Chapter Two: The Kibungo Massacre

“And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is upon the sea shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many.” ~Joshua 11:4

Land of a Thousand Hills Chapter Two:  The Kibungo Massacre

         I’d like to forgive them, but I can’t. I look down at this rotten piece of meat that used to be my hand and know I will never forget.

         “Long sleeves or short?” the Umfundsi asked me, before his blade came crashing down upon the altar, separating bone from flesh.

         Some things just can’t be forgiven.

They killed my parents and I am expected to forget. I see their faces in my dreams, horrified and disfigured. I try to save them but my arm has been taken away, and I am forced to choose between them. I hear their screams as I am forced to drop them both to their deaths.

         It’s the smells that I remember, the pulled flesh, separated from bone, rotten and baked in the hot Rwandan sun. I hear loud thunderous crashes of explosions in my dreams and I have trouble sleeping at night.

         I try to forgive, but I can’t. I’d like to forget, but I can’t.

         We knew there was trouble in Kigali. We heard it on the radio. The president’s plane had been shot down, and it triggered some kind of country-wide killing spree with Hutus killing Tutsis.

         A craze set in and Tutsis started to panic and flee. Hutus set up road blocks and cut off food supplies to major Tutsi villages, and it added to the hysterics. Neighboring countries closed their borders to the refugees and the Tutsis seemed to be trapped with no place to go.

         Our village, on the banks of Lake Akagera, was relatively isolated within the mountains, safe from attack. The Umfundsi and his wife visited often, bringing food and other rations, encouraging us to leave behind all of our earthly possessions and seek refuge at the Nyarubuye Parish.

         “You will be safe there,” the Umfundsi said. “The power of God will protect you.”

         I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay at our home and play with my friends, but my father was a very religious man and made up his mind for his family, to take advantage of the Umfundsi’s invitation to stay at the parish.

         Most of our village agreed with my father. They packed up small night bags with a few changes of clothes and left their homes behind. A mass exodus of people made the four kilometer journey down the heavily traveled, earth-packed trail to the parish.

         Some of our neighbors were stubborn and refused to leave their homes. “I was born in this house. I will die in this house,” was a common response. Those who stayed behind were the lucky ones. They were overlooked by the organized death squads of the Interhamawe Army, who planned for the Tutsis to be in a central location.

         The deception of a safer place under God’s protection lured us in and we were unknowingly rounded up and slaughtered as cattle.

Their combined legions, armed with a vast array of weapons ranging from stones to makeshift swords that were sharpened at the point, covered the landscape like sand on the seashore.

         They established their camp around the waters of Lake Akagera along a small, shaded inlet, known by local fisherman to yield the largest fish for market. Here, four kilometers from the peaceful Nyarubuye Catholic Parish, down a heavily traveled, earth-packed road, they took control of the entire land.

         Their territory extended throughout the Kibungo Province, from Gikungo to Nyarubuye, assuring the only safe passage was across the vast lake into Burundi. The killings had grown increasingly systematic; only nine days old, their campaign had already claimed so many.

         Their plans, perhaps weeks old, had been meticulously thought out by militia leadership. The Umfundsi had given the militia the designated signal that he had been successful in his mission, to lead Tutsi refugees to the safe haven of Nyarubuye Catholic Parish, like lambs to the slaughter.

         It was a good plan, and I imagine the men laughing and joking around the campfire, how all Tutsis must be foolish to trust in the power of God to protect them. Our extermination was inevitable, for the Land of a Thousand Hills had been promised to the Hutus.

The smells of grilled gorilla steaks and roasted potatoes reached the parish. This was the customary meal before the army was to go on the march, supposedly doing God’s work. The Interhamawe felt it was cruel for their soldiers to kill on an empty stomach. The gorilla steaks were tenderized using the smoked wood from an apple tree, infusing a special woodland taste into the meat. A ceremonial salt, rendered from the rock face nearby cliff, was rubbed into the meat to bring the soldiers good luck. The meat was then placed on sharpened skewers and wrapped in banana leaves to lock in the rich aroma and moisture the seasonings would produce. The wild potatoes were also wrapped in banana leaves, but buried under the top level of ash and roasted over the fire. The hot embers cooked the potatoes but did not scorch their fruit. The meat was succulent, and the Interhamawe felt that eating the meat of a gorilla gave them special powers of invincibility. When they had full stomachs, their souls would truly be prepared for battle. It was after their meal that they began their attack.

