I was also fed up. I saw the faces of all of the people I killed before me. I remembered I had sung in front of them in church. I thought, “How come I killed the same people I was singing for?”

It was time to stop. Still, I had already taken their things, and I decided those things would stay in my house.

alice: I woke up in the swamp, with lots of dead bodies around me. They smelled, and dogs were eating them. My husband found me there. He told me they had thrown him into a well; he’d had so much water in his body that they had to pump it out of him.

Then he showed me our baby. “We’re going to have to bury her,” he said. But there was no place to bury her properly. We could only cover her up. I still can’t bury her, because I never want to go back there.

While I was unconscious, the inkotanyi had taken control of the district. Now they were asking the able-bodied to come out of the swamps and join them. Still very weak, I stayed there for two more weeks, until my husband could get me to a hospital. It was mid-May when he carried me out of the swamp on a door.

When I left the hospital two months later, we moved into a house shared between ten families. We eventually got a house of our own with help from the government, and some of my husband’s relatives who had returned to Rwanda stayed with us. They didn’t understand what happened; they didn’t live through it. They told my husband I was handicapped and would not be any good to him anymore. They asked him, “Will you wash your kids’ clothes? Will you be the one to raise them? Let us find you a new wife.” My husband looked at me like I was useless. But he told them, “What happened to her could just as easily have happened to me.”

emmanuel: After the inkotanyi ended the genocide in Rwanda, they formed a new government. In 1996, I went to a district court to turn myself in. I started to tell the judge what I did, but I was talking so fast, like a crazy person, that he asked if I was sane. I said, “I can’t cope with it anymore. I just want to be forgiven.” Then he asked, “Who are you asking for forgiveness from? You killed almost everyone.” I answered, “Since there is nobody left, I am asking forgiveness from the government, because I killed its people.”

A month later, they sent me to prison. I went with my father. We were packed like beans, one under another. Of course, people were beaten. The police told the guards that I had confessed and that they should be nice to me. I was allowed to work outside, cooking and cleaning for the policemen. My
father, who did not co-operate with the courts, died from sickness in prison. I was there for seven years, until the amnesty. Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, said that anyone who had confessed could be freed.

Still, if somebody killed your family and then got out of prison, you would be unhappy. At the same time, if you had killed you would not be comfortable facing your victims. That’s why four ordinary people in Nyamata started an organization called Ukuri Kuganze Guharanira Ubumwe n’ubwiyunge (May Truth Bring Unity and Reconciliation). I joined in 2005. We wanted to have a place to talk and to plan how we would build a future together, so we borrowed some land, and together — hundreds of us — we raised crops and animals and built houses.

alice: I didn’t expect to ever meet Emmanuel. I didn’t even remember his face. My neighbours pushed me to join the association because I stayed at home too much. I lived in my thoughts about the genocide and about the problems I still faced. I knew this group was for people who survived and people who were getting out of prison for genocide. I wondered how we could accept these people into our communities again.

emmanuel: I remembered Alice’s face; I’d kept it in my mind. When I first saw her, we were making bricks for a new house. I wanted to talk to her. But I was also scared of her. Every time our eyes met, I wanted to run. I had no idea how to approach her.

alice: One day, Emmanuel brought some sorghum beer and some sweet potatoes to the field where we volunteered. This was for ubusabane, or sharing, which gathers a crowd and puts them in a good mood. He started by grilling the potatoes; he took the biggest one and gave it to me, saying, “This is for our secretary.” We all drank and danced.

Then he asked if he could talk to me. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “I have a big problem.” He kept repeating this. “I have a big problem, I have a big problem.” After twenty minutes, he fell on his knees and asked me to forgive him.

“Why?” I asked him. “We are friends. What do I have to forgive you for?” He just kept saying, “Forgive me, forgive me,” and I kept asking why. Finally, he said, “I’m the one who cut you.”

