Godgiven: A journey from an Indigenous Congolese child to a Proud American Grandpa

By Dieudonne Ndinda

"Godgiven" is a moving autobiography that details the journey of an indigenous Congolese child. Since his birth in 1955 until present day, Dieudonne Ndinda takes us along with him from his youth in his home village through his education at the University of Kinshasa. Readers will discover his fight for opportunities in the workforce in the African Central Great Lakes region and his settlement in the United States of America.

From childhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo to becoming an American Grandpa, this enlightening story will inspire and invigorate readers across the world. This unique memoir illustrates life in our increasingly interconnected world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098340124

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APRIL 1955 – APRIL 2020

Godgiven

A journey from an Indigenous Congolese child

to a Proud American Grandpa

Copyright © 2020 by Dieudonne M. Ndinda

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

print ISBN: 978-1-09834-011-7

ebook ISBN: 978-1-09834-012-4

"Your story is what you have, what you will always have.

It is something to own".

Michelle Robinson Obama

Contents

INTRODUCTION

From my childhood to growing up

My Parents

My childhood

Primary School and Early days of DRC Independence

Middle school

Junior and High School

The teaching Job

The National University of Zaïre – UNAZA, Kinshasa Campus

Work, Family, Society

Office National de Céréales – ONACER

Office National de Promotion de Produits Vivriers – ONPV

KOMEZA Sprl

CONSEILS, GESTION ET PARTICIPATION - COGEPAR

GROUP VK

SAGESS (SOCIETE D’AUDIT, GESTION ET SERVICES)

THE MINISTRY OF ECONOMY OF DRC

From the Congolese Nightmare

to the American Dream

RD CONGO as a Nation and the Congolese Citizenship

The pogrom against Congolese Tutsis

Welcome to America

Transit in Benin

Settlement in Nashville and Employment

Dealing with family issues

The Buhoro Family

My adopted children

My Second Marriage

My Third Marriage

The Next Chapter

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

When I was a little child, I asked my father and my uncles if my grandfather Buhoro had brothers and sisters. They answered that he had no siblings. They also told me that my great-grandfather Mbyayingabo was an only child. And they could not consistently give me the genealogy of their ancestors. Since they were orphaned in their infancy, left alone with their mother, it is understandable that, at the time when oral tradition was the only mode of communication, they couldn’t trace their lineage. Then, several years later when I settled in the USA as a refugee, one of the things that surprised me the most was that a lot of Americans don’t know where Africa is, while others think that Africa is a country. Motivated by those observations, I got the idea of, some time in a near future, writing a book with two objectives: give to my descendants a written reference of my family line and, through my life’s story, give to the American people and others some perspective of Africa in general and of my country of origin, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in particular. And, in my view, the best way to achieve these two goals was through an autobiography.

I am the first born of a family of seven children, and at my birth my father gave me the first name of Dieudonné, a French name that many Americans have a hard time to pronounce and that means God-given, which inspired the title of this book. After cross-checking the oral information received from relatives and friends of my extended family, I was able to make a genealogical tree of what currently constitutes the Buhoro Family.

So far during my life, I have greatly benefited from the solidarity built within this family and the unconditional support of many friends and comrades. So, throughout this book I cite several names of people who marked my life and which, understandably, many readers will find it difficult to read. But these are people I have known and who contributed to make me the man I am today. I remember that, speaking at Aretha Franklin’s funeral on August 31, 2018, former President of the United Sates Bill Clinton referenced to the conversation they had about her book From These Roots; when he asked her "why the book was full of those names of unknown people," she responded that she knew them and that was what mattered for her. I totally agree with Aretha. Much more, for me the most important thing is the story behind each name invoked.

The period covering my childhood and adolescence begins with the time the Congo, then called Belgian Congo, was a colony of the Kingdom of Belgium. Since my father was an employee of the colonial administration, my family lived a relatively comfortable life. At my five years of age everything changed when, in 1960, Belgium suddenly decided to grant independence to the Congo. As my father found himself jobless, we were forced to move from my early childhood town to a village where we were reunited with other relatives and where other opportunities of employment were available. Thanks to the relationships built by my uncle and role model Herman Habarugira, my father quickly found a job as a topographer agronomist in a tea production company, while I was adapting to my new environment. Proximity to my grandmother, to my extended family, and especially to my cousin and mentor Jean Népomuscène Muzaribara, allowed me to cultivate a sense of family that would impact the rest of my life.

When, on June 30, 1960, the Congolese independence was proclaimed, I saw people cheering, dancing, and happy, but a kind of anxiety was perceptible due to concern about the unknown.

The Belgians had just left the country in the hands of a group of inexperienced and ill-educated politicians. Mr. Joseph Kasavubu was appointed President of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mr. Patrice Eméry Lumumba was elected Prime Minister. They had a completely different view of the direction of the country so that, in 1961, the President fired the Prime Minister who, in turn, fired the President. Joseph Désiré Mobutu, who happened to be the Minister of Defense appointed by the Prime Minister, neutralized both the President and the Premier Minister and put in place a transition group formed by what he called Commissaires Généraux. Eventually, Mobutu reinstalled President Kasavubu and arrested Patrice Eméry Lumumba who would be killed in bizarre circumstances.