The protection of the parish brought a false sense of security, and a jubilee like celebration in which all crimes and debts were forgiven. The multitude of people from all around the Kibungo Province danced around the pews and sang songs to a God that refused to hear their voices.

We saw the Interhamawe Army approaching the parish throughout the night. They carried torches that created a fiery wave throughout the forest.

Still we sang and danced and fed upon the delectable treats prepared. My parents danced shoulder to shoulder with the Umfundsi and his wife and I sang songs: “Jehovah, I adore thee, whose son gave his life for me.”

An invisible aura surrounded the congregation and we didn’t care that our doom was quickly approaching. We trusted God’s protection to save us. I realize now that I was swept up in the excitement of the praise. The dancing overtook me. I was unable to control my urge to sing. I lifted my voice as high as I could. I too believed and hoped that God would hear my songs and jump in and put a stop to things before they started. He didn’t step in and my faith has been shaken.

The lights grew closer and the singing grew louder. I saw the Umfundsi and his wife go outside to tell the Interhamawe that there were no Tutsis in the parish, to turn around and search elsewhere. When they came back inside wielding weapons and the orgy of killing ensued, I knew we had been betrayed.

The songs turned to screams and the dancing to a panicked frenzy. Children were separated from their parents in the confusion. Husbands accidentally trampled their wives, crushing them in the crowd. Blood flew, bodies collapsed, and bones splintered.

The Umfundsi grabbed me by the arm and was yelling, “If your arm is infected, you must cut it off. If your eye has a splinter, you must pluck it out.” He had a worn, blood-stained machete in his hand and a blood-lust on his face. A combination of mud and blood formed a type of war paint that was spread across his brow. “The angel of death has come and I shall be spared,” he said. “Long sleeves or short?” He brought his cleaver down hard on my arm, cutting it at the elbow, and I exploded into pain. I felt my life force slowly leave my body. Drip, drip, drip. The pain jerked me back from what seemed to be an out-of-body vacation where I was able to look down on the massacre as a whole. The loss of blood dulled my senses and dizziness overcame me and I fell to the earth, spared from witnessing the remaining brutality of the next couple of hours. 

         I lay among the multitude of rotting, decaying corpses, a cesspool of filth with excrement: feces, blood, and urine.

         God had long ago abandoned that holy place, leaving only his messengers the maggots behind to devour the evidence of the atrocities he had allowed to take place.

         God is not a loving, caring God. If he were, he would have allowed one of two things to happen: allow me to commit suicide or allow the killers’ blades to kill me. Instead I passed out, and so the monsters only thought I was dead.

         I remember the sound of buzzing flies filling the air as they flew from around the country, flocking to enjoy the new harvest. I swatted endlessly at the tiny devils’ invasion as they were a river, relentless against my defenses, flying through my flailing arm to the fresh meal so unwillingly provided.

         I opened my eyes and witnessed the brutality of hell on Earth. I’m not sure how long I slept amongst the dead, longer than a few days, shorter than a week. The hot, rainy climate of the long, wet season hung on the air, along with the vast numbers, assisted in preparing the unholy feast for the maggots, splitting and spitting entrails, covering the ground.

         I closed my eyes but could not escape the smells of decaying flesh. I opened my eyes, trying slowly to digest the massacre in its entirety.

         To my left I saw five thousand dead, mutilated bodies, some in pieces, torn like paper dolls. To my right I saw bits and pieces of the once beautiful human form.

         I tried to push myself up. The bodies on top of me weighed heavy. I wriggled back and forth, leaning at first on one side and then rolling, making my way to the other. I saw arms amputated, cut at the elbow, and the wide-open eyes of the decapitated victims, all this while the dead slept. I tried to scream, but my body shook uncontrollably.

         My head turned and I saw my dear father laying ten feet from me, bent in prayer and humble supplication. I knew he was gone, delivered from witnessing the horrors of the aftermath. I saw no evidence that he had been maimed or hurt. Most of the bodies lay in an imperfect state, but not my father. His skin stretched, enhancing his muscular form. His calloused hands from a lifetime of plowing the field were clenched together, his two pointer fingers elevated together focusing God’s energy into his own body. Despite the multitude of unwelcome dinner guests, my father lay almost as he had a protective shield around him, a sacred seal that warded off all of Satan’s creatures.

