Machete Season

This chapter looks at life after the genocide. With so many houses destroyed, aid workers built mudugudus, subdivisions that provided emergency housing and more security for peasant families that lived in the surrounding bush and jungle.

The women currently living in the new housing feel safer, even though they have long walks to reach their farm plots. Francine always feels “hunted” and fears for her children from every stranger’s eyes (184). Like many others, she has withdrawn from life and her community in the mudugudus.

Some aspects of life return to normal. In full churches, Tutsi and Hutu pray side by side. The market is open on Saturdays and Wednesdays. There is a new hospital, and weddings have resumed. But the fear remains.

Most of the killers say their days of killing and taking revenge are over. They insist they will be ordinary men when they get home. Élie intends to make amends by giving gifts to the victims to whom he has written apologies. Pio, if given the chance to go home, will apologize because he is no longer interested in playing the “tough guy” (19). All the killers, he says, will have to learn to live with the idea that they were part of the evil that swept through Rwanda in 1994.