And perhaps that's one of the most uncomfortable things about privilege: how easy life can feel when you're the person they have already chosen.

Imagine walking into an interview without the familiar anxiety of wondering whether you'll be good enough. Imagine answering questions knowing the job is practically yours. Imagine submitting an application knowing someone will make sure your name gets noticed. Imagine walking into a hospital knowing you won't spend hours sitting in a queue, watching people arrive after you and leave before you, because somebody knows you're coming. Imagine never having to explain yourself twice, never having to prove that you belong, never having to wonder whether the rules will suddenly become stricter when it's your turn.

There is a certain comfort in being expected. In being recognised. In having doors open because someone knows your name, because your family knows someone, because you belong to the right circle, because somebody has already spoken on your behalf.

And there is an entirely different exhaustion in being the person who has to knock, introduce themselves, present their qualifications, explain their worth and still hope that the opportunity is genuinely available.

I don't think everyone who gets a position through connections is necessarily unqualified. That's not even the point. The point is that some people get to compete while others are quietly removed from the competition before it begins.

I wonder how many people have spent years trying to improve themselves for opportunities they were never seriously considered for. How many have mistaken a rigged room for a personal failure. How many talented people have learned to call themselves inadequate because nobody bothered to tell them the seat was already reserved.

And perhaps the saddest part is that some of us will keep working on ourselves, collecting certificates, gaining experience, rewriting applications and rehearsing interviews, thinking that if we become good enough, eventually someone will let us in.

When sometimes, we were good enough all along. We just weren't the ones they were waiting for.

I love my mother. She is my whole world, I love the woman who carried me in her body, gave birth to me, and raised me into the person I am today. I love the woman whose blood runs through my veins, whose love existed long before I had the words to recognize it. She is a part of me in ways that time, distance, disagreement, and independence could never erase.

But, my mother comes from a world that taught women certain things about what it means to be good. A good woman is patient. She endures. She sacrifices. She puts her family first, sometimes even when putting herself first would be the kinder thing to do. She knows how to keep a home, how to carry responsibilities, how to make compromises, and how to survive things she probably should never have had to survive in the first place. She was taught that a woman's strength is measured by how much she can carry without complaining, how much she can forgive without leaving, and how much of herself she can give away while still being called a good wife, a good mother, a good daughter, a good woman. She believes a woman should be submissive. She believes in letting certain things pass, in keeping quiet, and perhaps in trusting that life will eventually deal with people accordingly.

Me? Baby, I am that bitch ( since that's what you call it these days)

I am a woman who knows that being a good woman does not mean being endlessly available for sacrifice. I am a woman who leaves situations that cost me my peace without feeling guilty even when I am accused of having a bad attitude. I am a woman who questions traditions, I am a woman who makes decisions about my body, my money, my relationships, my career, and my future without needing a committee to approve them, I live a life that makes sense to me not the society.

I have absolutely no respect for anything that humiliates me, diminishes me, or expects me to swallow disrespect just to prove I am a good woman. I will question you, challenge you, and walk away from you. I am not submissive, and I have never aspired to be. I am dominant, opinionated, stubborn about my freedom, and entirely uninterested in making myself smaller so someone else can feel bigger.

I am a woman who does not stay in a relationship simply because leaving would make her look like a failure. I am a woman who does not measure her womanhood by whether she becomes somebody's wife or somebody's mother. I am a woman who does not endure disrespect just to prove that she knows how to keep a relationship. I am a woman who does not confuse suffering with loyalty or silence with wisdom. And I am a woman who does not spend her life being praised for how much she can tolerate when she can be building a life in which she does not have to tolerate so much.

I disappoint people, I love people without losing myself in the process, I am generous without allowing myself to be exploited, I remain soft without making herself small.

My mother believes a woman should know when to be silent. I believe a woman should know when her silence is costing her too much. My mother leave things to karma, I believe inbeing the very lesson someone thought I was too polite to teach them.

I do not think she is weak because she is silent, nor do I think she is less of a woman because she believes in submission. I know the world she comes from is different from the one I am trying to create for myself. I honour her sacrifices, her strength, and the life she gave me. I can admire the woman she is without wanting to become her in every way.

I am her daughter, not her replica. Perhaps she taught me how to survive, and I am learning how to refuse the things women were once expected to survive.

