by Rémy Ngamije
It is not every day when the power imbued in Rwandan names makes itself felt. Thus, a child called Maniriho, meaning “there is a God”, may question God’s existence until some unwarranted fortune convinces them of the existence of a high power, while another called Byago – meaning “mishap” – may for a time wander blissfuly through the world unaware of the ultra-low frequency calls such a name sends out into the universe, summoning small woes which constantly harangue an otherwise superstition-free life. It is, however, quite clear to Séraphin that his mother is doing more than just calling out his name.
Turihamwe?
Are we together, Séraphin?
We are together or we are not. If we are not together, then you are alone.
Are you ready to be alone? Do you even know what that means, Séraphin, to be alone?
How brightly you burn, Séraphin, but for whom do you shine?
Turihamwe?
Séraphin feels the quiddity of his being summoned to the fore, it stretches out before him like a lake with the distant horizon vaguely clear and the depths unplumbed and unknown. Hitherto he was convinced he would wade into its waters with graceful certainty. But now, seeing its vastness, he is scared. He looks at his mother. In her he sees a similar vastness, but tamed by a power he did not realise she had. Séraphin bows his head.
“Turihamwe,” he says.
His mother sighs.
It is a start, a small one, but a start nonetheless.
VIII
For the most part the past is right where it belongs: in the past. Everything is always headed towards the past anyway so it seems fitting that it is where time and memory are located. It is where choices make sense, where mistakes are sometimes forgiven. The past is certain and settled, even if human beings are not; they constantly sift through words, deeds, bones, and things to try and explain today or predict tomorrow, all the while forgetting the universe’s secret joke: it is dying, cooling and slowing down. It knows there is no now, it is already gone; there is no tomorrow, for it has already come. The lights in the sky are gaseous funeral pyres for stars burning themselves out, gentle and spectacular twinkles which comfort any who turn their heads skywards at night and find solace knowing they are present in the universe’s wake.
The pull of the past is to be avoided to make a thrust into the present where Séraphin, after returning from the shops with boxes of fruit juice, is conscripted by Therése into a cornucopia of chores that must still be completed before the first guests arrive for the New Year’s party. Coated with the sweat of industry, internally Séraphin broods, retreating to his Department of Dealing With Shit, a chaotic, cavernous hall filled with the chatter of a hundred thousand Séraphins.
“Fam, it’s better if they’re married. I’m telling you. Less drama because they have a lot to lose!”
“I hate to admit it, but that makes sense. Kind of.”
“Pretty sure, this life game is rigged.”
“I know, right?”
“I know someone, somewhere, has the cheat code, or a map of the whole thing, with all of the naps, meals, stress, pits, and anxiety traps marked out.”
“Dude, when you find them, let us know.”
There are five of them huddled around one Séraphin, who has the rest nodding along to his argument that they must engineer a situation in which they can meet with Jasmyn now that they have her number.
“I say,” says pro-Jasmyn Séraphin, “we call it. That’s why she gave it to us, right? She expects us to call.”
Another Séraphin interjects. “Shouldn’t we wait a little? Three-day rule and all that.”
The other Séraphins look at him in disbelief.
“This ain’t the movies, dude,” the pro-Jasmyn Séraphin says. “This is The Game. The Game doesn’t have off days, it doesn’t have holidays. The Game is The Game, The Game’s always afoot, and every game is the final. We don’t watch, we don’t bench, we play.”
The Séraphins, to Séraphin’s frustration, notice him. Just great, he thinks. Now he has to push his way across to the exit on the other side of the massive room, jostled by each thought’s presence.
“Call her.”
“No, don’t call her. Play it cool.”
“You’re wasting your time playing it cool with hot girls. You need to call in an airstrike. Blitzkrieg, bro!”
“Like the formula.”
“Which one?”
“Persistence over resistance equals success never fails.”
“That, my friend, sounds very rape-y.”
“You know what I mean.”
“This is the call-up, Séra. Like when the apprentice leaves the monastery and comes back years later to face the master.”
“Dude, you gotta give her the work.”
“That ninety-ninth level Hadō without the incantation kind of work.”
“Ey, yo, Séra, I figured out what we to do after graduation. I say we take a year off and just figure shit out, you know? No rush, no pressure. We’re bound to figure something out. We always do, don’t we?”
“Yo, this new playlist is fire on flames. It’s called Hi-fidelity Infidelity, get it? It’s all R&B shit. Then there’s this one: The Golden Age of Worry. It’s all angst-y and confusion, but with a positive undertone. Really made for the times, you know.”
Séraphin pushes through the crowd of thoughts, clasping proffered hands and bumping shoulders, as he makes his way across the hall, pausing to sign off on playlist ideas and promising to think about taking time off after graduation. The Phone Jasmyn Action Group surrounds him and peppers him with their interests, drowning out everything else.
