The Journey of My Life From Rwanda

“It’s time to get ready for school” she shouted.

Mama was very good at shouting for us as we were always lost in local and traditional games with other children, not wanting to go home as there was nothing to go to; no food, no television, no radio, nothing!

“Alright mama, I’m coming in ten minutes” I replied.

“No ten minutes!” she shouted back.  

She knew that ten minutes for me meant forever playing.  Playing and having fun was the only way to put my suffering behind.  The township where we lived was one of the most deprived parts of the city of Kisangani situated in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo then known as Zaire.  My parents were one of the few who put serious emphasis on the importance of their children’s education.

“Come on!  It’s time to get ready so get out of there and come here now!”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh” I grumbled as I walked home towards the tiny bucket with little water to wash my face, hands and feet before putting on my school uniform.  Unable to afford a watch or a clock, we used the size and position of our own shadow in the middle of sunshine to determine what the time was and amazingly we always got it right.  If you couldn’t see the shadow it meant noon. 

One of the things I most hated about school was the fact that it was situated at about seven miles from where we lived and we had to walk the distance under the burning sun of midday to go there.  The school catered for both primary and secondary school.  The primary children occupied the school in the mornings from seven thirty until twelve thirty in the afternoon and the secondary school children occupied the school between one o’ clock till five thirty in the afternoon.  When walking to school, the heat was sometimes unbearable because the equator crossed the city.  I used to dream of growing up to become a doctor or professor in order to escape the natural cruelty of walking under the intense heat and drive a car or catch a bus to wherever I wanted.  “But how on earth will I ever achieve such a thing?”  I would wonder because looking at life around me, it was impossible to even imagine such a thing never mind hope that one would escape such extreme poverty.  I was one of the many millions of children around the country to become victims of the Mobutu regime which saw many, many people lose their lives and everything they owned.  People gradually sold their belongings in order to afford food, shelter, treatments and school fees for their children.  Dishonesty and corruption became the most common ways to make money in this vast, naturally rich country. Civil servants like my father, who didn’t believe in corruption and dishonesty, didn’t have a life but worked non-stop in order to survive the hunger and chaos which lived with the poor on a daily basis.  People were being exterminated slowly by this regime due to greed, corruption, mismanagement of resources, abuse of power and position, and partly due to peoples’ intellectual blindness and lack of knowledge.  The population were led to worship this dictator leader who had turned such a prosperous country into almost a desert where you had to pay bribes in order to access basic things such as drinking water.  The psychological and physical damage left millions already dead ten to twenty years before their actual death - by this I mean people were helpless, hopeless and their motivation for life or success was non-existent.  But life had to go on.