With the death of the latter, his party and its allies started an insurrection. The country was divided in several provinces with a multitude of political parties which looked a lot more like ethnic groups, turning against each other.

It was during this period that I learned that I belonged to the Tutsi ethnic group which, with Hutu and Twa, constituted the Banyarwanda or the Rwandophones people who, being marginalized and denied their Congolese nationality, found themselves in conflict with other ethnic groups.

Hence, it was in a chaotic climate of threats and fears that I started and pursued my studies at the Catholic Primary School of Birambizo from 1961 through 1967. However, there was some respite when, in 1965, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu took power by a coup d’état. The coup d’état was generally applauded by all socio-political actors and the international community. For the first time since 1960, my family, my community, and all Congolese in general, could feel safe in their homes.

After the Primary School, I was admitted in the Rugari Middle School Institut Sainte Marie where I spent two years - September 1967 through June 1969 – in very challenging conditions.

From Rugari, I moved to the Jomba Institut Saint Jean Bosco, which later became Institut Busimba, where I completed my high school in 1973. My stay at the Jomba secondary school definitively marked my life, having spent my adolescence there with all that implies in terms of perceptible physical, mental, emotional, social and behavioral changes, and assertiveness. The education received at this boarding school, coupled with the mentorship of my cousin Jean Népomuscène Muzaribara during my vacations, helped to shape the man that I have become. And although I was affected by the loss of my father when I was only 17 years old, it was with maturity and in total confidence that I received my High School State Diploma in 1973. And matureness was really needed when came the time to decide whether I would pursue my university education as I had planned, or I would follow the demand of my mom who insisted that I stick with the teaching job so that I could take care of my siblings.

Fortunately, in that deliberation I could benefit from the support of my mentor Jean Népomuscène and my role model, Uncle Herman, whose involvement allowed me to go to the National University of Zaïre – Kinshasa Campus.

At the University, I maintained my high school discipline. I was unimpressed by the guys who spent their time flirting with girls; actually, I was shocked by the extent of fornication that existed at the Campus. For me, there was no way I could even think of having a girlfriend, for several reasons: first, I considered it as a distraction while I should concentrate on my studies; second, it would be a betrayal to my Princess whom I had left in Jomba; third, the State Financial Aid I was receiving was just enough to cover my needs and I didn’t have the means to meet the costs of maintaining that kind of relationship; forth, I knew that proximity might lead to situations with disastrous consequences.

And this focus on studies paid off because on July 2, 1977 I was conferred upon the degree of Bachelor in Economic Sciences with concentration in Financial Management, at only 22 years old.

Then began my long professional career, going from a position of executive in State-owned companies ONACER and ONPV (1977 – 1979) to, successively, a senior manager position in the private company KOMEZA (1980 – 1982), a senior auditor and economist in the Consulting Firm COGEPAR (1982 – 1985), an expatriate senior executive in the holding Group VK (1985 -1990), a Partner in the Accounting and Auditing Firm SAGESS (1991 – 1998), and an Economic Adviser of the Minister of Economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo (1998).

As my career was successfully evolving, I managed to take care of my mother and my siblings, to create strong friendships, and to make up my own family by marrying a gorgeous, elegant, well-educated lady named Caritas Rwigema Rukundo who gave me five wonderful children: Didier, Micheline, Laurien, Carine, and André.

Nevertheless, as there are no roses without thorns, I had to face a lot of disappointments, challenges, and moments of sadness, especially the premature death of many loved ones.

The period after 1998 would start with a descent into the Congolese hell which shelters the demons of the nationality issue, already foregrounded by wicked politicians in the aftermath of the Congolese independence. To make the reader understand the underside of this question of the citizenship of Banyarwanda or Rwandophones in Congo, I had to dig in the past to give a historic overview of the creation of the Congo as a nation.

First of all, the current geographical space covering 1,430,000 square miles (2,300,000 square km) in the center of Africa, which forms the Democratic Republic of Congo, exists as a State only since 1885. The occupation of this space took place gradually, first by fishermen and hunter-gatherer peoples whose traces of presence go back to approximately 200,000 years B.C., and then by several successive migratory flows as well as conquest expeditions. Already, the desertification of the Sahara triggered a movement of people from the northern Africa towards the South which stretched over a period of several thousand years. This movement took two different directions: a group going towards the Northeast of the current DR Congo and the Kivu, and another group heading towards the western region while extending beyond the cuvette central’ forests to the current province of Maniema¹.

Between 2,000 B.C. - 500 B.C., those waves of migrations ended up connecting to each other to cover the most part of what would become the Congo several years later.

Communities were constituted and organized according to their specific beliefs, values, and environmental conditions. Villages, districts, and kingdoms were created. The southern and western regions experienced the emergence of kingdoms among which the oldest and best known was the Kingdom of Kongo.

At the east of the Kongo, other kingdoms, of which the most important are Kuba, Luba, and Lunda, were created.

