For 30 years in exile, our grand parents couldn’t stop talking about Rwanda, They painted “Utopia”, a green-lashed eden of flowing milk and honey. Even God returned at dusk to rest in Rwanda, they said…
Unlike the self-exiled today, I never heard my parents criticize Rwanda, its people or leaders. We weren’t taught hate. Indeed how could they speak of heaven, then profane the angels within? Our upbringing was more like Kaligirwa’s song “Turaje”, a ballad about love of those we left behind and longed to reunite with..
In every wedding they would barely spend 20% of the nuptial talks on the bride and groom, then proceed to romanticize about their topic of predilection: Rwanda; A paradise on earth that they longed to return to…
By 1990 onwards, many weddings in exile weren’t even real, or if they were, the contributions weren’t meant for the newlyweds. They’d become clandestine gatherings to collect money for our return, and chances were, the groom would leave at dawn, to join his brothers on the battlefield, leaving his pregnant bride behind, to liberate Rwanda. You see, nothing else mattered, nothing else matters, we live and die for Rwanda.
In 1994 when we returned however, we found the exact opposite; we found an empty country, corps of genocide victims, traumatized survivors, desperate killers: we found a dry, barren land, with smokes coming out of freshly burned mud huts, in short, we found hell.
Had our elders deceived us? Had it all been in vein? Was there another Rwanda? There aught to be! For whatever this was, it wasn’t the country we had been promised. But that isn’t the end of the story, but a new beginning. For the last thirty years I have seen a country transform before my eyes.
Our story is like that of “The Lion King”: The death of Mufasa, the exile of Simba; the return of Simba, the ultimate battle to chase the hyenas off the land, and the rebirth of Africa!
It is all captured in Kayirebwa’s song “None twaza”. If I was once told, that Rwanda Police will be on the streets on Christmas, distributing gifts to children, I wouldn’t have believed it. But it came to pass, and I have since reconciled with my grandparents.
We aren’t quite there yet, but give us only a little time, like Bob Marley would sing, “we’ve been coming in from the cold”, and soon, the Rwandan dream will be fulfilled…