go any further than the village of Biaro, about forty kilometers from Kisangani, where they settled in a makeshift camp, waiting to know the fate reserved for them. The others were stopped just seven kilometers from their destination at a checkpoint manned by the Rwandan Patriotic Army, who had set up a military base in the town of Lula. They spent a few days there until finally the RPA, who had been speaking in reassuring tones in order to calm the desperate refugees, ordered them to turn back around and head south, again citing security reasons. After walking twenty kilometers, the refugees struck camp at Kasese, and like the first group, began waiting for the outcome of events.

  The mortality rate skyrocketed in the two camps, with some succumbing to disease and others to exhaustion. But the worst was yet to come. After closing the Kisangani-Ubundu access road to NGOs and journalists, on April 22 the RPA soldiers and rebels began to systematically massacre the refugees in the area, indiscriminately slaughtering men, women and children under conditions of extreme cruelty before burning their bodies.

  The few survivors who were able to join us on the road to the west told us that the RPA and the rebels had sorted the refugees into groups and taken some of them to unknown locations never to be seen again! They invited others to a meeting, and once there, fired on them with automatic weapons and threw grenades into the crowd. Some people managed to escape by fleeing into the very forest they had been reluctant to enter a few weeks earlier. But their luck ended there. Many were caught by their assailants, others died a slow and painful death, and still others, after wandering several days in the woods, regained the road in search of assistance and food, only to fall into the hands of the killers.

  It is estimated that tens of thousands of people died in the area around Kisangani, killed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army and the rebels or by hunger, fatigue and illness.

  The luckiest among the survivors, mostly women and children in a lamentable state, were repatriated to Rwanda by air, but once there, death or imprisonment was often their fate.

  Objective: Kinshasa

  After the fall of Kisangani, it became clear that there was little hope we would soon be returning to our country, Rwanda, and that the end of our journey would probably be Kinshasa, about 1500 kilometers southwest of Opala. The road would carry us through Mbandaka, halfway to our final destination. It is often said that history repeats itself. According to research on African migration paths, the path our Hutu ancestors would have taken to populate Rwanda from their home areas around Lake Chad was very close to the path we were taking, only in the opposite direction. The only difference being that they took nearly five centuries to go a distance that we covered in seven months!

  Between Opala and Ikela, the retreat of the FAZ towards Kinshasa created opportunities for us to find supplies of food. As we had seen elsewhere, the Zairean soldiers terrorized the villages along our route, forcing residents to flee into the woods and abandon their fields and houses, where we could then stock up on provisions without encountering any resistance. One person’s misfortune is another man’s gain!

  With control of Kisangani, the RPA and the AFDLC could now make use of a navigable river network and much faster means of transport to pursue the extermination of the refugees and the conquest of Zaire. The immensity of the territory required them to divide their forces into small groups, with the preferred tactic being the ambush, especially on the banks of the many rivers where refugees were gathered in groups trying to figure out how to get across. And often, the only option they had was to make a raft out of pieces of wood or bamboo bound together with vines and wrapped in a tarp to reduce the risk of sinking.

  Knowing how to build rafts was probably what enabled me to save my family and to avoid being ambushed. It was a technique I had mastered in my childhood. We built them back then so we could play out on the rivers that, in any case, were nothing like the ones in Zaire.

  Being responsible for a woman and three children, I knew that I had to rely solely on my own efforts. So when we would arrive at a new river that had to be crossed, I didn’t hesitate. Instead of waiting for some kind of miracle to get us across, I would immediately begin constructing a raft and was consequently always among the first to reach the opposite bank. Our strategy of not camping for more than one night in the same place or before crossing a body of water also enabled my family and I to stay ahead of the danger and to escape the massacres that decimated thousands of refugees at Opala, at Ikela, at Boende on the Tshuapa River and at Ingende on the Ruki River.

  Ikela, the last encounter with the FAZ

  Located on the road between Kisangani and Kinshasa in Equator province, Ikela is a town built along the Tshuapa River, with a port and an airport. The routed FAZ were waiting in Ikela for a boat to pick them up and take them to Kinshasa via Mbandaka. With only Kalashnikovs as possessions, they set up a checkpoint where they engaged in systematically fleecing the refugees who were pouring into the city. The searches were carried out carefully and methodically: men searched men, women searched women, and they weren’t shy to poke into people’s genitals and anuses to find hidden dollars. They took everything: from pieces of cassava to clothes in good shape to shoes and other valuables such as watches and jewellery from those who still had them. They didn’t hesitate to shoot at the refugees’ feet to force them to reveal their hidden money. In doing so, they condemned them to death, because in our desperate flight, our feet remained our most precious possessions.

