Vignette, corrected version

Vignette

I am observing an English lesson for Secondary I. Children who started primary school as soon as they were old enough and haven't needed to repeat a year start secondary school at 12. Others come up to 10 years later, when their family can pay the fees or they find a sponsor.

The school year started only last month and the teacher has apologised for the low standard of the class. Some students, however, seem to me to be speaking and understanding pretty well.

A series of questions is written on the blackboard as prompts. Students volunteer to come to the front and answer questions posed by their peers. At the front now is a cool character – low slung trousers, shirt barely tucked in. I didn't catch his name.

How old are you? I'm 17.

Who is your best friend? Jesus. Jesus is my best friend because I don't have a girlfriend. I loved a girl but she didn't want me because I'm poor.

Will you get another girlfriend? Perhaps in a year or two.

Are there brothers and sisters in your family? I have two brothers and three sisters. I am the last-born.

What is your father's work? My father was killed in the genocide.

Quite matter-of-fact. I detect no emotional shift. He was two years old. That's just how it is.


PS, Weds 10 Feb
I am reading 'Machete season: the killers in Rwanda speak', borrowed from the FPH library. The killers Jean Hatzfeld interviewed came from near Gitarama. These ordinary Hutu farmers talk of hunting down Tutsis week after week in the papyrus swamps where they fled to avoid the killing in the villages. Returning on the bus from Gitarama after the workshop there, the sun is bright, although to the north there are heavy clouds and occasional drops fall on the windscreen. We are in a lush valley bottom, with bright green rice, fronds of tall grass used as cattle fodder, and what beyond, feathery, head high? Papyrus.