Author: Thomas Kagera

Our troubles today are not anywhere near the pain and certainty with which Jesus, the Saviour, faced death in order to save me and you. Yes, He was certain He was going to die. And He was certain that His death was the only sure path to the eternal life of humankind.

He endured the mockery, the stripes, brutality and the callous indifference of the Pharisees that approved His death. He was shackled. With wry sarcastic and deriding smiles, they pierced His hands and feet; telling Him to call on His Father to rescue Him. He endured it all in humility to the end.

These hard times you experience, even during the Holly Week, should enable you explore who you are and your relationship with God.

So, my friend Kamanzi, l beckon you to take the humility that Jesus demonstrated during his last week on earth. Not for some time, but all the time. To the end.

Today it is not possible to commemorate Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Resurrection of Christ in conventional church buildings. But, maybe, God has a reason for letting us do so AT HOME. Is there any place better than a home? With all the earthly toils, where we put many man-hours in our work across geography (tens, hundreds, some times thousands of miles away ) and time (from morning to evening; from our youth to our evening hours), we eventually get back AT HOME.

And, my friend, remember those times when everything seems to be falling apart. A friend, before delving into giving you emotional and physical support, will tell you to feel AT HOME.

What am saying is this; maybe God has put a situation that forces us to make our homes become the church space in physical and spirit so that at the end of the hard times we will willingly take our homes to the church. I am made to believe that what we are now experiencing may contribute to our own ongoing journey as God’s people as we prepare to get AT HOME.

Kamanzi, the home in which you now mainly find yourself, offers you a place in which your faith can be discovered afresh, where you can find ‘the Church within’.
And, in symbol and in reality, when we are done with our work here on earth, we shall meet the Lord AT HOME. God is giving us to understand what it means being AT HOME. So let us rejoice in all situations, for there are many episodes that God brings before triumph. He brings a storm before serenity. He brings birth-pangs before delivery.

And am in agreement with messages that church leaders have sent forth.
The Anglican Church during these hard times has reminded us that: “As in the early days of our faith, public gatherings of Christians outside the home are [for now] forbidden. Nevertheless, we are finding ways to join in prayer and intention; to cry ‘Abba, Father’; and to recognize we are all buried with Christ by baptism into his death, that we might walk in newness of life. The present situation does not negate the joy we have been granted in the resurrection.”

And the Holy Pope, in his Holly Week message encourages love and generosity. “Let us try, if we can, to make the best use of this time: let us be generous; let us help those in need in our neighbourhood; let us look out for the loneliest people, perhaps by telephone or social networks; let us pray to the Lord for those who are in difficulty in Italy and in the world. Even if we are isolated, thought and spirit can go far with the creativity of love. This is what we need today: the creativity of love. This is what is needed today: the creativity of love.”

Kamanzi, let us humble ourselves and pray: “Father, we thank you for your unending Love. We pray for your unconditional healing. We thank you for keeping us AT HOME as we prepare ourselves to meet you one day AT HOME. We worship and adore you; now and forever. Amen.”

Bye for now my friend,

Yours,
Thomas Kagera

With the prevailing circumstances, I am reminded of the vanity of worldly riches. I, every morning, look at my car just parked there, no where to go to. But even the proud owners of jets cannot fly them. Air spaces are all shut. Every country is nursing its citizens and fighting an unseen tiny but wildly devastating enemy.

I am confined to a room. The designer clothes, shoes and perfumes in my wardrobe have all become useless and serving no purpose.

The work engagements and meetings that always steal my time with God and family have all come to a complete naught.

The merrymaking, the evening drink with friends (how I miss my cold Miitzig), are all nothing now. All that you and me need today is food and air to breathe. We just want to be alive. Nothing else is really important.

But you should have hope in God. He is keeping you alive for a purpose. God will enable scientists and political leaders to steer us through this. Otherwise, on our own, our energy, we cannot.

