LA VIE

La Vie

Qu’est-ce que la vie?

Ce mot précieux qu’on chante

Qu’on raconte et qu’on respire

Qu’on joue avec dans nos paroles

Mais sans conscience de sa portée

Je me demande: qu’est la vie?

Je regarde ces enfants qui pleurent

De faim mais ne peuvent manger

Tant leur estomac est habitué au vide

Et je me demande: qu’est la vie?

Je vois des hommes qui se meurent

Lentement, lentement d’une mort sans fin

Dorment à même le sol à coté des somptueuses

Demeures

Je les vois grignoter les restes de grands riches de la terre

Tels des chiens qui vivent de la charité de leurs maîtres

Et je me demande: Est-ce ça vivre ?

Je regarde cette mère qui se casse le dos

A travailler dur pour pouvoir chausser ses gosses

Pendant que le mari s’offre une bière

Et commente la Premier League

Je la vois bosser du matin au soir

Et c’est à peine si à la fin du mois

Il lui reste assez pour une miche de pain

Est-ce ça vivre ou bien survivre ?

Le chaos règne,la douleur est reine

Ici et là les hommes tuent les hommes

A cause d’un nez trop long

Ou d’une peau trop noire

Ils tuent à coups de balles

Ils tuent à coups de machette

Ils tuent au nom de religion

Ils tuent au nom de liberté

Mais ils tuent quand même

Ils tuent

Les cadavres jonchent les rues

Cris et pleurs remplissent les villes

Et en regardant ces images sur nos écrans

On s’exclame: Oh quelle horreur!

Mais notre indignation s’arrête là

Et pendant que ces atrocités font rage

D’autres s’affairent à compter

Les bénéfices de la vente de leurs armes

Comme quoi l’homme est un loup pour l’homme

Et au milieu de ces tragédies et malheurs

On continue de croiser les bras

Victimes d’un fatalisme irraisonné

Et d’une foi trop erronée

Victimes consentantes d’un monde cruel

Résignés à vivre dans la panique et la peur

Mais je refuse

Je refuse de m’abaisser devant les circonstances

De me dire que ce qui fut, fut.

De me dire que ce qui sera, sera.

De me dire que j’y peux rien

et que mieux vaut laisser les choses aller de leur train

Je refuse de croire en un Dieu qui nous aurait créé

Pour nous voir souffrir

Je refuse de croire en un destin de malheur

forgé d’avance

Je ferme les yeux très fort

Et comme Henley, m’obstine à croire

Que je suis le maitre de mon destin

Que je suis le capitaine de mon âme

Je ne sais ce que me réserve le sort

Mais je choisis d'être et de rester sans peur

Je choisis de me lever

Je choisis de parler

Je choisis de prêcher sans relache

Qu'il n'y a que Moi, que Toi, que Nous

Who can create a new world

Un monde libéré des chaines du Moi

Un monde où Arabe et Européen

Musulman et Chretien

Blanc ou Noir

Vivront comme des frères

Car nous sommes tous humains...

Humains aux mêmes rêves

que nous batirons ensemble

Humains aux mêmes peurs

que nous combattrons ensemble

Ouvre ta main....

Regarde-la.....

Profondement....

Ce monde est là!

Voices from a Post-Genocide Generation

I was recently asked to share my perspective on how the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi is affecting many post-Genocide Rwandan youngsters.At first, I didn't know where to begin but then I decided to take my own experience as a base, so here goes.

I recall the first time I came face to face with the issue of Genocide. I watched images of mutilated bodies being carried by the Akagera river and thrown over the Rusumo falls to continue into Lake Victoria.Funnily, in my 4-year-old mind, I don't know where I fetched the idea that those were crocodiles.

Shortly thereafter I started learning about it in school but it wasn't until my 14th year (2009) that I really started to understand the reality and the horrific impact of the Genocide in the Rwandan society. As a member of AERG (a Genocide Survivor Students Association) and studying in a boarding school, I came across fellow youngsters who had grown up without knowing their parents who were victims of the Genocide. Others were so shaken by the horrors they had witnessed that their nights were just a long succession of nightmares. At various memorial events, I saw kids affected by trauma, and rightly so. How can you not when you are staring at hundreds of skulls and bones smashed to bits, when you look at those empty eye sockets and seem to catch a last expression of horror in them as they saw their death coming; when you read thousands upon thousands of names on a wall and you understand that every last one of them had a life, dreams, aspirations, and hopes for a future they were never to know as their lives were put an end to in an instant by the blow of a club, or a bullet to the heart, or a machete tearing through the flesh? How can you no be traumatized when you try with all your might to think it is all just a bad dream but your heart keeps telling you it is damn real?

After such encounters with the past, I saw kids letting so much anger, hatred and resentment build up inside them that they couldn't bear to sit with a Hutu kid they had shared everything with just days before.I gotta confess this happened to me too. I watched others become so ashamed of their parents' sins that they chose to live in denial or considered themselves at the bottom of the social order.

So when you ask me if the post-Genocide generation is dealing with the consequences of the Genocide; well yes it is.Very much. And it's not just that. Think of all the kids born in the jungles of the Congo and raised to become fighters of the FDLR in a war whose origins and reasons they hardly know the truth of (if they do at all). Think of the youth across the world whose opinion is being misled by so-called political refugees who only chose exile as a better alternative than facing justice for their crimes.

But another thing I came to learn was that if knowing one's history is absolutely necessary, we should also avoid being enslaved by it because then we're bound to make the same mistakes again or make new ones that are even worse. I understood the necessity of saying "Sorry" and the importance of forgiving if we are all to go forward and rebuild a better, stronger nation; risen from its ashes, having learned from its mistakes.