The Congolese Central Basin was occupied by riparian peoples formed by a mixing of populations from various origins. The first occupants were pygmy hunter-gatherers scattered along the Congo River and its tributaries. The region was then invaded by Bantu immigrants who imposed themselves by dominating the aboriginal peoples and expanded towards the East, up to the Kasai River basin. Other migratory waves settled on the confluence the Ubangi River and the Congo River. While riparian peoples settled in the western bloc of the Central Basin, earth groups, of which the most important were the Mongo and the Ngombe, were organized in principalities. Further north, Sudanese Bantu societies were formed, made up of Azande and Ngbandi populations coming from the Southern Sudan. The north-east of the current Democratic Republic of Congo was occupied by livestock breeders and farmers from the central south of the Sudan. Further south, the tropical forests were occupied by populations coming from the Rwenzori Mountains chain whose communities expended as far as Maniema. Their commercial activities led them to make a junction with the north towards Kisangani.

In the eastern of current Congolese territory, the 1988 discovery of the Semliki harpoon at Katanda in the North Kivu, by Americans archeologists Alison Brooks and her husband John Yellen, shows that this zone was inhabited approximately 90,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherer peoples, the pygmies (also known as Batwa) were the first occupants. Subsequently, successive migratory movements invaded the region from the Rwenzori massif to the Lake Tanganyika through the area including the chain of volcanoes between the Lake Edouard and the Lake Kivu.²

At the east of the Lake Kivu there was the Kingdom of Rwanda which, under the reign of its powerful King Kigeri IV Rwabugiri, launched several incursions and conquests wars in the Hunde and Bushi territories during the 18th and 19th centuries³.

Although most of those invasions ended in failure, the Rwandan King managed to impose his authority on the space going from the chain of volcanoes Muhabura – Mikeno to the Lake Edouard, including the Gishari, Kamuronsi, Byahi, and Bwisha regions of the current Democratic Republic of Congo and the Bufumbira region of the current Uganda.

Local chiefs representing the King were appointed and Banyarwanda people – Hutus and Tutsis - settled around the volcanoes. Other Rwandans, mainly Tutsis, immigrated and settled above the Rusizi Plain on the Itombwe Plateau in the 1880s to form what would be later called the Banyamulenge community, meaning people of the Mulenge territory which is part of the Plateau.

Thus, the extent of the territory of what would become later the Democratic Republic of Congo was formed by several migratory waves and a wide variety of kingdoms which stretched beyond of the current borders of this country and whose decline and dismantling began with the black slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Under the pretext of countering this slaves trade, the King of Belgium Léopold II convened a meeting in Brussels in 1876 during which geographers and explorers discussed strategies to conquer the entire Africa⁴; the International African Association was then created.

Informed about various exploration missions conducted in Africa by Journalist-Explorer Henry Morton Stanley, King Léopold II reached out to this last, recruited him and entrusted him with mission of laying the foundation for creating a State as large as possible around the Congolese Central Basin.

Thanks to his relationships with local chiefs and through negotiations, Stanley and his expedition managed to buy, on the behalf of the King Léopold II, sovereignty on large expanses of indigenous lands while going up the River Congo to the Stanley – Falls and building trading stations all along the River⁵.

As part of a long-term strategy, the King’s Study Committee of Haut-Congo was transformed into The International Congo Society in 1878 under the full control of the King Léopold II who later convinced the Belgian Parliament to allow him the creation of The Congo Free Sate (Etat Indépendant du Congo".

At the same period, other Europeans countries – France, Portugal, Britain and Germany – were engaged in a race to conquer colonies throughout Africa, with sometimes the unavoidable confrontations. In order to avoid self-destructive conflicts and to better share the plunder, at the instigation of King Leopold II and with the support of Britain and Portugal, the Germany Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called for a meeting of representatives of 13 Europeans nations as well as the United Sates. The meeting which took place in the Germany city of Berlin from November 15, 1884 to February 26, 1885 - thus the historical title of Berlin Conference – concluded with the signing of the Berlin Act that formalized the sharing of the cake Africa based on their own rules, butchering the continent like griffon vultures.

The International Congo Society, also known as International Association of the Congo, was confirmed as the King Leopold’s private property that became "The Congo Free State’’ on August 1, 1885.

While by the end of 1902, almost all Africa was under European control, the most intriguing thing is that the boundaries of the colonies were drawn without regard to spaces occupied by the ancient local kingdoms and tribes. Hence, the same ethnical groups, even same family members, could be found on each side of the borders of what would be later called the Democratic Republic of Congo. For instance, the Bakongo found themselves in the territories of the current Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), and Angola; the Lunda and Bemba would be found in DR Congo, Angola, and Zambia; the Ngbandi would be found in DR Congo and in the Central Africa Republic; the Nande would be found in DR Congo and in Uganda; the Banyarwanda would be found in the DR Congo while some members of their families stayed in the Kingdom of Rwanda; the Bufumbira region that belonged to the Kingdom of Rwanda became an Ugandan territory. This situation would be disastrous after African countries acquired their independences, when determining the citizenship of cross-border populations, especially in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Already jostled by the protests of the international community about the murders and atrocities committed by his representatives, King Leopold II bequeathed the Congo Free State to his country Belgium before his death. Hence, in 1908 the country took the name of Belgian Congo with Léopoldville (Kinshasa) as the capital city. The annexation of Congo to Belgium led to the implementation of a new colonial administration eager to restore the reputation tarnished by a system of forced labor imposed by the King’s agents. Having opted for an economy oriented towards mainly on industrial agriculture and the export of raw materials, the Belgians set up a management with balanced powers between the Administration, Catholic missions, and powerful private companies. In the process, in 1910 Belgians and Germans agreed on the boundaries of territories under their control; Rwanda and Burundi were left to the control of Germany. As a border between Rwanda and Belgian Congo, they drew a line from the south of Lake Kivu through the plain along the Nyiragongo volcano and the chain of volcanoes Mikeno, Karisimbi, Sabyinyo, Visoke, Gahinga, and Muhabura. As already mentioned, in the Congolese side of that chain of volcanoes, Rwandans communities – Hutus and Tutsis – found themselves on the Congolese lands under the colonial administration.

