Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (8 page)

“But, Mom, it’s so expensive, and we can’t—”

“Shush,” she broke in. “I told you not to give up hope, didn’t I?”

It turns out that my father had left before sunrise to sell two of our cows so that he could send me to a private high school. Cows are status symbols in Rwandan culture and extremely valuable—selling one was extravagant; selling two was an invitation to financial ruin. But Dad was determined that I would get an education. He took his cow money, drove three hours south to a newly built private school, and paid my first year’s tuition in cash. It was difficult for my father to express emotions, but it was impossible for him to conceal his love for me.

A few weeks later, I was packed and ready to go. Janet hugged me, and we cried and promised to write each other many letters. My mother kissed me over and over, fighting back tears. Vianney, now the last of the kids at home, ran to his room and refused to say good-bye.

A lot of the neighbors came out to wave farewell as my father and I drove away. I felt pangs of loss leaving Mataba, but I was anxious to start my new life.

MY NEW SCHOOL LEFT A LOT TO BE DESIRED. The dorm room was tiny, and it had a cement floor and rough cinder-block walls that cried out for a cheery coat of paint. I slept with ten other girls on mattresses crammed so close together, they took up nearly every inch of floor space. There was no running water, so every morning we grabbed buckets and hiked two miles to the nearest stream to fetch what we needed to wash and cook. And I missed my bed and my mom’s rice and beans.

However, no matter how hard it was for me to “rough it,” I was not going to quit school and ask my parents to bring me home. In fact, when it came time to choose our subjects for the year, I selected the most challenging courses: math and physics. Not only did I want to make Mom and Dad proud, I wanted to prove a point to my brothers. Like typical Rwandan men, they teased me about women belonging in the kitchen, not the classroom. Well, I’d show them!

Two years passed, and I was one of the top students in the school. When the government announced that it was holding a special exam for honor students who wanted to enter public school, I decided to take the test. Deep down inside, I felt that it wouldn’t matter if I scored the highest test results in the country—I’d still be passed over because I was Tutsi. Nevertheless, I studied hard and was sure that I’d written an excellent exam, but weeks went by without any word, so I put it out of my mind.

Months later I was home on summer vacation when Damascene bounded into the house, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Immaculée! Immaculée Ilibagiza! I just saw the list—you passed the exam! You’ve been accepted at Lycée de Notre Dame d’Afrique. It’s one of the best schools in Rwanda, and it’s just down the road from my school!”

The family was sitting in the living room and everyone went crazy. I jumped out of my seat, yelling, “Thank God, thank God!” and making the sign of the cross as I did a little victory dance across the floor. My mother had tears in her eyes, and my father shouted, “This is the biggest joy in my life! I have gotten on my knees every day for the past two years and prayed you would get into that school. God has answered my prayers!”

“I guess you must be smart, even if you are a girl.” Aimable was laughing, but I could see how happy he was for me.

Damascene was smiling his beautiful smile and was so full of pride that I thought he’d explode.

We had a family party that night, one of our happiest celebrations in a very long time. Lycée was an excellent girls’ school where many of the daughters of the country’s highest-ranking politicians had attended. Not only would I get the best education available to any young Rwandan, but my parents wouldn’t have to struggle with the privateschool fees anymore. The only drawback was that the school was far away in the province of Gisenyi. Since it was a four-hour drive from Mataba along perilous roads, this meant that my parents wouldn’t be able to visit often. And it was also located in a predominantly Hutu area known for being openly hostile toward Tutsis.

“Don’t worry, it’s a girls’ school,” Damascene said. “They have a big fence and lots of guards to keep you safe. And my school is so close that I’ll be able to visit you at least once a month.”

I LOVED LYCÉE RIGHT AWAY. The buildings were spacious, beautiful, and sparkling clean. The classrooms were brightly painted, and there were colorful flowers planted all around the campus. A high security fence ran around the entire complex, making me feel safe and secure. I was happy, and I knew that my father would be, too, especially when the nuns told us that we’d have to pray together before and after meals.

