Orphans and murderers

In spite of having been here for over a month now, I did two things yesterday that I had planned on doing in the first few weeks – but never got around to until now.

First, I went to an orphanage in nearby Kilala village. A short daladala (200 Tsh) ride east of Tengeru took me to Kilala's roadside transit area, and then another minibus (500 Tsh) took me uphill to where the orphanage and small hospital are located.

The orphanage looks after around 25 children, from age of birth until toddler-sized (around five). Located in a small, peaceful compound bordered by hills and a grassy athletic field, the orphanage resembles a converted church and is comprised of a laundry room, kitchen, eating area and then several bedrooms with cots. Just outside of the main building is a classroom, and this was my first destination of work. After being given an informal hand-held tour by a tiny orphan girl, who didn't say anything I could understand, I sat down in the classroom with the group of rambunctious tots and their saintly teacher/caregiver/foster-parent. After noting her teaching style of practising phrases in English as a group, and then quizzing each little squirt individually, I then took my turn of lecturing the miniature congregation. On the wall behind me was a drawing of a human body with labels in English and Swahili, so I first took to teaching the kids some memorable basics (eyes, ears, nose and mouth) before moving on to some more complicated parts (arm, hand, fingers, thumb). After lessons, we all took off to the field for some leg-stretching games interspersed with counting activities. All good fun. The kids then returned to the classroom and I was handed a pair of chubby two-year-olds to entertain. With banana-flavoured baby slobber still fermenting on my t-shirt collar, I soon saw myself putting sub-1-year-olds to sleep in their cots. At this point, it was noon, so my first orphanage experience came to a close.

The next half of my day – spent listening to a convicted murderer describe the events of a day of mass-killings during the genocide in Rwanda – was predictably dissimilar to a morning spent playing with kids. In Arusha sits the Arusha International Conference Centre, site of the criminal tribunal for the genocide in Rwanda. They host morning and afternoon trials in a series of small courtrooms. Visiting courtroom #3, I got to watch the trial of Jean-Baptiste Gatete, an official accused of giving orders for a gathering of Hutus to commit genocide. Most harrowing was the fact that the day's witness – unnamed and under witness protection – was a convicted participant in the genocide. The courtroom consisted of Gatete's defence (to my left), prosecution (to my right) and a trio of judges in the centre. Also in the centre, but blocked from my view by a curtain, sat the witness. I sat in a gallery, blocked from the courtroom by soundproof windows, and listened to the discussion with a radio headset (live translations in French and English were available).

Though I didn't write any details down – and I only saw a fraction of a trial that was several sessions in-progress – the gist of it was this: the witness was, at some point in 1994, at a church where mass-killings were being carried out. Many Tutsi people sought refuge in churches during the genocide, thinking themselves safe. Let's call the witness Bob. Bob was made to carry the bodies of the dead from the church and throw them into a mass pit. This took him about three hours. At the same time, killings of the Tutsis trying to protect themselves in the church were taking place.

I gathered that the Prosecution had previously been trying to prove that Gatete was present at the church during that day, and had given orders to kill those inside the church. The Defence had provided the witness in order to prove that Gatete was not there. Bob's evidence of this was that, in those three hours, he had not seen Gatete. If he had not seen him, then someone would have informed him of his presence.

After the Defence spoke to the witness, the Prosecution started their battering of him. “Is it not possible,” asked the American Prosecutor, “That Gatete was there, and you simply did not see him?”

After some back-and-forth, somewhat contradictory statements from the witness, Bob settled on “No, it was not possible.”

I've summarized the events in such a way that makes the whole experience sound brief and riveting – but it was actually quite boring, for the most part. Discussion moved very slowly, focusing on intricate details. Even the International Law student sat to my right had fallen asleep at one point. At the end of the day, the witness seemed a little irrelevant. His evidence neither proved that Gatete was present, nor that he was absent, during that day at the church. He seemed a little unreliable, but not to the extent of obviously lying about not having seen Gatete at the church.

So, while the trial itself was nothing incredible, the fact that I sat in the same company as a participant in the genocide was itself an experience I won't forget. Though Bob was only prosecuted for a single murder, it was evident that he may have been involved in far, far more than this. After all, he owned a beating club. Still, Bob maintained that he had had no choice in his participation. He was following orders, and would have been shot had he not participated or helped to carry the bodies of the dead. In fact, he claimed that he managed to save one Tutsi woman's life, after she pleaded with him for help. All sounds a bit similar to the fantasies and excuses I've read in books like Jean Hatzfeld's Machete Season.

Update: Gatete was a leader of Interahamwe, a paramilitary organization backed by the 1994 Rwandan government. This was a bigger case than I thought.