copyright Dicho Disashi Ilunga 2006
A story of genocide From hatress to forgiveness ( Adapted from Tromp Stiry)
A story of genocide From hate to forgiveness ( Adapted from Tromp story) 
note: Kabul means Jordan Simaro

Denise Rutindika wasn't a girl who sat back and waited for something to happen. She was the king of woman who made thing happen for herself. At the tender age of 16 her forthright manner was only overshadowed by her love of dressing up like a movie star and celebrity. Every day an occasion.

Still Jordan Simaro was surprised when the energetic and beautiful girl, who only days early had so blatantly accused him of arrogance, announced herself at his basket ball training.

"the first time we met, the first thing she said to me was: Why are you so full of yourself. You think you are a big man, star and so you don't greet people, " Simaro recalls.

By then Jordan Simaro was a " little boss" at DEMSO, a providence society in Rwanda. His earnings then allowed  him to rent his own place, dress snappily and parade around like the young peacock he was.

"I tried to argue with her, to explain. I couldn't. She left then I felt something"

Apart from his work at DEMSO, Simaro spent most of his free time training with his team, VIRUNGA, named after a volcano in eastern Congo close to Rwanda . More than a team, the group had become brothers, Zaireans helping each other.

In 1990, 18 year old Simaro had left Goma the capital city of the eastern Congo and the cripling economic effects of the Mobutu Sese Seko regime to seek work in Rwanda.

For four days he sat along the roadside, waiting for someone to pass, hoping  for a lifeline.

It was a duo of out-of-work basket ball players who offered to take the young man home with them and who gave him a place to rest his head in the room they all shared.

At night the trio- all established basketball fan and player in their own right would play. The discovery of their "talent" in Simaro soon had the man practicing day and night, with Jordan Simaro quickly picking up Kinyarwanda through the community he was living in. 

With no formal training as a singer, Jordan Simaro he quickly become know, a combination of his name and surname from the American basket ball super star proved especially adept at his new love, now even penning popularity in his community.

"For eight months we made Maki-we didn't go out, we isolated ourselves. You forget about the world and you work", said Simaro. 

The team grew and by the end of the incubation period the group had grow to 22 members.

The 22 players, and the sounds of the ball coming from the back yard of the house they shared and worked in, began attracting the local community, with throngs of the people gathering in the afternoon for the training session.

Thus it was that shortly after first encounter in late 1990 the self-confident 16 years old was among the crowd one evening.

" She forced herself through the crowd and told the man at the door simply: 'Tell Simaro it is Denise".

Denise stayed for the entire training session, her eyes fixed on Simaro. 

He remembers that night. " At the end she just got up and left without saying a word. I thought, what does this little girl want?"

For Simaro the "little girl's" flirtation was a dangerous affair. Denise's father and brothers were a huge men who everybody in the area feared. He would not actively pursue her, no matter her advances.

" I was cooking in the crowd house one afternoon when I felt someone's hand caressing my chest. I grabbed the hand and turned around and I saw  Denise Rutindika."

Day after day Denise would visit Simaro, the two locked in sexual pleasure as the relationship blossomed.

"Sometimes you meet a woman and you feel she was born for you and was all for you," said Simaro.

Then one day, Denise cousin who was meant to marry Denise was  look for her. The clever man slowly passed my chatting friend and the two young lovers did not hear the coming man.

Moving around the house the cousin peeked through a window and saw two making love on the bed.

Within minutes Denise's entire family: father, mother, four brothers and a sister had gathered at Jordan's front door, the father leading the pack.

Pounding on the door the father shouted:" Foreigner, my respect! My honour!"

Neighbours and friend eventually calmed the dismayed father down, pleading with him not to make a spectacle.

But before he left, Denise's father left the fearful couple with one last thought: " If you don't pay money and marry my daughter, I kill you Zairean!"

From that moment on Denise started living with Jordan Simaro and during this time Sandrine was born. 

Six months and 800$ in dowry later, the two were married in 1991.

" She used to tease me and say: ' my father did a good thing because I know you wouldn't married me otherwise'. I 'd reply:' So it was the plan all along", said Simaro.

