Dear Kamanzi,

I greet you and family, praying you are coping well. Hope you guys in Kigali have made good adjustment. For us here, we are so-so

Dear Kamanzi,

Even with much of the world under lockdown, and the cold silence sweeping through our cities, villages and lives, I cannot forget to remind you, dear brother, that we are walking in the Holy Week. A time we ponder and reflect on birth-pangs of the Church. A time we are reminded that the road to new life passed through death. The Death of Jesus the Christ.

Dear Kamanzi,

I do not want to contend that you are getting used to the lockdown. You should only be committed to fighting the cause of the lockdown. I just want to believe that we all consider this as a war, not a horror movie in which we are characters.

Dear Kamanzi,

I can’t start this letter with pleasantries of asking whether or not you are doing well. You are not. I am not. Nobody is. I will not even bother asking you ‘how is Kigali’, for I know how it is. Shut down. Desolate. Like many other cities around the world. This coronavirus has overthrown our lifestyles with astonishing speed and intensity. It has even twisted the way we greet or not greet.

{Perpetue Mukamuhoza, 51, is a resident of Gatare Village in Nyanza Sector, Nyanza District. She has lived with her husband for the last 27 years.Their marriage has been characterized by quarrels and sometimes beatings from the husband.} Without an income, dependent on his husband for survival, she could hardly think of extricating herself out of […]

{She walks haggardly, carrying a basketful of fruits and vegetables on her head, traversing the streets of the city and or suburbs, carrying a baby, tightly strapped onto her back, bent on eking a living for self and family. Another woman of her ilk, also a vendor, is indolently carrying second hand clothes—some in her […]

{Nkombo Island, in Lake Kivu, is saturated with captivating beauty, a beauty that has been splashed on her endearing face and surface by creation—the silent ripples that create mobile glows as they consume the cast rays of the sun, the luxuriant green vegetation that drunkenly leer about and the abundant aqua life—all give the island […]

{Nkurunziza Jean Dean, the Managing Director Eastland Motel-Kayonza, says it simply and clearly. “We train these youths here, equip them with hospitality skills to serve as if the hotel belonged to them and to count every client as if their very own life depended on them.” His is a second statement; the first having been […]