One morning when I was eleven, I opened the outhouse door – and screamed. But I couldn’t move a muscle. An eight-foot black mamba was coiled on the cool earth floor. This species is actually gray or brown, but the inside of its mouth, revealed when it gives its warning hiss, is a threatening black.
Hearing my scream, my father’s brother Ezra – visiting from Rwanda – came running with a hoe and killed the snake. He and I were incredibly lucky. Feared for both their speed and the potency of their venom, black mambas kill hundreds of people in the Congo every year. Much later, though, I couldn’t help wondering: Would Ezra have preferred death by snakebite to the death he suffered at the hands of fellow human beings?
Because of the snakes, we children never climbed trees here as we had in Burundi, nor were we allowed to explore the mysterious jungle, from which we heard raucous birdcalls by day and eerie cries at night. So, to our disappointment, we could never see the monkeys at play in the treetops. One day, however, a man showed us the paw of a gorilla he had killed deep in the forest. I shuddered. The powerful paw was bigger than the man’s hand.
Like other village children, my brothers and I herded goats, collected firewood, fetched water, and tended our family crops. Phocas and Clement cleared brush with machetes, while I cultivated with a heavy hoe or pulled weeds by hand. Our father’s young sister Priscilla, who lived with us at the time, often helped.
Reaching the end of a cassava row one day, I was startled when a thick, mottled creeper – spiraled around a bamboo trunk at the field’s edge – began to slide. Glancing up, I met the glittering eyes of a python. I knew they killed by encircling their prey, tightening their muscular bodies till its bones cracked. Dropping my hoe, I fled the field.
Next day, on the way to our plot I burst out, “Let’s ask God to protect us!” Priscilla said a prayer, and that day we were spared the sight of snakes.
The four youngest children in our family were born in Kalambi, and our mother depended on my help at home. Our biggest task was processing cassava. With long knives, we peeled the roots and placed them, tied in cloth, into the creek to soften – and to get rid of their bitter flavor. Three days later, we took the roots from the water and laid them in the sun. When they were dry, we pounded them into flour, which we stirred into boiling water. The result was ugari, a filling starch that we served with fish sauce or vegetables.
I helped clean the house, hauled water, ran errands for my father, and looked after Fidel – my eight-years-younger brother – carrying him everywhere on my hip or on my back. A tall man now, Fidel likes to tease me, saying he’s the reason I’m so short.
When we weren’t helping our mothers, we girls contented ourselves playing hopscotch and other games in the village street. Needing some way to cool off, we often swam in the fish ponds – although this was forbidden, and the mud smelled foul – or waded and splashed in the creek.
Before returning home from an afternoon at the creek, Bishoshi and I would catch crabs for our mothers to cook, shrieking with laughter if one of us was careless enough to get pinched. We never spared a thought for the black stones under which the crabs hid. Only years later did prospectors discover our streambed rocks, which turned out to be valuable columbite, coveted for manufacture of electronic products.
In 1977, when I was twelve, Papa took Phocas, Clement, and me to visit his own parents in Rwanda. We had never met our grandfather, Ephraim. But we knew our grandmother, Damaris, because she had come to spend time with our family in Kalambi. I admired Tateh Damaris when I learned of the risk she had taken to visit us in the Congo; as a Tutsi, she might not have been allowed back into Rwanda.
Now the time had come to see her again and to meet Tateh Ephraim. I was thrilled. I would see the mighty Lake Kivu – thirty miles across at its widest, and fifty-six miles long – that Mama was always reminiscing about. And I would finally experience Rwanda, land of my ancestors, country of a thousand hills.
The first thing I noticed, on arrival in my grandparents’ village, was the red earth, so different from Kalambi’s black soil. Like us, our grandparents grew cassava, sorghum, coffee, soy beans, potatoes, and yams on their farm. But they also raised fruit near their house: banana, papaya, guava, and pineapple. They kept livestock too. They were quite wealthy.
Tateh Damaris rose early to prepare breakfast for her family and for the farm hands. During our month’s stay, I helped her tidy the house, grounds, livestock paddock, and paths. Next we would spread rushes on the floor, then feed the hens and gather their eggs. I walked the pastureland, collecting cakes of dry cow dung for fuel. In a large flat basket, I collected fresh dung as well, which Tateh Damaris and I plastered on the house walls as weatherproofing.
Phocas, Clement, and I revered Tateh Ephraim; after all, he was Papa’s father. A deep thinker, he enjoyed sharing his wisdom through maxims, jokes, and proverbs. “Do evil when good no longer exists on the earth,” he would tell us. We knew he meant: Do only good.
During the day, our grandfather tended his cattle, sheep, and goats. In the evening, he herded them into their enclosure, pulling thorny branches across its opening as protection from predators.
Seeing a mass of fish in a large crock one day, I happily anticipated a fish fry, such as we occasionally enjoyed in Kalambi. To my shock, however, Tateh Ephraim started hoeing the fish into the ground in his banana grove. His explanation – that fish made good fertilizer – startled me, but I never doubted him. His crops were excellent.
Although Tateh Ephraim had never been to school, he had taught himself to read. When his day’s work was done, he put on the pair of glasses Papa had sent him, relaxed into his comfortable chair, and read his Bible. One evening he called me to his side. “Scripture says hard times will come over the earth in the last days, my child,” he said. “People will change their ways for the worse.”
Another time he remarked, “When I read the Bible in Kinyarwanda, I understand it best. Kinyarwanda is the most beautiful language in the world!” I avoided Clement’s eye, afraid we might burst out laughing. Kinyarwanda was the only language our grandfather knew.
Sundays we joined our grandparents on their forty-five minute walk to church in Karengera. Tateh Damaris, a woman of style, wore an elegant mushanana. Usually kept for rare celebrations, this traditional garment is tied at one shoulder and falls in graceful folds to the ankle. Along our way, we had to traverse some rickety planks over a swirling creek. While I hesitated, my dignified grandmother traipsed confidently across in her high heels. I felt proud to see how respectfully my grandparents were greeted by everyone we met along the way – Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa.
4
Wakening
MY FATHER’S FAITH shaped our family’s outlook. Through daily example, he and Mama taught us children to love our friends and neighbors – and enemies – and to trust in God, no matter what.
The way Papa described a coming kingdom of peace and justice, I expected to wake up to it any morning. I would peek outside, hoping to glimpse a leopard romping with a baby goat, or a lion eating straw like an ox. My mind stopped short, however, at the idea of my baby brother putting his hand into a viper’s nest. Shuddering, I turned my imagination away from snakes.
Singing was as natural as eating in our home. Since Papa could read music, he often taught us songs from his Kirundi and Swahili songbooks. His favorite, picked up at the Billy Graham crusade – Mbega urukundo ry’Imana yacu, “How great is God’s love, beyond all telling” – accompanied us through the years.
Every evening, we gathered in the living room to sing, pray, and listen