The Rain in April

It's always bad news

Prologue...

He didn’t stop; he just kept on running, tearing through the thick bush as he ran. He didn’t even stop to catch his breath. He had to save her; he had to get to the clearings before anybody else. As he ran, he perceived he wasn’t alone; he was being followed. The air whispered to him, the ground shook because of their boots and the air smelled of their bullets. It had been days, days of hell and days of bloodshed. He fell down, but stood up almost immediately.

“Keza,” he muttered, running faster.

The sky was getting darker now and he could smell blood, he looked down and it seemed to him as though the earth would open up and swallow him.

“Keza,” he called again. He stopped and leaned against a tree to catch his breath. Then it came re-echoing through the forest, her screams revealing her deepest fears and his deepest fear. She had been surrounded, she had been taken.

“Keza,” he muttered under his breath, breaking into a run.

Chapter 1

APRIL 7, 1994.

THIRTEEN DAYS EARLIER…..

Patrick Gahiji sat outside what they now called home, a bamboo house which was located in a remote village some few kilometers from Kigali. He sat on a rocking chair his father brought home the day before and watched as his father worked tirelessly on his small farm outside the house. They had both tried to grow corn on the farm but failed; now the corn was finally sprouting and his father dedicated most of his time to it.

“We will sell the corn. I’m sure it will fetch us enough money to change the furniture in the house.” His father said one night after super.

“What if the corn fails to grow? You and Patrick have been trying to grow it for months now.”

Uwimana, Patrick’s mother asked. She was tall and dark and had an oval face with long dark and curly hair. Despite having two children, Uwimana still looked very young, her slim perfect body and her round beautiful eyes said it all.

“They will grow, the first rain has fallen and there is no need to water them anymore.” Patrick’s father, Frank answered.

Frank Gahiji, a Tutsi, has spent most of his life trying to survive in a country torn by ethnicity and tribal war. The upper class always had the advantage. Frank Gahiji was forced to flee the country with some other refugees during the riots but after some months, he made his way back into the country, working hard to regain the trust of the people he had known before he fled the country. He met a woman from the opposite tribe, Hutu and fell in love with her. Although their relationship was questioned by many, the two ended up getting married and were blessed with two children, Patrick, who was sixteen and Keza who was just nine years old. He had moved with his family to Kigali, but out of fear of being implicated by the extreme Hutus, he relocated to a remote village just a few kilometers outside the capital. The village consisted of people mostly from the Tutsi tribe who had found refuge there. He watched his son growing into a fine young man that he wanted him to become, someone who wouldn’t find fault with another man just because they came from different tribes. He wants his son to be like him and not like his grandfather who had no intention of peace and who was always plotting to carry out evil against the Hutus. As a young boy, Frank had been afraid of his father. He watched his father kill many people in a course to achieve power.

“Son, one day you would find out that everything I have done is for you and our people.” His father told him one morning before he and his colleagues left to carry out an attack. He had always hoped to prove his father wrong. Even though Frank wanted the Tutsi tribe to return to power, he wanted this based on a mutual agreement and not based on war and bloodshed. This was one of the reasons why he returned to Rwanda even after his father’s warning that he would die a shameful death. He believed in the power of reconciliation instead. He met and married a Hutu woman and despite that, tensions grew increasingly. Frank believed in the example that he laid, he was confident that many people would come back and for once, the country would be united as one, not one tribe above the other, oppressing the other, but everybody on equal rights.

Patrick watched as his father stood up and stretched himself. Sweat oozed out of every part of his black skin, bringing his muscles into view through the reflection of the sun. His father was tall, dark and despite being skinny, has a muscular figure. He had black beards that formed a circle round his wide mouth. He had told Patrick not to work with him in the garden that morning insisting that since the corn was already sprouting, there wouldn’t be much work.

Patrick stood up and went inside the house, his mother was already gone to the market and his sister Keza was asleep. He sat by her bed and looked at her, she was his only sister and he would go through any length to look after her. He remembered the day she had fallen ill. He was told to look after her as their parents were away on a trip. He watched as her condition grew worse with each day passing by. He had become afraid and thought she was going to die, he remembered carrying her on his back and running towards the village clinic. He was relieved when the nurse told him that Keza was feeling better.

He touched her hair and traced it down her shoulder; he smiled, rubbed his left thumb on her forehead before leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead.

“There has been an attack on the President this morning; sources have confirmed that the President might have been killed this morning when his plane was blown up by an unknown group….”

Patrick stood up from where he sat, he couldn’t have heard it any better. He walked over to where his father stood motionless with a small radio pressed to his right ear as if the radio wasn’t loud enough. The sitting room was empty except for two dirty armed chairs facing each other and a center table made of bamboo.

“The plane was blown up this morning and….”

The radio continued.

Patrick looked into his father’s cold eyes and saw something he hadn’t seen in a long time, his father was afraid. Standing there looking at him, Patrick was sure his father had been immersed in one of his greatest fears. He dropped the radio on the table and stood still facing the window.

“Father, is everything alright?” Patrick asked, taking some steps forward.

“Everything is alright, son.” He turned and looked at Patrick, faking a smile.

“Go and get your sister, your mother would be back soon and we don’t want to be late to church.” He smiled again before turning away from the window.

We closed our eyes, we saw nothing but darkness, great darkness of our souls

OGUINE KOSISOCHUKWU