On a Monday evening, as I was heading home, I stopped by Meze Fresh Restaurant in Kimihurura to pick up some food. After packing my order, the manager, Pacifique Ndahiriwe has a question for me: He wants to know how much it costs for his story to be published.

After I’ve assured him that this news paper only charges money for adverts, not stories, he sighs with obvious relief, and starts offering snippets of his story. We agree to an interview the following evening after he has returned from school (University of Rwanda, School of Finance and Banking).

Ndahiriwe’s story

Born on February 12, 1989, in Goma, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Ndahiriwe is the last born among six siblings. His parents fled to DR Congo during the pogrom of 1959.

His earliest memories of life in Congo are still fresh: "In my early years I never went to school because it was rare at that time in Congo.”

He recalls a lot of silent killings and burning of houses around the village, a fact that made the family to live in constant fear in a makeshift wooden house.

"My father kept a spear in his room. Whenever such incidents happened, he joined other men in the village with their spears to confront the attackers.” Looting was rampant by Congolese soldiers, a fate Ndahiriwe’s family suffered several times.

"One time, after looting things from our house, they abducted my elder brother, Enock, and forced him to carry the loot.” Enock would later join the Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) until 2006, when he retired.

One evening, while out at play, Ndahiriwe and his friends spotted a row of soldiers approaching with lit torches. While his friends attempted to run away, Ndahiriwe stood and urged his peers to stay. A soldier overheard him and walked straight up to him, kicking him hard in the stomach before rejoining his colleagues. He was only eight-years-old.

The young man witnessed the spectacle of soldiers marching in military formation as villagers fled in different directions.

Soon after the soldiers had filed past and were out of sight, gunfire would erupt in the distance. Faced with this state of affairs, his family was forced to flee from Masisi to a small town called Tongo. He recalls that unlike Masisi, Tongo was at least accessible by car, and relatively safe. The journey from Masisi to Tongo was to be made by bus.

They boarded the bus, but just a few meters after take-off, four men who were seated in the bus whistled simultaneously. A fifth man who was seated in the co-driver’s seat stretched his hands and reached for guns hidden in the luggage compartment — three or four of them.

"I knew immediately that we were heading for death. This was my very first time to get into a vehicle, and I wondered why I had to die on such a day.”

The next thing he recalls was that they were settling in at Nkamira Refugee Camp, in Gisenyi; where under the protection of the United Nations, they received basics like food and house hold items. His family stayed in the camp for two months.

Back in Congo, they had only known a life of subsistence farming and cattle herding, and indeed he concedes that "I had never known money”.

At the camp, they would barter whatever relief items from the UN with what they needed. A common scenario was exchanging their rice with Ibirayi (Irish potatoes).

After two months at the camp, the UN relocated the refugees to Kibungo, at a place called Nasho. However due to rampant deaths from Malaria, the family was soon forced to look for a new abode.

One of his aunties who had fled to Uganda in 1959 had recently returned to Rwanda, settling in Kibungo first, before moving to Ruhengeri. "We joined her in Ruhengeri for almost a year,” he recalls.

Knowing the RDF

In Kibungo Ndahiriwe interacted a lot with soldiers, occasionally joining them on their morning fitness drills. He still remembers his first soldier friend, Duniya.

"In Ruhengeri I can say that I became mature. We stayed in Karwasa village, which was tightly guarded by RDF. This only made my love for the army to grow stronger.”

Soon the young man could no longer resist the temptation to be with his new-found friends, and so started sneaking from home to stay in the barracks. And every time his parents found it out, he would receive a thorough beating.

He recalls that the soldiers used to drive villagers to a place called Kagoma to collect food from farms, and on many occasions he travelled with them. "The army unit was headed by an officer called Kibogo, who loved me so much. I think the soldiers loved me simply because I also loved them. I loved the soldiers because they always gave me food.”

One of the biggest problems in Karwasa was shortage of water. There was just a huge stationary water tank the soldiers filled with water which they fetched from a distance using water tankers.

As he grew more familiar with the soldiers they started giving him nicknames. "Some soldiers called me Sebarenzi Kabuye while others called me (James) Kabarebe. They always joked that one of them was my father. A soldier called Rukara, who operated the RPG is the one who gave me the name Sebarenzi, while another soldier, Kayitare named me Kabarebe. I didn’t know those people whose names I was taking; all that I knew was that they were senior soldiers, and that made me proud.”

Kayitare, he recalls, used to buy him scholastic materials, and always told the young man that one day he would be a great person, but that first, he had to love school.

In 2001, Bishop Rucyahana built a school –Sunrise School, in Musanze. No sooner had the school opened than Kayitare asked him to go and ask for a place. He did, and was awarded a scholarship.

By P3 he had been voted a student leader, "and from then on until I completed high school, I was always a student leader.”

One day while in P6, he went to Mukamira barracks with the intention of joining the army, but was swiftly turned away because he was underage. At only 14, he walked away angry and dejected.

At high school, he met children of army generals. One of his best friends was a boy named Masudi –son of Gen. Mubaraka Muganga. "He was a year behind me, and we always plotted to join the army together. One day I convinced Masudi to get his father’s mobile phone and extract Gen. James Kabarebe’s telephone number.”

He got a number as requested and gave it to Ndahiriwe, who immediately called it. "I told the person on the line, who I thought was the General, that I wanted to join the army. I even went as far as telling him that we were look-alikes!”

A meeting between the two was arranged for Kigali, and Ndahiriwe travelled from Ruhengeri to Kigali (Kimironko), where someone was waiting to pick him. "It was a woman, and she ushered me to a soldier called Sayinzoga, the officer in charge of the Demobilization and Re-integration Commission. I narrated my story to him. After hearing me out, he apologized and said he was not Gen. Kabarebe, and that he could therefore not be of much help.” Disappointed again, he returned to Ruhengeri to continue with his studies.

In S5, he made yet another attempt at joining the army, this time travelling from Ruhengeri straight to the Ministry of Defence headquarters.

"While there, I was asked why I wanted to meet the General, and I told them that he is my uncle, which was a lie. As I stood waiting, I overheard some soldiers saying I actually looked like Kabarebe.” Not that this would redeem him though, as he further explains:

"I was told that since it was a family matter, I should instead try to meet him away from office.”

Again, he walked away a sad man.

After completing High School at Sunrise, he worked as an intern at the Musanze District office, in the department of ICT. He also worked with the district’s National Youth Council, before joining the University of Rwanda to study a Bachelor of Business Administration.

Meze Fresh

In 2010, and in a rather surprise career move, Ndahiriwe joined Meze Fresh as a waiter. "The owner, Griffins, is a man I knew from Sunrise School, where he was our basketball instructor. I had known him since 2008. When he left Sunrise he joined Bridge2Rwanda, and after his contract expired, started Meze Fresh. One day he rang me, asking if I could join him in his new venture. He wanted capable hands that could run the business while he was away, and he trusted me.”

After two and a half years working as a waiter, he was promoted to the position of manager. Early in 2014, his high school friend, Masudi, called to tell him the army was recruiting for a cadet officers’ course. "Since I was now in charge of Meze Fresh, I had to do a lot of soul-searching. I considered whether to apply to join right away, or wait for my boss to return first and I hand over the business to him.”

One thing he knew for sure is that his boss would be very upset if he left just like that. "It would be a negative legacy on me and on Rwandans, so I decided to stay, while my friend joined the cadet course.”