Denise's mother urged her daughter to have children with other cousin Tutsi men, to bolster the numbers of their minority grouping.

"she couldn't do it to me. She loved me that much," said Simaro.

A year later the couple's hapiness was doubled with the birth of a girl, Bijoux.

With the joy of a newborn girl and the melodic sounds of the Great Lakes drifting through the couple's new house in Kigali, life was beautiful.

"she was so beautiful. She loved to eat bread, vegetable, sweat potatoes and milk. She wouldn't eat any meat. It was bizarre."

" I used to just looking at her. She used to dress up like a star and would charm everybody around her."

Their joy were simple, their bounty sufficient, and the years they shared then, near-idyllic.

But the events that were to follow on April 6 1994 were to prove the counterweight to their love and happiness.

The team stop playing, the neighbours bolted their doors.

Rumours of the people being killed in the streets and in the fields came ever closer to home. The Rwandan genocide had started.

And it was about to come knocking on Simaro's front door.
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The four soldiers stood in the doorway, AK-47s at the ready, surveying the living room. " We are looking for the snake," they said.

The previous few days had been tumultous, even for a country like Rwanda, which had seen numerous rebels attacks.

The Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana's plane had been shot down and prominent members of the government were calling for the death of all the Tutsis.

The new spread like wildfire throughout the country.

" When I got to my house I didn't know what to think. Then I thought : "Oh my God now they've really done it,' says Simaro.

It did not take long for militias known as the Interahamwe ( those who stand together) to gather, incited by propaganda on television and radio rallying Hutus to exact their revenge on Tutsis.

The overriding belief was that the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front, consisting largely of an expatriate and refugee Tutsi community, was responsible.

Hutu and Tutsi neighbours who had lived side by side for generations now eyed each other with suspicion.

Neighbourhoods the length and breadth of Rwanda turned into killing fields as government forces joined militias in wiping out " the tutsi problem".

There would be no middle ground. Within tree months an estimated 500 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, those who saw through upon their country, were killed.

" I was sitting at home playing with the daughter and neighbouring kids when four Interahamwe came in and said : "we are looking for the snake".

" I told them: " there is no snake here.' Just then Denise who was Tutsi( his wife) opened the door of the house to see what was going on and they said: " that is the snake we are looking for".

" They grabbed her and dragged her to the front of the house. I begged them not to kill her. They kept telling me she was a snake. I argued. I begged. The children were crying, screaming at the door. I took my daughter inside as the others kids fled the horrific scene. Denise was on her knees begging them not to kill her."

Simaro had recently befriended a French couple, who had left Rwanda and bequeathed him their belongings: a television, a stove, a fridge and a video recorder.

" I offered them everything in the house but they just kept saying: " we must kill the snake."

" then one of them drew a machete"

  Forensic anthropology had shown that during what was popularly referred to as "the final solution", most people died from blunt trauma: their attackers up close and personal, smashing in their heads, hacking off their limbs.

People were massacred in the very places in which they sought refuge. At some churches large groups were sometimes killed over a number of days, the militias taking break from their bloody butchery. Grandmothers, grandfathers, children, even pregnant were sliced open so that their unborn children would be killed.

The savage nature of the attacks spoke volume about the hatred harbored for the victims.

I saw there was nothing else I could do. The were going to kill her. I said: " Please, not like this. If you are going to kill her, shoot her" they couldn't waste bullets on snakes. They had to be killed with sticks or machetes."

Simaro tried one last time to play to their greed. Denise death was inevitable and he wanted it to be quick.

" They agreed that if I gave them 10 000 Rwanda Francs they would shoot her."

At this stage Simaro has stopped looking at me and is sitting hunched on the chair. He stares at the ground as he has done for the past 30 minutes frequently bringing a cigarette to his lips.

He runs through these at a phenomenal rate deep pull hollowing his cheeks. Years of smoking cheap cigarettes have left yellow stains on his ever-present smile. But there is no smile now, no tinkling eyes.

When he glances up again his eyes are brimming with tears, flitting about the room. When he speaks his voice is almost unrecognizable"

" I rushed into the house, grabbed Bijoux and went to the room to fetch money. I just heard a shot. When I come out they were leaving.