Later, during the World War One the Belgians gained control of Rwanda and Burundi; and eventually, these two countries had their supervision mandated to Belgium by the League of Nations after the war in 1923.Taking advantage of the control it had over the three countries, and anxious to decongest the overpopulated Rwanda while getting a workforce it needed so much, the Belgian colonial administration organized an immigration of Rwandans to Congo by successive waves. Between 1925 and 1929 several thousand Rwandans were brought to work at the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, an Anglo - Belgian mining company operating in the southwestern region of the Belgian Congo.

Sometimes to escape the royal chores, sometimes to flee the lack of arable land and famine, other Rwandans immigrants went to settle in the Masisi region of the Congo. Much more, starting 1937, another migratory wave of Rwandans headed to Masisi as labor immigrants under the colonial structure called Mission of Immigration of Banyarwanda (MIB).

By the end of the 1950s, the immigration of Banyarwanda to the Belgian Congo had completely stopped. But on the eve of the Congolese independence in 1959, anti-Tutsis pogroms erupted in the neighboring Kingdom of Rwanda as part of a Hutu movement, supported by the Belgian administration, to dethrone the King and establish an independent Republic. Survivors who managed to escape fled into the neighboring countries and thousands of Rwandan Tutsi refugees settled in the Masisi and Rutshuru territories.

Thus, at the time Belgium resigned itself to grant independence to the Congo, six groups of Rwandophones (Kinyarwanda speaking) had settled in what would become the Democratic Republic of Congo:

The Tutsis who, before the 1885 Berlin Conference, had established themselves on Itombwe High Plateau, more precisely in the locality called Mulenge; this group is known as Banyamulenge.

The Hutus and Tutsis who had settled into the Gishari, Kamuronsi, Byahi, and Bwisha regions following the conquests led by King Rwabugiri of Rwanda before the 1885 Berlin Conference and who found themselves on the territory of Belgian Congo when Belgians and Germans settled down their dispute in 1910 over the border demarcation of territories under their control.

The Hutus and Tutsis who immigrated in Masisi to escape the royal chores or to flee the lack of arable land and famine between 1920 and 1937.

The Hutus brought in Katanga between 1925 and 1929 as a labor force for the Union Minière du Haut Katanga.

The Hutus and Tutsis transplanted in Masisi and Rutshuru as part of Mission of Immigration of Banyarwanda program launched by the colonial administration in 1937 and that would continue until 1957.

The Tutsis refugees fleeing the pogroms in their country in 1959.

The question, at the center of a heated debate that has caused a lot of blood flow, had been whether these groups of people established on the territory of Congo at different times and under different circumstances can be considered having the Congolese citizenship?

By malignant political manipulation, Congolese political leaders have tried to put all those groups in the same box to deny them the Congolese citizenship.

And the Article 6 of the first Constitution on the new Democratic Republic of Congo, known as the Luluabourg Constitution of 1964, declared to be "Congolese each person whose any one ancestor was or had been a member of a tribe or part of a tribe established in the Congo in the Congo before 18 October 1908, date on which the Belgian Congo was created."

My understanding is the Banyarwanda meet the tribal criterion by the fact that Hutus and Tutsis were among tribes on the territory acquired by King Leopold II in 1885. But, the groups of Banyarwanda who had migrated to Congo after 1908 were declared not citizens.

Thereafter, several other laws on nationality would be adopted, at the mercy of politicians whose sole goal was to make part of the Congolese population stateless.

Excluded, hunted, and massacred, members of the Tutsi community allied themselves with other Congolese anti-regime, with the support of Rwanda and Uganda determined to dismantle the refugees’ camps that housed the Hutu genocidaires in the eastern part of Congo, to launch a rebellion in 1996 which drove President Mobutu out of power and installed Laurent Désiré Kabila as the new President of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Seeking to free himself from the influence of Rwandans and Ugandans who had helped him to seize power, the new President Laurent Désiré Kabila took the grave decision to expel the foreign troops. On August 2, 1998 in Goma, the Congolese Tutsis seized the opportunity to launch a new rebellion under the name of RCD (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie), with the military support of Rwanda.

Subsequent to calls made on national television by President Kabila and his Director of Cabinet Yerodia Ndombasi, the hunt for Tutsis and their massacre began in the areas under government control, starting with the capital city Kinshasa.

This is how, with many others, I was arrested and tortured for six months, then sequestered for another six months before the U.S government succeeded to get the survivors out of that hell and to bring us to the USA, after a six-month transit in Benin.

