At the last Kigali Vibrates with Poetry event held at The Manor Hotel in Nyarutarama in January, poetess Gaudiose Mukandahinyuka was easily the crowd favorite.

On that night, about ten local poets and poetesses took to the stage for a live session of works that were presented in Kinyarwanda, English, and French.

A panel of three judges would then pick the three eventual winners for the night; Hakeem Hakizimana, Uwacu Karekezi, and Ferdinand Munezero.

But the person that registered almost instantaneous applause from the crowd immediately she rose from her seat in the audience was Gaudiose.

Her tailor-made and brightly colored African fabrics and head gear were the most immediate attraction even before she delved into her cache of poetic works.

As she walked to stage, some people referred to her fondly as "Inyonza”, a rare fruit, or simply "rasta”. Later, after her performance she remarked:

"I was invited to this event and I honored the invitation. I knew not more than four people in the entire audience so it took me by surprise that I got such a reaction so I thank God for that.”

"I wish I had a venue of my own where I can do this on a more regular basis,” she was quick to add, and for good reason.

"There is nothing more satisfying than telling people the truth based on the experiences you’ve gone through.”

If anything, it is the challenges and hardships she has gone through that nurtured the poetess in her.

Tough childhood

Born in 1973, Mukandahinyuka is the third born in a family of three siblings. However she never set eyes on her two brothers, Safari and Ndahinyuka, as well as her mother. 

"On the seventh day after I was born I was supposed to be named in a traditional Rwandan ceremony but unfortunately imvururu (chaos) broke out. It is in this chaos that my brothers and mother were killed together with some of the people who had come for the naming ceremony,” she narrates.

Her father decided to take the then young girl to her paternal grandmother, although this did not alleviate her plight.

"I was seven years old when one day I returned from school and found grandmother dead. She had willed that when she dies I should be taken to my paternal aunt so that’s where I was taken.”

The aunt stayed in Rwamagana with her nine children so Gaudiose became the tenth.

"Since I was still very young I thought she was my mother,” she recalls with nostalgia.

Luckily, the aunt looked after her and even put her in school.

More problems

After completing primary school she realized that it was extremely difficult to attain a secondary education:

"There was discrimination based on whether one was Hutu or Tutsi, your family background and which part of the country you came from.”

This was 1990, the year the Rwanda Patriotic Front invaded Rwanda.

"We had people who used to say to me that I am very dark and that I must be from Uganda, just like the invading forces who they called Inyenzi (cockroaches).”

Coupled with family problems she was forced to abandon school altogether.

She still vividly recalls the day, in 1992, when some local leaders visited her locale and said they were searching for rebels. She recalls that they went to the extent of ransacking their house ceiling in search of the then RPF freedom fighters.

"They said they didn’t want us there so we went and rented in Kabuga. Life was very difficult until 1994 when the war broke out. When the war reached Kabuga, I had gone to Remera so I wasn’t able to return. After the war I returned to Kabuga to the biggest shock of my life; all my family and relatives had been killed. I was left with no mother, father, sister, brother, aunt or uncle. I was left with no single relative.

I asked God why me? I had survived the war of 1973 and gone through a lot of hardships thereafter, but at least I had people to call my own. This time it was all different.

Turning point

After looking for a person in whom to confide her problems and in vain, Gaudiose resorted to what she terms "ghetto life”.

"I started staying with rastas and sometimes I would sing with them. When I was not singing I would cook food and take and sell to them to earn a living. I started meeting fellow traumatized children some of who acted like they were mad. Because I had no family I was scared that I would end up like them.”

Her biggest problem at this point was the lack of a family and relatives to call her own.

She decided to get a man.

"I realized that since I had no family left, my only family now was in my womb. I had to create a new family from my womb.”

She had six children with her husband.

Gaudiose the poet

She started writing poetry in 1992, as a way of dealing with her emotions and coming to terms with the reality of her loss.

"Where I would have shared my thoughts with my parents or my brothers, I just put all this in writing,” she explained:

"That’s how I begun writing poetry, and today I have two big baskets full of books with my writings. I was writing every day, recording whatever happenings I saw. At night I would just sit down and write. Even now I still write every day.”

"In writing my thoughts I realized that even though I had a man, I needed to write about the plight of other girl children that were survivors like me, with no family but wanted to get married.”

She has written a couple of songs and poems addressed to girls and children’s issues.

"Even though I was married there were still challenges. While before I had to think only of my own problems, now I had to think about my family; my children and my husband.”

Tensions with in-laws

"Here I was, a person who had no single relative, married to a man whose whole family was still alive,” she starts.

"My mother-in-law was openly hostile to me because of this and fought our marriage from the very beginning,” she narrated.

She persevered in that situation, but that did not deter her from seeking her own happiness and also to make sure that this bad situation does not spread to her children.

"I loved business. I sold foodstuffs, and sometimes when there were events I cooked and sold food, and I always strived to be very hygienic and I made some money to support my family.”

Eventually her husband started to yield to pressure from his family.

"He asked me to leave him with the children and that I should also go and look for organizations that assist orphans to support me,” she explains, adding:

"Of course it was an indirect way of divorcing me. Imagine a grown woman like me, a mother of six children being asked to go and seek assistance from an orphanage.”

The husband eventually abandoned her with the six children, got another woman and re-married.  

"Because I had endured suffering all my life, I accepted the situation as it was. What pained me the most is the fact that my husband took all these decisions because of pressure from his family”.

She prefers to be positive amidst the turmoil:

"I thank God for giving me a big heart to handle all these problems calmly and still stay happy. I sought the services of counselors to help me come to terms with my situation, and I learnt to confide in friends about my problems.”

She reveals that performing her poems or songs at public events is therapeutic.

She stays with her children in the same house they occupied before her husband walked out on the family.

"But sometimes he comes back and harasses us and tries to evict us,” she laments.

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