OCTOBER 1, 1990, an electric current pulsed through the land when radios announced that the Rwandan Patriotic Front had invaded from Uganda. The RPF was comprised mainly of Tutsi exiles and refugees who had fled Hutu violence in Rwanda in earlier decades. Successive governments had persecuted them in Uganda, yet they were arbitrarily denied reentry to Rwanda, year after year.
In a renewed attempt to return, the RPF invaded Rwanda this first of October, but the Hutu government, supported by French military aid, rebuffed them. Government leaders labeled them inyangarwanda, “people who hate Rwanda,” and inyenzi, “cockroaches.”
Three days later, radio broadcasts reported that the RPF had attacked the capital city, Kigali. This was fake news; Habyarimana’s forces had in fact stopped the invasion at the Uganda border. Cleverly contriving a link between the RPF and the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, the government spread the word that “inyenzi have infiltrated everywhere.”
Their fearmongering led to arrests throughout the country. Who would be next? With the tension building, Charles and I decided to fast and pray on Saturday, October 6. At two o’clock that afternoon, we were kneeling in our bedroom when the door flew open and two policemen burst in. They grabbed Charles, who gave me a desperate look as they hustled him away to their car and drove off.
Sick and hopeless, I lay down on our bed and wept. That evening I vomited, the beginning of stomach problems that plagued me for the next fourteen years.
That night, one of my husband’s colleagues phoned, urging me to flee the country. He had heard a rumor that the rebels – as Hutu called the RPF – were now attacking from nearby Burundi as well as from Uganda, implying worse troubles ahead. But what could I do? I could not simply take my one-year-old and disappear without knowing what was happening to Charles – or even where he was.
A commotion roused me at five o’clock the next morning. Peeking between the curtains, I saw two military trucks packed with soldiers, as well as several soldiers standing in the road with two-way radios. These were saying that Bugarama had been infiltrated by RPF – another false report.
“Where are inyenzi?” one shouted through a bullhorn as they moved slowly down the street.
During this Sunday morning, a company colleague came by for my husband’s office keys. He did not know where Charles was, but he offered to help me search. We first walked to Muganza to inquire at the local jail, but Charles was not there. Then we drove to the patrol offices at the Burundi and Congo borders; here too no one knew anything. I realized then that Charles had to be at the central prison in Cyangugu. Back at home, I could not concentrate. For my toddler’s sake, however, I fought my fears and tried to keep calm.
After the weekend, I learned that Charles was not the only Cimerwa employee to have been apprehended. At least six other prominent Tutsi had been arrested in the factory town.
That Monday, all Tutsi homes in Bugarama were searched for weapons. I hoped that since Charles had already been detained, our house would be bypassed. But a police car pulled up at my gate, and Bugarama’s mayor got out with a police officer and Sebatware, one of Cimerwa’s three directors. Entering, they told me my husband was being charged with sabotage. Since Charles was responsible for Cimerwa’s explosives, he was particularly suspect, they said – and they had come to search my house.
I opened the doors to all our rooms and cupboards, showing we had nothing to hide. The men confiscated several photos, plus the receipt for a used Land Rover Charles had bought. Before leaving, they arrested Dominique, a Hutu teenager who helped with chores around the house. They kept him in jail two weeks, trying to make him say that Charles had exchanged the Land Rover for dynamite. Dominique was beaten, but he never denounced my husband.
From the day of the search, Cimerwa directors posted a guard at my gate. Alphonse dropped by one morning to ask how I was coping. He was arrested as soon as he left my house and was jailed for two weeks. After that, people stopped coming to see me.
In a matter of days, my neighbors had become hostile. At work, almost no one talked to me. I had never felt so isolated. The whole town seemed permeated with suspicion. Bonafrida, a Tutsi nurse in Cimerwa’s clinic, told me that Hutu patients no longer trusted her to give them injections.
On Sunday evening, October 14, my phone rang. It was Sebatware. In his abrupt manner, he said that prosecutors in Cyangugu wanted to interrogate me. “Be ready in five minutes!” he ordered.
My mind went into a spin. What did they want? As I hastily pulled on some slacks beneath my kitenge, I tried to think what was best for Charles-Vital. Should I leave him with neighbors? But I might not come back … I decided to take him along.
As I lifted my sleeping one-year-old from his crib, the company vehicle pulled up outside. Throughout the thirty-five-mile trip, I battled anxiety: What were they doing to Charles? What would happen to our child? What would happen to me?
In Cyangugu, three prosecutors grilled me about friends, relatives, acquaintances – in this province, in the cement plant, and abroad. They quizzed me about people in the snapshots the mayor had confiscated, which magazines my father-in-law read, where my family was.… I answered all their questions. I had nothing to hide.
Before letting me go, they warned me to tell no one of this interrogation. If I did, they would be sure to learn of it, they said, and there would be “consequences.” Then they dismissed me. But I had no sense of relief as Charles-Vital and I were driven home through the dark, nor any feeling of security as I carried him into our empty house.
Toward the end of October, I went to the mayor’s office, requesting to visit my husband in prison. The mayor replied that I was not a Rwandan citizen and therefore had no rights in this country. Reminding him of my official permission to live and work in Rwanda, I again pleaded to visit Charles.
“No!” he yelled. “Get out of here!”
And this was the man who used to shoot hoops with Charles on Cimerwa’s basketball court, stopping by our house afterward to shower….
Defeated, I stood in the road outside the mayor’s office. Looking upward, I silently cried out, reminding Jesus how he had fled Bethlehem with his parents, though neither he nor they had done any wrong – this was how it felt being Tutsi in Rwanda.
Cement trucks drove past, coating me with dust. I remained rooted to the spot. A driver rolled down his window, offering a lift, but I dumbly shook my head.
Finally, I walked home and wept. Then I turned to the Bible. In the third chapter of Ezekiel, I read, “But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint.” These words emboldened me to try again.
This time I approached Sebatware. Although I knew his callous character, I walked into the director’s office, putting my trust in God.
“You are not Rwandan!” Sebatware challenged when I entered. “Why did your parents leave this country?” He knew they had fled for political reasons, so I ignored his question, telling him instead that I wanted to visit Charles in Cyangugu Prison. His grim expression never softened, but he handed me a pass, granting freedom of movement on the company’s behalf. He also gave me use of a company car and driver.
Since I had the pass and the vehicle, I invited Oscar and Bonafrida to join me. Bonafrida’s husband, Silas, had been arrested, as had Consolée, Oscar’s wife. Consolée was pregnant at the time. She was later released to the hospital for the birth of their daughter, Ruth, but was then returned to prison.
We