On February 24, 2000, I arrived in Nashville, Tennessee. The settlement in the U.S. would be done gradually with the help of the resettle’ s agency, Catholic Charities, and of new friends, but it was not easy, given that I had to learn English and to go back to school.

Meanwhile, the process to bring my family, which still was in Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, took two years. Eventually, on January 20, 2002, we were reunited.

Despite many challenges, I managed to go to college, to recover my academic file from the University of Kinshasa thanks to relatives and friends in Kinshasa, to complete my Master degree in Business/Accounting, and to secure good jobs, first at Bank of America, and then at the government of the State of Tennessee.

The darkest page would be, in 2008, the death of my nephew Alidor Kaburabuza and of my lovely wife, - my best friend, - the mother of my children, - Mama Caritas -, at 53 years old. Those disasters led me to adopt the children left by Alidor and to engage in a second marriage, which would prove to be a total failure, and in a third marriage that I intend to preserve by all means.

As I get old and plan my retirement, it is time to think about what the next chapter will be.

I plan to spend most of the time of the rest of my life getting involved in initiatives - through platforms, networks, and organizations – aimed at bringing peace, reconciliation, and the return of refugees to their native Congo and at improving living conditions in rural areas of North Kivu. Will my contribution make a difference? I don’t know, but I believe that God kept me alive for a purpose.

Meanwhile, I am thankful to my God for all He has done for me since my birth, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, until now, in the United States of America.

I was born as a Congolese indigenous child, I grew up in relatively good conditions, I survived several disasters, and I have held high-level positions in Africa. I came to America as a refugee, without speaking English, I got a chance to go back to school, earned an MBA degree, secured good jobs, gave my children the opportunity to pursue higher education, purchased a house, and drive a nice car; I am happily remarried to my wonderful wife Thérèse Uwambaye, and I am a proud grandpa. Isn’t this what The American Dream is about?

What a blessing!

---

1 Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem; op.cit. ¹Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem: Histoire du Congo. Des origines à nos jours, Le Cri/ Afrique Editions, 2010

2 Yellen, John E., et al. A Middle Stone Age worked bone industry from Katanda, Upper Semliki Valley Zaire. Science, vol. 268, no. 5210, 1995

3 Jason Stearns: North Kivu. The background to conflict in North Kivu Province of eastern Congo.RIFT Valley Institute, Usalama Project, 2012.

4 Sanford H. Bederman: The 1876 Brussels Geographical Conference and the Charade of European Cooperation in African Exploration in Terrae Incognitae Journal, July 19, 2013

5 Cornelis, S. (1991). «Stanley au service de Léopold II: La fondation de l’Etat Indépendant du Congo (1878-1885)". In Cornelis, S. (Ed.), Tervuren: Royal Museum for Central Africa.: 53–54.

From my childhood

to growing up

My Parents

GODGIVEN is the English translation of my first name Dieudonné, which was given to me by my father at my birth on the day of 15 April 1955. He also gave me the last name of Ndinda Mahina, which means I overcome challenges.

My father, André Mugunga Mahuku, was born in 1925 in the village of Munanira, town of Jomba, in the Northern Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He was the fifth child of a family of seven children: four brothers – Hishamunda, Ndikumuzima, Sebukozo, and Habarugira - and two sisters – Nyirahabimana, and Nyiragwiza. My family belongs to the clan of Abanyiginya and the sub-clan of Abagunga.

As my grandfather Buhoro passed away so early in his age - my father was only eight years old - it is my grandmother Nyirampimbaza who had to raise their children as a single mom, with no resources and no support. The family was very poor, just with a small land, without cows or any other property. My grandfather had no brothers or sisters and he was an orphan himself. My grandmother’s family was living in Uganda, a neighbor country to DRC, and she couldn’t count on them for support.

But even though it was a big challenge, my grandmother did all she could to take care of her family; she was a strong woman who successfully fed her children and protected them in a hostile environment where poor people were abused and had little to say.

Her older son, Hishamunda, moved away at the age of 16 to shepherd the cows of cattle owners without any pay. The only compensation he would receive was to be able to drink milk, which was the only meal he could have. He lived with the cows in the bushes – there were no organized farms – and often had to confront animals. One day he was attacked by a lion and had to fight, with no other arm but just two sticks. After hours of battle, the lion ran away. It is amazing to see how the Tutsi shepherds master the art of using sticks to fight any enemy.

My aunt Nyirahabimana and my uncles Ndikumuzima and Sebukozo helped my grandmother to farm the small land they had and, often, went to labor for rich landowners to receive, in return, food for the family. Later, my uncle Ndikumuzima engaged himself in an ambulant trader through Uganda and DR Congo; that helped a lot the family.

My father and my uncle Habarugira were too little to work, so they were sent to the Catholic elementary school of Bunagana. My youngest aunt Nyiragwiza stayed home.

Since there was no secondary school in the area, the only choice my father and my uncle had, after graduating from the elementary school, was to register at the Mugeri Middle School located in the South Kivu Province of DR Congo. This was too far from home, and to get there one had to walk a hundred kilometers, and then take a boat from the City of Goma to the City of Bukavu, called Constermansville at the time, and finally take a bus to Mugeri. Even though the school was tuition free, the family couldn’t afford the cost of the trip for two students, so it was decided that only the youngest, Habarugira, should go. My father stayed home to help his family in fields’ works.

