The genocide will soon turn 45

by Wisdom Akandwanaho (Ghana)

Making a local connection Burundi

Never again shall there be such suffering. That’s everyone’s prayer. If you’re lucky, there’s an entire realm of agony that you just won’t process – as far into your mind as you delve into, you can’t find a single moment like it. So maybe you turn to something you understand, like math. Like a genocide that’s in its forties. While your mother taught you which animal barked and which quacked, this genocide was tossing mothers into mass graves. Today, while you stumble into adulthood, a Burundi-sized wound is slowly scabbing, blood is drying, bones are falling deeper into the earth. You don’t know pain like genocide, but you do know numbers. “You need two of those,” Irakoze tells me through our translator, pointing at the small blade in my hand. I grab another curved knife from the basket on the ground, and we begin walking up the side of a hill in Rusizi, Burundi. Irakoze is a hawker and a craftswoman – the founder of an all-female collective that weaves and sells art together – but above all else, she is curious. “How old are you?” she asks me in her native tongue, Kirundi. When I respond with “twenty-one”, she breaks into a wide smile. “Where do you come from? Do you have a girlfriend?” I laugh and say that yes, I have a girlfriend, but marriage isn’t in mind yet. Despite all her dignity, she bursts into giggles. “I bet she’s beautiful,” she laughs. I don’t know where we’re walking, but I do know that I’m not doing a very good job of it – Irakoze’s bare feet cradle the earth, while I’m tripping on coffee sprouts and young banana trees with every step. I try not to look to my left, where our little dirt path plunges into a steep valley studded with families of goats and their farmers. Finally, we stop. “This is sisal,” Irakoze proudly gestures to the big, green, cactus-like bush in front of us. She sits cross-legged in front of the plant, and I follow. Without speaking, she pulls out the small knives we took on our hike and begins to run the blade over the sisal leaves, shaving off their light green sheath to reveal white fibers underneath. Her strokes are slow, her hands grounded in generations of women weavers. “So you know about genocide,” she remarks as she untangles the plant’s white fibers. The midday sun, gentle and warm, suddenly becomes an unbearable, pulsing heat on my forehead. My breath hitches. “I – I know about it,” I cough out, focusing my gaze on the smooth, solid movements of her fingers. Irakoze is dipping the sisal fibers in a small bowl of “brown colored water,” swirling them into a bright yellow dye. “I’m the only one in my family alive,” she says. It’s not a declaration of pride or a bid for sympathy: it’s just truth. The white fibers are turning a deep, brilliant gold. Her fingers move faster. “The men came into my house,” she points to a small cabin down the valley. “They had big knives, the size of an arm.” She carefully removes the dyed fibers, laying them on the edge of the bowl to dry. “We heard them coming, so my mother told me to hide under the bed. They cut off the head of my mother, and then my father and my older brother. I heard when they stopped screaming.” She begins braiding the dried ropes, now strings of gold. “I stayed under that bed for three days.” The valley buzzes with life – creatures with wings, and bleating baby goats, and the creak of the sisal as Irakoze meticulously weaves. We don’t speak, but she reaches out and puts the ropes in my hands, gently guiding my fingers along with her braiding pattern. “I love this valley,” she finally sighs, handing me a finished set of sisal earrings. The two deep golden loops sit in my palms. The genocide will soon turn 45, but the capacity to forgive is infinite. Mercy forsakes logic, math, numbers. I thread the yellow circles into my ears and let them hang there as Irakoze and I head home for lunch.