Panga

I snapped this photo of a panga, or machete, lying on the ground at a health clinic in the village of Tongo in North Kivu province. I snapped it because although the panga is a commonly used tool in Central and East Africa (and by other names, in many other places around the world), it has also been used (and is being used today, as I write these words) a great deal as a weapon.

It was one of the main instruments of death (and maiming) during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and I can't look at one without thinking of that, rather than its utility for cutting brush or dismembering a chicken. I recently read a good book about MSF called "Hope in Hell", by Dan Bortolotti, who recounts the experience of a Belgian doctor in the Rwandan town of Butare during the early days of the genocide.

The doctor recalls that on April 22 and 23, 1994, Hutu soldiers hacked to death in front of the MSF medical staff 150 Tutsi hospital patients, and then grabbed a nurse who was a close friend and seven months pregnant: "They came to take Sabine and I intervened physically and said, 'Leave Sabine alone. Sabine has nothing to do with this ... and besides, she is a Hutu.' The captain who was responsible for the different [killing] teams looked at me very carefully, and then he opened his pocket and took out a piece of paper, and on this paper there was a list of names, typed. And Sabine's name was on it. He looked at the paper and he looked at me and said, 'Yes, you are right. Sabine is a Hutu. But her husband is a Tutsi. And his baby is going to be a Tutsi.' I suddenly realized the cruel reality that in Rwanda the baby follows the paternal line. So Sabine was killed and so was the baby."

So I took a photo of the panga.