My uncle Habarugira was so brilliant in school that after four years he graduated from the Mugeri Middle School, called Ecole Moyenne de Mugeri, which educated future teachers. Hence, he came back and was hired as a teacher at the Bunagana Elementary school. But, following disagreements with Father Hermans, a catholic priest head of the school, he didn’t teach for long time. He joined the colonial administration as a clerk in 1949. With this new job, he had enough money to support his family.

My father met my mother Adèle Nyirakagori Kabami in 1950. She was a Christian girl, an active member of the 7th Day Adventist church, and one of the conditions for my father to get married to her was for him to join the same religion. So, he got baptized as an Adventist and they were married in 1952. The same year my father was admitted at an Adventist school located at the Adventist Mission of Rwankeri, in Rwanda.

The town of Jomba, in DRC, is separated from Rwanda by a dense forest with the mountain chain of volcanoes Muhabura, Sabyinyo, Visoke, and Gahinga. To go to his school, my father had to march across that forest populated by elephants, buffalos, gorillas and other dangerous animals. This long tiring journey would take a whole day. My father stayed at the school; he came back home every three months during school breaks, until he graduated in 1954. After his graduation as Agricultural Monitor, his brother Habarugira helped him to get hired by the Belgian colonialists in a program named Mission d’ Immigration de Banyarwanda (MIB).

At that time, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda were both Belgian colonies.

Realizing that Rwanda’s overpopulation could serve as labor force reservoir for their eastern Congolese territories, the Belgian authorities created the Mission d’ Immigration de Banyarwanda (MIB) in 1937, whose objectives were to solve the problem of the overpopulated Rwanda and to fill in the deficiency of work force in the Kivu by settling migrants from Rwanda in Gishari region of Masisi and Bwito region of Rutshuru.

So, in 1954, my father was hired by the MIB as a settlements clerk in the Bwito section of the Mission that covered the villages of Busenene, Kanaba, Butare, and Bambo. My father and my mother moved from Jomba to Busenene. These villages, interconnected by the Bishusha – Bambo dirt road constructed by Belgian authorities, were engulfed in bushes and trees occupied by chimpanzees and monkeys. There was no electricity or clean water.

As my mother had several miscarriages, my parents had no children yet. That was, for them, a source of a lot of pressures from distant relatives because, in our culture, married people are supposed to have children and if they don’t, they are suspected to be victims of a curse from evil spirits. My father was constantly harassed and pressed to consult traditional witches, but he refused and stuck to his Christian faith and beliefs. In 1954, my mother got pregnant again and I was born on April 15, 1955 in the village of Busenene. My names, meaning God-given, and I overcome challenges, were his way to respond to all his detractors.

My childhood

Six months after my birth, my mother got pregnant again and in June 1956 my brother Denis Rudakangwa was born in the village of Kanaba. Rudakangwa means fearless. The earlier arrival of my brother had some consequences on my infanthood because, due the pregnancy, my mother had to stop breastfeeding me. That was an issue because in our culture the breast milk is the principal, if not the only, aliment that needs to be fed to a child aged 0 to 1 year. But there was an alternative. My uncle Habarugira Herman and his wife Madeleine Nyiramugeno had a one-year baby, named Oscar Habarugira, who was still being breastfed; so, it was decided that I should share the breast milk with him. He would suck one of his mom’s breasts and I would suck the other. When I was one year old, I started drinking regular milk and eating light healthy meals.

At age of two, while my mother was pregnant with my sister Dariya Mukamusoni, I was sent to live with my grandmother Nyirabaresha – my mom’s mother – at the village of Rubona in the region of Bwisha, about fifty miles far away.

My grandmother was one of the several wives of my grandfather Munyankumburwa and she had her own house where she lived with my uncle Jérôme Rwubaka. The environment in Rubona was so different from that of Busenene, and some events marked my entire life. For instance, I remember that I had to share the bed with my grandmother and, instead of sheets and blankets, we were sleeping on mat made from some type of leaves and on dried cow skin; this was very tickling. But life was lovely since I was surrounded by my grandmother, my uncles, aunts, cousins who all took care of me, sometimes overwhelmingly.

I was nourished several times during the day and my belly was constantly inflated; people gave me a nick name of Gafu, meaning little bloated stomach. Nevertheless, their attention didn’t hold me to deceive their vigilance on several occasions:

One day, an uncle, who was cutting the hairs of a cousin, unintentionally left a razor on my reach with no surveillance. I took the razor, and, in imitation of my uncle, I tried to cut my hairs; of course, I got hurt and I had blood all over my face. The whole family was in panic. That explains the big scar I have on the left side on my forehead; I almost lost my eye.

On another day, I took a machete inadvertently left beside me and, imitating how firewood was pruned, I just cut my finger on my left hand; it still is carved.

Other multiple incidents left my legs and my feet covered with several wounds, especially as I didn’t wear shoes; scars can still be seen today.

