Kwibuka 32: A Dreaming Child- Dieudonné Gakire

Since the 7th of April, Rwanda began the official week of commemor tvation and 100 days of remembrance for the Genocide against the Tutsi, one of the darkest chapters not only in our nation’s history, but in humanity.

Some days, I feel I have so much to say. Other days, words fall short.

More than 10 years ago, I wrote a question to myself that still echoes today:
What would life have been like if 1994 had never happened?
For us as a nation, for families, for individuals.

I asked this after witnessing the heavy price survivors carry every single day: the pain, the memories, the invisible weight.

In my twenties, I chose to listen.
To sit with children who survived.
To hear their stories and write them down.
Even to face perpetrators and their children searching for understanding, for truth.

I walked through memorials across the country, learning, remembering, holding onto history because we know that the final stage of genocide is denial. And memory is our resistance.

My question has always been:
What can I contribute so that no child ever lives this again?

Because survival is not the end of the story.
Healing takes time.
Sometimes it feels like a part of you was buried too.

And while the world moves on, you are still learning how to stand, how to live, how to hope again, to dare to have dreams and ambitions again.

There were moments when, if asked about joy hobbies, music, dreams, the only answer we had was silence.

Today, my work is rooted in that journey.
To create spaces where children feel safe.
To nurture community, unity, resilience, and a sense of belonging.

To give the next generation what many of us had to grow into without.

I carry a dream
of a Rwanda united and strong,
of an Africa free from violence and division,
of a future where no child grows up in fear.

And I remember.
I remember my extended family, who were killed simply for being Tutsi.
I remember the lives interrupted, the stories unfinished.

But I also carry their light.

In memory, we find truth.
In truth, we protect the future.
In resilience, we continue to live.

By Dieudonné Gakire