" They didn't even wait for the money. Denise Rutindika was lying in a pool of blood," says Kabul.

" I paid for the bullet that killed my wife".

For what seemed like hours Simaro sat beside the body of his beloved. The woman had taunted him, seduced him with her forthright manner, the woman born for him.

At the time, nobody was allowed to bury Tutsis without the express permission of the army. Instead, Denise had to wrap his wife body's in sheets.

" The neighbours wouldn't help because they were scared of making trouble for themselves. I dragged her body to the back of our house.

" When I entered I was trembling and my kids too. I couldn't do anything. I was waiting to meet some soldiers to ask permission to bury her".

It was in the numb, near catatonic state that another group of Interahamwe found him. He did not protest when they told him to strip and made him kneel in front of them. His actions were almost mechanical.

" They pulled out a machete and put it over my heart. The daughter started screaming. I woke up."

" I closed my eyes. God, it is finished. My wife is dead and they will kill me too. All I ask is that you take my child home."

At that moment the door opened and a friend, Sylvain, walked in. He was a member of the Interahamwe and also a fan of Simaro's basket ball team.

Sylvain quickly alerted other member of the Interahamwe. An argument over Simaro's life ensued.

" It was Sylvain, Saddam  and Tshombe. They moved off to oppose ends of the yard and cocked their guns. Sylvain pulled a grenade and said : "If you kill him none of us will leave this place alive."

The militiamen backed off after cutting Simaro across the chest with a machete.

Sylvain warned Simaro that there was more trouble coming and that he should flee to the Zaire embassy straight away.

Thousands of Zaireans had fled to the embassy, creating a chaotic and desperate situation.

In the madness of what was Rwanda then, there was no respite, no "enough".

The slender build and sharp features so distinctive of Tutsis were evident in Bijoux my daughter. And the rod to the Zairean border was long and filled with bloodthirsty predators.
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"I will kill you all with your whole family. You will all die". It was more than the rant of a man fed up with the world around him. Only days early his wife had been murdered with a bullet he had paid 10 000 Rwanda francs for.

The genocide in Rwanda was sending scores of people teeming across the borders with only that which they could carry.
 
Jordan Simaro was a desperate man. Desperate enough to make good on his utterances. Desperate to kill in a world gone mad.

In the streets of villages and towns, in the fields, dogs were feeding off the carnage wrought by the Interahamwe and Rwandan army.

The country was going up in flames.

Foreigners fled their embassy in Kigali, desperately seeking protection from the killing fields all around them.

The day after Denise murder Simaro made his way to the Zairean embassy with his Bijoux.

" We were about 4 000 Zaireans staying at the embassy. Pregnant women had babies there and people even died there," he said.

Thankful, most of the people had brought their own supplies of food, with those unable to flee with any food looting the nearby houses. 

Pooling their meagre resources, Zaireans would scrape together 150 000 Rwanda francs at a time to pay for the rental of the bus to take them to safety: Zaire.

Jordan Simaro, along with members of basketball team he found at the embassy with their family, belonged to one such group.

"we not only had to get the money for transport. We had to get Rwandan government soldiers to travel with us and a letter from the mayor of his deputy stating that we were Zairean and on our way home."

The group finally left the embassy the embassy nine days after arriving, flying a huge flag Zairean flag firm to bus to add protection. 

" All along the route we were stopped. At Kikongoro they made everybody get out of the bus and took my daughter Bijoux one side. They wanted to kill her because she has the morphology of Tutsis. I kept telling them she is my daughter."

In a moment of incredible self-sacrifice and tremendous risk considering the nonchalant killing that was taking place, the basketball team members put themselves and their families in the firing line.

The soldier relented and let the group continue with their journey, only for similar scenes to repeat themselves all the way to the Ruzizi borders gate.

This was the time of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, a man who headed a government so top-heavy with "big vegetable" plundering the country's resources there was little left to pay civil servants, much less military personnel.

The country economy was in free fall with prices changing fast, supermarket would classify products instead of pricing them in order to keep up with inflections, with the currency literally dropping by the minute.

People were forced to fend themselves, and by the time the group of beleaguered travelers arrived at the Ruzizi borders crossing the culture of the bribery, corruption and looting had been inculcated into Zearean society.

