Shattered (12 page)

At the top of the first page was a flag—I guess the Rwandan flag. A band of sky blue across the top with a sun in the corner and then a band of yellow and the bottom third green. It was sort of a pretty flag, but awfully
simple. It didn't look like a real flag, but more like something some kid in grade five had made up for a social studies project.

Below that was a map. It was a tiny little piece of land, so small that the name “Rwanda” had to be spelled in smaller letters than the neighbouring countries. It was dead centre in the middle of Africa—it was landlocked with neighbours on all sides and no ocean. I remembered enough from my grade nine geography to know that no coasts meant limited trade and limited money.

One border was shared with Tanzania. Burundi was at the bottom. The Congo on the other side and Uganda on the top. I'd heard of the last two, although I didn't know anything about them. There were a couple of fairly big lakes, some rivers marked on the map, and I assumed since it had a star that the capital city of Rwanda was someplace named Kigali.

It certainly didn't look very big. I scanned down the page to a section marked
FACTS
.

Total land area: 26,338 square kilometres.

That was tiny. From what I could remember that was much smaller than Lake Ontario. The entire country could be slipped into Lake Ontario and still have space to spare. No wonder nobody had ever heard of it.

Natural resources: tin ore, tungsten, methane, hydropower generation.

I guess that would be from all those rivers—and arable land.

Population: 7,810,000.

What? That wasn't possible. How could that many people live in that little a country? I read the text. It said
that number was an estimate … there had never been a census … and that there was a high rate of mortality due to AIDS, higher infant mortality rate, and a generally high death rate.

Official languages: French, English and Kinyarwanda.
Kinyarwanda … I'd never heard of it. It was probably something they only spoke in Rwanda. At least if the people knew English they could get movies and TV shows and … did they even have TV? They had to. No country was so backward that they didn't get MTV.

I kept scanning the facts.
The country is a republic … independent since 1962 … former colony of Belgium … population in rural areas … most densely populated country in Africa
—no kidding—
few natural resources … big foreign debt … 60% of population below the poverty line … 90% of labour force in agriculture … average life expectancy, 39.33 years—

People had to live twice as long here. I shook my head. In a nutshell, it was a poor, rural country with too many people, not enough resources, more than half the people lived in poverty, the whole
country
itself was poor, AIDS was rampant, babies died too often and everybody else died young. Why would the United Nations even be in this place? It wasn't like it had enough of anything that anybody was going to bother fighting over.

Now that I knew more about the country I had to know about what had happened there and it certainly wasn't in my book. How big a tragedy could it be if it didn't even rate a mention? Then again, this was a geography book, so unless the tragedy involved a volcanic eruption it probably wouldn't have been written about.

I climbed off my bed and flopped down on the chair in front of the computer. I wiggled the mouse and the screen came to life. I went to Google and keyed in a search.

Rwanda … no, that wouldn't work, that would just give me more about the country. I needed to know what had happened when Sarge was there as a peacekeeper— that was it. I backspaced out “Rwanda” and typed in “United Nations Peacekeeping” and hit Enter. The search engine came up with more than twenty-four thousand sites. I clicked on the first and a site popped up.

It had the UN logo in the top, sky blue background, like the colour on the Rwandan flag, like I imagined the blue berets of the peacekeepers would be. In big letters it read, “Peacekeeping … in the service of peace,” and below that it listed the parts of the world where they had, or still had, missions. I highlighted Africa—at least I knew that much—but there were no current operations. I went to past operations and did the same. There was Rwanda, along with a strange heading: UNAMIR. I clicked on the site.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was in operation from October 1993 to March 1996. It was originally established to help implement the Arusha Peace Agreement signed by warring Rwandese parties on August 4, 1993. The mandate and strength of this mission were adjusted on a number of occasions in response to the tragic events and the changing situation within the country.

Tragic events … what tragic events? I clicked over to the facts-and-figures button. There, under force commanders were listed two Canadians—Major-General Roméo A. Dallaire (October 1993–August 1994), and Major-General Guy Tousignant (August 1994–December 1995). Obviously there were Canadians who had participated in Rwanda. Under that it listed the countries involved. I counted forty different countries and the total strength, ranging from around a thousand personnel up to over five thousand. At the bottom, the last line listed fatalities: 3 military observers, 22 other military personnel, 1 civilian police and 1 local staff—27 in total. People had died. Had he seen somebody die, a good friend, somebody he was in the military with, and that's why he got so upset? Was that the tragedy? I needed to know more. I clicked on the summary section of the page.

Fighting between the mainly Hutu government of Rwanda and the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) broke out in October 1990. A number of ceasefire agreements were negotiated, culminating in the Arusha agreement signed on July 22, 1992. As a term of the ongoing negotiations to establish power sharing between the two parties there was created a 50-member Neutral Military Observer Group furnished by the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Hostilities recommenced in February 1993, interrupting the negotiations and a request was made for United Nations involvement. The Arusha talks, brokered by Tanzania and the OAU, reconvened and led to the signing of a comprehensive
peace accord in August 1993. This accord called for a democratically elected government and provided for the establishment of a broad-based transitional government until the elections, repatriation of refugees and the integration of the armed forces of the two sides. Both sides asked the United Nations to assist in the implementation of this agreement. In October 1993 resolution 872 established the creation of an international force, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). This force was mandated to help implement the agreement, monitor its implementation and support the transitional government. This force, initially composed of a battalion strength force—400 from Belgium and 400 from Bangladesh—under the Command of Major-General Roméo Dallaire (Canada) was established on December 24, 1993. It took an additional five months for the force to reach its authorized strength of 2,548. In addition many unresolved issues between the parties delayed implementation and the transitional government was never inaugurated.