People with energy and vigour have all become helpless. All of a sudden. Here in Kigali, the hard-hit families by the lockdown have to be fed. No matter whether able-bodied or not. It is not a bad thing to feed them. But it takes us back to realize the vanity and emptiness in world possessions.
Uncle Tommy, I have learned that where you are, the government food distribution plan, as a response to the lockdown, is also out. And I understand that for the first time your government leaders are going to categorize people according to their incomes–as rich, poor, needy, etc.
This is something we did in Rwanda many years ago using a community participatory approach called UBUDEHE. The government of Rwanda knows the status of each household with a certain degree of accuracy.
In times like this, it becomes an easy task for government to identify how to support the most vulnerable through either direct financial support (executed under Vision Umurenge Program) or which able-bodied but unemployed youth to recruit in construction works of public infrastructures, among others.
The categorization is as well important in identifying most vulnerable families for which government pays medical insurance and tuition fees at university.
Uncle, I think there are many experiences and lessons we can share during and after episodes like this.
For, at the end of it all, it is we, the ordinary people, that either sink when things go haywire, or swim to the shores when all is well crafted.
These actions that involve the ordinary people; their views, their needs, their satisfaction, their commitment to sharing experiences and their willingness to embrace and enhance change are what is making Rwanda unique, adaptive and personifying hope.
By the way, do you get time to exercise from home? Please do. Keep fit. Walk around the house and take short runs in the compound. It is good for your health. Boosts your immunity and helps to avoid DVT [Deep Venous Thrombosis] or blood clots on the legs.
Well, I do not have much more to write.
But I continue to beseech you uncle, to continue joining us in prayer and never to relent in observing the guidelines given out during the lockdown. I say this because I know if you do not rest at home, you may end up Resting In Peace.

Cheers uncle,

Good Weekend

Kamanzi-Sengabo

You see, my friend, to this coronavirus, life is an offense, and economic prosperity is treason. But me and you have got to continue defying its rule and denying it continuity, by staying at home, washing hands and following other guidelines issued by health experts and political leaders. That way, we shall ‘flatten the curve’ when it can no longer find ‘fuel and the dry grass’ to rage on.

Where I am, dear Kamanzi, we are contending with many issues; conspiracies about the virus, misinformation, stern orders, crude actions by implementers of orders and indolent but deep-seated fear.

I think you have, by now, heard of the coronavirus origin theory: Manufactured by US or China as a biological weapon? China has used it to capture US and European stock markets? Africans will be killed in millions by the virus? [Much as we do not have deaths near to the exponential curves of Europe, China and the US of A]?

A disequilibrium has already created disarray; supply, demand, availability, and necessity no longer see eye-to-eye; each is facing in a direction, not where it is needed but where the storm has whirled it to sit and settle.

The petrol stations, banks, pharmacies hospitals, and clinics remain open but how workers get to and from work remains a challenge as all forms of public and private means of transport are banned.

Kamanzi, as you know, I am, among other trades, a poultry farmer. I had invested some savings in raising about a thousand birds. Croilers. I was targeting the Easter season. Today, I can neither get poultry feeds nor can I be mobile enough to take the birds, at that pre-mature stage, to the market.

And who would buy when all potential buyers are tacked at home without earning? And would they afford the luxury of buying chicken when even other low cost foods are hard to come by? I am that stuck. But not desperate. Still, like you told me in your previous mail, hopping towards hope.

My and your way of life seems to have forever been changed.

This situation has humbled us all as equal human beings, on earth and before the Lord. When all public transport was banned, those with private cars never wondered how the vast majority of the people were surviving. Now that private cars are banned, the owners have started seeing their world collapse. “How do we get to work”, “to the bank”, “to KFC” and “to the supermarket”? I wish they had all asked those questions in support of those whose only choice was public transport. Because they all seem so completely insensitive to others when they only start whining now.
And with this virus that is offended by the existence of life, the rich and peasants have to be treated here, at home. The affluent and elites, political giants and peasants, face the same wrath, same facilities. They will not be flown to some 5-star hospital in the West.
Do you think this will open willingness of some of our leaders to invest in medical facilities here at home?
They better learn and act.
By the way, Kamanzi, how are you holding with false news on coronavirus those ends? Misinformation about the cure, vaccine, effects, contagiousness and strength of Africans to resist the pathogen?
Misinformation at times becomes too much. There are times when you just have to shut to the world, and let false news pass. That is why I have today had to shut and instead spend some time tending to my vegetable gardens. Seeing them sprouting into vitality gives me renewed energy. How they effortlessly blossom and bloom gives me hope for a good future. A future free of coronavirus.
These are not normal times my friend. Let us pray like we have never prayed before. We keep each other in prayer.
Truly,

Thomas Kagera

It would be vast silence reigning over here in Kigali hadn’t it been for drums of hope sounded by the top leadership of Rwanda; drums that massage panic into calmness; drums that that sooth despair into hope and assurance; those drums that create a melody so energizing and reminding everyone of us, Rwandan and non Rwandans alike, so long as they live in Rwanda, that much as we are all prone, none is walking alone, until we beat coronavirus to the throne.

Uncle Tommy, this is what I mean by the sounds from these drums of hope. On Friday last week, while addressing the nation, President Paul Kagame promised to support hard-hit Rwandans living in urban centres without a salaried income, with food and other basic necessities during the coronavirus containment period; a period of social and economic challenges.

True to his word, food distribution to vulnerable families has started, as of March 28, 2020, first, in the three districts that make up Kigali–Nyarugenge, Kicukiro and Gasabo.

