Field Trip

Field Trip

I was but at child at the time, I had just lost my first tooth and I was learning addition at the local primary school. I was the son of a doctor, a wise and charismatic man who always had the answer to every one's questions. Sometimes, when the moon failed to shine and the swaying branches of the bold baobab trees sent menacing shadows dancing across my room, I would curl up in the corner of my father’s study and watch him read; the way his thick eyebrows would arch ever so slightly when something surprised him amused me, and eventually the soft desk light would fade away and I would be safe in my father’s comforting arms as he carried me off to bed, singing me an old African hymn about a father lion who sees his cub for the first time. Those nights were magical.

I had just been released from school, I took a shortcut through the bush to try to beat my father home. He would always leave work at 3 o’clock sharp to greet me at the front door and exclaim, “Othenio tell me what you have learned!” and he would lift me up and sit me atop his broad shoulders and he would say, “Son someday all this will be yours.” and he would point out to the vast horizon and we would both laugh, his a deep fatherly laugh, the type that every little boy dreams of. As I emerged from the bush, only a couple of paces away from my house, I heard a blood curdling scream, the kind that instantly brings the most fearless men to a halt. I heard the sound of a truck rolling down a dirt road, American music blasting from the speakers and countless men singing along; I doubt they knew what the words meant, but they chanted along anyways. My father subsequently appeared from behind a wooden shack, first walking and then rapidly accelerating until he was in an all out sprint. A black pickup truck tailed closely behind him, its seven occupants armed with AK-47’s and belts of ammunition draped from either shoulder. My father spotted me as I began rushing towards him, and shot me a glance of desperation and horror, he waved his hands desperately, willing me back into the bush and I obeyed him. As I lay horrified across the dry soil, I peaked out between a cluster of tall grasses and watch my father as he stumbled on a thick root and collapse to the ground, tears flowing profusely out of his eyes. He begged me not to watch, not to watch as the men ran over his legs and torso, not to watch as they dragged him through the dirt and stripped him of his work clothes, mocking him all along, not to watch as they laid his naked body up against a wall and shot him three times in the arm, just to inflict pain, not to watch as a bullet pierced his skull and seized from me the only person I had ever loved in this cruel and unforgiving world. I had never hated anyone in my whole life as much as I hated these men, these cowards, these Hutu.

As I return to my village, a small coastal town on the banks of Lake Kivu, I find no trace of the day that has forever changed my life. The town was completely decimated during the war, and even though it has been less than 20 years since that day of great pain and sorrow, it seems as if it never happened. The people never talk about it, and upon further questioning the whole town denied being present the day my father died. It’s as if the most important day in my life had absolutely no importance in the lives of the rest of my village. For me it was the end of my world, but for them it was yet another day of massacre, just another day of hatred between brothers.