I am proud of my mother. I am proud of the woman she is, the woman she has been, and the woman she continues to become. I am grateful for the life she gave me, the love she showed me, and the parts of herself she poured into me, knowingly and unknowingly. There will always be pieces of her in me, in the way I love, in the way I care, in the strength I discover when life becomes difficult. Some of those pieces I will recognize only as I grow older.

Why control women's bodies? Why restrict their independence? Why make their sexuality a matter of public concern, their ambitions a subject of debate, and their freedom something that must be negotiated? Why has a woman's ability to exist on her own terms so often been treated as a threat to the natural order?

Perhaps because patriarchy was never simply about superiority. Perhaps it was also about fear.

There is something revealing about needing to control someone you claim is beneath you. You do not build elaborate systems to restrict the freedom of people whose existence poses no threat to your authority. You build them when their freedom challenges the position you have grown accustomed to occupying.

And women's freedom has always challenged something.

A woman who can provide for herself does not have to remain where she is mistreated. A woman who can think critically does not have to accept every tradition as truth. A woman who understands her worth does not have to confuse obedience with love. And a woman who can imagine a fulfilling life outside marriage, motherhood, or male approval becomes harder to control through the fear of being unwanted.

This is what makes women's liberation so threatening to patriarchal structures. It does not necessarily take power away from men; it takes away the assumption that men are entitled to power over women.

Of course, not every man consciously seeks to control women, and not every unequal arrangement is born from deliberate malice. Patriarchy is a system, sustained by institutions, traditions, expectations, and beliefs that can outlive the people who created them. But its consequences remain visible wherever women's autonomy is treated as negotiable and men's authority as natural.

The most revealing thing about patriarchy is that it often calls control protection, submission respect, and obedience love. It gives restrictions softer names so that women might mistake their confinement for care.

But protection that requires your freedom to disappear is not protection. Love that cannot tolerate your independence is not love. And authority that collapses the moment someone questions it was never as secure as it pretended to be.

Maybe that is the confession hidden inside patriarchy: the fear that women, given the freedom to choose their own lives, might no longer choose the lives that keep the system comfortable. And if a system cannot survive women being free, perhaps the problem was never women's freedom, perhaps the problem was the system.

Because true power does not need another person to be smaller. It does not need obedience to feel legitimate or restriction to maintain its authority.

If women's freedom is enough to threaten your power, perhaps what you call power was control all along.

Now, whenever I hear that someone is getting married, my first thought is no longer “Oh, how beautiful.” I find myself wondering, Are you really happy? Are you actually in love? Do you feel safe with this person? Are you choosing this marriage because you want it, or because everyone around you thinks it is time?

Sometimes I look at the bride and quietly cross my fingers for her. I hope she loves him. I hope he loves her. I hope they are not getting married because of pressure, age, family, expectations, or simply because they have been together for so long that leaving feels harder than staying.

Even with the couples everyone calls “happy,” I wonder how much of that happiness is real. How much of it exists when the cameras are gone, when they are alone in their house, when nobody is watching? I wonder how much of what we call a beautiful marriage is actually two people quietly trying to survive something they once thought would make them happy

And maybe that is the strangest thing about growing up. I used to romanticize the wedding. I used to think marriage meant eternal Love. Now, I just sit there crossing fingers.

I hope they laugh together when nobody is watching. I hope they are gentle with each other on ordinary Tuesdays. I hope they still like each other years after the flowers have dried and the pictures have faded. I hope, more than anything, that when life becomes difficult, neither of them secretly wishes they had chosen differently.

So whenever I see two people getting married, I still believe in the beauty of it. I just find myself crossing my fingers and whispering, Please let them really love each other. Please let this one last.

