Skip to main content

Taking back memories .... 19 YEARS LATER PART 4



   For the past two and a half  months,  I have gone through some normal moments and some extraordinary ones too.Writing about my experience back home in Rwanda has been the hardest to capture, from the point of view of some people it may seem like a normal visit ( sometimes that’s what I think too) but other times which seem like precious moments hidden somewhere in my mind, the experience has been exteraordinary!! Finding the right words won’t cut it, yet not finding the right words wouldn’t do justice to some of those precious moments.



   Going back to Gitarama was probably the climax of my visit, I went back home and by home I mean where I was raised for 2 years…where my parents were born,where it all began!! Driving through that countryside was like walking through a time machine ,the only difference was that I had no idea of what moment in time I had gone back to.



  It has taken me a week  to write this down and still, words fail me…my head is constantly replaying scenes of my visit;the long journey that kept me awake for almost a day, the first time I saw those houses built on hills and was stunned, the weird  feeling I got  from hearing everyone  around  me speak my mothertongue, the hugs I got from relatives


I hadn’t seen for years, the scared face of my niece who hadn’t realized who I was,
the heavy rains in April, the beautiful streets of Kigali that light up at night, the times I spent with my precious brothers, the confusing moments where my mothertongue would easily evaporate, the food I ate, my internship experience, the new friends I made, the times I missed home, sad stories about the genocide that I picked up… I remember everything!! How do I begin to write down each moment without wanting to write a book about it???!!!!



  When I saw where I came from, I could only imagine the childhood moments I might have gone through had I been brought up there...

When I saw where my mother had been born and raised, I saw the things that probably made her to be who she is ( the best mother I could ask for)

I  googled  the miles from Gitarama to Nairobi, 1236.7km ,the journey we made 19 years ago  and that made me appreciate the one man in my life who has been the rock that built my family ( I love my Papa) I was so overwhelmed with gratitude for my life,  God always has His reasons and I can only be grateful and accepting of them.



    I can’t say this journey back home has changed me ( maybe the weight gain) but it has made me think more about  my life and what I want with it. I am thankful for the warm welcome and I am most grateful to  my 3 brothers for making this trip worthwhile. I will miss it there but am glad to be back and whatever the future has in store for me in that beautiful land of a thousand hills, only God knows! I am grateful for the memories i have taken from Rwanda, at least now i have some to compensate for the curiosty that has lasted 19 years of my life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Boxed in...

" Thinking out of the box, thinking like there's no box "..who cares?????  example of  wise words that I have ignored  a thousand times simply because they are money-making ideas for  inspirational gurus fixed on creating  bestselling  mantras.They give you that "i-can-do-anything" willpower which slowly fades into a  "maybe-i-can't-do-that" motto.  I am not writing this down to discredit these wise adages or worse still, to count the number of times i have ignored these words .But am writing this because i had the most unusual wake-up call,from one of these bestselling jingles "Think outside the box" Let's hit rewind and go back to a few weeks ago...it was back to class and that feeling of "am-not-ready-for-school" was nagging at me.3 months of internship,and a week to rest( which was  recuperation period from tonsils), and now back to school with a project proposal due in a week.Complaining is so easy when you have the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

19 years later..

The past three weeks of my life have been a dream come true...not because i have stumbled into a load of cash or become a celebrity overnight. I have done nothing that seems out of the ordinary, but this event has and will forever  change my life.I have  no idea how to put it all in writing cause sometimes it still feels unreal. That dream came when i arrived in the land of a thousand hills,my home country Rwanda! I packed my bags so fast(still in shock).I got  on a bus(still in shock)n i saw my home country..still in shock!! It happened so fast and time has gone so fast..after 19 years of being away from a country i can hardly call home,i finally got to see where i was from,its like knowing a part of yourself that you didn't get a chance to live out. I won't deny that i  missed home,sometimes it felt( and still does) like i was a foreigner in my own home,everyone speaks the same language that am  able to speak but when i try to speak,it sounds so foreign!I...
5 comments
Read more

Totally offside!

It's that time of the world, when the only thing i get about football is the theme song.Frankly speaking, if there were no "waka waka" and "ole ola" i would flush  this FIFA business out of my head.I have lived through 6 World Cups, and what do i have to show for my enthusiasm about football? Nothing! Football has never been my cup of tea, and there was a time growing up i remember hating all that hullabaloo that comes with it.You would assume that living with 3 brothers would make me have a soft  spot for the game, but it didn't. It made me more indifferent .Thinking of  all the cartoon shows i missed all because of a sports update that had to be watched ( probably the best days of my childhood). Despite, my clueless nature about football, i've come a long way with the game..proof of which is my mysterious knowledge of footballers' names even though i don't know how their faces look like! The soccer terminologies,well, it's enough to know...
Post a Comment
Read more