The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

By 2006 Claire has left Rob, whose “abuse had become intolerable” (136). Wamariya works hard through high school and manages her struggles by “shut[ting] out” family (136) and reading Toni Morrison. When she receives word that her brother Pudi has died of meningitis at age 22, Wamariya regrets never having told him how she thought of him the years she was a refugee. She had been afraid to talk to him on the phone because it would be like talking to “a ghost” (137) and therefore did not have a chance to tell him she appreciates how he “tried to help [her] understand a world [she] would never understand” (137).

Three months after their appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s show, Claire goes to Rwanda to visit her parents. While there she visits a genocide museum and sees a movie about forgiveness. Claire, whose “faith is her shield” (138), believes forgiveness is necessary for peace, whereas Wamariya believes forgiving people for committing such horrors is impossible. Though forgiveness is “the missing piece” of her life, it “feels false” (139).

When Claire next returns to Rwanda, she convinces Wamariya, now 19, to ask her boyfriend’s father to pay for tickets to bring their mother to America. Wamariya is hesitant about the “whole dynamic of giving and receiving” (140). Claire also has “an intuitive sense of […] the lingering effects of outsiders coming in to save, enlighten, and modernize Africa” (141), and does not want to accept help, but she is worried about her mother’s condition.

Once their mother is in America, Wamariya and Claire argue about housekeeping and food. Soon the church pays for plane tickets for their father and youngest siblings. In addition to their family, several cousins live with Claire, who supports the entire family.

Their parents do not talk about Rwanda. Wamariya tries to talk to her mother about the genocide once, but it upsets her mother. One day she notices that her mother looks so different from her memories, and she ponders how “[t]he fantasy of reunion was a lie” (145). She cries in the bathroom.

After leaving the Maputo camp, Claire and Wamariya make their way to South Africa. Wamariya worries that Claire, finding her “a burden” (147), will abandon her. She finds South Africa “so beautiful” and “filled with pride” (147) now that Nelson Mandela is president. They obtain six-month refugee visas and enjoy the freedom of knowing they will not be arrested.

Claire has “always kept one dignified outfit […] so she could present herself to anybody, anywhere, as a smart, enterprising young woman” who needs “no pity, no permission” (148). In each new location, she dresses in her nice outfit and goes door to door asking for work. In Durban, South Africa, she obtains a job washing clothes.

One day a woman sees Claire and Wamariya emerging from church and invites them to her home, where she gives them a large meal, including ice cream. Wamariya appreciates that the woman, Linda, “saw the child in me that no one else seemed to see” (150). The church gives them a monthly food donation, and Linda helps them find an apartment. Wamariya likes living in South Africa. Claire makes good money watching cars at a hotel. When she receives her first payment, she buys chicken gizzards, which are traditionally saved for men and “tasted like victory” (151).

Wamariya adores Mariette and continues to take care of her. Linda helps Wamariya register for school; however, when they move closer to Rob’s factory, she must stay home with Mariette. Claire loses her job but resells clothing and cleans houses. Wamariya helps her clean houses and likes watching Oprah when she comes on the television.

When Claire becomes pregnant, Rob convinces her to go back to Rwanda with Wamariya. Neither Wamariya nor Claire want to sacrifice their stability in South Africa, and they believe their parents to be dead. However, Claire, only 17, was raised to believe “she had to do what her husband wanted her to do” (155) even though he “was a tyrant” (155). Claire, Wamariya, and Mariette take a bus north, closer to the war.

By the time she is 20, Wamariya struggles between her love for Claire’s kids and her impatience with their being accustomed to comfort. Also, unlike Claire and her kids, Wamariya, who lives in a white suburb, lacks connection with the African American community. She lives a “privileged” life in which she does not have “to worry about basic needs” (158). She continues to find refuge in books.

Wamariya is invited to a luncheon at the midwest office of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. There, guests invite her to speak at various events. She finds it “strange and rewarding” (160). However, “even the kindest individuals with the best intentions” (160) cannot truly understand her. When she speaks at events, she is required to “assume” the “identity” of “Oprah’s special genocide survivor” (160). She once again meets Elie Wiesel.

Wamariya is waitlisted at Yale University and flies to New Haven for an interview. She is accepted on the condition that she first attend classes at Hotchkiss, a college preparatory boarding school.

In 1998 Wamariya and Claire ride the bus back north. Claire is five months pregnant. They stop in Zaire, now the Democratic Republican of Congo, which has been “destroyed” by war (165). In Kazimia family members are hiding in Rob’s family’s house, where food is scant. During the day, the family hides under the bed as bombs and grenades go off. Wamariya finds her body an inconvenience and wishes she did not have to eat. When Wamariya comes down with malaria, everyone expects her to die, but Wamariya is determined not to go “out like this” (170) and survives.

Claire gives birth to Freddy in the hospital; five days later the hospital is bombed and she runs with him back home. The children are not let outside because solitary children are offered food and candy and then taken to serve in the army.

Wamariya wants those “who have so much” and those “who have so little” to know that “boxing ourselves into tiny cubbies based on class, race, ethnicity, religion […] comes from a poverty of mind” (177). She believes sharing is “[t]he only road to equality” and “a sense of common humanity” (178).

Mrs. Thomas helps Wamariya unpack her room at Hotchkiss, and the two cry when she leaves. Wamariya has “never lived alone” (179). She attempts to regain her “toughest, most defended refugee mindset” (179). She finds that her teachers are eager to help her. She keeps busy with dance and the hockey team because she is “drowning inside” (180).

When she returns home for Christmas, she feels as if she is in “a war zone” where there is “a competition over whose needs got met” (180). Family members are not getting along because “[t]ime had opened such a gap” (181). Mariette, now a teenager, angers Wamariya by refusing to help Wamariya’s mother clean; when Wamariya orders her to respect her grandmother, Mariette replies that she doesn’t “even know her” (181).

Now 20, Wamariya returns to school. She struggles with her “inner life,” feeling like “so many people and nobody at all” (181). Though her philosophy teacher has been kind to her, she struggles to sit through hypothetical conversations about war in his class. Unable to be “less emotional” (183) as her teacher suggests, she drops the course. She believes his desire for her to be less emotional is “meant to augment his own comfort while ignoring” hers (183). Though she had not wanted anyone to know her story, now she works her story into all her answers in class, making her classmates “roll their eyes” (184). She has nightmares, feeling that she is “in fifty pieces” (184). To Wamariya, school is merely “a different jungle” (185).

When she cannot sleep at night, she makes bracelets with beads Mrs. Thomas gave her. She gives the bracelets to people who are suffering.