Many times, many of you condemn this person or the other because he orshe behaves like this or that, but the reality is that, it is where wecome from that dictates what we are. For many of us, we were born andbred in the village. This automatically “condemns” us to being villagerswhatever we do, wherever we go and that is that! To the lucky few like me, possessed with lots of ‘Jonathan’ or is it Good luck, we break out of the vicious cycle and change, but that is not an easy task. There are a lot of things we take for granted and yet others value them greatly and there are those that some people value and others despise greatly, I think the right word is abhor! Some days ago, I was called by a friend who was asking me to accompany him to one village in the western part of the country, reason being that, one of his neighbours’ husbands had lost a mother and as you all know, such a situation is never a laughing matter. When it comes tosuch periods of sadden and unforeseen calamities befalling one of us, we are all duty bound to join hand and share the sorrow. I think, this is one of the values we Africans share across our continent. No problem, calamity can befall any of us without warning and the only way to overcome such is to join hands with others. Much as we all had our own programmes, we decided to set them aside and give priority to the community’s call. It was agreed that we paid somemoney in form of contribution for the bus fare as those who had vehicleswere so few to accommodate the number of people willing to go for the funeral. No problem with that. We set off on a Sunday morning for theburial ceremony. We sped fast through Kigali’s environs, then toGitarama and then turned off the Butare road to head towards Karongi or what some of us call Kibuye! There was nothing eventful along the road. I have travelled this road I don’t know how many times! After nearly two or so hours, we came to a stop at the foot of a huge hill and had to disembark from our vehicles; reason being, the place was typically “Hillywood” and no vehicle of any calibre could battle those hills. Of course roots are roots, we can never get ashamed of where wecome from. The hills climbing were a rather hard task but we managed to overcome it. Many of us had left Kigali without bothering to take anything and so, the stomachs were beginning to demand for plate contents or something like that! Maybe the hill climbing had exasperated that maddening hunger! There was nothing like a boutique in sight and so, we had no choice but to ignore our stomachs’ demands and get on with the business that had brought us all this way! If you are a weak hearted person, please stop here! As the hour for the burial came, a sort of mass was conducted by a local village catechist and we proceeded to the graveside for the final function of bidding farewell to a beloved one. Just hold on, instead of heading for the common “irimbi” (Cemetery) or the banana plantation, we were instead ushered into one of the rooms of the house! Here, beloved ones are interned in the comfort of their houses and so, one room had been chosen for this purpose. Apart from this shocking revelation, the manner it was conducted was equally shocking to many of us. What can we do about it? Different people, different values!