I met you before I knew what love was, I don't think you did too, but I knew who to look for when I come to school, I knew whose container I would pick alongside mine, I knew whose hand to hold during our playtime. You'd always finish your breakfast before me but You'd sit and wait until I was done so we can go play together. Time flew, we went to primary but this time to different schools but they close. You'd always miss your school bus and we'd beg our driver to let you hop in the school and we'd drop you off at your school since it was minutes from mine. I remember the way you would buy me Barafu from those shops in Nyamirambo and come running so that they don't melt before you reach to me. And our friends would always tease us that we are “ aba chérie” it even reached to the point our parents knew. Even though we didn't know what love was then, this become my first definition of Love. I sometimes wish I remembered your second name, I would probably find you on Instagram and Thank you for those childhood memories. ( algorithm please bring Joe here🥹)

Dear Bri,✨️

Kimironko brought us together. We were both new commers, we helped each other adopt to Kigali parent's environment which wasn't easy but we managed. I always escorted to the kitchen to go get food but you'd always wait until they brought me food from home, since I lived close to the school. You always accompanied me home after school and you'd take your Motto after I am home. We saved our snack money because we wanted to get small iPod, you got the blue one and I had the grey one with memory cards filled with King James's songs. We'd listen to those songs climbing that Cumi na Kabiri road.

But we both knew it wasn't going to last forever, Secondary was coming and we'd part ways. But for that little in between season, you made Kimironko and being a new comer never felt as wierd. Thank you for walking me across, literally and in every other way.

Dear Eli,🪔

I don't know why but whenever I think of my “first love” I see you.

I remember when we first saw each other, I was standing outside the ladies bathroom waiting for my best friend then you passed by with your friends. You wore a black sleeveless shirt, we held an eye contact for seconds but nothing other than that. I never thought I would see you again but the universe has it's own ways of writing stories.

Then you become tied to many of my firsts: the first time I aced a chemistry test( because you'd always help me study), the first date in a restaurant that was in downtown bus park, my first football match, you loved Christiano and my competitive self chose Messi ( I am his biggest fan now), you gave me a flower on our first Valentine 2017( it was my first ever Valentine's in love), my first Kiss( those innocent lip kisses) . You become a reason I stopped taking a long notes paper in exam to copy from.

I sometimes smell your perfume and It takes me back to those evenings we spent in Excella gardens arguing about names we'd call our first daughter, the times I would use buying a toothbrush as an excuse to spend those 6 minutes with you, times you'd take me to Kimironko bus park to buy me popcorns, but these memories don't last long before that Thursday night when the universe decided to put miles between us. We stood under the streetlight when you played “ Ntundize by Bruce melodie” on your big brother's Infinix Hot series. Then we hugged for the last time, we promised each other a reunion but the universe had it's other plans.

Dear Fil,🎈

I know if you ever saw this, you'd be surprised to see your name here. I know you don't think I remember you as a Love because of how difficult our time together become. I won't lie, I have spent years trying to convince myself that what happened between was nothing but a mistake. But it wasn't. It was Messy. It was painful. It was Ugly. And it was LOVE still.

When I met you, you were hurting. I thought if I loved you enough I could fix you. I didn't know that trying to heal someone when you're still learning yourself can break you even more.

Through loving you, I discovered parts of myself I hadn't met before. You showed me things about my boundaries, my expectations, my fears, my capacity to love, and eventually, my capacity to choose myself.

So no, I don't look back and wish we had lasted but I also don't wish I had never met you.

Wherever life has taken you, I hope it has become gentler. I hope you have found the kind of love that doesn't require either person to destroy themselves to keep it alive.

Dear Val,🏵

I know we never really got the chance to become what we could have been, and honestly, that is something I will forever take the blame for. We were brief, but you meant more to me than I ever knew how to show.

I was afraid. Afraid of getting attached, afraid of you leaving, afraid of being hurt the way I had been hurt before. So instead of letting you get close, I kept my distance. I refused to talk, refused to fix things, and convinced myself that leaving first would hurt less than being left.

I am sorry I let my past get in the way of what we could have been. You never deserved to carry the weight of wounds you did not cause. I wish I had let you love me without constantly preparing for you to leave. I wish I had let you keep me warm instead of pushing you away. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had just been brave enough to stay.

Thank you for loving me, even when I did not know how to let myself be loved. I am sorry, V. I truly am.

Dear Abu♡,

After all the times I thought love meant loosing, surving, learning and putting myself back together, somehow you came along and made me want to stay. You made me feel like I don't have to rehearse Goodbyes while I am saying Hello!

I love you in the quiet ways too. In the ordinary days, the silly moments, the little routines, the comfort of knowing you are there. I love that you have become part of my everyday life, not just some beautiful story I tell people about. You make me feel something I haven't felt in a long time. Not just loved. Lucky.

