The Machete

"A Machete, and a Barteaux in particular, is the best bang for the buck in the knife world."

-M. Willson Offutt

According to the Wikipedia encyclopedia, the machete "is a cleaver-like tool that looks like a very large bread knife" with a blade typically 50-60 cm long. It is often bought with one one side ground down to an edge. Some, however, are made so cheaply that the purchaser is expected to finish the sharpening.

Today I saw someone walking down the street with a machete in his hand. As I stood waiting for a matatu (dhala in Arusha) I watched him as he came and entered the same matutu as I. He sat next to me. We took off down towards what I term as the uneasy co-existence of decadent UN lifestyle and local culture.

Now to those from Africa, this is not an abnormal scene. Boy is on his way to cut something down, or farm - it is a tool of his trade/livelihood. Perfectly acceptable.

However, I began to smile at first.... Let me explain.

Being the sad woman I am, I began to mentally visualise how I would explain this to a judge in a Magistrates Court (or if I am lucky - Crown Court!), as my client stood charged for possession of an offensive weapon. The line of argument would probably go along the similar lines of those arrested for carrying flick knives who undoubtedly will profess that they are part and parcel of their current 'employment'. More often than not, these individuals are "painters and decorators" on their way to a job or from a job, which they are loath to tell the court - ofcourse - because they are supposed to be unemployed and it was a quick job for a mate! So translate that to a court in Arusha. Cause to smile! The court is not likely to be amused and the level of abuse hurled at me, would be, to say the very least, interesting.

However, my job at the moment daily dwells on what human beings did with that seemingly innocent steel blade with rough wooden handle.

It was at this point that the man sitting next to me with that stained and well used blade held loosely between his legs no longer held a humorous context. I recall previous research on machetes, the fact that you can purchase two types - heavy duty or economy. The heavy duty machete reserved for more heavy duty jobs. The economy designed for less rigorous use. So, which one would you use to hack someone's head off, I think? Would that be a heavy duty job or less rigorous considering the apparent softness of the human's neck veterbrae? Or would one pick and choose their machete, in the same way one would choose a gun - depending on whether the intention is to blow the motherf*&^%'s head off or just the kneecaps?

So picture it, one takes this so called "large bread knife" having believed that that a certain ethnic group is not worth living. In his mind, they have been reduced to the status of cockroaches (and quite obviously not that of the revered status of those in New Orleans!) and deserve to be terminated. There is no need to call in the exterminators. This is a job that has to be given personal attention. One's neighbour, childhood sweetheart, business associate will take that personally sharpened tool and use it on this 'vermin,' these 'snakes.'

Slaughter is personal. Intimate. Proximate. One hacks at the individual as you would a field of sugar cane. This farming tool is used to destroy women and men in ways previously unimaginable to me, sometimes after being raped/beaten/abused - take your pick. Tell me which one would anyone advise effectively does its duty? Heavy duty or economy? I look at photos later of dead bodies, some hacked into unidentifiable pieces, children's feet lying several feet from the bloody body, churches filled with just a mass of flesh and blood. I read transcript after transcript of what apparently was a justifiable attempt to rid the planet of "a stench", garbage, a cancer. Most of it carried out by 'Joe Bloggs,' not the military, with a machete in his hand.

This once innocuous tool, takes on different meaning. I know it was used in the Cuban War of Independence and a weapon of choice for the Haitian Tonton Macoute. I know it is used in armed robberies in many African countries. I know all of this. However, I wonder, how do Rwandese survivors get over what I presume would be a life long phobia of such an instrument? An instrument that uniquely symbolises the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people? And what happened to all those thousands of machetes that were imported and distributed? Are they still in circulation? Can you buy them in the local market as you would second hand items in Gikomba? How does a person who has witnessed the use of that simple farming device on themselves, their family, friends, strangers, then pick one up again and use it to farm, to cut vegetation, re-use it in everyday chores after it has being involved in so much horror? How? I don't know. I don't know.

I begin to feel uncomfortable. Very warm despite the fact it is relatively cold. Clammy. Claustrophobic. I get off at the next stop. It is raining. I wait for the next dhala.