Uncle, don’t you think this is a president we should be proud of? Leading from the front; enabling all; caring for all and proactive in all circumstances. Yes, President Kagame is not a ‘consumer of moments’. He plans for circumstances, and manages a variety of conditions: moments, events, episodes, shortages, skirmishes and disasters. I think his military training, political instincts and business acumen blend into his personality so well to create a trinity of goodness. My thinking. What do you think?

Here is what I mean: Disaster or not, Kagame has been prepared for many years for an unfortunate episode like this of coronavirus. That is how the food items distributed to vulnerable families in Kigali and other secondary cities are drawn from the country’s National Strategic Grain Reserve under the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources which is used in case of food shortage.

You see uncle, this is what I call being visionary. Few countries in Africa have such strategic grain reserves.

And because Kagame has been planting these seeds of a ‘shared vision’ for the last…I think more than 30 years, among Rwandans, strategic support from private individuals towards fellow citizens these days comes so easy, effortlessly. Don’t you remember how individuals contributed to the Girinka–giving out cows to poor families; or to Agakiro Fund; and currently giving out smart phones to poorest families in the country through Connect Rwanda? That is the shared vision he has nurtured and the country is reaping from.

Do you then still wonder why Rwanda Association of Petroleum Products Importers (ASSIMPER) has donated 56,000 liters of fuel to the government worth Rwf 60, 088, 000 to be used in different emergencies during the current coronavirus crisis? It is because the spirit of Rwandanness has been nurtured and given room to bloom.

These are great acts of valor we should all cherish in the middle of the coronavirus crisis.
So dear uncle Tommy, rest assured, we are hoping towards hope. One day, these moments that are tough to bear will be sweet to remember. From Kigali with love.

Cheers
Kamanzi-Sengabo

The unpredictable consequences have, especially, put entire lives in a quagmire.
And what pains most is that this pathogen is now biting deep and bitterly because there was a ‘public health cover-up’ when it first showed up in Wuhan, China, December last year.

Can you imagine that local authorities in Wuhan kept information on coronavirus under tabs for fear that putting information out there would hurt the economy and social stability? Do you know it is that prolonged period of inaction that gave latency for the virus to make inroads. Don’t you think if there was no denial and information crackdown right from the start the situation would have been different.

To worsen the situation, politicians in Wuhan incessantly claimed that human-to-human transmission was not possible. That was the bomb.

Anyway, no amount of finger-pointing toward China about its lack of transparency early in the outbreak, or the time lost before Beijing finally alerted others about the nature of its epidemic—although both true—can change this harsh reality.

Here we are. In a lockdown. Our jobs have stalled, social transactions maimed and the core of our livelihoods threatened.

My friend Kamanzi, I am writing this letter from the dungeon of my home, trying to look at many blank pages of the bleak future. What if…just imagining, what if this virus persists for a year? What becomes of production? What becomes of services? What becomes of global incomes? What becomes of governments? What becomes of social order? What becomes of families? What becomes of friends? And what becomes of life?

Well, worries do not change a damn thing. So, before we get to that unknown, unpredictable future, I have decided to go frugal with all my expenses. In the opposite direction, I have gone extravagant with my love for all people in my life and mankind.
And, listen my friend, I beseech you too, to cut down on your expenses and extravagantly splash love to people in your life. Today I only spend on food and very little on fuel. I do walk, if the need is so critical, any distance in the range of 5km. I’ve cut my weekly data costs by 80 percent. And after mailing this letter, I will switch off data connection until late hours of the night when I will browse through the current affairs for about twenty minutes.

I am saving money from the left pocket to the right pocket; preparing for very hard times ahead. Being thrifty, observing minimum spending and being prudent in such times like this is not an option; it’s a must-practice.
We are faced with a cataclysm like one never before.

But we should not use this time for elegiac lamentation. Instead, we should do something useful in our lockdowns. Besides sparing time on my very blank schedule to write a letter of encouragement to you, I am now transforming my city-based home compound; transiting from flower to vegetable and fruits gardens. I was able to secure seedlings that I have already planted and nurturing.

Do you remember ‘AKarima k’igikoni’? I have established four of them in my small compound, fertilizing them with chicken dung. Watering them in the morning and evening. They are my new job; something to look to for accomplishment and gain satisfaction.

In the afternoons, I read vernacular novels to my children; all in the age-bracket of secondary school and university. They never got a chance to read those books by themselves. I find it interesting. They find joy in listening to my measured voice. Sometimes poetic. And they enjoy my mastery of the mother language. I count something good in these hard times.

Alright my dear Kamanzi, I have to let you do other things. I hope to hear from you soonest. I pray we get out of this, stronger and wiser. Cheers and carry on.

Truly, Thomas Kagera