It's like somehow, after all the wrong turns, I ended up exactly where I was supposed to be and I don't want to take that for granted.

ILoveYou Abu. More than I sometimes know how to say without becoming embrassingly emotional. So, I'll say it like this: Thank you for being the bone the Universe finally threw me.🤍

Thank you for the inspiration❤️.

Obviously, I opened the chat.

I was not prepared for the amount of homo/transphobia sitting comfortably in those replies. Someone literally said, “I would look for sex workers and close them in the room with him for 30 days. If he comes back gay, naba ndeba”

Yoh! Isn't that sexual abuse? 💀 And aren't we supposed to have a reaction to that?

Rero kuko ntajya nsobanukirwa where all this hatred comes from, I decided to ask a very direct question:

And these were some of the answers.

If someone actually crosses your boundaries or makes an unwanted sexual move on you, then deal with that person. You don't get to turn one person's behaviour into a reason to hate an entire collective. Being gay does not automatically mean someone wants you. Gay people can respect boundaries just like straight people can. And if someone doesn't, you address their behaviour. Simple.

But there is something else I notice in this kind of reaction. Some men seem deeply uncomfortable with the idea of being desired by another man. And sometimes I wonder whether part of that fear comes from suddenly imagining themselves on the receiving end of behaviour women have complained about forever.

Another person said,

In my opinion, Children learning that LGBTQ+ people exist is not the same thing as telling children to become LGBTQ+. And questions about sports, bathrooms and gender policies can be discussed without treating every trans person as a danger or pretending that one policy automatically represents every trans perosn everywhere. Trans people should be able to use toilets that match their gender without being treated as threats. Using a bathroom is about meeting a basic human need, not gaining access to other people's bodies.. The same standards of privacy, consent and respectful behaviour should apply to everyone, and anyone who harasses or assaults someone should be held accountable, regardless of whether they are trans or cisgender.

Sports can also be discussed through fair, evidence-based rules that take age, level of competition, safety and the specific sport into account. But those conversations should not be used to exclude or humiliate trans people as a group. Trans people deserve the same opportunity to participate, belong and enjoy sport as everyone else.

Then another one said

This one genuinely made me laugh. Is being gay the end of someone's ambitions?

Because I have never submitted a CV and been asked “So, what are your qualifications and also, which gender are you sexually attracted to?” The doctor treating me has never had to tell me who they sleep with before prescribing my medication. The pilot flying a plane doesn't need to say, “Welcome aboard, I'm your pilot and, by the way, I had sex with a man/woman last week”

Being gay is not a career.It is not a replacement for becoming a doctor, businessperson or pastor. It is one aspect of someone's life. And just because something doesn't make sense to you does not mean it deserves your dislike.

And here comes another

Acceptance ariko with conditions? Because if two women kissing is suddenly acceptable but two men kissing is disgusting, then this is not really about homosexuality. It sounds a lot more like the sexualization of women and the policing of men's masculinity.

And then we have:

The funny part is that wigs, makeup, heels and elaborate cosmetics have all existed in men's fashion and history long before today's gender rules decided what men were “supposed” to look like and somehow we have reached a world where a person's ability to negotiate a business deal is supposedly determined by whether they wear a wig. what's wrong with Soft voices??

Then, someone said:

A Dick has biological functions. Urination. Sexual reproduction. Pleasure. None of those functions comes with a divine instruction saying, “And this must only ever be used with a Kitty”

Alsooo,

Being transgender isn't about randomly choosing what you want to be, And the idea that someone would go through all the social pressure, judgment and discrimination that can come with being trans simply because they “could have been anything they wanted” completely misses the point. Ubundi se, if being anything you want is supposedly the conclusion here, why are you treating it like an insult? You just described someone as having strong belief and faith in themselves. So what exactly are you praising here: tthre courage to live as themselves, or criticizing them for actually doing it?

Then Finally,

I guess this 👇🏾 answers the ones above better

Why does someone else's sexuality make you angry enough to threaten them, shame them, “correct” them, nibindi byinshi??

It's almost 2 am reka njye kurya even though I still don't have an answer to my original question.