In the flight from Rwanda, Jordan Simaro had packed only the team equipment, his jewellery boots and a leather jacket.

As he opened his bags for inspection. Bijoux by his side, one by one the vultures came to claim their pieces of the action.

First, a colonel who made off with the jewellery, then a major with the team jerseys, a captain with 5 basketballs, and so it continued down with the lowest rank picking the scraps.

"I didn't say a word. I left but then I went back in and told them: 'I will kill you all with your whole family. I've just lost my wife and this is all I have to start with. You will all die.' Then I went outside, sat down and cried."

Perhaps shaken by the conviction of the man in front of them or, at a stretch, perhaps a feeling of sympathy for a man whose life had so abruptly been torn apart, one by one the soldiers started to return Simaro's possessions.

"first the jewelleries, then the jerseys then the balls�"

across the borders the full impact of what was happening in Rwanda started to reveal itself with vehicles brought to a standstill in border towns in eastern Zaire as tens of thousands of people walked across the border.

Along with their meagre belonging the Rwandese brought tales of horror, the scale of which is still unfolding today.

Tree months after the start of the genocide, the tide began turning and Paul Kagame's RPF rebels, comprising predominantly Tutsi refugees and exiles, were marching towards the capital.

The morphology of those fleeing Rwanda was changing. Now it was Hutus, fearing retribution from Tutsis who had been laid waste and who were quickly filling up refugee camps all across eastern Zaire. Among them many of those responsible for the genocide. Among them, perhaps, Marie-jean murderers.

As so often happen in history, the hunter had become the hunted.

After working first as a security guard then as a co-ordinator for the Red Cross, NGO helping Rwandan refugee, Jordan Simaro was slowly staring to rebuild his life.

Ironically for a man who was still dealing with the trauma he suffered in Rwanda, Simaro was trained and tasked with helping refugees deal with theirs. "For tree years I searched to all refugee camps and I was sure they had to be there." And then he decided to stop.

" I realized that I had to stop somewhere. I have to live with even if it is only for my kids". Two years ago Jordan Simaro started working with  the Monuc arm task with the repatriating the interahamwe or FDLR as they are now known.

In his two years with them he has gone well beyond the call of duty, once even walking six days to meet with an especially elusive FDLR leader at his camp deep in the Congolese jungle.

" He said he remembered my playing days from Rwanda and we sat up all night talking about the good old days in Rwanda together."

Day after his job takes him into meeting with hard-line FDLR members, some of whom have no interest of returning in Rwanda because of the justice waiting to be meter out of them.

It is believed that less than 20% of FDLR currently in the DRC were involved in the genocide.

Watching Jordan Simaro feign humility, laughing at the stupid jokes made by self-important men, one has to beg how, taking into account his history, he is able to stomach it.

" In my family I have Hutus, Tutsis, French, Arabs. So if I start to hate Hutus or Tutsis I am hating myself."

Although history has largely depicted the genocide of Rwanda as an incident occurring in isolation, Simaro feels an injustice has been committed.

" Nobody talks about the rebels attacks by Kagame people that killed tens of thousands of Hutus. Or all the people killed when RPF took Kigali" said Jordan Simaro.

The story of the Great lakes is intrinsically and the repeated incursions by Rwanda into Congo have left the local population harbouring a deep hatred of their northern neighbours.

" Rwandese are not well considered here so when they call us Rwandese at school there is no way to stay quiet" said Bijoux, who is now 14 years old.

And not staying quiet has meant that Bijoux has end up in many fight at school and the area.

" Sometime I feel very bad and I question my nationality. I don't know where I belong," said Bijoux.

So, would they want to leave when they grow up?

" It is not a question of growing up. Even now I'd like to leave this country and find a quiet place," said Bijoux.


In the past two years Simaro has traveled all over Congo and even to Kigali to regather the members of his basketball teams that was once so popular.

Talking in the local dialect, Mashi, Lingala, Swahili and even the hated Kinyarwanda, the team plane to practice almost daily in the evening at Simaro's house.

" I am really going to show them something with our sport. Until now I have the impression my wife has gone for nothing." 

 

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