Where were you on 7 April 1994?
Where were you on 7 April 1994?
When human beings started massacring other human beings,
savagely,
mindlessly,
mechanically;
neighbors became monsters
friends become unrecognizable ennemies,
and lovers stop mixing like water and oil?
Where were you on 7 April 1994?
When churches become killing chambers
When machetes and ubuhiri became toys
Hotels became cemeteries.
Where were you on 7 April 1994?
When the “hit song” was the sound of broken skulls,
When the “flavor of the month” was rotting human flesh
When the “color of the month” was blood red.
When were you on 7 April 1994?
When human beings lost their humanity and became worse than animals
Where were you?
Where were you?
Where were you on 7 April 1994?
Forget about you, where was I?
Where was I on 7 April 1994?
I was 18, two months before high school graduation in a bland suburb of Boston
Here the hit song was Wu Tang Clan or A Tribe Called Quest…
If Kigali was earth, I was on Mars, also known as the United States.
Nothing happening in Africa was on my radar
Back home, President Houphouet had passed away, I didn’t know.
I was probably watching a baseball game on TV
Yes, April is the start of baseball season in the US [in case you didn’t know]
7 April, 25 April, 10 May, 10 June, 15 July,
Just dates for me, nothing else
But in Kigali, these weren’t just dates
That was killing season
that was chase them, catch them, kill them season
Scorch earth, leave no witness
history in the making
Bloody, brutal history.
The killing stopped, the genocide ended
A nation has lost an unfathomable number of its sons and daughters
And I was still on Mars.
Exit Mars, back in Africa.
There’s a country called Sierra Leone, some crazy stuff going on there too
Sierra Leone leads me to Rwanda.
Then there’s DR Congo, my beloved Congo, it also leads me to Rwanda
And I read, read, read, read, read, and read some more
And I watch, watch, watch, watch, watch, and watch some more.
I am still reading and still watching.
In June 2018, I watched my first artistic performance on the genocide,
Samedi Détente by Rwanda-born artist Dorothée Munyaneza
Where? In Germany of all places
Yeah they know a thing or two about genocides.
The title of this text comes from Dorothée’s play, she asks that question in Samedi Détente
The play was musically violent, with squeaking machetes
With some French man — a French man!! — reading French government correspondences by Mitterrand.
I was seated in the back, hum no that’s not going to cut it
Who’s this black, bearded man disrupting the quietness of a German theater?
You’re lucky I didn’t go and stand by the stage
Second row, right smack in the middle
I am trying to get transported to April 1994 in Kigali
A few white folks got up and left, yeah too much guilt probably, I hear you!
And 25 years later, I am in Kigali
It’s all about circles
From knowing nothing back in 1994 to being in Kigali as the country marks the 25th year since the genocide.
25 years….
They say time flies
it depends on which clock you are using.
Perpetrators and victims don’t wear the same watches
Perpetrators and victims don’t heal the same.
Forgiving and forgetting are fraternal twins.
25 years in the history of Africa is nothing
But have we learned anything?
I love the yellow of the sun
The blue of the sky
The green of the hills.
Let’s hope the sun never sets
That the skies never turn gray
And the hills remain forever green.
Now do you remember where you were on 7 April 1994?