Muaaahhhhhhhh😘 Ndabakunda🫶🏾

Soooo…This might seem a little ( I know it's a lot) unrealistic. Some of these things I have never seen them anywhere before and others are the little pieces I saw from some places and loved ( for those that I didn't see anywhere, I tried my best to describe them to Ai so it can help me visualise them). So Here we go.

A. INDOORS

1. I WANT A TINY HOUSE WITH NO DOORS INSIDE.

I want a very tiny house with no doors inside kuburyo wherever I'll be in the house nzajya mba ndeba inzu yose. Plus I always see myself living alone and I don't want kugira ubwoba ikintu kiguye in another room.

1. A READING NOOK.

I would prolly place it next to the window, so that I can read with a beautiful view and some fresh airrr.

B. OUTDOORS

This is where it gets REALLLLY UNREALISTIC. I want very very big outdoors, so that on birthdays, or different occasions abantu bajye baba bisanzuye. I wouldn't be packing all of them in my ka tiny house.

1. A BIG OUTDOOR KITCHEN.

I want this huge beautiful open self-contained kitchen outdoors, This would be for when there's parties, events or celebrations at home. We'd prepare meals from this kitchen and use it's dining table while eating.

1. THE OUTSIDE SITTING AREA

There's a coffee shop in Remera nabonye ifite a place like this🥹 and I want this in my future home. They have a way they fully close it and turn it into a movie theatre. This would be a sitting place for when I have people over or I want fresh air.

1. A PORTABLE FIRE PIT

I want a portable fire pits. The one next to my reading nook and another one outdoors.

1. AN OUTSIDE BATHROOM

1. SWINGS

Nabuze amafoto ya the actual swings that I want but I want them

1. A BASKETBALL HOOK.

For when my Baby would be around. Not a big court just enough space to dribble and shoot.

Ngayo nguko let me go look for cash twubake inzu

I was watching an interview from 3 years ago on MIE and the girl in the interview was being accused of being a lesbian because she posts her girl best friend every now and then. This reminded me of how many times I and my friends were called “ Lesbians” I don't mind being called a lesbian and there is absolutely nothing wrong with being one. But assuming someone's sexuality because they have a close friendship? Crazy.

The thing that bothers me even more is that we somehow made friendships dependent on gender and sexuality. Two girls can't be deeply affectionate without being accused of secretly being together, while a girl and a boy can't be genuinely close without everyone assuming they are sleeping together.

But friendship can be intimate too. A friend can hold you when you're falling apart, kiss your cheek before you leave, know every little detail about your life, celebrate your birthday like it is their own, and be the person you call first when something happens. None of that automatically makes the friendship romantic or sexual.

But friendship can be intimate too. A friend can hold you even when you're not falling apart, kiss you, know every little detail about your love, dance with you in the kitchen, write a whole article about you, have you as her phone's wallpaper, and celebrate your birthday like it's their own. None of that automatically makes the friendship sexual.

I think we have forgotten that there are different ways to love people. You can have a person who is incredibly important to you without wanting to date them. You can be physically affectionate without wanting sex. You can choose someone, prioritise them, miss them and love them deeply while the relationship remains completely platonic and honestly, I think that is the part we are losing. We are becoming so suspicious of closeness that we don't know how to simply let two people love each other as friends anymore.

Soooo….. is everyone really having sex with their friends? Or have we just become so used to shallow connections that we can't recognize deep love without sexualizing it?

1. Lining Up Before Entering Class

I thought we left this in lower primary.

We weren't supposed to enter the classroom before the teacher arrived. I particularly don't miss Thursdays, because we had Swahili after lunch and this teacher would sometimes arrive 20 minutes late while we stood outside under the sun like we had committed a crime.

And of course, we weren't supposed to talk, I remember they once saw one of my classmates smiling bamuha igihano cyo gukora muri Jardin agakuramo ibyatsi akoresheje intoki ze😭

2. Couvrette

This one is personal, when we arrived at school, they would give us a white sheet called a couvrette that we had to put over our bed after making it so that all the beds looked identical. Wagira ngo we were in a psycho ward 🤭 rero these couvrette had different numbers and sometimes, while distributing them, the matron would make a mistake and write the wrong number on yours. And guess who would pay for it? YOUUUU.

