Editor, RE: “Rwanda will always attract attention” (The New Times, June 1). Exceptional and especially unexpected success, like unusual abject failure, always attract attention and comment, both positive and negative. Someone also told me once, at the height of one of those periods when Rwanda was under sustained and clearly well-coordinated attacks from the west, that that is the necessary price we can expect for taking ourselves too seriously, insisting on always acting in accordance with the dictates of our Agaciro, refusing to bend a knee when we are told to, and yet continuing to succeed in reaching our own set goals. Nobody ever bothers to concern themselves with nonentities, if they ever notice them it is only when they do something extraordinarily bad like become the scene of collective mass murder leading to a cataclysmic orgy of killings as our country saw in 1994. Or, against all expectations and prognostics from the entire world, you can turn yourself around from such a terminal event, put yourself on the road to your healing, move from success to success, refuse to be intimidated by anyone and always do things your own way. That gets attention, a lot of it positive, some negative—including extremely negative. But if we are attracting such attention it is because we stand out. We shouldn’t want it any other way. Mwene Kalinda