The sight of him gave me strength and I was able to push my way up to my knees and escape from my temporary prison. I crawled, making my way over to him, and embraced him, throwing my arms around him as if holding him as tight as I could would allow half of my own life force to pass into his body so that we could be united once more. He was long dead, but in my grief I needed his warmth and though I knew his heart no longer beat, I thought I could feel his heart beating against my breast.

         I kissed his lips and both of his closed eyes. I unclasped his hands and placed them on his stomach. I looked around and surveyed the destruction. I had found my dear father, but I did not know if my mother had escaped or if she had suffered the same fate as so many others.

         I wondered how such a thing could happen to so many people in such a holy place as the Nyarubuye Parish. I wondered why the Umfundsi had betrayed us. Why had he made a contract with the devil? Why had he traded our lives to gain favor with his God? All of these things ran through my mind as I scoured the wastelands looking for my mother.

I had trouble distinguishing one person from another as the massacre had happened some days before and many of the victims now lay only in bone form. It seemed as though every morsel had been disposed of while I slept.

         I could feel where my arm used to be throb, as though the piece of meat were still attached, haunting me as a ghost. He didn’t even have the decency to cut off my non-throwing hand.

I remember how tired my arm became as I threw rocks at wild mongrel-dogs. They came sniffing around, looking to steal a free meal left by the transgressions of man. The thought of the victims, including my father and my mother, being devoured by dogs chilled me to my very bones. I was determined to keep them away. They traveled in packs and had a ravenous look on their faces. Their eyes were empty and shallow as their salivation bordered on cruelty. These dogs were starving and the famine showed in their structure. Under any other circumstances I would have befriended them, taking them in as my own throwing, them spare scraps from our dinner table. But, I needed to deny them this meal. I did not have much strength, for I had not eaten in several days, but I threw each stone with all of my might, each thrown with the intent to end the dogs’ cruelty. I was frustrated as each stone fell short of my target. When the last few rocks hit several of the lead dogs, they ran from the massacre with loud yelps that reminded me of my youngest brother. There was no doubt in my mind that hunger would eventually overcome them and they would be back.

I feared for my life. I felt the Interhamawe would return to finish the job. I wanted to die, but there were already so many dead.

         Those same messengers that erased the terrible acts God had allowed to happen mocked my pain as they sealed my wounds and kept me alive. My suffering had only just begun.

The whole thing seemed too well planned for us to have had a fighting chance. The Tutsis fate had been sealed long before the president’s plane had been shot down. It seemed too meticulous to be natural. The Umfundsi had only played on all of our fears. He took advantage of our everlasting faith and devotion to God.

We were told we would be safe from all harm if we just went to the parish. We were told no one could hurt us or would attempt to hurt us so long as we stay in the holy sanctuary that God built. It was all folly. We were all taken in and duped by the one who was supposed to save us.

Betrayal is a wicked thing. It ruins. It destroys. It burns all who are involved. He betrayed the trust of twenty thousand innocent people who looked to him as a flock looks to their shepherd. He killed my parents and I will never forget. I try to forgive, but I can’t. I just can’t.

There were maybe twenty thousand people who had called the parish sanctuary home before those two days of the massacre, but I could count only forty-two survivors that arose from the destruction.

         Some of them were missing limbs, others were bleeding from minor cuts. Most were orphaned children just looking for their parents.

         I remember a blonde-haired, green-eyed girl named Morgan. She was the first yellow-haired girl I had ever seen, and she reminded me of an angel. She was nine and had a dirty face and a pale shyness. It took her nearly two weeks to talk to me. When she finally did, I discovered she was the only child of Belgian missionaries who had been placed at the church in Nyarubuye to help alleviate tensions between Hutus and Tutsis. She could not find her parents and was frightened that they may have become martyrs for Christ.