“What did you say?” I asked him. He repeated, “I’m the one who cut you.” I asked him to tell me where and when. He did; his story was all true. So I left him there, on his knees, and I ran for miles.

emmanuel: I thought ubusabane would make it easier for Alice. After prison, before going home, we went to ingando, re-education camps where the government teaches unity and reconciliation. Some people who’d had a chance to ask forgiveness from survivors found they could be traumatized by it, acting like someone who’s gone crazy. At ingando, they told us that when we asked for forgiveness we should find a way to do it so that they could be held by their friends if they needed them.

alice: For Emmanuel, it was easy, because he was ready to ask. He had prepared his heart, and he had prepared a way to do it. I was in shock. I didn’t say if I had forgiven him or not. I couldn’t really answer either way. So I left him in a place that was not comfortable for him either.

After I left, a woman found me. She took my hand and led me home. She told my family what happened. My husband said, “This is your fault. Why did you join an association with killers?”

I spent one week thinking about it all the time. People sometimes asked who had hacked me, and I couldn’t answer them. But I knew I wasn’t born like this! I needed to know who did this to me, because I was judging everyone around me. The people living across from us — they took a lot of our things, so maybe they were the ones? I wanted to forgive and live normally with people again.

Still, I had a hard time when Emmanuel revealed himself to me. It took me back to 1994. My husband reminded me, “You promised God that if you found out who did this to you, you would forgive him. Why are you hesitating?” So when I went back to work, I was the first one to greet him. I told him, “I forgive you. God will forgive you.”

emmanuel: Even though I didn’t know if Alice would accept, after I said “Forgive me,” everything was easier for me, even eating. For the first time in a long time, I felt the food go into my stomach. Before, I had no appetite, even when my stomach was empty. It was like a huge stone was lifted off me, and my neck could stretch and my head could rise up, because the stone was not there anymore.

Now we are close friends. When I need something and she has it, she will give it to me. If I have something more than she has, I will give it to her. We can sit down and share food.

alice: I forgive Emmanuel, but as Emmanuel, not as a Hutu. It’s not the same with all Hutu. I will not forgive those who have not come to ask. Some of them pray in my church. I know the ones who chased us from our home, and those who came to kill at the church. Others, I’ll never know. Like the one who killed my child.

My husband will not forgive Emmanuel. To forgive, you have to have something in common, like the projects we have in the association. My husband hasn’t shared that kind of experience. He dislikes anything that reminds him of those days. He still will not listen to Rwandan radio, only to international news. He doesn’t want me to talk about what happened either, but I don’t always have to do everything he says. For me, talking about it helps. This is why gacaca, the local court held outside on the grass in every community in Rwanda, has helped me. Since most Rwandans can’t travel to the international tribunal in Tanzania, these trials help us all learn what happened.

The surprising thing about gacaca is that when people like Emmanuel tell the truth, the survivors come to love them, while the Hutu who worked with them during the genocide start hating them.

emmanuel: There is tension between those who have confessed and those who have not. Some months ago, my daughter was sick, and the hospital could not figure out what was wrong with her. The traditional doctor said she had been bewitched. I think it came from someone who is angry that I confessed. Before I went to prison, my wife heard me giving testimony about the house where I killed fourteen people, and she went home completely changed. Now when we argue, sometimes she says I might kill her. So we don’t talk about it.

I did tell my daughter about it. I told her that I fell into sin, a big sin, and she should know about it so that she does not fall as I did. I don’t give her details; I usually say we were in a group and we killed some people. We didn’t know it would haunt us.

Even today, I see the faces of the people I killed. They pass before my eyes without speaking to me. I think they are silent because the dead can’t forgive. Can you imagine? You killed someone you don’t even know, and he passes before your eyes, and he will never talk to you.

alice: My kids ask what happened to my hand. I tell them the devil came to Rwanda. I say there was a war, and the government told the Hutu to kill the Tutsi. When they ask me how they can recognize a Hutu, I change the subject.