There is love in the small village home where we sit with two boys and the parents of one and a brother of the other. A group of ragged children are gathered outside the open door, curious, until they are shooed out of the compound into the village beyond the rough built wall of black volcanic rocks and the gate made of metal sheeting. The parents, like all the villagers, are farmers, and their plot is a half hour walk away, on one of the steep hillsides that characterize the landscape of northwest Rwanda. The volcanic mountains and the gorillas are not far from here, but we are focused on the story that is being told in this small room where we are crowded on wooden chairs around a low table.
Jacques is 21, wiry and animated, is charged with an infectious energy. Martin, 20, is quiet and calm and soft-spoken. They met at the nearby secondary school. Martin was living at home with his parents, and Jacques was renting a place to live, as home was further away. They liked each other and a bond formed between them, an intimacy complicated by the fact that Jacques is Tutsi and Martin is Hutu. You would think it wouldn’t matter, 18 years after the genocide, but it mattered a great deal.
This simple house, with bright blue window and door trim, is set between the town of Ruhengeri and the lakeside town of Gisenyi, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo. There is a complex history here; genocide happened in this village and afterwards many perpetrators fled across the border to Congo. Some died there, some came back, and some are still in prison. But this area was filled with tensions before and after the genocide. During the civil war that preceded the genocide, the rebel Tutsi army, led by now president Paul Kagame, was holed up in the high mountains, fighting with the then Hutu led government. After the genocide, Hutu extremists took control of refugee camps in Congo, and mounted raids against the new government. For many years, this area was militarized and conflicted.
All this history quivers into life when Jacques begins to visit Martin’s home, and the boys want to spend school holidays in each other’s homes. When Jacques moves into Martin’s home the neighbours are hostile, what’s this Tutsi boy doing here, why has he come? Martin’s mother describes how it was difficult to have this Tutsi child in her home: the neighbours complained that she was helping Tutsi, she was not on their side, and if there was any small problem they would come and burn down the house. She wanted Jacque to leave but her heart was changed by her husband’s steadfast support of the boy’s friendship and Martin’s fierceness. Martin was unequivocal: If Jacques goes, he will go too. If the villagers decide to burn down the house, then they will die together. For Martin’s mother now, Jacques is no longer a visitor. He is a son.
Jacques parents were afraid too, why was their son so insistent on this Hutu friend? Their Tutsi neighbours questioned why a Hutu boy visited their house? And Jacques parents asked themselves if it was safe for their son at Martin’s, could something bad happen to him? But they saw, said Jacques, ‘that we loved each other and lived together in harmony, and even if they did not wish for this friendship, they did not challenge us.’ Instead, they came to meet Martin’s family and the two families came together in friendship.
The problem was the neighbours. Some of Martin’s friends could not accept. Some of the villagers did not accept. There was anger and fear from both the war and the genocide, both Tutsi and Hutu died during that time. Martin’s father describes how there still many Hutu in the area who have genocide thinking, as well as many who have family members outside the country who reject Tutsi. He witnessed the genocide, refused to participate.
Slowly by slowly, as Rwandans like to say, there has been change. The Tutsi left in the village now visit Martin’s home, appreciating the welcome given them by a Hutu family. The villagers, not all of them but some of them, see the two boys as brothers. Martin has stayed friends with those who came to accept his friendship with Jacques. Jacques is comfortable in the community.
Martin and Jacques became leaders in their school, inspiring peace and reconciliation initiatives. Their friendship became an admired model for what is possible. Jacque’s older brother changed. He didn’t accept this friendship at first, was opposed to it, but it taught him that the time for ethnic identity is gone and in his work, he now treats Hutu and Tutsi equally, caring only about the quality of the work.
Two boys, who love each other, offering a story to their nation; a story in which love trumps hate, in which togetherness wins out over ethnic conflict, in which the violence of the past can be transformed into a genuine peace. Rwanda needs these stories of living together in a heartfelt way, brotherhood coming from below and not from government directives (although the government directives to live in peace and work together and to forgo revenge, have contributed to the security that makes such a friendship possible.) Jacques and Martin challenge the fissures below the surface; challenge the young generation to come to terms with their inheritance.
It could be seen as a sad commentary that this friendship between a young Hutu and a young Tutsi stands out so strikingly. But as the family escorts the visitors through the village back to our rented car, following the Rwandan custom of accompanying visitors some steps of their journey home, my heart is not the least bit sorrowful. I have been wrapped in love and my heart is now as wide open as the landscape, and into that openness the afternoon breeze blows peace and hopefulness. If the green shoots of possibility, stories like this one, can rise on the wind and spread seeds of change, then another world is possible.
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