He shifts his wiry frame in front of an easel that’s plastered with a white canvass he intends to paint something. 

I watch him closely arranging his painting materials: three gallons of paints of different colours and a brush that he holds tenderly on his right hand. He mixes the paints in an object that can pass for a Petri-dish, and tries the resultant mixture on a piece of white paper on his right side.

Jean-Baptiste Rukundo then nods his head as he starts doing what he knows best, painting.

Within half an hour, he’s finished. The complete product is an enthralling piece of art depicting a beautiful woman gripped in a picturesque and static magical moment of a dance, with the usual flailing of the arms.

"That was so fast!” I tell him, hypnotised by how he managed to create such a hot piece within a short time.

Rukundo can pass for any other ordinary artist in town. However, when you adventure to see and sample his work, you will realise that it is a creation of a person whose heart is deeply entrenched in what he’s doing.

Born 24 years ago in Kicukiro District in Kigali, Rukundo was only four years old when tragedy struck his family. He was still too young at that age to comprehend how it happened, why it had to happen and what actually happened. But when it was all over and his eyes opened to the world, he found himself as one of the multitude of orphans who had lost their parents during the mad moment of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The parents were gone, and he was miraculously left with his elder sister and two brothers in a world where he didn’t have a clue of or any surviving family he could share his wretched sorrow with, apart from his three siblings. And all of them were still too young to fend for themselves.

Then a benevolent hand, in the name of a person he tells me is called Sister Dorothy, emerged from darkness to be his guardian angel, seeing him not only through his formative years where he grew up with many questions to ask the world, but also seeing to it that he got what he needed most at that time, education and food.

"I attribute my existence to the philanthropic work of Sister Dorothy. She’s a humble Catholic woman who made sure that I got all I could have had if both my parents were alive. I had food, I had education and I had a motherly love. There’s nothing else I can ask from her.”

But how did he meet Dorothy? I venture to ask considering that the genocide left many orphans out there in utter disarray and it was not easy for many of them to find someone who could take care of them.

"I was that precocious and talented child right from when I was in nursery school where Sister Dorothy used to teach. When she saw these attributes, she took me under her comforting wings, promising that she would make sure she saw me through my education.”

Rukundo remembers that right from his primary school; he knew that he was talented in art.” From that young age, I used to do clay molding, toy vehicles out of wires and make models of houses using split sorghum stalks.”

This early foray into art endeared him to his teachers who assigned him the role of making teaching materials like charts among other objects that they used in class to reinforce their lessons.

This didn’t escape Sister Dorothy’s eyes as well. Therefore, when he finished his primary and later, O-level education at Kicukiro Secondary School, it was natural for him, owing to his intrinsic talent, to join Nyundo School of Arts in Rubavu District. This is a school where young artists are taught to explore their creative talents.

"When I arrived at the arts school, I felt like a camel that had reached an oasis. Art was my passion and here there was an opportunity in front of me to harness my talent. I felt elated.”

Nyundo also made Rukundo make a network of friends that would later help him gain his foothold in art industry in Rwanda.

In the meantime, while he was at Nyundo, Dorothy used to call him during holidays and he would go to her organisation to do some menial jobs in their farms. From the work, he would be paid some stipend that he prudently kept with his benefactor.

"When I finally finished my schooling at Nyundo, it’s this money that I used to rent myself a house as I embarked on another journey to become self-reliant. Life was hard then, but I had to do everything possible to ensure I had a roof over my head and food to eat.”

For some time, life to Rukundo was a daily struggle for survival. His siblings had relocated to Uganda and he found himself grimly alone in Kigali, with no family but himself against the world.

"My sister and brothers decide to look for greener pastures in Uganda. But I decided not to follow them, rightly convinced that with my talent and education, I would find an opportunity here in Rwanda to live my own life.”

Without a shoulder to lean on, Rukundo started off as an itinerant painter. "I would be called by shopkeepers to design for them a notice board here and a billboard there. I would be called by homeowners to decorate their children’s rooms. Any work that came before me, I would take with both hands just to sustain myself.”

Months later, he joined Uburanga Arts Studio, where he says that he did his apprenticeship under established artists there and later moved to Ivuka Arts Center in Kacyiru where he’s been working now for three years.

"Doing art has proved to be so much therapeutic to me. When I’m painting, I forget about the tragedy that befell my family. I for that instant forget that I have my siblings who are now not with me—whom I can share my laughter and pains with. I feel that I’m myself, and I forget,” he says.

Have you forgiven those who were responsible for the death of your parents? I ask him. At this question, I see his lips purse and for some brief seconds, he stares vacantly into space.

Then after recollecting himself, he shifts his shoulders and replies, "If only I knew them, I would’ve forgiven them long time ago. If they can only emerge now and tell me they were the ones who killed my parents, I would forgive them instantly. But what’s deeply hurting is that they are faceless, that I don’t know the people who were responsible for all these torments that have plagued my life.”

Plagued your life, how? I again ask him. "When I was a young boy, during the post-genocide period, I was always a withdrawn child and my age mates didn’t want to play with me. I felt a recluse. I withdrew into myself. I took into books so much instead of socialising. I managed to be a bright child at the expense of interacting with my contemporaries. I missed one of the exciting periods of being a young boy, maybe, life would have been different.”

But Rukundo is optimistic that despite the challenges that dog the arts industry in Rwanda, he has the steel in him to ensure that he makes it in life through it. "This is my talent and passion. We don’t earn a lot in Rwanda from art—artists are just struggling to make ends meet, but we have to soldier on.”

As parting shots, Rukundo says that even though art is just like any other work, one has to be patient to reap any profit from it. "I’m optimistic that something great is in the offing, that one day, I’m going to become a famous artist through doing great art pieces. I didn’t have money to go to college but one day, I will.”