And if you forgot to put your couvrette on your bed, or you washed it and it hadn't dried yet, You were going to do punishment with your mother( the school mother)

3. Carrying Dishes

Why did a Senior 1 or any child have to carry a dish of rice or sweet potatoes that was almost bigger than them, a cannette full of hot igikoma or tea😒.

4. Friendships

If they saw you holding hands with another girl, they would tell you to hold hands for 24 hours. Or you'd get into trouble.

5. Showering dress code.

Okay, let me first crash out. The amount of spankings I received because I didn't wear that specific thing to go shower...

How do I even explain it to you? Rero you had kwambara igitenge kirekire kuva mu gatuza kugeza kubirenge, then ugashyiraho a towel ugahisha your shoulders.

And if you got it wrong? Inkoni zarakubonaga noneho uvuye koga.

6. Sitting Manners

Dare sit with one leg on top of the other.Ha! Suddenly you're a hoe.

“You need men.” “You were not raised well.” “ You're pleasuring yourself” inshuro zose nashyize ukuguru ku kundi iyo pleasure ntabwo ndayumva😭

You were supposed to sit with both legs together and your arms placed properly on top.

7. Putting Your Hands in Your Pockets

We were given skirts with Pockets that We NEVER had gushyiramo amaboko. Noneho if they found that pocket torn, they would call for a quick assembly kuko putting your hands mu mifuka meant Masturbating. Some of us didn't even know what that word meant at the time.

8. Unnecessarily Checking Our Pockets

You could be peacefully walking around and suddenly the matron would stop you. “Remove everything from your pockets.” even if they found a petit mot yanditseho Happy birthday, you and the person who wrote “Good morning” to you were now in serious trouble.

I remember someone was once sent home because they had a petit mot that didn't even contain anything serious. It was basically some happy birthday message.

9. Stopper Socks 😭

We were not allowed to wear stopper sock or socks that were “too long.”

And during preps, we weren't allowed to wear socks muri sandales. If they caught you wearing ibipapa or babouche outside the dorm, they would confiscate them. And then you'd walk barefoot until the dorms opened again.

10. Having a Talent Apparently Meant Becoming Catholic

If you could sing really well, played piano, you had to go to Catholic. I had a friend who played guitar. She was the only person who could play it really well, so they rushed her into the Catholic choir.

11. The Billing

You would pay the normal school fees wagera on the gate, ishura “ uburezi gatolika” “ insurance” “ nta ndobo ugira” “ uwo mupira ntabwo ukigukwira gura uwundi” “ kwiyogoshesha” “…..” “…..”

12. The Nurses

God.

How do I even start this one? 🤦🏽‍♀️

I need a hug.

The nurses were mean. And sometimes I genuinely wondered whether they had gone to nursing school or whether they had simply been handed the position. We once had a very kind nun working there. She was understanding and sweet but they fired her in a month.

The infirmary would open during lunch and after night prayers. Whatever problem you had, there was a very good chance you were getting paracetamol. And if it wasn't paracetamol, they would tell you that you missed home, that you were scared of a test or that you were seeking attention.

We were required to give our medicines to the nurse so she could keep them, and whenever we needed them, we would go to her office.Tell me why this nurse refused to give me MY OWN MEDICINE because apparently I was just scared of a test. She told me I shouldn't get a little pain and immediately run for medicine and gave me some other lame excuses. Mind you I brought these medicines from home.

13. Carrying Baskets Before Going Outside 😭

They would open the dorms at 5 p.m. when there was no sports, and at 5:25 p.m. when there was sports. Then, ten minutes later, they would come knocking on the doors telling us to go outside, whoever got out at that time was safe. Then five minutes later, they would come back for whoever was still inside and you had to bring a basket to get out.

If you had lost your bucket, you would use the baskets other people had brought to go clean the toilets and those enormous terraces.

14. Sleeping in the Basketball Court Until 10:30 a.m.

This was punishment and public humiliation combined. If the dorms were closed while you were still inside, whether you were wearing socks or had simply gone back to get the pen you forgot, you were finished.You would be forced to put your pajamas back on, carry your mattress and bed covers and go sleep in the middle of the basketball court. Wagira ibyago hakanyuraho umwarimu wivanga mu bintu

15. Closing the Toilets and the bathroom 😤

Somebody pass me a handkerchief. During studying days, if they saw you outside during study time, you could be punished by kneeling down, helping the kitchen staff gutora ibishyimbo, or carrying firewood.

