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From Red Earth
From Red Earth
A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness
Denise Uwimana
Plough Publishing House
Published by Plough Publishing House
Walden, New York
Robertsbridge, England
Elsmore, Australia
Plough produces books, a quarterly magazine, and Plough.com to encourage people and help them put their faith into action. We believe Jesus can transform the world and that his teachings and example apply to all aspects of life. At the same time, we seek common ground with all people regardless of their creed.
Plough is the publishing house of the Bruderhof, an international Christian community. The Bruderhof is a fellowship of families and singles practicing radical discipleship in the spirit of the first church in Jerusalem (Acts 2 and 4). Members devote their entire lives to serving God, one another, and their neighbors, renouncing private property and sharing everything. To learn more about the Bruderhof’s faith, history, and daily life, see Bruderhof.com. (Views expressed by Plough authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Bruderhof.)
Copyright © 2019 by Plough Publishing House
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87486-984-2
EBOOK ISBN: 978-0-87486-225-6
Cover photograph by Martin Huleatt
In memory of my beloved husband Charles and all my family, friends, neighbors, and fellow Rwandans who perished in the genocide against the Tutsi.
Contents
1
Plane Crash
I HAVE HEARD that in the United States, people remember exactly what they were doing when planes hit the Twin Towers. In my country, too, we remember a plane crash that way. There is this difference: On September 11, nearly three thousand people died. In Rwanda, smaller in size and population than Ohio, the number was three times that many every day – for a hundred days.
Or think of it this way: if you stacked fifteen copies of this book, every word would represent one man, woman, or child murdered during the genocide against the Tutsi.
I’m trying to help people grasp what happened, because no one can picture a million human beings killed. Not even we who survived.
MY FIRST AWARENESS, when I woke on Thursday, April 7, 1994, was a too-familiar sense that the other side of the bed was flat, cold, empty. In the two and a half years since my husband had been forced to move out, I never got used to his absence. I felt it most keenly after one of his clandestine visits, like the one the previous weekend.
I missed Charles now more than ever. For the last six months, tension had been mounting in our town, Bugarama. With all the bad news and rumors, a heavy dread had been growing within me. This was bad, because a child was growing within me too. Our baby was due to be born in just two weeks.
I yearned to put my head under the pillow, pretend life was normal, and go back to sleep. But that was not an option. My two little sons relied on me. So did two young cousins – Aline, fifteen, and Thérèse, sixteen – who had been sent by my uncles to keep me company. Our houseboy, Samuel, lived with us as well; in Rwandan society, every middle-class family had a teenage boy or girl to help with chores and shopping. I could count on him to make breakfast, yet he, too, seemed an overgrown child.
An internal poke – my baby’s elbow? or heel? – was the nudge I needed to pull myself out of bed and get going with the day. Standing at the window, combing my hair into a frizz around my head, I looked over our front yard, edged by its high fence and iron gate, to Cimerwa’s cement plant – our factory town’s reason for existence – across the road.