Rwanda, Where Souls Turn to Dust: My Journey from Exile to Legacy Tapa blanda - 2009

Um'Khonde Patrick Habamenshi was born in Gisenyi, Rwanda. In 2008, he created Behind Dogon Doors, a social enterprise helping individuals and organizations build a lasting legacy. Through his organization, Habamenshi uses the lessons he learnt in his own life to help others understand their true worth and the value they bring to the world. Habamenshi now lives in Toronto, Canada. Visit his website at www.rightyourlegacy.ca All my life I had been driven by the belief that there is always a better tomorrow after the storm. Now, I wasn't sure anymore. After five years living in post-genocide Rwanda, my idealism and optimism seemed all too childish and naive, my dreams a sad bundle of pipe dreams, chimerical projections of a mind that refused to see what the world really looked like. What if Evil was to always triumph over Good? What if I was to simply accept that I was just an odd "ethnic" piece mistakenly placed in the colourless puzzle of life? The refugee syndrome, that cruel realization that I belonged neither where I came from nor where I now was, affected me so acutely, it almost hurt to breathe. I was broken to a point I had not realized. I was left to myself to deal with my demons and my ghosts; a pervasive enemy roamed within me, slowly and surely killing me in a way the enemy without had failed. Although I had not collapsed before my tormentors in Rwanda, I now found myself slowly sinking into a deep and bottomless hole."