  We still had about six hundred dollars. To avoid having it taken, we put all our eggs in one basket and entrusted it to Emmérence, then five years old. I divided the money into two stashes: one hidden in the cast she still wore on the arm she had fractured in Tingi-Tingi, the other in a piece of raw cassava that I had opened, cleaned out and then re-covered with its own skin after hiding the carefully folded money inside. To get past the checkpoints without being searched, we asked her to walk through, crying and calling for her mom, simulating a lost child separated from her p
arents. Emmérence played her role to perfection and was able to get past the checkpoints without a hitch! Once she had made it, we’d go through ourselves. One of the Zairean soldiers gave me a kick in the ass after seeing that I had nothing of value that he could steal! We would then join our daughter waiting for us a little further down the road to continue our journey.

  One day after our visit to Ikela, the boat the FAZ had been waiting for pulled up and took on all the soldiers who, while waiting, had transformed themselves into big-time bandits! Afraid of being ripped off, some refugees had chosen not to enter the city and decided instead to set up camp a few miles away and wait for the departure of the thieves in uniform. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize that also waiting were the RPA and the rebels, who then surprised and massacred most of them, leaving hundreds of bodies rotting in the open air or floating in the Tshuapa.

  The killings at Boende and Ingende

  Once through Ikela, we continued on our journey to Boende, some three hundred kilometers away, which we reached after two weeks of walking. We passed through a number of villages, among them Businga and Ekuku. We then reached the town of Ingende after travelling about the same distance.

  Since the FAZ had not entered this region, the people had not fled the villages. Some villages were inhabited by people who were still living in a primitive state, men and women both dressed only in loincloths. Even though our numbers had dwindled, our arrival panicked the local people who looked on helplessly as we plundered their crops. When someone spied the ripe fruit of a papaya or orange tree, they’d cut down the whole tree—a tree the villagers had taken years to grow— rather than taking the time to climb up and pick the fruit.

  On the road, the days followed one after the other, each day the same as the one before it, punctuated only by periods of walking and of rest. We took advantage of the lunch break to try to get rid of the lice—which had multiplied exponentially—infesting our heads and clothes. The most effective method was to place your clothes on top of an anthill and let its occupants do the work, which only took a few minutes! As had become our custom, we made sure never to spend more than one night in the same place, because we knew our survival depended on it.

  Refugees who passed through Boende and Ingende after us told of the large-scale massacres that were committed by the RPA and the rebels. People were shot or killed with traditional weapons and their bodies thrown into the Tshuapa. In other cases, especially at Ingende, the soldiers and rebels tied refugees together with ropes in groups of twenty to thirty people, forced them to lie face down on the road and crushed them to death under the wheels of a Tata truck. Others were thrown alive into the river where they drowned. The massacres at Boende and Ingende are among the most notorious committed against Hutu refugees in the Congo.

  Wendji Secli: The end of the world

  Wendji Secli is located on the Congo River, twenty kilometers south of Mbandaka. We arrived in the village on May 7. All of the refugees were in a state of exhaustion and sick; the children showed signs of malnutrition and almost everyone had swollen feet from the long walk. As had happened before in other places, we landed in Wendji Secli completely by chance, simply continuing our journey westward, guided by the instinct of survival. We were hoping to reach Mbandaka, capital of Equator province and Mobutu’s hometown, where we thought we would be safe, because it seemed unlikely that anyone would dare to attack us there, even though we knew the RPA and the rebels were following close behind us. The local police and Red Cross, however, would not allow the refugees to continue on to Mbandaka. They had constructed a makeshift camp in the village of Wendji Secli, on the site of what had once been a factory of the Société équatoriale congolaise Lulonga-Ikelemba (SECLI), on the east bank of the river. They told us that a boat would be coming to take us to Kinshasa.

  The Congo was so wide at this point you could barely see the other side, which was not surprising since the river’s rate of flow is one of the largest in the world, second only to the Amazon. Strategies that we had previously employed to cross other rivers would not be successful in crossing this vast expanse. Despite the sound of boots approaching, we sat and waited. The wait became all the more difficult when we learned that Wendji Secli is a peninsula surrounded by the river to the west and impassable marshes to the south, and that the only exits were either to cross the Congo or to go back ten kilometers and take the road going south, since the way north was blocked by the police. If the camp came under attack, the only solution would be the river!

  With the arrival of the first refugees, the local police set up a checkpoint, where they confiscated weapons and military equipment in the hands of the former Rwandan Armed Forces combatants and the former militia. Some of them were executed, but others refused to be disarmed. They felt that it would be a big mistake to hand over their weapons while the enemy was so close and the war was still raging. They chose instead to go back and take the dirt road to the main road leading south, towards the town of Lukolela. Some refugees who still had some strength joined them, but most remained at Wendji, trapped between the river, the swamps and the RPA and the rebels.

