Our Lady of the Nile (18 page)

That very same day also brought great disappointment. The breathless mayor arrived to inform Mother Superior of the latest instructions the President’s office had just telephoned through.
Mother Superior called together the teachers and all the staff to update them on the new arrangements. They would fill the pupils in later. Queen Fabiola’s timetable was overloaded. In addition to the First Lady’s Orphanage, she was to make a donation to the Gatagara Care Center for Handicapped Children and visit the Benebikira Sisters. Of course the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile was still on her schedule, but she could only spend an hour there. She didn’t want to disrupt the pupils’ timetable in any way, but she was intent on dropping in on a lesson for at least a few minutes to encourage the pupils and applaud the government’s efforts to promote female education. They would therefore have to trim the welcome speeches, cut most of Brother Auxile’s songs, and shorten the dances. Instead of convening in the large study room, they would welcome the Queen in the yard, weather permitting, or else in the entrance hall. It was agreed that the Queen would sit in on Sister Lydwine’s geography class – for no more than ten minutes, the mayor instructed. The topic would be agriculture in Rwanda. There’d be a rehearsal in the afternoon, where they’d try to anticipate Fabiola’s possible questions and prepare answers. Just before the sovereign’s departure, the seniors would give her presents, and Brother Auxile’s choir would sing the national anthem and, if time allowed, a few of the songs.

The Belgian professors protested: they had been promised a personal introduction to their Queen and a few minutes’ conversation with her. They were told they could stand in the corridor
outside the classrooms, and when Fabiola walked by they’d be able to greet her, and she’d probably address a few words to each teacher. The French teachers said they didn’t feel particularly involved, but they’d gladly take a few photos as souvenirs. The mayor strictly forbade them to do so.

On the following day, the eve of the royal visit, things grew even more frantic. State security agents arrived, flanked by five white men in dark suits, definitely Belgians. They seemed to be in a hurry, walking so fast the mayor struggled to keep up. They had a meeting with Mother Superior in her office, inquired about the pupils’ state of mind, consulted the list of teaching staff, and asked for details of the young French teachers. They questioned the mayor about the atmosphere in his district, and he assured them that things were extremely calm, that the people were in excellent spirits, that they were eagerly looking forward to the event, and that the Queen could count on a warm welcome, since he had been organizing and supervising all the preparations personally every day, from dawn till dusk, and sometimes a good deal of the night, too, over the course of the past month. But the whites, who are strangers to politeness, interrupted him and requested that he get to the point. He did manage, however, to advise them to watch the enclosures of a few Tutsi, and the Rwandan security agents nodded in approval. The police officers searched every inch of the lycée. Sister Bursar even had to show them her pantry, which no one had the right to enter except for her. While they
rummaged behind the stacked cans of corned beef and jam, she jangled her bunch of keys in protest. The police officers then gave their instructions to the mayor and Mother Superior. Two of them, a Belgian and a Rwandan, remained at the lycée. They were installed in the guest bungalow.

The security agents’ jeep had barely departed when a battered old minibus pulled up in the yard. Three whites wearing shorts, khaki canvas jackets, and bush hats piled out. They were followed by a black man in a bright red shirt and tie. The black man, who turned out to be a journalist from Radio Rwanda, asked to see Mother Superior. He produced a permit to take photographs, issued by the Ministry of Information, and introduced his companions as veteran reporters working for a Belgian daily and a French weekly. They wanted to do a report on the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, which they said was renowned in Belgium and elsewhere as a pioneering school, a model of female advancement in central Africa. They’d take some photographs, interview some teachers and, if possible, some pupils, and naturally Mother Superior herself. Flattered, though a little anxious, Mother Superior asked them to be as discreet as possible, and dispatched Father Herménégilde as their guide. The journalists returned to their minibus and came back laden with cameras and tape recorders.

Father Herménégilde was quite shocked at the journalists’
curiosity, or rather their indiscretion. The whites wanted to see and record everything. Not only did they photograph the chapel, and the classrooms (Sister Lydwine was warned in time and raced through the lesson she had rehearsed for the Queen), but they insisted on viewing the dormitories, and the seniors’ decorated alcoves. They prodded the beds, asked where the showers were, and even entered the kitchens, where they peeked inside the stew pots and went as far as tasting the beans Sister Kizito was preparing. They seemed fairly uninterested in Father Herménégilde’s comments and pronouncements vaunting the government’s titanic efforts and tremendous success in promoting girls’ education, and preferred to ask a series of incongruous, inappropriate, and impertinent questions such as: Did they complain about the food? Didn’t they feel too isolated? What did they do on their outings? Did they have boyfriends? What did they think of family planning? Was it their parents who’d be choosing their future husbands? Were they Hutu or Tutsi? How many Hutu and how many Tutsi were there at the lycée? Father Herménégilde motioned them to stay silent, but some of the girls, proud to be speaking into a microphone, got entangled in lengthy answers before finally asking: “Am I going to be on the radio?”