         A small congregation of survivors met in the center of the church to decide the best way to escape the country alive. Prior to deciding to stay at the church, we had heard about a refugee camp just twenty kilometers east of the Tanzanian border. Now that the primary sanctuary had failed, we decided to fall back on the secondary hiding spot. Some of us wanted to stay together and felt there was a greater safety in larger numbers, but we decided to move in seven waves of six, so we could be spread out and do our best to avoid being captured.

I was to be in the third wave along with Morgan, an elderly couple who had trouble walking under the best of circumstances, a tall man with a fondness for football, and a teenage boy. The group believed that if we should run into any trouble, the tall man and the teenage boy would be able to protect the rest of us. I was skeptical, but determined to make sure Ajani was born and Morgan was delivered to safety. I hoped her parents were still alive and I held out the slightest hope that my own children were somehow with them.

We traveled by night and hid in the jungle out of sight by day. This made things difficult as it is nearly impossible to move at night without being seen and while avoiding the major roads. Our night vision quickly adapted, but still there were nights when we remained stationary out of fear of being seen.

The long rainy season can be quite chilly at night as the dampness of the air soaks into your clothes. It is not a dangerous cold, where prolonged exposure can kill as you thrust forth into the elements, but it is a cold that bites at your very soul. It is a cold that allows you to get just warm enough so that you think you can go on, only for it to remind you of its miserable teeth, to make me feel as I do, freezing slowly and methodically from the inside out and with no fire to break the nature of the beast. A fire seen in the wilderness would be as a beacon to our location, and so the cold prevailed.

Morgan and I were both shivering constantly and I tried to lend her my warmth, what little warmth I had, and she latched on ravenously. We traveled and I told her stories that I thought would cheer her up. We both thought the rain would never stop and so I told her the story of an African flood myth. I said to her:

“In the beginning of all things, Gumbo, the wise and powerful God of the sky and creator of the heavens and the Earth, became lonely and so he pushed from the sky two well-formed clouds toward the Earth putting all of his love and energy into them. When the clouds touched the ground, they transformed into the first man and first woman.

“Now Gumbo’s best friend, Old Swiftly, the river god, creator of all creatures in the sea, became jealous of Gumbo’s new friends because he was spending all of his time with them and Swiftly felt forgotten.

“Each day Swiftly asked Gumbo if he wanted to create things together, for he knew when they did the world would truly be harmonious. But Gumbo had spent so long with Swiftly that knew what to expect and he had such wonderful adventures with his new friends that he avoided Swiftly at all costs as to avoid boredom.

“This made Swiftly sad and each night he cried himself to sleep and his tears covered the earth by night and the water receded by day. In his terrible sadness he accidentally destroyed the man and woman’s home, so that each morning they needed to rebuild.

“Gumbo became angry at Swiftly for all the horrible damage and so broke all bonds of friendship with him and banned him from ever touching land again.

“Swiftly fell back into the sea, clutching at his chest and thinking surely he must die of a broken heart. Tears fell from his face for four thousand years and covered all the lands and creatures that Gumbo had created. The man and woman died of starvation and once again Gumbo was lonely.

He discovered he not only missed his new friends but also missed his best friend, Old Swiftly. He missed creating things together. He missed Swiftly’s sense of humor and tenderness, but he had banished him from all the land and had not seen him in over four thousand years. Gumbo wanted to see his old friend again and apologize for everything he had done.

So Gumbo came down from the sky and waded into the water. He walked in every direction covering every corner of the Earth. Swiftly’s tears hitting Gumbo’s face.

“‘Swiftly, I don’t know where you are or where you have been all of these years but I miss you. I have been a fool for putting new friendships before our everlasting one. Please forgive me for everything I have done.’

“And Swiftly, hearing his old friend’s apology, came up from beneath the water and embraced Gumbo as he never had before.

“And from that day on, Gumbo and Old Swiftly were the best of friends and everything they created together was indeed harmonious.

“Gumbo recreated man and woman with the help of Old Swiftly and this time they remained friends.”

I thought the story fitting considering all of the rain and it seemed to bring a smile to her face and helped lighted the mood. After a month of delays and walking only at night, we finally breached the boarder of Tanzania. Rwanda is sometimes called the land of a thousand hills, but the serious elevation of our long pilgrimage did not begin until we crossed over the border.

It seemed the logical place to have a refugee camp. Protected not only by the vast elevation in all directions, for the refuge was deep in the bowl of a valley, but the majestic quality of the shrubbery seemed to give all who made it to this safe place a feeling of empowerment.

