At a young age his mother used to read to him and his siblings bed time stories about a family with many kids whose mother who read stories to them until they fell asleep and left the house to look for food before they woke because she was afraid to see her kids die.
His mother was his hero but unfortunately he last saw her during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, while running from a large group of people who wanted to kill them they were surrounded and nowhere to go.
The young boy closed his eyes to avoid seeing how he will be killed. His mother let go of the boy’s hand and told him to run very fast and never stop running because she saw life in him and believed that he would survive and the young boy took off running.
That was the beginning of his survival and loss of hope after losing his hero that he loved dearly. This is a short story of the journey of Theoneste Makombe, an author of The Race for Life.
"Since the passing of my mother I carried the guilt for so long that I let her die while I should have protected her. I lost hope and I thought that I would never be a man because I felt like I betrayed her. I had so much trouble in school as I always had so many unanswered questions and I was close to giving up but fortunately after so many nightmares I met a group of boys who prayed for me and on that day I found his hope again and became a preacher,” said Makombe.
The event organised by Interact Rwanda kicked off on January 13, at Olympic Hotel, Kimironko brought together powerful, inspirational, and well experienced speakers to share their personal real stories and experiences that can help the audience. The event will take place every after two months.
Dr Christelle Giraneza, founder of Urukundo Initiative said that life comes with many challenges but everyone has to look for their uniqueness and authenticity.
"Despite the challenges you face in life as long as you are chasing what you love never fear anyone, don’t let people tell you that you are no one to take decisions for yourself. Each individual has dreams and goals and nobody has to dictate you how to chase your dreams, what you wear or how you live your life just look for your uniqueness and go for it,” she said.
Growing up in a small underprivileged village in Zimbabwe, Charline P Chikomo, founder and CEO of Duce Leadership Initiative never dreamed of becoming anything special. He just wanted a normal life with access to basic needs.
When it was time to start primary school he was lucky to find a sponsor who paid for his school fees, the sponsor was a woman named Charline from UK whom he was named after for realizing that there is power in helping others even without money but the power to education that helps them unleash who they will become.
"After completing high school on government scholarship I was sent to study law in South Africa but I was mentally depressed despite the good grades I had but I had not discovered myself. Education had taught me everything but myself so I took a year to learn about myself and what I want. After taking time I decided to found the DUCE Initiative to help young people who cannot access education access it,” said Chikomo.
Briana Makombe, a cross cultural expert, revealed that what helped her to find her uniqueness was discovering what the most important thing in her life is then she got to know who she is. If you are serving yourself and you want to know who you are for your own good, you will never find it.
"When you begin to serve others you would never be what other people want you to be to succeed but rather you start realising what you like and don’t like for yourself. Don’t keep it to yourself because the more we give the more we get, the more we give away who we are the more we discover who we are,” said Briana Makombe.