“We’re leaving Rwanda,” the woman replied. “Everyone says the killing has stopped, but we don’t believe them. Before, it was the Hutus and now it’s the Tustsis. But you can’t trust anyone any more, they’re killing their own people now. Everyone’s gone mad in this country. We want to get out.”
“We’re heading for Zaïre,” another woman said. “They’re taking in refugees. We’ll be safe there. We just want to get away from the slaughter. Come with us. There’s nothing any more in Rwanda for a young girl like you.”
Mutesi turned away, unsettled by the women’s talk, suddenly undecided in her mind. She sat at the roadside for a while longer, trying to work out what to do. Zaïre, a new life in a new country. Maybe a better place for her and her baby. But a country she didn’t know, people she didn’t know. She thought about it for a long while, but knew she couldn’t face another challenge in her life while pregnant with her child. Rukara was her village, her home, the only place she had ever lived; the only people she had ever known. The only place she had ever felt safe.
She carefully got back to her feet and fought her way slowly through the mass of humanity, down the road towards Kigali.
It took Mutesi twelve days to cover the hundred kilometres to her home village. She walked in the very early morning and late afternoon and evening. It was the dry season and there was no rain, but the sun was still hot during the day and it exhausted her. Following the Ruhengeri - Kigali road south east, near Tumba she branched off and took the road to Mugambazi, about fifty kilometres from Ruhondo and half way to Rukara. With the help of the map and the women she passed on the road she found her way without too much difficulty. The mass of refugees moving towards her forced her to walk parallel with the main roads and she took small trails and paths, always fearful that she’d be seen and apprehended. The atrocities she’d witnessed and the months with Jean-Bousquet had made her frightened and suspicious of everyone, man or woman.
At Mugambazi, she left the road and struck across country to the east, in the direction of Rutare and its hilly, forested slopes. She saw fewer people now, small groups of women and occasionally men. Many of them seemed to be camped out temporarily, as if they didn’t believe the killing was over and were afraid to return to their villages. Her progress was slow and tiring and her pace dropped significantly with each day. She fashioned a crude walking pole from a tree branch to help keep her balance on the untracked terrain. Fearful of falling and injuring herself and the baby she skirted steep climbs and descents as best she could, often having to make a wide circuit to get back to her original line of direction.
Three days later, after struggling through the forest and around the steep and dangerous hillsides Mutesi managed to find the north side of the Muhazi River. Although she had consumed it sparingly, the food and water Irene had provided had almost run out and she foraged for nuts and berries and edible plants that she recognised, like wild cucumbers and yams, putting whatever was left into her bag as a reserve for the next day. She drank river water and found safe hideaways to sleep in at night, out of sight or smell of any wild creatures that might be roaming nearby. The evenings were cool, but the smock and cardigan provided by the housekeeper were sufficient.
She walked alongside the river for two days, becoming more and more tired and less careful, narrowly avoiding injuring herself in the inhospitable terrain. Small groups of people, bedraggled, dirty and listless, passed her from time to time, seeming dazed and walking aimlessly along, sometimes not even speaking a word.
From time to time she would see wild creatures, bands of wild dogs or jackals, and once, she saw a leopard drinking from the river at sunset. But she was able to stay downwind of the animals and was never threatened by any of them. She had little sleep, being disturbed by the many animal noises in the night, lying tired and hungry in whatever sheltered spot she could find.
Ten days after leaving Ruhonda she saw the sheen of Lake Muhazi up ahead, near her home village. The sight energised her and she began to walk faster and with more abandon. Her mind went back to the tranquil life with her family, before the killings. It was a comfortable, safe feeling. Familiar voices, sounds, odours, began to resonate through her. The smell of cooking, the laughter of her sisters and brothers, the sound of her father and mother talking. She was reliving her past life, she was safe at last, safe in the comfort of her family. Mutesi was hallucinating.
As she hurried towards the lake, she stepped down from a rock and the ground gave way beneath her foot. She had stepped into a moss covered ditch. The slope she was on was only a gentle decline, but steep enough to carry her down the hillside. Helplessly she rolled down the shale covered slope, more than ten metres to the bottom. Mutesi lay for a while, breathless and bruised, fearfully holding her hands around her stomach. Then the baby kicked. She breathed again deeply and gave thanks to God.
Painfully she climbed back to her feet. And fell again. Her left ankle was swollen badly, it was sprained. She managed to crawl to the riverside and dangled her leg in the cool water until the stinging of the sprain diminished and the swelling dissipated a little. Mutesi remembered the healing plants taught to her by her mother. Looking around she saw a group of pineapple lilies growing nearby. The leaves of the plant had healing qualities for bruising and fractures. She crawled over and collected some of the leaves to wrap around her ankle. Then she placed a thick coating of mud from the river bank over the leaves to form a primitive poultice. A wide strip of cloth torn from her smock served as a bandage and the strap from the bag given to her by Irene fastened around her ankle held it in place.
