Ruzagayura
Kamanzi, our sub-chief, came to take away our children. The Colonial had paid him to do it. He’d given him a watch, a pair of sunglasses, a bottle of port wine, two jerry cans of gasoline, a swath of fabric for his wife and daughters. He took Gahutu’s children, and Kagabo’s, and Nahimana’s, and many others. Even the ones who weren’t ten yet. He brought them to the Colonial’s field. So they could pick the flowers the Colonial had planted. Flowers with white petals and bright yellow hearts. The sub-chief had said:
“These flowers are for the war. They’ve told us Rwandans that we have to help with the war effort—the Belgian war, the English war, the German war, the war of all the White men. These flowers are medicine for the soldiers fighting the war. They kill off the mosquitos that attack them and give them malaria. We need many flowers. The Administrator said so to the chief, and the chief said so to me: that’s why I need your children. We need children’s small hands, the white Colonial said, to harvest small flowers.”
And the children harvested and harvested the flowers, in the sun and in the rain. The ones who went to school no longer went to school. They were picked up before sunrise and returned home after nightfall. They were too exhausted to eat. And they cried and cried, and they became ill, and when the mothers tried to hide their children, they came for the fathers, who got ibiboko, eight lashes.
—
That was when the chiefs turned pitiless. These were the Bazungu’s chiefs. They had been to Nyanza, to a school for chiefs. They had shirts, trousers, sunglasses. They hobbled because the Administrator forced them to wear shoes. Behind them followed clerks who knew how to read and write better than they did and who recorded everything in their large notebooks. The chiefs were afraid of the abakarani, because they were the ones the Administrator invited on certain evenings to drink beer on his barza, and how can you hold your tongue when on top of that they offer you port wine, the ubuki of the Bazungu?
The chiefs went to Mass; you had to be baptized to become a chief. Everyone had followed their example: after them, everyone had received baptism; after them, everyone went to Mass; what else could we do but follow them? They went with the sub-chief to the parish assembly, the inama. As for the chiefs, they went to a spiritual retreat at Monsignor’s house, the bishop’s palace in Kabgayi.
But the chiefs were afraid of their white masters and their masters had told them:
“Now we’re at war. We need men to dig the earth in the mines, we need a lot of iron and a lot of copper for our blacksmiths to make rifles and cannons. You have no idea of the riches you have here: there’s Minétain, Somuki, Georouanda, and all the other companies that provide wealth for you and the Congo, where your men have gone off to work. It’s up to Rwanda to feed them, and we need a lot of beans for the men who dig the earth in the mines. More men, and still more beans.”
—
And the chiefs had said to the sub-chiefs:
“I need men and I need beans, for if I don’t find men, if I don’t supply beans, they’ll ruin me.”
And the sub-chief said to us:
“Men, beans and men, or I’ll be let go.”
—
That’s how the chiefs turned harsh and the sub-chiefs took the men and beans, and took away our children.
—
But not even the sub-chiefs were spared, nor were the farmers. Their cattle were taken, or else bought, but for a pittance. So the farmers hid the cattle; they sent herds to Bugesera, Kivu, Tanganyika. And when the Administrator asked, “What happened to your cows?” they wailed and moaned and gripped their heads with their hands:
“What, don’t you know? Woe is me! Woe is me! The tsetse fly and the plague decimated my herd. I do nothing all day but weep over Isine, Rugaju, all my favorites.”
They slaughtered the last cattle: “The Congolese eat only meat, raw meat,” the farmers were told.
—
As we know too well, one misfortune leads to another. And when the barns had been stripped clean, that’s when Ruzagayura showed up.
—
Yes, that’s when Ruzagayura, the great famine, came crashing down on the poor Rwandans, on the weakened men, the emaciated women, the sickly children. That year, the long dry season seemed never to want to end. We waited for the rain, which they say is Kibogo’s rain, also called Bweramvura. We waited for it anxiously so we could plant the beans, peas, and sorghum. When it came, it was only to fool the farmers, for as soon as the beans and peas began to sprout, Bweramvura abandoned the hillside, abandoned all of Rwanda, and an even more crushing sun returned to parch our fields. We waited for the heavy rain, the one they call Zina; she came as if in a fury, spitting hail and lightning, then immediately left, content with the devastation she had wrought. The rain of Nyamvura, too feeble, could bring no aid. Dust had buried the now-arid land under a layer of red ash.
—
Disease afflicted the potatoes and cassava that the Bazungu made us plant. They had said:
“With these vegetables, we can conquer famine. We shall save Rwanda, your country. Plant cassava and potatoes and they will save you from hunger.”
But diseases attacked the plantations. The potatoes were eaten away by rot and rapacious mushrooms, tormented by ravenous flies. And the cassava turned out to be poisonous. The barns remained empty. There was nothing left to eat but banana or fern roots, or wild grasses. We made a porridge out of dried banana leaves. Some people devoured the fruits of thorn bushes.
The infants were the first to perish, their mothers having no more milk. Children with great gaping eyes ate dirt, the elderly went off to die quietly, columns of families wandered the paths, vainly searching for scraps. Someone said, “Over there, on that hill, they’ve still got food.” And the skeletal hordes started up and the vultures followed behind. Soon the path was lined with corpses. And those who survived found at the end of their road only empty barns and abandoned villages. And the sated vultures and hyenas didn’t bother with their stacked bones.
—
Then the men, women, and children abandoned the hillside. Entire families fled to the Congo. The country became sterile, desolate, deserted by both people and the Imana that provide abundant milk and honey.
—
Hope returned when Chief Kamanzi came to visit the hillside. His huge automobile that looked like a small truck caused the little children to scatter for their lives and the girls coming back from fetching water to drop their earthen jars, which shattered. The Swahili driver laughed at this. “Our chief is here, he hasn’t abandoned us, he’s going to get us food.” Chief Kamanzi came with his clerk who always followed him around, his briefcase stuffed with papers, and with the sub-chief who had put on his trousers and shirt as if he were going to Mass. Everyone thought, The car is filled with sacks of beans. We’re saved! But the driver took from the back of the car two jerry cans and three crates of Primus. The chief asked for large pitchers in which to pour the contents of the jerry cans. We realized it was sorghum beer.
Chief Kamanzi gathered the notables, the catechist, the sages, and the elders. Everyone squatted inside the cabaret hut around the large pitchers. Kamanzi wished the entire assembly peace. The clerk handed him a sheet of paper, for our chief knows how to read and even to write a little. He thrust it back irritably, then addressed the gathering.
“I have not come here to lie to you,” he said. “May I poison our King Mutara if I were to do so! You all know, and especially you elders, how many famines our Rwanda has known. But listen well to what I’m about to tell you: ...
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