A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali Read Online Free PDF Page A

the men of the hills. The Whites have guns. The Blacks have secret thoughts.
    Kawa wanted Célestin to know another life than life on the hill. He wanted him to be an “intellectual.” This is what someone is still called today who can read and pile up paper instead of milking a cow or goat. He would go and live in Astrida, 3 the capital, and become rich trading with the colonials. A legitimate plan, which did honour to a loving father, but one whose full complexity was still beyond his grasp. It was Célestin, an insatiable reader, who made it possible for his father to get an inkling of the difficulties that lay ahead in his advance toward prosperity and social prominence.
    Célestin had brought home a big book written by a Belgian doctor who was a specialist in indigenous cultures. In his country he was considered a great Africanist. The Belgian king, queen, ministers, high and low civil servants, all learned everything they knew of the mysterious continent from this book. There was no greater authority on Rwanda than this doctor. He knew the history of all the kingdoms of Africa and the characteristics of each of its peoples. He described each scientifically, applying the leading theories of morphology and anthropology, as they had recently begun to do in Europe, particularly in Germany. Célestin’s teacher, Father Athanase, had explained all this to him when placing the precious volume in his hands. If Célestin wanted to become an intellectual, he said, it was time for him to discover which were the pure races so he could model his attitude and behaviour on them. This would do much for his social advancement.
    Reading this book disrupted his entire life and the lives of his family, his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, of whom the most beautiful and most intelligent would be baptized Gentille.
    He learned that the Hutus had inhabited the region of the Great Lakes since time immemorial and that they were probably descended from the Bantus, who were savage warriors from Lake Chad and had founded great kingdoms, like those of the Monomotapa and the Kongo, as well as the great Zulu chiefdoms in South Africa. It was they who, long before the birth of jesus, introduced metallurgy to the region as well as a pottery technique still being practised today.
    The Tutsis, who had reigned over Ruanda-Urundi for centuries, had come from the North, from Egypt or Ethiopia. A Hamitic people, they were not true negroes but probably Whites darkened by centuries of sun. Their tall stature, the paleness of their skin and the fineness of their features attested to this noble ancestry and their distant relationship with the civilized peoples.
    “The Hutu, a poor farmer, is short and squat and has the nose characteristic of the negroid races. He is good-natured but naive, coarse and unintelligent. The Hutu is deceitful and lazy, and quick to take offence. He is a typical negro.
    “The Tutsi, a nomadic cattle grazier, is tall and slender. His skin is light brown on account of his northern origins. He is intelligent and skilful at trade. He has a sparkling wit and a pleasant disposition. Colonial administrators in Ruanda-Urundi would do well to obtain the assistance of Tutsis for tasks which in their judgment they may entrust without danger to natives.” 4
    When Célestin read these words to his father , Kawa uttered a fearful cry. All was crumbling around him: his pride as a Hutu patriarch and the ambitions he had been harbouring for Célestin. He himself no longer existed and his son was worth no more than a leper. On the hill, he was already being looked on with suspicion. Yes, now he realized why. For Kawa was very tall and his nose was neither large nor flat like the noses of his six brothers and forty-nine cousins. His skin was darker than the skin of Tutsis he knew, but when you saw him from behind or far away, or in a dark place, you could not tell the difference. He did raise cows like the Tutsis, but only chance