At the age of 3, I got infected with whooping cough and I was sick so badly that my father had to come to take me home for medical care. I was continuously coughing for several minutes until I almost lost my breath; my eyes were coming out of their sockets, and only antibiotics treatment could cure that disease. That explains how I got big red eyes.

At that time, my family was settled in the town of Bambo where my sister Dariya was born in August 1958. My father was promoted to an Administrative Clerk position and worked in the office of a colonial Belgian authority under the supervision of Mr. Désiré Butera, a close friend to our family. After I finished the treatment, I stayed with my family.

Bambo was a big multiethnic and multi-cultural town where life was very enjoyable. There were schools, a health center, and clean water. In our neighborhood of about ten houses, meals were shared. Women were organized to prepare a variety of food (rice, potatoes, meat, fish, vegetables, beans …) and served the meals by groups; at the lunch time, men gathered in back yard huts and ate together, so did women and children.

Even though the only person to wear shoes in my family was my father, each of us had his/her own suitcase full of clothes. We had a hut that served as a kitchen and a much bigger house to live in. However, the house was built with rudimentary materials and had straw roof; fortunately, we had a cat to chase the innumerable rats, unavoidable in that type of house. The town didn’t have electricity, so we used a kerosene lamp as a lighting device. In 1959 my father had to rebuild our house after it was burnt down, supposedly by a maleficent spirit sent by a worker who had been fired by him, but I believe that the fire was caused by the kerosene lamp knocked over by a rat.

In September 1959, I went to a pre-school close to the family’s house. The school was built in lumber with a roof covered by metal sheets, had pavement in soil and no ceiling. The noise was insurmountable when it rained. One day, a severe wind snatched the metal sheets and one of them flew away and landed at our teacher’s house yard, hurting his wife; her leg got wounded badly.

On Saturdays, my father sometimes took me with him to his workplace - there was no school on Saturday – while my mother was taking care of my brother and my sister. One day, my father and his Belgian boss were alerted by other workers about the company’s truck driver who had been attacked by a python. The unfortunate guy had stopped his truck to go relieve himself in the bushes since there were no public restrooms all along the road. The Belgian asked my father to accompany him to rescue the driver, and, unable to drop me home first, he had to take me with them in their car. When we arrived at the scene, the python had already swallowed the driver up to the chest. The Belgian waited until the python had swallowed wholly the man before he shot and killed it. Bystanders opened the python’s stomach and took out the driver’s body to bury him. Later on, I was told that it is the reason why I am so afraid of snakes, having seen a snake swallowing a man while I was a child.

1960 was the year of Congolese Independence. At the beginning of that year, Belgian colonists and administrators had to close their businesses and prepare to leave the Congo; so, my father was terminated from employment and we had to move from Bambo to go settle in Bukombo, forty miles away, where my uncle Habarugira had purchased a land on which he had already settled his mother and his brother Ndikumuzima’s family. It was in April 1960 that we travelled, together with the family of a man named Ananie (I don’t know his whereabouts), packed in the back of a small truck with all our belongings. My father has already built a house that we were going to inhabit, so our settlement was easy. And we were welcomed by our extended family. Our house was built of wood and clay, with a metal sheet roof; the pavement was of soil and it had no ceiling, just like my Bambo’s school.

But, in the area, it was considered as a middle-class house, so I liked it. Our closest neighbor was my grandmother Nyirampimbaza, my father’s mother. We were separated from my uncle’s family by a road leading to the Catholic mission of Birambizo located one kilometer away. My other uncle, Sebukozo, had his family settled three kilometers further in a village called Munini.

This was the beginning of a new life in a new environment, with new people, and so many challenges. The first challenge for us kids was the language. At the multicultural town of Bambo, where we had come from, the language mostly spoken was Swahili. In our new environment, there were three ethnic groups: Banyarwanda, - Hutu and Tutsi - speaking Kinyarwanda; Hunde speaking Kihunde; and Nande speaking Kinande. The few educated people within those groups could speak Swahili and French. So, to communicate with other children, we had to learn all those languages and that was not self-evident. But, the most important issue was the weather. In Bukombo, it rained almost every day during the entire year and, contrary to the warm weather of Bambo, it was cold. This was especially hard for my mother who was suffering from a hereditary asthma, which eventually killed her in 1995 as it will be explained in later chapters. My father also became sickly, suffering a lot from rheumatism arthritis.

Having lost his employment, my father’s tightened budget was not going to help. We had to adapt to a new, cheaper, diet. Fortunately, my father was a hard worker, and, despite his poor health, he successfully put in value our new fifteen acres’ land by planting trees, raising some cows, goats and poultry, and cultivating vegetables, potatoes, maize, sorghum, cassava, and other products thanks to his agricultural skills and to a cheap labor. Also, using his relationships, my uncle Habarugira got my father hired by a tea company, named AGRIMUSHALI, located 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) away from our house. Since there was no public transportation, my father had to wake up at 3 AM to walk to his job and walk back home at 4 PM every day, Monday through Friday. I watched my father becoming skinnier and skinnier, missing some workdays due to illness, until his sudden death in 1972 at the age 47.

My mother was helping, doing some farming work and brewing and selling sorghum beverage.