Mutesi sat back against a tree trunk and rested until the pain in her ankle eased. Exhausted with her efforts she fell asleep for several hours, her body recuperating while she slept. When she awoke it was early evening, the star-filled sky above her like a magic sparkling carpet. A balmy, soft moment in her journey. She ate the last of the food from her bag and drank some water from the river. Her ankle was much improved and she managed to fashion a cushion around the top of the walking pole with the rest of Irene’s bag so she could use it as a crutch. She climbed carefully back to her feet and limped towards the lake. Heading towards Rukara. Heading towards her home.
The last part of her journey, as she skirted Lake Muhazi, was a place of rocky terrain, lazy streams and lakes, surrounded by marshy, treacherous land. She spent many hours retracing her tracks to find a way through the hostile environment. The pain in her ankle was a constant reminder of how close she was to failing in her task but she somehow found the strength to carry on. Now she walked and rested in equal measure, for her own and the baby’s sake. Mutesi had no strength left to wash herself, and she ate whatever plant or flower came to hand, with water from the streams. In a constant daze by now, she would fall into an exhausted sleep then climb back to her feet, again and again, to stagger forward, determined to carry herself and her baby back to their home.
It took two more days for her to cover the last twenty kilometres and at long last, almost two weeks after leaving Ruhonda, she reached the outskirts of Rukara. Mutesi knelt down on the dirt path and thanked God for her deliverance. She had made it home alive, with her baby safe. Clambering painfully back to her feet she limped wearily past the line of shacks towards her parent’s home. The village seemed deserted, she could see no one around, until she came to the church building in the centre. She heard singing and went up to the door.
The tiny building was filled with people, singing their hearts out, praising Jesus and the Lord. Thanking the heavens for their miraculous survival; against all odds they were still alive. She looked around at the decorations in the church and realised it was Christmas Day. She had lost count of time and hadn’t realised the date. Now she saw a few familiar faces, women and girls, friends from the past. She stepped inside and sat by the door, filthy and exhausted, sobbing quietly, hardly believing she’d returned home again, but knowing that no member of her family was there to welcome her back.
Some o
f the women turned and came over. “It’s Mutesi. Look, Mutesi’s come back. God be praised. Mutesi is back with us.”
Mutesi wrapped her arms around her stomach, around her unborn child, and she fell asleep, surrounded by what remained of her village friends, lulled by the musical voices in the church, finally feeling safe, finally realising that the killing was over.
TWENTY
April, 1995
Bumbogo, outside Kigali, Rwanda
Mutesi limped slowly towards the temporary clinic in Bumbogo, forty kilometres from Rukara. Emma was getting some fresh air outside and saw her stagger into the encampment, helped by another young woman. Between them, they helped the girl into the clinic. One of the beds had been vacated that morning and they lifted her onto it. Emma could see she was due to give birth soon; she looked exhausted and frail, at the limit of her strength. She bathed Mutesi gently with warm water then let her rest. Doctor Constance, the only doctor in the clinic, would examine her later, when his impossible schedule permitted the time.
Going outside, she sat with Marianne, the woman who had accompanied her, who chattered in voluble French, which she tried desperately to understand. From what she could make out, the young woman, who Emma learned was about seventeen years old, told her that Mutesi had stayed with her in her home since she had returned to their village in December. Marianne’s husband had been murdered last July, in the same final mad wave of violence that Mutesi’s family had fled and which had spread as far as the lakes on the eastern border with Tanzania. She had taken the young, pregnant girl into her home to help her regain some strength, but even now she was still fragile and weak. Mutesi was only eight months pregnant but because of her frail condition she feared the baby would come prematurely.
In Rukara, the Hutu had slaughtered anyone who could bring children into the world, including the wise woman, the village midwife. The village was reduced to mainly old women and children, with the few men who had escaped death returning one by one to their decimated families. Mutesi had fought so hard to survive that she was fearful of putting herself and her baby in the hands of an unqualified person. Marianne also knew she was at the limit of her strength. She would need all the expert help they could find to bring the baby into the world.
Euphrasie, another woman who had survived to return to the village from Kigali told them she’d heard of a family clinic which had been set up in Bumbogo, about forty kilometres away, just outside the capital. It was run by French people and helped women who had lost their families. Despite the atrocious manner in which so many Rwandan women and girls had been impregnated, it was still too shameful to admit to being a rape victim. The clinic was called a Family Assistance Clinic, although almost all the patients were pregnant women in desperate need of care and attention.
Mutesi knew that she could lose her own life and her baby’s without expert assistance and facilities, but there were none in Rukara. There was no midwife, no electricity, no tap water, no facilities of any kind to help her if anything went wrong. She told Marianne that she was determined to get to the clinic in Bumbogo to have her child in a safe place.
At first Marianne tried to dissuade her, she was too weak to make the journey. But Mutesi was adamant. If this was the last thing she could do for her baby, she had to do it. She had to get to the clinic in Bumbogo. Marianne saw that she couldn’t win the argument, so she insisted on going with her, she couldn’t let her attempt it alone. She found out there was a bus to Kibali that they could pick up at Kayonza, about ten kilometres walk from the village The bus would take them to the outskirts of Kigali, just a couple of kilometres from the clinic. Euphrasie explained to them how to find their way, but both she and Marianne were concerned that Mutesi wasn’t strong enough to undertake the journey. It would challenge any woman, but for a full-term pregnant teenager, it could be fatal.