“Will you or won’t you?”
“You should!”
“Look at him, he will!”
“Totally will. Right?”
“Smart’s money on calling her, guv’nor!”
“Call! Call! Call!”
Séraphin shouts for silence. The whole hall comes to standstill. “Okay, fine,” Séraphin says. “I’ll call her.” The room erupts in applause and cheers. “But not tonight,” he adds quickly before the ideas start getting ahead of themselves. “No rush.” When Séraphin arrives at the door he is looking for, he pulls on the handle and fights to be freed from the other Séraphins. He has to push with his might to close the door, pushing back poking heads and arms.
“Be gentle, but firm. Oh-so-firm!”
“You’re the man, Séraphin. Don’t forget—!”
Séraphin shuts the door and steps back into his mother’s kitchen.
After Éric finished frying the chips he was told to start grating carrots for a soup; Yves sweated outside as he banked down coals and prepared to start roasting beef steaks, pork and lamp chops, and chicken breasts and drumsticks on the braai outside; Séraphin sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions, and shredded lettuce leaves for a salad that would be pillaged for its olives and feta. When Therése began pulling out the ingredients for a mountainous potato salad Séraphin was not quick enough to duck out of the kitchen and was forced to spend a chunk of the afternoon peeling and cutting potatoes. Eventually, he furnished the monotony of the task as a reasonable excuse to go and help Yves with the meat. He found his brother standing next to the brick and concrete fireplace that was built into the back wall, spearing and turning meat over with a pair of tongs, trying, without any luck, to stay out of the smoke.
“Did you bring juice or something to drink?” Yves asked.
“Nah, sorry. I was hellbent on getting out of the kitchen. But I can get you something if you want.”
“It’s fine. I’m nearly done anyway.”
“What’s left?”
“The chicken.” Yves tossed his head towards oven trays stacked with the roasted and basted goodness of his labour. The beef steaks and lamb cutlets looked dark brown and one or two were a bit burnt. The pork chops were bronzed to perfection. Séraphin walked over and scanned them for the smallest, pulling it out and sinking his teeth into its tender warmness.
; “God bless swine,” said Séraphin. He took another bite from the chop before handing it to Yves. “Pass me the tongs, I’ll do the chicken.”
Yves gratefully stepped out of the smoke and took the proffered chop. “Gonna be a long night,” he said, picking his way around the bone.
“I swear the older these people get the longer and harder they party,” Séraphin said. The tongs darted into the fireplace, picking and flipping over chicken pieces at speed. “Remember when we were younger these things usually ended at midnight? But now at two o’clock people are still camped out here.”
Yves finished cleaning the meat off the bone and sucked on it out of boredom. “So, Séraphin, there will be questions tonight. They’re going to need answers.”
Séraphin turned to face Yves. “Bro, tonight all of the Agent Smiths in the world could fire their questions at me and they wouldn’t hit me. What do you plan on doing after you graduate – I’m thinking of a Master’s degree. Whoosh. Oh? In what – Commercial Law, maybe, it’s a big field. Whoosh. Oh, that is good. And then you will become a lawyer, no? Lawyers make big money in Namibia – Yes, uncle, they make a lot of money. Whoosh. Oh, we will be so proud and your parents too – Yes, I’m certain they will be. Whoosh. Bro, I know how these things go. Always give vague answers that are in line with what they want to hear. Never commit. Tonight, no expectations formed against me shall prosper.”
“Good luck with that.” Yves looked at his brother in silence for a while. “Seriously, though, what do you plan on doing after you graduate?”
“I don’t know, man. I really don’t. All of my applications for work in Cape Town law firms were rejected.”
“And here?”
“Here what?”
“Jobs here at home.”
“I haven’t tried for anything here.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because I would certainly get a job, bro,” Séraphin said, shaking his head.
“And what’s wrong with this place?”
“It’s, well, you know, home.”
“And?”
“Well, the purpose of home is to be left.”
“Hmm,” Yves said.
Too late Séraphin realised what he had just said and began to apologise, trying to delicately pick out the long thorn he had just placed underneath their ambling conversation’s exposed foot. “You know I didn’t mean it like that, Yves.”
“I know, Séra. You often don’t mean things in the way you say them.”
Séraphin turned back to the chicken, flipping the pieces over for the last time and coating them with a final layer of basting sauce. In his first few years away he would return home full of stories for his younger brothers – cafés and restaurants which catered to epicurean whims; foreign and attractive women who did not let skin colour stand in the way of a good romance; parties which left the body depleted and the mind scrambled. He would enjoy being the centre of attention, the caveman bringing home fire, a sailor spinning tales of strange lands for landlubbers for whom the horizon was perpetually out of reach. Séraphin would wow Yves and Éric with his peregrine cool and cow them with his slang. What began as expository storytelling strayed too close to bragging, though, and soon Yves and Éric stopped looking forward to hearing about what they were missing out on.
