Reflections on sunday: May we strive to be ‘untouchables’!

And so it goes…. It used to be that when you went to secondary school, it was a big deal. It meant leaving refugee life and joining the ranks of ‘seniors’. It meant having a shot at one day lifting your parents and siblings out of their misery of Nyakatsi…… Incidentally, what we call Nyakatsi today was called ‘iy’ibyatsi’ in times of yore, to denote a grass-thatched house. It expressed more emphatically the derogatory nature with which the houses were viewed. We all craved an iron roof over our heads because everybody knew that those houses could not be hygienic. However, they also knew that, short of a miracle, they were condemned to bear with ‘iy’ibyatsi’ humiliation forever. Our zeal to pursue education and get a decent income for self and family was partly fired by the need to forever do away with such ‘byari’ (bird’s nests). Which makes it all the more perverse when some people are heard defending their continued existence in Rwanda, today. But that’s the way with Rwandans. Some will oppose the policy of eradicating grass-thatches just because their government has suggested it….. Anyway, not to digress. Finishing school meant an end to ‘nyakatsi’; weights of loads of firewood; blackened pots of water; toiling for a Munyankore the whole day for a bunch of bananas; say it. Joining secondary school was a form of liberation. ‘Form of’ because you were still a refugee and condemned to a life of statelessness, which meant going to secondary school was not exactly like going back to your country. Still, we devoured books like our very lives depended on it – and, say what, they did! Imagine the shock, then, when the results of our exams came and all who expected to do well had flunked. ‘Dry thunder’, which is said to be stronger than ‘wet’, couldn’t have been more devastating. Luckily, the computer marks were dropped and manual marking by humans restored our true marks after a while. And so, we finally set off for Mbarara, there to live for six years as civilised ‘basiniya’, as secondary school students were reverently called. As they say in Kinyarwanda, however, uwarose nabi, burinda bucya (once you’ve had nightmares, expect them until morning)! How else would you explain what happened to us on our way to Ntare School? For information, we used to carry wooden boxes for suitcases. In a bus, the suitcases and any other luggage were kept in the rack on top of the bus, unlike today. Unfortunately, dust roads were uneven and if the bus ever tilted beyond a certain point, it meant scattering the luggage to God-knows-where! And that’s exactly what happened – everything was scattered near the road. Imagine me going out of the bus when it had thus scattered the luggage only to find my brother’s and my property nearest to the road. My late brother (RIP), being the cunning type, decided not to budge from the bus. You see, my younger brother and I carried our little possessions in the same wooden box, since we were joining the same school. And our precious property? Well, not exactly what you’d call plenty: each a pair of used shoes that were donated by our brother in university in Kinshasa, in the then Belgian Congo (after which it was called Congo Kinshasa, after which it was called Zaïre, after which……Anyway, today’s D.R. Congo!) In addition to those two pairs of shoes, there was one pair of bed-sheets that I and my brother were going to ‘share’. Then two blankets and that was about all, as we’d buy socks in town and then wait for a pair of uniforms from the school: a pair of khaki shorts and two white ‘Ugil’ shirts each. Talk about a life of plenty…….it was awaiting us! So, the now shattered wooden box having been of generous size, it had also contained a ‘few’ provisions, for the old students of our new school to tease out of us. Those provisions now lay scattered all around the broken pieces of the box, all together now a heap of shame. Shame in the sense that the provisions were now a heap of blankets and shoes, roast groundnuts, ripe ‘Kabalagala’ bananas, spilt milk and broken-bottle pieces! Well, you could bear the shame of squatting to scoop the blankets and shoes, but imagine trying to gather those nuts and bananas! And if you didn’t, could you dare face those merciless students? What the heck, I gathered everything – except, of course, the split milk! After all, laughing at me wouldn’t kill me, so I wrapped everything up in one blanket and calmly resumed my seat, clutching my bundle. Wasn’t I going to secondary school, then university and then as a graduate wouldn’t I go to a shop and simply sign for a car and drive off, to slowly pay later? Alas, by the time I finished school it was not even possible to automatically get a job, leave alone sign for a car. Still, imagine the motivation. Our youth, pick an area of study that’s not yet saturated and you’ll be unscathed by competition. You’ll be ‘untouchables’. ingina2@yahoo.co.uk