A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [30]
“Can you tell me the story?”
“I had a lot of cases. Once, at the village of the president, the Rwandese asked us to erase the village. We had to take people in their houses, lock the houses. We poured petrol on the houses and burned them. If you tried to escape from the house, you’d be shot immediately.”
“How many people do you think you’ve killed?”
“People I myself saw dying? Around three thousand.”
That must be a translation error. I clarify, “Three thousand?”
He emphasizes, “Three thousand that I saw myself. We had to take dead bodies, I had to put them in rivers or the lake.”
“Did that include children?”
“What?” He looks at me like, yeah, duh. “Children, babies. . . .”
“What made you decide to leave the army after five years?”
“It was only because of my age. They asked me to leave, but I was happy to. The souvenirs of what I did in the army are very bad. I do not think I will be able to study. I have a problem in the mind. I want to be an apprentice for manual work.
“I feel sometimes in my mind I am very different from other children my age. Because now I continue to think about violence, what I have done. Maybe I will practice violence in the future. I can’t behave that way now, but I have to fight the images in my mind.”
I WANT TO TALK with little Luc. While staff members round him up, I notice two girls. The littlest, around eight years old, wears a skirt. Noella, eleven, hangs close to the other girl, clinging to her like a life raft. I’ll talk to the three together.
We climb a steep wooden staircase, accessible only through the director’s office, to a little room perched on top of the center. The girl’s room feels like a princess’s high tower, albeit a worn-down, African-war-zone version. I look out the window to the hills and fields of Rwanda.
I squeeze in between Noella, Luc, and the other little girl, then show them photos of my family, postcards from New York City and the Oregon Coast. Our driver, Serge, speaks Kinyarwanda, so he translates. I show them a photo of myself running in the forest, which I use as a lead-in. “Does this forest look like the forest where you used to stay?”
Luc says, “Yes, but I don’t know where . . .”
Noella takes over. “We are only angry and upset about the absence of our mother. We would like to be back with her.”
“What about your father?” I ask.
“We love both parents.”
“Do you want people in America to know something about you?” I say.
Noella plays with her hands, while Luc laughs, “The white man can help us to eat well and when we know something about our parents we will say ‘bye-bye’ to the white man and go home.”
“Do you know anything about Interahamwe?”
They whisper to each other, then Luc speaks up. “We don’t understand talk about Interahamwe. But whenever we passed, we saw men with hammers looking for precious metal, like diamonds.” Noella elbows him, gives him a hard stare. He continues, “They must be in the mountain because I hear people search for these metals . . .”
The two whisper to each other, conferring. Serge points out, “They are discussing what to say and what to avoid saying.”
I try to soften them up by saying, “Sometimes people tell little kids to not tell the truth, but it’s always better to tell a safe adult. You might feel better to tell the truth.”
Noella furrows her brow. She’s one stressed little girl.
The staff member jumps in. “Sometimes they say they came from Rwanda, they were arrested by police on the road. Sometimes they say they came from the mountain. Some days they say they came from the village. When we separate them, they change the subject. They were found in the forest, so their parents must have a link with Interahamwe. They are not allowed to talk about it.”
Maurice adds, “If they say they are from the forest where they have parents who are Interahamwe, they will jeopardize their own lives. That’s why they emphasize they are from Rwanda. But we know Rwanda, we work