Bosco Ndendahimana Nyamirambo

PIX; Please a picture of Interahamwe with their green bitenges, machetes and guns wit appropriate caption about their thinking and actions.
There also several photos of Josef Fritzl on the net



From Nyamirambo to Amsteten; the universal cruelty of the human spirit

BY GEORGE KAGAME

Once I went to the same boarding school with a certain Fred Ngenda who as a teenager in Nyamirambo by 1994, he had seen gruesome incidents, these made very good pastime for many students as we listened to his accounts as one way of whiling away lazy Saturday evenings in the school compounds.

Encircled by very strict religious administrators it was easy and essential for students to be friends with just about anybody in the school. With that necessity, our paths crossed many times that it was inevitable we became genial friends.

Ngenda had an uncanny character to be alone most of the time, but whenever he chose to talk, he was a very hilarious person and was widely popular at school.
Saturday evening walks and chats in the school gardens featured so highly on many students favourite activities lists.

In the gardens the students retold each other movies, songs, rap music, and who between Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG were kings of East and West Coast. Ngenda liked to talk about fashion, in fact was the best 'designer' in that small community, that unofficial title in the school setting carried a lot of weight.

Ngenda’s stories were even more interesting; he talked about close encounters with guns, fast cars, but his about one particular incident during the 1994 Genocide. It was about the otherwise normal and favourite activity of any teenager in Africa-that noble job of collecting water for the family.

In Ngenda's case this simple task one time took two weeks to accomplish, involving standing or sitting in one body position and not changing for 24 hours, any slight movement of his body or branches of a tree under which Ngenda was hiding would have cost his life. By the time he returned with the water, some of his people had starved off to death. That story made many students that listened to it cry! Ngenda’s accounts made him a hero for many of us, some boys even cried-which was rather odd and considered cheekish for bulging teenagers keen to have the confidence and coolness of Denzel Washington, this was 1996. England’s failure at the semi finals of Euro 96 was a more likely candidate to make many boys cry by then.

The Balokore (born again Christians) amongst us, and they were very many then, would organise prayer groups where Ngenda would be dedicated to God. In the evenings we would tease him bout the prayers!

Later as we matured, we would be educated that events that made Ngenda hide with a jerry can of water for two weeks in one place were a result of African backwardness and poverty. The examples about African brutality were quite many on the continent at that time. Foday Sankoh was busy in Sierra Leone butchering and boiling his victims, Somalia was as hot in conflict as it is today while a local brew was slowly claiming the lives of Kenyans who drunk the thing at free will.
Last week an incident slowly unfolded in an Austrian town of Amsteten that emphasizes the universal cruelty of the human spirit irrespective of geographical or periodical limits.

The incident involves Josef Fritzl and his family, the story makes the makers of horror movies amateurish compared to what Fritzl did. This particular story is dramatic in that it is it not about some village peasant drunk with government and religious propaganda but a widely respected man of social standing in the said Austrian tow, a country with one of the most strict immigration policies because of its fears of immigrants! The nature of Josef Fritzl actions is so brutal that compares to the incidents that led to Ngenda spending two weeks doing an errand that otherwise takes a couple of minutes normally. For Rwandans both inside and outside the country the month of April is a constant reminder of how brutal; even the less sophiscated human beings in your average neighbourhoods can be, Ngenda’s story and that of Fritzl are so horrible that manufacturers of nuclear technology should like little children- there's no need for expensive weaponry if the human mind is still working, its that simple really. The 73 aged Fritzl also happens to be a qualified technician and respected family man but with Austrian government assistance in 1984, Fritzl extended his house by building an underground extension. In the underground extension, he sealed off the entrance and imprisoned his daughter Elizabeth Fritzl then aged only 18 till mid April 2008.
As the raping became more frequent Elizabeth conceived and had a child, then another child, then another till they were seven. Of the seven, three became noisy kids, Fritzl removed them from the bunker and put 'threw' them on the doorstep of his family house above the prison, only to adopt them and thereby become a more respectable human being in his town.



Fritzl then embarked on a policy of sustained rape of his daughter for the next 24 years, in which time no one knew she was hidden and upon her discovery, her father had raped 7 children out of her.
He would step in his cell, just below his house-where other members of his family stayed, those members included his wife, who was also the mother of Elizabeth and her other siblings.

Had it not been the sickness of one Fritzl’s prisoners, Elizabeth’s story would possibly remain unknown. But Kerstin Fritzl 19 was no ordinary prisoner and Frizl was not your ordinary village thug seeking ransom. In fact Frizl was the father and the same time the grand father of the girl.

Fritzl was by many accounts, an affable and socially very respectable man; he was married, highly educated, and also successful in businessman.
Now a society like Austria is dealing with such issues as a guy who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years all the while raping her and forcefully fathering her seven children-whom he also terrorized daily.
Last Saturday at Jali Club, there a was a ceremony of great significance, Pangea day was a global event staged in selected cities all over the world, Pangea Day seeks to unite thew world though sharing universal messages of hope, love, peace and happpines. Rwanda was one among seven cities to stage.

The live programs went a long way in depicting that human beings wherever are; face the same challenges and themes like love, despair, sorrow, faith, hope and success are universal. Josef Fritzl and the 1994 Nyamirambo bandits that ensured Ngenda hid in one ditch for two weeks is testimony the human beings need a lot of Pangea’s Days.