The United Nations, and what I fancied the rest of the world, felt the refugee camp to be a sufficient effort to calm the ruthless killings taking place. If would-be victims could just escape and evade the Interhamawe Army and somehow get across the border, the world could protect them.

Life in the refugee camp was a return to the most basic of human conditions. It simply was not equipped to handle the number of people who frequented its borders. There was not enough water and not enough food and it seemed as though the flies that had hovered around Nyarubuye had followed us. This was a great calamity as flies gained access to a lot of the grain supply and it became ruined and unusable.

It was supposed to be partitioned off, segregating the men from the women to help prevent rape and pregnancy. The goal of the United Nations was to keep the population of the camp down to a manageable level. Don’t ask me exactly what that is because I could not tell you. It seemed as though they let in any and all who wanted to stay there.

         There were rows after rows of shelter halved tents. In theory, each person was to carry half a shelter with them at all times and they were to find a friend or a partner and link the two shelter halves together to form a tent considered to be suitable living conditions. But the shelter halves were never taken apart and so row upon row of tents stood erect as far as I could see. And the rows were perfectly parallel, with each tent aligned with the next in an exact line, dress-right-dress fashion. It did not create the wholesome feeling of community and it did not feel as though it had the love of human hands. I could feel the military precision behind every single tent. I recognize the proficiency, but I would have done it differently.

         I remember hanging clothes on a line that was used to align the tents and washing my clothes in the nearby creek with a limestone paste that was surprisingly effective at removing all stains.

         There were three community tents set up toward the center of the camp. These were used for food distribution and our daily rations. Because the grain and wheat situation was a fiasco, military MRE’s were passed out once per day. These were meals ready to eat and they contained six thousand calories. Their intended purpose was to feed two people for one day, but each person was given one and only one per day. We had to stand in line and our names were checked off a list as we picked up our daily rations.

My favorite was chili-macaroni. I could use water from the creek to pour into the heating packet and the water combined with the powder to form a steam and if I slid my meal into the packet, in less than two minutes I would have a hot meal. But some meals such as tuna casserole with crushed peas were simply not worth the trouble. The heat did not make them taste better. The heat did not remove the foulness of preserved tuna that had been dehydrated perhaps years earlier. I swallowed the tuna without tasting it. I inhaled the nourishment as though if I had stopped to take the time to taste, the taste alone would consume me from within.

The young girl Morgan’s hopes and prayers were answered. Both of her parents had gotten word that an attack had been planned on the Nyarubuye Church and they managed to get to the camp, avoiding the church at all costs. They resisted the desire to rescue their daughter and had held out hope that she would survive and somehow make it to the camp. They embraced as if Morgan were a newborn babe—holding her, checking every inch of her for cuts and bruises—and for the first time in a long time I cried. I was happy at their reunion. My face was red and swollen and I couldn’t conceal my own grief or emotion. I missed my own family and seeing the reunion only made me miss them more.

The population of the camp grew to critical levels as perpetrators of the crimes tried to escape from prosecution. They fled across the borders and hid out in the camps blending in as survivors, and for months most of them lived undiscovered.

But for the true victims it became a life full of uncertainties. Most were recognized by the people who saw their faces as they escaped the horrors of the original attacks. But the perpetrators created more than a sense of fear. Rumors grew of a minister of death riding a chariot of fire who had made his way to the camps. I had seen such a man riding the very bicycle that I had ridden to the doctor’s office the week before the massacre and I knew it to be mine. I had left my bicycle outside of the church as my family and I waited inside. This had been the first time I had seen my beloved bicycle since before the attacks and I knew this chariot of fire must be referring to my own bike. That is how I associate the term Minister of Death to mean the very Umfundsi who had betrayed all of those people to their deaths.

I notified the camp officials of whom I thought the man to be and they were slow to act. I was terrified of the Umfundsi and the terror he could invoke. That is when my decision to return home to Nyarubuye became final. I later heard that he had indeed been captured by Belgian official and was sent to Brussels to face the war crimes tribunals. I felt much safer knowing he could no longer hurt me.

The return home was much easier than I expected, of course I have still not stepped foot into the church where it all happened. I expect I never will.