A childhood lost to ethnic hatred
Jean-Bosco Ngarambe's fate as a Rwandan refugee in Uganda was determined before he was born, after a 1959 revolution staged by the Hutu saw many Tutsis killed and others forced into exile, he tells Louise Umutoni.
Jean-Bosco Ngarambe, who lost his childhood and his father to the Rwandan genocide, is a Carleton University student who hopes to return to his homeland and protect the people.
Jean-Bosco Ngarambe, who lost his childhood and his father to the Rwandan genocide, is a Carleton University student who hopes to return to his homeland and protect the people.
Photograph by: Jean Levac , The Ottawa Citizen, Citizen Special
'You are not Ugandan, go back to your country."
Those are the words a fellow student at Kitebi Primary School said to six-year-old Jean-Bosco Ngarambe. The frustrated little boy beat up his tormentor and was suspended.
This was the kind of taunting he had to put up with living in Uganda as a refugee. Ngarambe knew he did not belong and yet he could not go back to his country either.
"I was born in Uganda in 1986, not because I wanted to but because of the ethnic division in Rwanda that had forced my grandparents to live in exile in Uganda along with so many other Tutsis," he said.
For Ngarambe, his fate was determined before he was born. In 1959, a revolution staged by the Hutu saw many Tutsis killed and others forced into exile. He says his life as a child was one of confusion as he did not understand why he could not go back to his homeland. To Ngarambe, the genocide did not start in 1994, but rather back in colonial times when Rwandans were divided according to ethnicity and convinced to hate each other.
"I grew up with my grandparents and they told me stories about Rwanda and how it was such a beautiful place. They referred to it as the land of milk and honey and I wondered why we could not go back there. I dreamed about going back. I would have given anything to go back."
Like many Rwandan children living as refugees in Uganda, Ngarambe was never happy in Uganda, apart from when he was doing the traditional Kinyarwanda dance to raise money for the Rwanda Patriotic Front.
"We performed at different functions and the money collected was used to support the army that was being set up to liberate Rwanda," he said.
Ngarambe not only lost his childhood to this hatred, but he also lost his father who was a soldier in the RPF. "When my father joined the army no one told me because they wanted to protect me, I only found out after he had been killed," Ngarambe explains.
This, however, did nothing to abate his enthusiasm for Rwanda and the possibility of going back when the RPF won the war.
"I remember getting to Rwanda right after the genocide and the place looked war torn and I breathed in the air and I honestly felt joy inside me. A soldier asked if I preferred Rwanda to Uganda and I said yes without any hesitation. I loved this messed up country because it was home and I was only seven then."
Today a student at Carleton University studying criminology, Ngarambe talks about how he would like to follow in his father's footsteps, whom he considers a hero. "I feel like I owe it him, I owe it to my country too," said Ngarame.
After his degree, he would like to join the Canadian Forces Air Command, so that when he gets home he will be better equipped to fulfill what his father set out to do and that is to protect the people.
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About the Writer
This April marks the 15th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. For 100 days beginning in April, 1994, thousands were slaughtered, most of them members of the minority Tutsi tribe. Louise Umutoni is a Rwandan journalist with the New Times in Kigali. Currently on a three-month internship at the Citizen under the Rwanda Initiative, a partnership between Carleton University's journalism department and the National University of Rwanda, Umutoni met and spoke with genocide survivors who make their home in Ottawa. Today is the final instalment in the series.
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