Primary School and Early days

of DRC Independence

At the dawn of the Congolese Independence in 1960, I witnessed a visit of the Customary Grand Chief of the Bwisha, Mwami Ndeze Daniel in Bukombo. His car stopped at the intersection of the roads from the Administrative Post of Bishusha, from Kichanga via Sisa, and from the Birambizo Catholic Parish. People were running to meet the Mwami, and, since it was close to our home, I was among the children curious to see him. I will never forget one thing he said: "Bakongomani mushaka ubuhuru? Ubuhuru buzabahuragura. Njyanye n’abazungu, musigarane ubuhuru bwanyu". Translation: Congolese, you want the Independence? It will run over you and crush you. I am leaving with the White people, stay with your Independence. Later, I learned that he was among the Congolese who were against Independence at that time.

On June 30, 1960, the Congolese Independence was proclaimed. I saw people cheering, dancing, and happy. At a local banana beer bar, a man named Marembo was playing accordion.

But there was also some kind of anxiety, some people worrying about an unknown future. It was in that climate of mixed of joy and uncertainty that my sister Esther Mukakigeri was born, in August 1960.

In September of the same year, my father registered me at the Birambizo Catholic Elementary school. I was five years old, but since there was no pre-school, there wasn’t any other alternative. This choice was very hard to make because my parents were both Adventists and the Church prohibited their members to send their children to other schools than those operated by the Adventist Church of Seventh Day, especially if they would be required to go to school on Saturdays. But the closest Adventist school was 5 miles (8 kilometers) away and my father couldn’t accept that his little children walk 10 miles - round trip – everyday. This issue created much dispute between my parents and the Church leaders, until settled by the Church National Leader, Pastor Jonas Mbyirukira, who gave a special exemption to my family.

My first days of the school were met with some mixed sentiments. On one hand, I was very excited to go to school, all supplies were free of charge, and the teacher liked me. On the other hand, I had to wake up early, prepare to go to school at 7 AM, run a half mile on a muddy slippery road, make the same trip twice between 12 PM – 2 PM for the lunch break at home, and come back home at 5 PM. Worse, all students - including me - were shoeless; some children were so poor that they dressed in dirty shirts with no shorts. Some had chiggers on their feet and lice in their hair. But I was quick to adapt to the situation, and, thanks to our teacher and to the strict disciplinary rules in Catholic schools, after some time all students became cleaner. No tardiness, no dirty clothes were tolerated; and the teacher used to whip badly all recalcitrant.

Eventually, the school was enjoyable; our main classes were calculation, reading, writing, and religion. The first three classes were in French while religion was in Kinyarwanda. The school calendar year was from September through June with two periodical exams followed by two-week breaks on Christmas and on Easter. The main exam was scheduled at the end of the school year, in June. While I did well that first year, my father didn’t want me to move on to the 2nd grade until I was 6 years of age; so, in September 1961, I had to start over the 1st grade which I completed head of the class with a 99 % average. All schools had kept the educational system implemented by the colonial administration: the elementary school had grades 1 through 6. At the end of the year, there was a solemn proclamation of exam results from the top of the class to the last. This system had the merit of creating competition among students by making everyone to work hard to have the best grade. The following years went smoothly and, at the age of 12, I completed the elementary school.

While I had no issue at school, life at home and in our community had a lot of ups and downs. After school, Monday through Friday, I helped my mother in some household chores such as going to fetch water from the nearby river. In the evenings, we used to sit in the kitchen hut around the fire watching our mother prepare the food; she was an excellent cook. By 7 PM, the meals were ready, and the diner was served; my brother and I shared a plate, my sisters – in 1964 Rachel Mukamuganga was born – shared their plate, and our parents had their own plate. The food was always delicious, sufficient and varied. Around 8 PM we used to move to the main house to sleep; my brother and I slept on the same bed in our room, girls had their own room and they also slept on the same bed, while the main bedroom was for our parents. Our mother led the night prayer.

Sometimes we had visitors - cousins, uncles, aunts, friends, even strangers – who came to stay for a day, a week, even a month and we were happy to welcome them. The Easter period was more challenging because it was a baptism season and people were coming from remote villages to get baptized at the Birambizo Parish; they needed to be close to the parish at the baptism eve. On any evening we could see a group of 10 to 20 people, who had known my parents when my father was working for Belgian colonists, arriving at our home for a one-day or two-days stay. Food was not an issue because my father made sure that we always had enough reserves. To sleep, they used dry leaves from banana trees and mats of leaves lying on the ground in the kitchen hut.

On some occasions when we had a special visitor, my brother and I had to give up our room and go sleep at our grandmother’s house.

The older I got, the more household chores were assigned to me. Hence, at 10 years old I was in charge of cleaning and ironing the clothes and bedsheets for the family. The laundry was done at the nearby river and I used charcoal iron for ironing. I also started helping my mother to prepare the sorghum beverage for sale, often with the assistance of my cousin Dative, daughter of my uncle Ndikumuzima. Dative is one of my favorites, if not the favorite, of my female cousins. I loved, and still love her a lot. She often came to stay at our house to help my mother. The town of Bukombo had a market every Sunday and people came from several villages to sell or buy products. Other people were coming for the Sunday Mass at the Birambizo Catholic Church. So, my mother chose to sell the sorghum beverage on Sundays when the demand was high. And the beverage