[APPLAUSE]
Good evening.
You're even shorter than me.
That's rare.
I'd like to thank everyone for being here.
And thank you for a wonderful dinner.
We had a delightful dinner.
And thank you to the Poetry Center for having me.
I'm going to be reading from my novel, Running the Rift.
Running the Rift is the story of Jean Patrick Nkuba.
He is a young Tutsi boy, coming of age in Rwanda,
in the years surrounding the genocide.
I wanted to say a little bit about Rwanda,
just to give you some background.
In the country that became Rwanda,
before the Belgians occupied Rwanda
at the end of World War I, the Tutsi and the Hutu
were, essentially, one people.
The Tutsi, originally, were probably a Nilotic people.
They were the keepers of the cattle.
They were the elite of the society in Burundi, Rwanda.
And the Hutu were the agrarians.
They were more the toilers, and they kept the fields.
But the interesting thing was that before the Belgians came,
distinctions were very fluid.
The people were essentially one people.
They have the same origin myths, the same religion,
they have the same language, Kinyarwanda.
And it was not until the Belgians came that distinctions
were set in stone.
If you got a certain amount of cattle
before that-- there was a lot of intermarriage--
if you got a certain amount of cattle, you could become Tutsi.
If you married a Tutsi, you could become Tutsi.
Then, the Belgians came in, and, in their infinite wisdom,
decided that they would divide and conquer.
They set the Tutsi up as their surrogate ruler, ruler class.
And they put them in charge of, essentially, the slave
labor of the Hutu, and instructed
them to beat the Hutu, or they themselves would be beaten.
They really got these divisions, and the bitterness that came
with those divisions, going.
And what they did was, they would call everybody in,
and they would measure different parts of their body.
They measured their nose, and they measured their fingers.
And if you had a thin nose-- because the Tutsi were,
essentially, thinner people.
They had more Ethiopian features--
if your nose was less than a certain amount,
you were a Tutsi.
If it was more than a certain amount, you were Hutu.
And once they gave you an identity card--
it's called Indangamuntu--
and once you got that identity card, once the Belgians were
there, you could not change.
You were Hutu or Tutsi.
And those same identity cards were
used when they set up roadblocks during the genocide in 1994.
And if you were Tutsi, you were murdered.
And even some people who looked Tutsi--
because by the time the genocide happened,
you couldn't really tell Hutu from Tutsi.
I spent a lot of time in Rwanda.
And some people, yes, you can tell right away,
especially the Tutsi.
Because you have these people that are very,
purely, what you would call Tutsi.
They're very tall, very slender, and narrow-featured.
But a lot of the people, you really can't tell.
Some people who were more narrow-featured and tall
were killed, even though they were Hutu,
because they looked like Tutsi.
Jean Patrick Nkuba is a young boy.
The two things that he wants in this world
are to run in the Olympics.
He discovers very early that he has
a great love and passion for running, as well as a talent.
And he qualifies for the Olympics in the 800 meters.
That's one thing that he wants very badly.
And the other thing that he wants is to be a scientist.
His father was a scientist.
And he was a prefect at a local school called
Gihundwe, a secondary school.
Jean Patrick wants his education,
and he he wants to run.
And in the environment of Rwanda in the 1990s,
it becomes increasingly difficult.
The novel starts in 1984, when he's 10 years old,
and it goes through the genocide.
I'm going to read you some passages.
The first passage I'm going to read
takes place when Jean Patrick has just-- his coach
has started to groom him.
He has a Hutu coach.
And his coach, very early on, when
he was in secondary school at Gihundwe,
his coach recognized his potential,
and he starts training him for the 800.
Jean Patrick qualified for nationals,
and he's just gone to nationals, and discovered that he
has run an 800 A standard time.
A standard is-- when you're qualifying for the Olympics,
A standard says that that's what they want.
They will take a B standard time, one from each country.
But A standard is what they're looking for in the Olympics.
And he has just run an A standard time in the national
meet.
And he's coming back from--
he lives in Cyangugu, which is a fishing village in the South.
And he has gone Kigali, where nationals were.
And he's with his coach, and they've just
been through a checkpoint.
This takes place in 1992, when tensions are really increasing.
And there's been a civil war since 1991,
between the Hutu and Tutsi.
The rebels, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the RPF,
came down from the North and occupied
Ruhengeri in Northern Rwanda.
And that started the Civil War.
And now there are checkpoints everywhere.
The soldiers are checking your identity,
and they often hassle the Tutsi.
John Patrick and his coach are coming back,
and they've just gone through a checkpoint.
And the people before them were Tutsi, and they were hassled.
And John Patrick is really feeling his heartbeat.
This starts then.