I was there when they torched our homes, our thatched homesteads in the sprawling hills, sending us in disarray to neighbouring states. 1959 it was, the year of my peoples’ mass exodus to places we hardly knew. Places we had only heard of in fables told to us by our elders by the fireside as we roasted sweet potatoes after a long day.
We had lived in harmony until that day when our good neighbours turned out to be our worst enemies. Why would Gako, my father’s old friend of all people turn out to be the most vicious of the lot? Why after all those years as young boys attending catechism classes with my father at the nearby make shift church under the tutelage of ‘musenyeri’ Petero and thereafter growing into young men and being among the few teaching pioneers in Byumba, would Gako betray us? Gako took our cows, he took our ancestral land, he took everything that belonged to us and gave us less than two day breaks to leave or we would all be wiped out. My father gave him 200 cows and a portion of his land so we could be spared and stay, but he wanted everything and wanted us out. We did not belong in Rwanda they said. We belonged somewhere else. The Colonialists SAID so.
Our crime? We were Tutsi.
I vividly remember walking miles and miles towards the Akagera River fleeing the genocide. I remember dehydration, starvation and suicide were the order of the day at the banks and the crocodile and hippo infested waters only made the situation worse. But we had to find our way across the river or we would be killed by the advancing bandits who wanted us out of 'their country’.Not many of us made it across.We finally arrived at where we were to call home for the next 30 years. But we were also unwanted! We were resettled in tse tse fly infested areas, not because there wasn’t better land, but because we were thought to be the final solution to the nagana epidemic. And we did send away the tse tse flies. But we died in hordes. Cholera and other epidemics, we saw them all but we survived.
After years, we eventually settled in our new ‘home’ but were limited in our movements. The camp commandant had to approve of our every movement in and out of the camp. We started tilling the land of neighbouring communities for food and other amenities. Something we had never imagined doing. Yet at day break we saw at a distance our homes where we were not allowed to return to.The struggle continued. We got educated and excelled; we got good employment and multiplied in numbers. BUT we never forgot home. Our offspring faced the wrath of being who they are but they kept in mind that to belong, you had to work twice as hard as those who belonged.
That in short is my father's 'account', a first generation Tutsi refugee.
I was a second generation Tutsi refugee. I still faced the complexities of belonging but not the way my parents did. I was neither Ugandan nor Kenyan. I was not even sure I was Rwandan. It didn’t bother me until I started travelling- using a refugee passport. We were always pushed off the immigration queues and subjected to body checks, to see if we were carrying ‘excess’ money. Ours was regarded as ‘excess’ but that of the rest wasn’t. At an early age we learnt how to open up tubes of toothpaste and lotion to stash our pocket money.
They called us names and we laughed it off but we did not, not take notice. We had to excel to survive. That was instilled in us from a tender age.
I never watched the movie Cry Freedom, but I remember when it premiered at the Kenya cinema. I was young but understood what it meant to my people. About a dozen of my parents’ friends returned home that night from the movies with a renewed zest to find their freedom, to return home.
We did eventually return home but with a heavy price to pay. Over a million of us perished in yet another replay of the 1959 happenings, only that this time, they did not leave any stone unturned.
Ours is still an uphill task with the continued revising of statistics of those who perished; still being called a foreigner in your own country (foreign aggressors etc) and; worst of all dealing with genocide revisionists who are tirelessly working towards damaging historical accuracy and mocking Rwandan genocide survivors and Rwandans as a whole.
We are tired of taking matters of life and death as a joke. We have for over 30 years fought for our identity, in the process lost lives in order to belong and we may as well spend the rest of our lives doing the same. Whether we succeed or not isn’t debatable for we have acquired with time the stealth that comes with struggle.
When the phrase ‘never again’ was coined for remembering the Rwandan Tutsi Genocide, one thing for sure is that it was given a whole new meaning. In Rwanda, death on genocidal grounds shall no longer look on with a casual eye as our never again has true meaning every day and in every way.
As for Genocide Revisionists....your hate speeches are but an attention grabbing stunt thinly woven to revert the course of justice.
We just completed our memorial week commemorating those who lost their lives, we shall continue celebrating their lives in the years to come!!!
Woooo, I finally got my divorce and child custody rights. I can't explain just how happy and relieved I am to finally have this over and done with!!Its been the roughest patch in my life so far characterised by long sleepless nights, terrible mood swings, anxiety, constant tears, fear of the unknown and worst of all a cloud of uncertainty!
