I lost my father last week, it was painful after a short-illness, we had tremendous hope that he’d make it but the Lord took him to another place.

The most comforting thing anyone said to me is that we are not of this world but merely travellers and visitors in this cold inhospitable Earth. It makes you realise how resilient we are, there are over 100,000 diseases that can kill you, millions of ways to die and yet we survive daily. Life is not a right; it is a privilege and blessing to live every day.

I also remembered my father’s lineage stretching back 19 generations or some 700 years, and you realise life is not a mistake or accident. It is a result of the diligence, planning, and prayers of countless forefathers who never see their descendants but do everything to lay the foundations for future generations.

They did not leave pyramids or castles; they left something far more valuable – a name. A name synonymous with honour, synonymous decency, and the epitome of pride and if any one of those ancestors had died before siring a descendant then I would not be writing this piece.

Life and death are part of the same cycle; life is a continual thread of a fragile existence. From the moment you are born you are in a race where you are only one step ahead of death, the only way to cheat death and live forever is to leave a child and a good name.

In ancient Greek culture you had what is called the Heroic age, we had that in Rwanda as well; this was a time when a man strived to live forever in his name. It is then that you realise that a man is not his body, because his body will one day be a corpse. A man is his name, his legacy, his loves, sacrifices, and his good deeds.

It is for that reason that my father will join a long list of men immortalised in their names. A man who quietly helped others, a man who would be embarrassed to be thanked for an act of kindness, a man who saw kindness as a duty not a favour.

With him goes the last generation that straddled the ancient and the modern, the men who balanced the traditional culture and Western culture. My generation will always be modern, always more in touch with modernity more than our tradition.

Within a few days of his death, two other contemporaries died, it was like a spirit of death was taking the best among us. A generation that was born here but fled while they were children; they queued for food everyday in refugee camps, were spat on and despised.

But not only did they survive, they thrived in a hostile world and made themselves indispensable to the societies that were hostile. They never gave up on the dream that is Rwanda, and returned in triumph albeit with a wounded heart.

They ran the gauntlet of life and death, but there is no winner in this never ending race, the best you can do is pass the baton on to the next runner. It is now my turn to run.

Ends