The two women prepared themselves as best they could with their limited resources and set off towards Kayonza. It took them a day and a half to get to the clinic.
Emma requested permission to look after Mutesi herself. She wanted to be the one who made a difference to the girl’s life.
Mutesi went into labour the next day.
TWENTY-ONE
April, 1995
Bumbogo, outside Kigali, Rwanda
Emma woke up, aroused by the baby’s cries. It was evening and he was hungry. Mutesi was still sleeping. She fetched a bottle of warm milk from the kitchen and picked up the baby.
“Mutesi, it’s time for Leopold’s first meal”, she said. When the girl didn’t respond, she shook her gently, still to no effect. Emma suddenly had a terrible premonition. “Mutesi! Wake up Mutesi!” she cried, shaking her more urgently, her heart racing.
The young girl lay still, her eyes closed and a peaceful expression on her face. “No! No!” Emma sobbed. “Not after everything you’ve been through. Your son is safely delivered into the world. Mutesi! You’ve got everything to live for. You can’t give up now.” She replaced the screaming baby in the cot and raced through the clinic to find Dr Constance.
He checked Mutesi’s vital signs then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Emma. There’s nothing we can do.”
“This is all my fault.” Emma grabbed the doctor’s arm. “If I hadn’t fallen asleep she would still be alive. I should have realised she wasn’t just sleeping, that she wasn’t well. I should have called you before.”
He shook her hand away. “I don’t think it would have made any difference. I was afraid this would happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I examined her, I noticed an irregularity in her heartbeat. It was fairly weak, which doesn’t always mean trouble but it was quite inconsistent, which means there’s a fault somewhere. Maybe a faulty valve, which causes the heart to work harder on one side than the other. Extra stress, like childbirth, added to the severe exhaustion she was suffering can place too much pressure on the heart and it can fail. I’m sure that’s what happened.”
“But why didn’t you say anything? Maybe I could have done something. Don’t we have anything that could have helped the condition?”
“Emma, you know what limited facilities we have here. We’re not equipped to deal with complex issues like heart problems. We don’t even have equipment to diagnose the problem. And she was about to go into labour. If we’d given her anything we might have jeopardised the baby’s birth.”
He took Emma by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “We have saved one life today. Without our help, Mutesi and her son might have both been lost. You must think of the positive aspect of our work.”
“But, I fell asleep. It was wrong of me. I should have been alert to her condition, her weakness. I should have been extra vigilant when she was sleeping. I should never have dozed off.”
“What time did you start this morning?”
“I was called at four o’clock to help with a caesarean and I’ve been on ever since.”
“That’s fourteen hours without a break. Be reasonable, Emma. Everyone needs time to recuperate. We’re not machines, without sleep we’ll make even worse mistakes. But the point is, you didn’t make a mistake. Mutesi had a weak heart and we’ve got nothing that would have helped her. Her heart failed after the exertions of the birth, but she leaves a beautiful healthy little boy.”
“But she died on my watch. How can I rationalise that? How can I cope with her death on my conscience?”
“Emma, please stop blaming yourself for this. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I should have prescribed something for her immediately after the delivery, but I didn’t expect it to come so soon and I was trying to do a thousand things at the same time.” He looked down, disconsolately, “And I was half asleep myself. I haven’t been to bed since the night before last. We’re all overwhelmed here. We’ve got a team of six to look after seventy women and the chances are we’re going to see some accidents. After what they’ve been through, these girls are so weak, so traumatised, so….vulnerable. Sometimes they just do
n’t have the strength to carry on. Especially if they have a condition like Mutesi’s.
“I understand you’re grieving for Mutesi, we both are. She was a sweet girl and she didn’t deserve this wretched end to her life. But the chances are she wouldn’t have made it whatever we did. She obviously had a very severe heart problem and she succumbed to it. We did our best and we can’t do more than that. But you must put incidents like this into perspective, admit that we can’t win every time, however hard we try to beat the odds, and we’re going to have a few failures alongside the many successes. If you can’t, then I’m afraid you need to evaluate your suitability to this work. I’ll tell you frankly it’s not the job I signed up for, but it’s what we’ve got to cope with. It’s not easy, nobody said it would be, but if we don’t do it then it will be a whole lot harder for these poor people.
“Now, I want you to go and take a break. Have something to eat then sleep until tomorrow morning. “I’ll look after Mutesi. And I’ll talk to Marianne. Trust me.”
“Then I’ll take the baby and feed him. He can spend the night with me, there’s nobody else available to look after an orphan.” ‘Orphan’. The very word rang out in her own ears. Leopold was now an orphan. Who in Rwanda would care for a one day old orphan?
“Please let me look after the child.” She implored. “You have to let me do this for Mutesi. I promised her and I can’t break my promise.”
Emma finally wore down the doctor until he agreed and she took the tiny baby to her quarters, changed and fed him, then made up a comfortable cot for him in a drawer in the room. Then she fell onto the bed in an exhausted sleep.
MARBELLA
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
TWENTY-TWO
Marbella, Spain
The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set Page 71