In April 1994 the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed while returning from ongoing peace talks in Tanzania. These deaths set off an unprecedented wave of political and ethnic killings that included the slaying of the Prime Minister of Rwanda, cabinet ministers and UNAMIR peacekeepers. The killings, primarily targeting Tutsi and moderate Hutus, were carried out by the Rwanda armed forces, the presidential guard, and militia. It
is estimated that in the 100-day period subsequent to the plane crash a genocide ensued that resulted in the massacre of 800,000 people.

Eight hundred thousand people—that couldn't be right. That must be a typo … maybe somebody had put in an extra zero or two. There was no way that that many people could have been killed. I'd have heard about something that big.

By October 1994 estimates suggest that out of a population of 7.9 million, close to 800,000 people had been killed, 2,000,000 had fled to neighbouring countries and an additional 2,000,000 persons had been internally displaced. A Commission established by the Security Council of the United Nations reported that there was “overwhelming evidence” that proved that Hutu elements had committed acts of genocide against the Tutsi people in a “concerted, planned, systematic, and methodical way.”

Genocide. I knew that word. It was like the Holocaust … World War II … what Hitler and the Nazis had done to the Jews. Genocide wasn't about soldiers killing soldiers—that was bad enough, but that's what happened in wars, what the soldiers expected to happen. In a genocide it was just regular people being killed— slaughtered—because of who they were. The Nazis targeted Jews. Men, women, children, old people, babies. They were killed because they were Jews. How many had been killed? Was it six million … eight million … I
couldn't remember exactly, but I knew it was mindboggling, not believable.

At least I knew something about the Holocaust. We'd taken it in history classes and I'd watched war movies on TV, and my grandfather had even been in that war. Why didn't I know anything about Rwanda? No wonder Sarge had been so angry and upset. He'd been there, been part of that insanity, that tragedy, and I didn't even know anything about it. Nothing. How was that even possible?

Eleven

“
I REALLY APPRECIATE
you driving me,” I said to Berta.

“That is fine,” she answered. “But I'm still not sure … why are you going downtown on a school day instead of to
school
? Shouldn't you be going to school?”

“I'm doing this
for
school,” I said. I always found that part of the truth was the best lie. Nobody, including Mrs. Watkins, would have approved of me skipping school to complete the interview. “I'm interviewing somebody for an assignment.”

“And who is this somebody? The man where you are working? You could interview him any time you are down there, yes?”

“I could, but it's not Mac I'm interviewing. It's a soldier … a former soldier. It's for bonus marks in civics.”

“Bonus marks would be good. It would make your mama and papa happy.” She gave me a big smile.

“I'm not doing it to make them happy.”

“It would also make
me
happy.”

That was different, but that wasn't the reason either.

“It's just important for me to do.” I was glad she didn't ask me to explain it any more because I didn't understand it myself. Why did I want to talk to this guy? I'd interviewed
him already. Certainly enough to get the extra marks. Mrs. Watkins hadn't said anything about how long the interview should be and I
had
spoken to him. And especially after the way he walked away last night, how did I know he'd even talk to me? Of course, that was also assuming I could find him to begin with.

“Are you feeling well?” Berta asked.

“Sure, I feel fine. Why?”

“You hardly touched your breakfast.”

“I wasn't that hungry.” Actually I was too nervous to eat. “And you were up last night … a few times.”

“How did you know?” I asked, surprised she was aware of it.

“I hear noises … I wake up.”

“I'm sorry,” I apologized. “I tried to be quiet … I'm sorry I woke you up.”

“You were quiet,” Berta said. “But I hear even quiet noises in the middle of the night.”

I knew all about Berta and her nights. She often took a little nap, a siesta, during the afternoon to make up for difficulties getting to sleep. I used to think she stayed up late to watch the Spanish soap operas on cable but it was more than that. She just couldn't sleep. My mother said some people were like that, just natural nighthawks.

“I checked on you when I was up,” she said.

“You did?”

“I saw the light on and peeked into your room. Once you were just staring out the window … another time at the computer.”

I hadn't been able to sleep either. I'd gone back to the computer a few times and looked up more information.

What I'd found hadn't settled my mind, only disturbed it more.

“More school work,” I lied.

Berta half turned so she kept one eye on the road but could cast a half gaze on me. She didn't have to say a word.

“Sort of school work. Things I was learning about bothered me. Have you heard of Rwanda?”

“
Si
. Terrible what happened.”

“You know about it?”

“I read. I remember. Some things are hard to forget.” “But I didn't know about it. How could I not know
anything
?” I asked.

“No one knows everything. Things like that they are not taught to children … best to protect them from these things.”

“Protect them? How does not telling somebody protect them?” I asked.

Berta shrugged. “This traffic … this jammed traffic … is so bad. Your parents go through it every day … no wonder they come home with bad moods some days.”