One of the first friends I made was a Hutu girl named Sarah. We became as close as sisters, and she invited me to meet her family in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city. For a simple village girl like me, that trip to the big city was a real eye-opener—especially when I saw airplanes up close for the first time. Sarah and I went to the airport at night, when the runway shimmered in a fluorescent glow and the landing lights flashed red, white, and green as the huge planes descended from the sky. My jaw dropped open when I heard the roar of those gigantic engines.

“Oh, just look at them!” I exclaimed, as Sarah collapsed into laughter. “Now I think I’ve seen everything.”

Another friend I met on my first day was Clementine, a gorgeous young woman whose smooth skin and beautiful eyes gave her the look of an American magazine model. She marched over to me when she spotted me in the crowd of new students. I was taller than most, but she was at least six feet. We recognized each other as Tutsi by our height.

“How is a pretty Tutsi girl like you going to get along so far north, surrounded by all those unfriendly Hutu faces on the other side of the fence?” Clementine smiled. “We’ll have to stick together and look out for one another.” We hit it off right away.

Clementine was right about the unfriendly faces. It was difficult to venture beyond the campus walls—whenever I did, I felt the eyes of the local people on me and heard them muttering “Tutsi” in a menacing tone. The priests and nuns who ran the school made sure that the students and local residents never attended the same mass at the local church. We were issued strict orders forbidding us to leave school grounds without a staff escort. It was scary out there, but within the walls of the school I never felt any ethnic discrimination. Teachers never took ethnic roll call, and while most of the girls were Hutu, we loved each other like we were family.

I stuck close to campus, studied hard, and tried to keep myself from feeling homesick. I missed my parents and brothers, and I even pined for Vianney’s pestering. Speaking of my baby brother, he sent me a touching and troubling letter a few months after I left home. He wrote that he missed me horribly, was unable to sleep since I’d gone, and that at night he sometimes saw ghosts walking from room to room. When he did, he’d run from the house in terror. The letter tore at my heart—yes, Vianney and I had bickered often at home, but now I realized how much I meant to him. I felt guilty for leaving him alone and promised myself that I’d be a better sister to him.

Damascene was true to his word and visited me once a month. We’d sit together on the grass and talk for hours. He always had good advice for me, especially when it came to studying.

“Pray, Immaculée. Pray before you do your homework and whenever you’re preparing for a test or exam. Then study as hard as you can.” I did as he said, praying especially hard before math exams, and I continued to excel in school.

When Damascene visited, my girlfriends all demanded to know the identity of the handsome boy I’d been talking with so intently. “That was my big brother Damascene,” I’d proudly reply.

“No, it wasn’t. Nobody gets along so well with a brother. You looked like you actually
enjoyed
being with him.”

I was so lucky to have my dear Damascene in my life.

CHAPTER 3

Higher Learning

L
ife was good at Lycée until war broke out in my third and final year.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon on the first day of October 1990. My classmates and I were waiting for our Civil Education class to begin and wondering why our teacher was late. Mr. Gahigi was an easygoing, friendly man and perhaps the calmest person I’d ever met. So when he finally showed up wringing his hands and pacing back and forth at the front of the classroom, we knew that something was wrong. One of the students asked him what was the matter, but he continued pacing and wouldn’t look at us.

I wondered what bad news our teacher was keeping from us, thinking he was probably going to tell us that the nuns had cancelled movie night. But it was something much bigger. We weren’t allowed to listen to news broadcasts at school, so just like at home, I was isolated from what was going on in the real world.

“I’ve just found out that there has been an attack on the country,” Mr. Gahigi informed us somberly. “I’m afraid it is very serious and could have an impact on all of us for a long time to come.”

The class fell silent—and then everyone started talking at once, shouting out questions, wanting to know who was attacking Rwanda and why.

“A group of Tutsi rebel soldiers living in Uganda has crossed the border,” he replied. “They are mainly the children of Rwandan refugees who have banded together and are fighting to get back into the country. There is a lot of fighting going on right now north of here between the rebels and the Rwandan government soldiers.”

Mr. Gahigi was bombarded with a volley of frightened and indignant questions: “What do those Tutsis want? Why are they attacking us? What will they do to us if they reach the school?”