The dancers had to be assembled, since they really wanted to film them. The journalists relished the sight of these young women (all seniors) lined up in the gym in their sports gear. Veronica was an irresistible magnet to every camera. The journalists
asked her to step onto the stage on her own to pose, first facing them, then in profile. “Fabulous, just fabulous! She could go on the cover!” A furious Gloriosa asked them why they were only interested in Veronica. They burst out laughing and said: “Okay, we’ll take your photo too.”

Just when they were preparing to get back in their vehicle, Father Herménégilde reminded them they were due to interview Mother Superior. “Out of time,” they said. “We’ve already got all we need. Please thank the Reverend Mother. We’d like to go up to the source of the Nile. Is there anyone to guide us?” Outraged at their poor manners, Father Herménégilde took his revenge with a rambling explanation of how it was impossible since the track had been swept away by a landslide. “Plus,” he added, “it’s starting to rain, so you’d better get going if you want to avoid getting bogged down on your way back to the capital.” The radio journalist and the driver firmly agreed with Father Herménégilde’s advice, and the minibus set off, much to the chaplain’s great relief.

They waited for the Queen. A long time. On every hill, the local Party chiefs had tried to mobilize all the inhabitants who were fit and able. Many objected. Especially the women. There was always a field of peas or millet that needed weeding, it couldn’t wait, and then there was the desperately sick newborn who wouldn’t tolerate being strapped to its mother’s back for a whole day in the sun or rain. At last, enough folk were roused to garnish the verges of the track for two kilometers. Little Belgian
and Rwandan flags were handed out to the children from the primary school close to Nyaminombe. The monitor showed them how to wave the flags and made them practice one last time the song he’d written to welcome the Queen: “Sing as if it were the President,” he advised them.

The lycée was seething with excitement. The pupils, some of whom hadn’t slept a wink, had gotten up long before the alarm bell and the groaning gates. There was swapping and squabbling over mirrors, combs, and tubes of Venus de Milo cream. There was endless disentangling of hair and envying of those who were fortunate enough to have had theirs straightened. Every girl wondered what they could do to get noticed by the Queen or, perhaps more importantly, the Minister accompanying her. But how, since they all wore identical uniforms? It was out of the question to wave at her or wink – impossible! The girls practiced smiles of enthusiasm and admiration. Some were counting on their light complexion and their smooth hair, but most relied on chance: maybe the Queen would stop in front of her and say something. And then she would never forget her. But that would take a miracle, and only Our Lady of the Nile could perform that.

For breakfast, Sister Bursar had opened a few of the large tins of jam usually reserved for the pilgrimage picnic or the Monsignor’s visit. Then, alas, the girls had to return to their classrooms, since the Queen wanted to experience the lycée as if it were a normal day. Sister Lydwine repeated her geography lesson, without apparently getting bored of it, and ensured that the pupils
answered the anticipated questions as spontaneously and naturally as possible. The other teachers quickly gave up on their lessons, since the pupils rushed to the windows as soon as they thought they heard the sound of the long awaited-motorcade. The Belgian teachers sat stiffly on their chairs, for fear of creasing their suits or getting chalk dust on them. The chosen singers and dancers waited in the gym, ready to take up their places in the yard at Brother Auxile’s signal. The two police officers paced the corridors. The mayor raced back and forth between the track and the lycée. Father Herménégilde stood on the chapel steps rehearsing his welcome speech in a loud voice, accompanied by expansive gestures. Mother Superior was everywhere: she tried to reestablish some kind of order in the classrooms; she sent one of the French teachers, who’d appeared wearing an open-necked shirt, off to find a tie; she rearranged the beds in the dormitories; she summoned the lycée hands to wipe down the refectory tables once again and mop the showers; she discovered imaginary spider-webs in every nook and cranny; she ran a rigorous finger along the tops of the books in the library, revealing a thin line of dust; she reminded Sister Kizito of the statutory size of the fried cassava …

The Queen was due at half past nine. At ten o’clock, the rain arrived. The clouds, which until then had held fast to the peaks up on the ridgeline, now rolled down the slopes to enshroud the lycée. Many of those waiting beside the track took advantage
of this to sneak away. Then the fog spread into ephemeral filaments, but the heavy motionless clouds began to pour forth their cataracts of rain.

