At the age of 12, Viviane Uwababyeyi made her debut performance before President Paul Kagame, reciting a poem that thrilled thousands who had attended a rally in Nyamasheke District. That was in 2015. Her second time to perform before the president was at the recently concluded Citizen outreach, where she again recited a poem that left many with goose bumps. The two times she performed before the head of state, she shook hands with him and gave him the original copy of her poem. Uwababyeyi is the last born in a family of five and lives in the Nyamasheke district; she is a first year student at the East African University Remera campus, pursuing Leisure, tourism, and hotel management. Her journey as a poetess started way back in her primary level, when she was just nine years old. She used to recite poems during commemoration events, and the feedback she always got was encouraging, she says. This she says pushed her to keep on doing more poetry, since she also had passion for it. Commenting on where she derives her talent, Uwababyeyi says her gift has roots in her family. Some of her uncles, who were killed in the Genocide against Tutsi in 1994, were poets while others were songwriters, and that that is where she considers to have inherited her talent from. Her ability to also stand firm and confident is as a result of her parents training and encouragement. “Having the ability to speak in public comes from my parents, who, at an early age, encouraged me to speak on behalf of my siblings during family gatherings even though I was the youngest. That gave me public speaking skills,” she explains. Prior to her first performance with the president, she took part in a competition that was organised at her school. She won and was able to compete at national level, where she emerged first as well, and thereafter winning the slot to perform for the president. Since then, Uwababyeyi has gone on to nurture her talent, performing and taking part in different competitions. Her biggest challenge as a poetess has been people who doubt her abilities, something she says discourages her. “The major challenge I encounter is that people used to doubt the originality of my poems. Some think they are not mine, saying that at my age I cannot be able to compose such good poems,” she says. Her other challenge is lack of enough platforms to showcase her talent as well as ‘fake promises’ from various people among others. She nonetheless hopes to keep on chasing her dream, and hopefully one day, she will put all her pieces in a book which she believes might change the lives of many people as well as teach the young generation about their history.