I felt the heat of shame on the back of my neck and wanted to crawl under my desk. There were 50 students in the class, and 47 of them were Hutus. I was so nervous and self-conscious that I couldn’t look at the other two Tutsi girls. It was the first time I’d felt embarrassed about being Tutsi, and the first time I felt singled out at Lycée.

“The rebels are soldiers fighting with the Rwandese Patriotic Front. That’s a political association of Tutsis who left the country years ago and have been forbidden by the government from returning. They’re foreigners, really, and they’re waging a war to get back into Rwanda and take over the government.”

I knew about the Rwandese Patriotic Front, or RPF, and I knew that the people in it weren’t fighting simply to topple the Hutu government; they wanted to live in a country that was free and equal. Most of the RPF soldiers—the rebels—were Tutsi exiles or the children of Tutsi exiles.

Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis had fled Rwanda during the troubles of 1959 and 1973, as well as the many other times that Hutu extremists had gone on Tutsi killing sprees. They’d gone into exile to save their lives and those of their families. Mr. Gahigi called the rebels “foreigners” because most of them grew up in neighboring countries such as Uganda and Zaire—but that was only because President Habyarimana enforced a policy banning exiles from ever returning to Rwanda. He’d created a Tutsi diaspora, and entire generations of Rwandan Tutsis had grown up without once setting foot in their homeland.

Mr. Gahigi didn’t mention any of that, but he knew what happened whenever Tutsis fought back against extremist Hutus. He was worried for us, saying, “This could go very hard for Tutsis. This kind of thing can lead to many killings, so let’s pray that the government and the rebels can settle their differences peacefully and we avoid a lot of bloodshed.”

Our class was essentially over. The girls talked of nothing but the attack and what they would do if Tutsi soldiers arrived at the school. I sat quietly with my two Tutsi classmates, trying to be inconspicuous. My shame slowly transformed into anger as I thought about how unfairly Tutsis had been treated. I silently rooted for the RPF, hoping that the rebels would beat the government soldiers and put an end to the discrimination. But by the end of the day, my anger had been replaced by fear as I worried about my village and my family. I closed my eyes and said a prayer, asking God to keep my family safe because I didn’t know how I would survive without them.

Many of the students had relatives in the north, where the fighting was worst, so the school director allowed us to listen to radio reports and keep up with events. But more often than not, the national radio broadcasted little more than hate propaganda. The announcers claimed that the rebel soldiers lived in the forest like animals, ate human flesh, and consorted with monkeys. They said that the rebels had become so evil that horns had sprouted from their heads. Rwandans were warned to be on their guard because the “rebel cockroaches” were cunning and could strike anytime, anywhere. These reports inflamed the hyperactive imaginations of already-frightened schoolgirls. One of them was so nervous that she almost got me killed.

Danida, one of my dorm sisters, believed every horrible depiction of the rebel soldiers. One night I must have woken her as I slipped out of bed to use the outdoor bathroom. It was cold, so I had a large scarf wrapped around my head and was wearing oversized pajamas to keep warm. I must have looked a little frightening because when I tried to open the dorm door to get back inside, Danida slammed it shut in my face. The entire campus soon echoed with her terrified screams.

“Help me! Help me! Oh my God, help! It’s an RPF soldier—he’s come to kill us, to eat us . . . he has horns on his head!”

I recognized Danida’s shrieking voice, and calmly said, “Danida, it’s me, Immaculée. I’m not a soldier. I don’t have horns—I’m wearing a scarf!”

I heard the sound of heavy footsteps on gravel and spun around. The school’s biggest security guard was charging toward me in the dark, holding a spear leveled directly at my heart. My knees buckled, and I dropped to the ground. He stopped just inches from me.

“Jesus Christ, Immaculée, I almost killed you! Who the hell is screaming like that?” he said.

By that time
every
girl in the dorm was screaming, and I had to shout for him to hear me over the din. Several security guards spent at least half an hour trying to convince the girls that it was safe to open the door, but they refused. The school director had to be summoned with a master key; once inside, she gave us a long lecture on the dangers of letting our imaginations get the better of us.