BOOK TITLE: Orchids: A Story of Suffering and Courage
AUTHOR: Thierry Manirambona
PUBLISHER: Pauline Publication Africa/St. Paul Communications
No. OF PAGES: 94 pages
ISBN: 9966-08-651-X
YEAR PUBLISHED: 2012
REVIEWED BY: Matthew Ujah-Peter
''March
is in full swing. the mornings are so cold. The flowers have
blossomed and the grass is growing, luxuriously green. At night, insects
flocks to the lamps, and especially to the candle in my room. It rains
often at night, so softly. It rains for so long that the drops seep into
the drinking earth. Behind my window are beautiful, happy flowers. The
tinkling of evening bells fills my room; faraway birds-calls break the
silence. And close by, in the trees, from leaf to leaf, tardy raindrops
joins their predecessors, dripping in shimmering silence unto the
leaves carpeting the ground.
I am so weak. I am too week to get
water for papa's orchids. It is so cold outside, but I cannot find the
strength to get out of bed to shut the window.''
It's exactly 20 years ago when the Rwandan genocide took place. As the
world, and indeed the people of Rwanda, remember and pay tributes to the
victims and heroes of the genocide, I want to use this book as a
reminder to all of us and especially the people of Africa that when we
kill one another it's indeed our own elves that we are killing.
When you look at the dailies each morning at the news stand, you are
depressed by the figures-figures that represents lives of real humans
beings but snuffed out, not by natural disasters or accidents but by
fellow humans who believe that there is noble purpose to their
acts. As Roberts Czerny remarked in the foreword of this book, ''
I
look at the numbers. I count the zeros. The more zeros I see, the more
shocked I feel, or depressed and helpless, or perplexed. But people are
not zeros.''
The Orchids is about one of the people behind
those zeros: Lucille. Lucille didn't die during the genocide but she
was a victim who lived long enough to tell her own side of the story.
Lucille
is a real person with real experiences of sufferings and pains brought
about by atrocities and senseless killings by fellow humans. But the
story of Lucille is not about sufferings and pains alone. It's also
about bravery, courage, kindness and triumph. Anytime you read or hear
news of sufferings from distance lands or from nearby lands about
figures of the victims with few or many zeros, it's about people like
Lucille - people
with vision and ambitions, people with hopes and dreams - who are behind
those zeros.
Meet
Lucille as she takes you by the hand on a journey through her world of
innocence, beauty, love pains, shame, and the triumph of love and
faith. Right from her childhood period to her young adulthood. Born in
1982, Lucille comes across at the beginning, as your average
young African girl growing up from childhood to womanhood but the
genocide that took place in the land of her birth in 1994 when she was
only 12 changed all that.
Lucille
will tell you of her experience and ordeals as she and her family moved
from place to place to escape the throes of death. Lucille also tells of her quest to make
meaning out of life in the midst of the sufferings, dislocation and
hopelessness that were the natural fruits of wars and genocide such that
took place in April 1994 in Rwanda.You will break a tear
or too as Lucille enraptures you with her descriptions of her native
lands, her love of literature and as she expresses her deepest feelings
with her poetic prowess.
The Orchids is Thiery Manirambora's effort that
helps the reader go on a journey alongside a real person who has seen
it all and has knows the hell and horror of human suffering brought about by
hatred, prejudice, racism and violence.
Beginning from chapter one,
The Good Old Days, Lucille relates her story from childhood experiences in Byimana in
Gitarama, southern Rwanda to chapter twenty seven - the last chapter titled
Into Your Hands, Lord... where
she tells of friends in
school when she was only a girl of eight growing up. She recounts her ordeals in Rwanda,
Congo, Burundi and back to Rwanda as she ran in the company of others
from place to place, lands to lands, country to country to escape the
throes of death.
Some of the most touching parts of The
Orchids are the poetic ways Lucille expresses her thoughts and feelings.
To one of her late female friend Assia, she expresses her feelings with
this lines:
Assia, your eyes are ocean of friendship. On each
shore of your gaze, there are words that sail over to the other side.
Chirping birds swim airily in the clouds and inscribe paths in the
middle of the desert. Migrating birds flee the winter of my heart for
the warmth of your eyes. At the bottom of your silence you will see path
that lead straight towards a new year. no matter how hard it is for you
to believe it.
Lucille at the end challenges us all to rise
above and beyond cruelties that life throws at us. She is the example
of the heroes that resides in each one of us. She urges us to fight on
as far as there's breath in our nostrils - to fight on and fulfil the
beauties that lies within and ahead of us all. The Orchids will leave
you re-evaluating your
attitudes to living, obligations to fellow suffering humans and the
overall big picture.
This is one
book that will take you on an emotion-filled tour of the life of a young
woman who know what it mean to suffer, to love, to be loved, to loose
loved ones to war and to loose one's home to an unneeded and meaningless
genocide. A young woman who will tell you her side of the hell that
broke loose 20 years ago in the
Land of a Thousand Hills.This is the story of sufferings and pains and of courage and of resilience.
As
the world remembers the Rwandan genocide of April 1994, we use this to
commensurate with all those who have lost loved ones in one crises or
another presently across the world, especially in Nigeria.