“Anyway,” Yves said, breaking the sombre pall, “the only real justice in the world is that you’ll most certainly get nailed by one of the questions you’ll have to answer tonight. You aren’t that slick, Séra.”
“You’re probably right.” Séraphin started tossing the cooked chicken pieces into a serving bowl. He pulled off the last drumstick and took a bite. The sweet, tangy, and herby flavours brought a satisfied moan out of him. “God, I’m good,” he said. He passed the drumstick to Yves.
“How many people do you think will come?” Yves asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know. Let’s take this shit inside. The mosquitoes are already out.”
“Who’s playing the music tonight?”
“I think I’ll have to. I’d let Éric do it but he’d probably blast rap or house the whole night. Boy has no sense of propriety.”
“Mamma would kill us if we let him anywhere near the speakers. Best you do it. Which playlist are we going with?”
“I’m thinking about premiering The Department of Native Affairs.”
“Sounds promising.”
“All the African jams we grew up with, man. Jeff Maluleke, Brenda Fassie, Wess, Salif Keita, and Papa Wemba.”
“Lucky Dube?”
“But, of course, brother.”
“The old folks’ll love that. They’re going to dance hard. If they aren’t too drunk.”
“Like that’ll stop them,” Séraphin said.
By the time they had delivered the meat to the kitchen the sun had descended in a fiery blaze which left burnt sienna smudging the clouds’ edges. Therése scurried around the kitchen putting finishing touches to dishes, while Éric carried stacked plates, paper serviettes and fistfuls of cutlery to the dining room. Yves and Séraphin took turns showering. They changed into fresh clothes and then went to the television room to flick through channels, watching the fireworks displays from Sydney, Tokyo, and Hong Kong who were already ahead in time, calling for the rest of the world to catch up.
IX
A gathering of Rwandans in exile – also known as a sigh of Rwandans – always winds up being more than the reason for the meeting in the first place. Be it a Sunday lunch after church, the graduation party of a daughter, or a New Year’s fête, nothing stops the recent buds of exiled life from calling to forgotten roots in a faraway land. Food and drink allow the shared language of struggle and forced adaptation to condense on the walls of carefully maintained friendships and polite associations, pooling together and finding voice in roundtable discussions which wend their way from the early afternoon to the deep night. At such events the animated voices of those who have lived and lost paint the night with tales of woe, injustice, stolen land, missing relatives, and stories of lucky escapes, then trail into a silence that hums around the present company as the narrator is temporarily lost to suppressed memories of terror; fearful, anxious crouching next to small, black Sanyo radios listening to scrambled news reports, hoping for aid, and praying for foreign intervention.
But first come the greetings—hugs, cheeks kissing each other, once on each side – and then the complaints – singular, collective, and colourful. The heat is cursed as newspapers are used to fan sweaty foreheads; the sporadic rainfall is bemoaned; and the price of food, along with the changed and improvised cuisine, is a mortal wound felt by all. Last comes the oft discussed problems of child rearing in the city.
“But these children are growing wild in this country. Just last week Jean was watching a video on television with nothing in it but buttocks! Buttocks! When I turned it off he was angry with me. These things would not happen in Rwanda, I’m telling you!” a mother’s voice will say.
“C’est la vie ici! You must be firm and vigilant,” says another voice. “These Namibian children drink and smoke from an early age, you know. They drink, and they smoke. I have seen them. God must help me if my children pick up these habits.”
The irony of their Namibian-born children learning, speaking, and dreaming in English, being surrounded by the trappings and aspirations of Namibian life in public and private schools, totally eludes them. They are convinced they are still Rwandan, and that if they but exercise moral fortitude, if they restrict television-watching hours to two or three hours a day, they will stem the tide of cultural change running amok through their houses. They pray and fast so as to gain understanding about the most recent phenomenon they have encountered in their teenage children’s lives: the sleepover.
“Eh, what is this thing?”
“I have heard that they go to someone’s house and watch movies, and eat, and dance, and then they sleep over.”
“But if that is all that they do, why do they need to go outsid
e to do it? What is outside that they cannot find at home?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds like an opportunity for smoking and drinking. And that is not even the worst, I hear. They could even be engaging in sex at these things.”
The other assembled voices gasp at the mention of the s-word.
“It is not easy to have children in Namibia, I am telling you,” says the first voice. All of the other voices nod their agreement. The simultaneous heavy sigh which issues from all of the mothers registers a solid four on the Richter scale. Sleepovers are unanimously banned. For many children university will be the first time they experience the denied ordinariness of sleeping over at a friend’s house.
