A letter to my Father

Before I get started with matters I created this blog for, I feel compelled to clear a few things that occupy my mind, so that I can create enough space. Well…so to speak. 

I would like to write a letter to my father, If only it could be delivered to him. I wonder if people who have left our world see us, and get sad or happy for us?!

Dad.

I would spend weeks collecting details so that I don’t miss a thing. I think that the main thing he would love to know is that we are home, in Rwanda.

See, my father believed that one day eventually, all Rwandans will have the right to be in their country and live together. He just didn’t know it would happen as soon as 1994; I mean he had been in exile since the 70’s,  had he known, maybe he would have negotiated for more days, maybe he would have cheated death for just one more year, maybe…he would have been more careful just to see this…maybe! I will let you into the content of my letter in the following lines.

Dad and I, in 1988.

Dear Dad, 

First things first. We are home. A year after you passed on, we found our way to Rwanda. I am fine, thank you for asking, and yes, I managed to go to school, and finished. Well, the most critical part of it at least. I majored in things I liked, and others I didn’t. The struggle was real but I had a choice. Nobody attempted to stop me like they did with you. 

I have an interesting job, and I met a bunch of creative people. I worked from one of the tallest buildings in the city when it was just completed, a building of that height, in Kigali? Can you imagine? KCT was a dream.

View from the KCT back in 2012.

Also, my current office is right next to a major road and when I want to take a break, I just walk by the roadside. Something you were never sure you could do because someone would show up and start asking you who you were? why you were walking? and you had to be nice, whisper a pray and not look at them straight in the eye, because you were not sure how that meeting might end…maybe with a few broken bones? ...maybe even death. Funny how we take certain things for granted these days. 

                                                                                                                     

Dad, Rwanda now has 30 districts, I have been to almost all of them and you can travel anytime, early in the morning, in the afternoon, late in the night and nothing will happen to you. The police and military are not the dreaded people you once knew, we see them all over the country, not to bring about fear and anxiety, but they are there to serve as they say. Can you believe that? I must admit though that the number of petty thieves can rival the police in numbers!! Haha, I hate those ones, they once stole everything from me, my bag, my computer, my phones (We use mobile phones now, and computers were made so small, that we move around with them), they even took my ID, all my credit cards…terrible dada! Though it is a headache, It took me less than 2 weeks to get all my IDs replaced. Yes you heard me, Indangamuntu, and no there is no Hutu, nor Tutsi stated on it. Umunyarwanda is what is written. Isn’t that what you have always wanted? I can’t start imagining what you had to go through to get one if you had one. 

One of the spots I love in Musanze. You know it as Ruhengeri. The Ibirunga  (volcanoes) are not a myth!😊. 

I have a passport! Yeah, I love traveling and I go places, not as a refugee. No, I present my Rwandan Passport. Stamp, welcome to Italy, stamp Dubai, stamp welcome to Russia, stamp welcome to Sri Lanka, stamp welcome to the United Republic of Tanzania, stamp welcome to Sweden, etc... Soon stamp Thailand, stamp Turkey, stamp Singapore, I travel to Nairobi with just my ID, then they stamp on a piece of paper and off I go. 

Kenya is my second home. I chose it. I met a man that I thought you might like, I liked him too, He asked and I was like…Obviously! Yes. (I am technically a citizen of the two best countries in Africa. ;-)! Dad, I am a mother now. I know she would have been your best friend, I know she would have warmed your heart.

Getting to Burundi takes more or less 7 hours by car, It would take you days since you wouldn’t use the main roads, but now it is less than 30 min with Rwandair… That is the national carrier, oh yes, we are proud you have no idea. We don’t go to Burundi as much, things are not alright there for us, for now…but that is a story for another day. 

I never get enough of the beautiful cloud. I guess I got it from you. I have many photos of the sky that you took on your work trips.  