  Three days after our arrival in Wendji, on a sunny afternoon, the long-awaited boat finally appeared. As there was no suitable place for it to land, the captain simply approached the shore, so that for people to board, they had to walk out into the water. The refugees rushed into the river and chaos ensued, which quickly degenerated into a full-fledged battle to determine who would be successful at grabbing this last chance to save himself or his family. The ship’s crew tried in vain to calm things down to enable a more-organized boarding. The bodies of people drowned in the crush began to float twenty meters down the river, but it didn’t change the behaviour of the refugees, who were determined to flee Wendji at any cost. Standing back from the riverbank, surrounded by my family, I was content to observe the scene. Had I been alone, I would have probably thrown myself into the fierce battle. But, with my wife and children, it was too risky. Noting that the situation was becoming more and more dangerous, the captain decided to terminate the operation and the boat parted with only thirty refugees on board. A chance to escape had just evaporated into thin air!

  During this same afternoon, my brother-in-law Joseph and I went for a walk in the village in search of food. He still had some local money in his pocket. When we arrived in front of a bar that sold alcohol made from corn (lotoko), he suggested we go inside and have a drink, something we hadn’t done for several months. We started talking with a man and told him we were hoping to get across the river and head for Congo-Brazzaville, which now seemed like an easier destination to reach than Kinshasa. He told us that the local police had banned such crossings. We offered him money, but there was a problem: he wasn’t familiar with U.S. dollars. We explained that with a one hundred dollar bill he could buy a fat pig like the one that was tied to a stake in the courtyard in back of the bar. After a long discussion, he finally agreed to take us across the river in his canoe, cash in advance. We went a few hundred meters south of the bar and he showed us a well-concealed place in the bush near the river where we could wait at one in the morning and not be noticed by the police.

  Around midnight, in total darkness and silence, the family crept along the river through the thorny mangroves to the rendezvous. After having placed our trust in a total stranger by paying him cash without knowing a thing about him, not even his name, we were rewarded when the man showed up around 2 a.m. He was accompanied by his wife who had a baby strapped to her chest. Still trying to maintain absolute silence, the boatman asked us to get into the boat, which was just big enough for all of us: myself, my wife, my three children, my sister Thérèse, her husband and their adopted child. With the boatman in the stern and his wife in the bow, we pushed discreetly into the current, heading in the direction of Congo-Brazzaville. When we got a few meters out, the man gave my brother and me each a paddle, so we could help make the canoe go faster. He had to show us how since it was the first time that we ha
d ever paddled a canoe.

  About six o’clock in the morning, with the sun rising and no idea how far we had come, we saw ahead in the distance a village perched on one of the dozens of islands that dot this marshy area at the confluence of the Congo and Oubangui Rivers. Our “captain” told us that the village was in Congo-Brazzaville and that he could not take us all the way there for fear of being accused of smuggling foreigners into the country. After leaving us off on a small uninhabited island, lighting a fire for us and giving us a supply of green plantain bananas, the couple wished us good luck and headed back. We kept the fire going, deliberately creating a lot of smoke to signal our presence, and the trick worked. Close to 8 a.m., two very tall and tough-looking men appeared in their canoe, armed with a shotgun, asking us who we were, what we were doing and how we had arrived. We were informed, to our surprise, that the boatman had fleeced us and that we weren’t actually in Congo-Brazzaville, in fact, we hadn’t even gone one tenth of the way! They were very nice people who really took pity on us. They took us to their fishing village that was inhabited by about thirty people, prepared a delicious meal of fresh fish and cassava, and set us up in a palm leaf covered space where we could rest.

  Shortly after our boatman had left us on the island, we heard a barrage of powerful explosions from where we had just been a few hours earlier. The sound was too loud to be confused with the sporadic gunshots we were used to hearing every day. The RPA and the rebels had attacked the camp at Wendji Secli on the morning of Tuesday, May 13, 1997.

  At eleven o’clock, while we were eating our meal, the first survivors of the attack appeared, crammed into canoes, most of them wounded and covered in blood. They told us that around eight o’clock in the morning refugees streaming down the road from Ingende arrived at Wendji in a state of panic, crying out that the RPA was coming. Some refugees immediately jumped into the same canoes they had previously been denied access to, and crossed the river, paddling by hand or with pieces of wood. Others decided to head north towards Mbandaka. But the majority remained in place, either too sick and tired to flee or convinced it was only rumours, something that happened often in our distressing situation.