By: Mary Adeline Imanirakiza
Akilah Institute, Kigali, Rwanda

My hometown girl is sad, she always sits in her own dimmy corner with a heavy heart. She is hurt, she is suffering a lot. I have been looking at her for a long time, her big brown eyes blinking the tears back and forward in her eyelids. Her face is always cold and her voice is soft as a feather of a peacock bird. The more I look at her, the most I realise her beauty. She is young, powerful woman. Although she tries to force a smile on her lips, I can see her real smile from a far.

One day, as I was having a simple tour around the village, I saw her in her corner. She was wearing a small sunny dress that reflects her beauty in the sunlight. I was planning to let her have her moment, but my heart said otherwise. “You have to talk to her. Say hi at least!”. Who would ever disobey her heart, when it is the only fuel source. That’s how my heart gave me the power to approach her.

I can’t forget how the pupils in her eyes danced when she saw me, she was surprised. “Hmm, can I sit here for a while?” I weakly said, I was afraid that she would turn me down. I thought that I was invading her privacy. But she smiled, I think it was a real smile. “Feel comfortable!” she answered me with a happy voice.

It was my turn to look like a lost puppy, I thought that I was going to help a sad, weak girl that always sits alone. I sat down on the coral stone. I didn’t know what to do, or what to say because she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes and mind were somewhere else.

“This place is beautiful.” I said to break the awkward silence that was eating me alive, again she smiled. “Yeah, I call this place my home.” she said. Home? I wanted to ask her how the trees, shrubs and the poor houses around us were her home.

“I call this place home because it is where I was born, I breathed my first breath here, I was breastfed by this place, I play around this place, I saw the first person in this place. So whenever I look around, I feel my heart swelling because this place is falling apart,” she continued, with unshed tears in her eyes. I looked at her feeling the same pain in her chest. What she was telling me is true. Our hometown was falling apart. There is no youth, young girls are mothers, young men are drug dealers and the adults that we call uncles and aunties are the bosses that own and purchase the drugs in our community.

As I look at my hometown girl, I understood why she sits in that corner alone and cries. I blamed myself for being blind and selfish. I only cared about myself. I should have realised the problems in the community.

“You don’t have to feel sad or blame yourself. We don’t choose the communities to be born in, but we have a mission to make the community better than we found it. Therefore it is our turn to rise and shine, it is our time to make a change.” I didn’t believe that those strong words were from her. For a few minutes that I have been with her, I have realised that she is strong, she is courageous, she is hard-working, and that is my hometown girl.