I sometimes go back to your village, I don’t necessarily feel connected to it. I go there to honor your memory. You were born there and that village raised you in a way. It is no longer the village you left. There is a centre de santé, there are buses every day of the week, the road is smooth…no we don’t have to get out of the car and walk. It looks a bit dry if you ask me, I do not know if it has always been like that or if it is the effect of climate change. People are still trapped in poverty but are getting out of the vicious circle one by one. The Akanyaru you crossed going to Burundi and the hill you climbed… all still intact. I don’t know if they remember you, they saw many atrocities. 

In 2014, I was told this was your house back in the 60s! It is still there. I was renovated though.

Cross the Akanyaru and you are in Burundi. I heard you used to wait for your people to come to see you from that hill. 

Today, we have hope for the future, we have problems too, maynnn! they are many (Excuse the terms, our generation speaks in tongues, I spoke only 2 languages when you left, now…it is 3 times that . Look at me, typing this letter in English. So, obviously, we got lost somewhere but for the better).

I was saying that we have challenges but nothing impossible. We are still fighting for basic needs, food, shelter, clothes, but we are fighting for other things too, like gender equality (I call myself an activist/feminist. I always imagine what you would have told me whenever I would come to complain about how much patriarchy has been unfair! Oui ma Cherie, tu as raison.  Je suis d’accord avec toi, Ni uburenganzira bwawe). Economic freedom is still a dream, we also are learning to agree to disagree, and accepting the possibility to have dreams.

I took this photo when I was writing this letter. Somehow, the new symbol of our City. Kigali Convention Center in the colors of our flag. These are not the ones you knew. 

Today, we are here, we are citizens of the world, we are not lesser human beings, we live together because it is the right thing to do. Kids are told that they can be anything they want to be. We have choices and we know that it is up to us to put them to use. 

I wish you could have been here to look at your children and children of your friends doing amazing things, Scientists, Economists, Designers, Digital Media Specialists and all the new jobs you never imagined would exist. They live off art, and we have entrepreneurs too.  Some more broke than others, but they don’t lose their smile.

I read the books you used to read like Anthologie Negro-Africaine for example. There are chapters I loved so much. One on ‘Puissance des femmes’ (Power of women), the literature on Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, and a collection of beautiful poems. How I would have loved to talk it through with you! This reminds me, in completely unrelated business, maybe a little, The US of A had a black president a few years ago. Well…he was half black half white, I don’t know who decided to say he was just black, but ok. It is not a scam .. it happened for real! I wouldn’t lie to you. 

This read doesn't get old!

Once in a blue moon, I see your friends and age mates, laughing so loud with a drink in their hand, at one of their children’s wedding, or a family party…And yes I get jealous and feel sad. I wish you could have been lucky enough to see the fruits of your hard work, imagination, dreams, and hopes… Yeah if only wishes were horses… All in all, it happened, you can rest in peace now.  

I shared the idea of writing to you with a friend. She asked if I will include some memories I wish I could live again with you. I have to confess that I didn’t have much to remind you of, except that one time, when we were home, you had friends come over and they were having a beer in our backyard. I had been sitting on your lap and was playing with your keys. I then walked away slowwwwly, and within a min, I managed to cause the greatest panic attack of the year in that home. Your 5-year-old girl's first attempt to drive a car. It didn’t move, but I started the engine! Why didn’t it move by the way? I suspect it was parked in neutral. Who parks a car in neutral? Your heart skipped a beat or two, you can’t forget that. For what it is worth, I consider myself a badass driver now, people around me say so (Except my life partner), and I believe them! 

I wanted to tell you so much about mum and my brothers, aunties, and cousins but that would have to be another letter altogether. Also, I figured they might want to do it themselves. We are all here, hopeful and trying to eat life with a big spoon as we say often. We should be fine.

It cost so many lives to be here, we lost so many people, but I guess you have seen them all on your side of the world. Those who survived were severely bruised, physically, mentally, and psychologically, but they now stand tall, learning a different way to look at life. So much is happening in the world today, we are all trying to fit in and claim our rightful place. It is such an interesting time to be alive. 

I hope all is well with you, 

Your daughter,

Ginty.