Just before ten thirty, Sister Gertrude ran down the corridor where all the classrooms were, shouting: “She’s here! She’s here!” The pupils, who had eventually returned to their seats upon Mother Superior’s incontrovertible orders, all rushed to the windows at once. Through the rain-lashed panes, they saw two military jeeps with their hoods down, flanking the gates, then four Range Rovers covered in mud pulling up by the four steps leading to the hallway entrance. The passengers got out – the girls counted a dozen at least: as many men as women, as many blacks as whites. Two of them ran toward the vehicle parked nearest to the steps, unfurled huge umbrellas, and opened the car door. The Queen! – it could only be the Queen – and the Minister! – of course it was the Minister – stepped out and took shelter under the umbrellas, but it was impossible to distinguish their faces beneath the hoods of their rain capes. Mother Superior, Father Herménégilde, and the mayor, who were waiting on the highest step, bowed respectfully, and the Queen, the Minister, and their retinue dived quickly into the hallway without taking the time to acknowledge them.

The choristers and dancers, who’d been packed into the hallway because of the rain, recounted the scene to their schoolmates. Mother Superior addressed a word of welcome to the illustrious
guests whose visit honored the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile lost in the mountains, then Father Herménégilde launched into the speech he had been correcting and editing right up to the last minute, but the Queen, at a discreet sign from one of her retinue, who never took his eye off his watch, made an adroitly delivered compliment interrupting the chaplain, whose eloquent stream seemed never-ending. The Queen, whose cape had been removed as soon as she entered, and who was now wearing an enormous hat, declared that she was happy and proud to be visiting the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, which was training the country’s future female elite in the spirit of Christianity and democracy. She had wanted to personally encourage the efforts of the pupils, the teachers, and the government. The Minister emphasized that the President, supported by the majority people, was working tirelessly for the country’s development, and that this wouldn’t be feasible without the cooperation of women, whose education, according to Christian morals and democratic principles, was one of his priorities. The blinding flashes of the two photographers in the Queen’s retinue made the mayor leap out of his skin, and for a moment he thought there had been an attack. The man who never took his eye off his watch whispered to Mother Superior, who immediately invited the Queen and the Minister to continue their tour and visit the pupils and teachers in their classrooms, which she had expressly wished to do. The choristers complained that they’d rehearsed four songs with Brother Auxile and had
only sung one, and even that song they sang while everyone was climbing the stairs, and they weren’t even sure the Queen and Madame the Minister had heard it.

In the end, the Queen insisted on visiting all the classes. In each room, the teachers introduced themselves to the Queen, who gave a few words in reply and then expressed her congratulations and encouragement to the pupils. Her face seemed frozen in a fixed smile, except when she glanced briefly at the man with the watch. In Monsieur de Decker’s class, there was some surprise at the reverence of his wife, who had accompanied her spouse to greet the sovereign. Fabiola lingered a few extra minutes in Sister Lydwine’s class, as planned, allowed the teacher to ask her three questions, then, satisfied with the answers, asked the pupils what they wanted to be: nurses? social workers? midwives? To avoid disappointing her, the girls she had questioned chose, somewhat randomly, one of the three suggested professions. The man with the watch showed signs of impatience. The Queen, the Minister, and her retinue quickly made their way back to the entrance hall, where the seniors, who’d been brought downstairs while Fabiola was with Sister Lydwine, were waiting to hand her their gifts. Gloriosa and Goretti gave her the basketry and the embroidered place mats. She admired them, then handed the gifts to a lady in her retinue, heartily thanked the two pupils, asked their names, and kissed them on both cheeks. Then, flanked by Gloriosa and Goretti, the Queen spoke, declaring that she would retain an
unforgettable memory of her visit, far too short for her liking, to the lycée of Our Lady of the Nile, how inspired she felt by all she’d just seen, and that they could always count on her to support the efforts being made by this beautiful country to promote female education and advancement. After saying good-bye to Mother Superior, Father Herménégilde, and the mayor, Queen Fabiola and the Minister returned, under the protection of the umbrellas, to the muddy Range Rover, while the rest of the retinue made a frantic dash for the other vehicles.