Rwanda

Not My Time To Die – Yolande Mukagasana

I had it in the back of my mind that for Rwanda i ought to try and read a book that spoke about genocide there. Not because that’s the only thing that’s interesting, but because one of the first ‘political books’ I read was Letters To Daniel by Fergal Keane, which reported on the war. I remember being so shocked by it.

Mukagasana’s testimony is shocking too. Shocking to me who has never lived under the threat of violence. For so many people that threat is daily and those of us that are comfortable should not forget it.

Please read her book.

In between the violence and hate, glimpses of life in Rwanda are in technicolour. I loved the writing about sex with her husband early on – ‘balanced’ by the sexual violence later in the book. Brutal legacies of colonialism are at the root and it is terrible yo read the division the West has caused.

I loved how Mukagasana wrote about nature – kites flying & the gentleness of gorillas & the thousand hills of Rwanda.