Then after class, if we had clubs, debates, or Ndi Umunyarwanda discussions, you'd go looking for the toilet and find the matron standing right in front of the door.And the moment she saw you:

“MBONE UMUGONGO!” her famous line.

On Sundays or days off, during preps, they would sometimes let you use the toilet. But after that? You'd sit under the hot sun in the basketball court for however long remained before everyone else finished preps.

And WHY is this list getting longer before I have even started talking about the misogyny, patriarchy, and the way everything somehow centered men?

1. Arriving at School at Least Three Days Before the Beginning of the Term.

Other students would arrive at school on Sunday because school was restarting on Monday. Us? We had to be there before the weekend even started. And let’s not even talk about the prefects. Those ones arrived five or seven days earlier. We would spend the entire weekend cleaning, dukora muri Jardin,…….

2. The Prayers

We would wake up at 4 a.m. on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and basically every other day that had a special saint, event, or Catholic reason I probably never understood, just to go to Mass in the cold.

And praying before eating, before the first period, after break before studying, before lunch, after lunch before studying, before dinner, after dinner before heading to the dorms, we'd stand in the cold sing atleast 8 Catholic songs, say those prayers nka 8 kuburyo, at some point I genuinely wondered if God was keeping attendance because why were we reporting to Him this many times a day?

3. The Uniforms

Why did we wear a skirt that could comfortably accommodate two other people at the same time😩 And because the skirt was apparently determined to have absolutely no relationship with our skin, we had to put handkerchiefs in our pockets so that the skirt wouldn't come anywhere near our legs.

We were given two uniforms. Dare to wear Skirt 1 with Shirt 2 because the numbers were different and then you had to buy new uniforms.

And if you came to S4 in 2020, your uniform had to have “20” after the number. The amount of times I had to explain that I am a transfer student🤦🏽‍♀️.

And during weekends and preps, we were only allowed to wear a completely white jumper, Dare and bring umupira ufite ingofero you'll be called Ikihebe🤌🏽

4. Opening and Closing of the Dorm

I understand closing the dorms during weekdays. There were times when we didn't even get the chance to freshen up after classes before going to preps. Fine. I understand.

But why were the dorms closed THE WHOLE WEEKEND?( I am crushing out🤯)

On Saturdays, we woke up late and that’s 6 a.m, If we didn't have Mass, which was very, very rare. By 6:40 a.m the dorms would be closed, and maybe around 11 a.m., after the pre-tests, they would open them ONLY for the people who were cleaning. After cleaning bagahita bafunga until 3 p.m. if the nuns were in a good mood and 4 p.m. regularly.

So between 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., you had to wash the uniform you were going to wear to Mass, do sports and somehow sleep because this was basically the only day you were allowed to sleep during the day.

Sundays were even worse. We would only enter the dorm for about an hour after lunch and then head straight to preps. I don't even know why we had those big dorms😭

5. Not Speaking a Word After Night Prayers

We would finish praying around 8:30 p.m., depending on how fast we ate and cleaned the dishes. From that moment until the following morning, you were not allowed to say a single word. You were supposed to go to the toilet and then straight to bed.

If they caught you washing your uniform after night prayers, they would take your uniform AND your bucket. If you met a nun 30 minutes after prayers while heading to the toilet, prepare yourself for some very creative and abusive words. Bagufata uvuze which was called “gusakuza” ukajya kwicara hanze for nka 2 hours.

6. Being a “Mother”

Thank God I was a transfer student when I was supposed to become a mother because why is another struggling child responsible for mothering another struggling child?

“Teach them how to make their bed.”

“Why didn't they clean the dishes?”

“Your child is sick. Go wash them.”

And then if your nine “children” did something wrong, somehow YOU were responsible.

7. Never Having Time to Wash Our Clothes Yet Being Expected to Look Neat

We only had to wash our 2 shirts which we more everyday during the day, and our white T shirt that we wore in every prep and the rest of our clothes only on Saturdays 😭

8. The Anti-Fragrance Rule

Okay, fine. Don't bring perfumes to school. I can understand that but what was wrong with roll-ons? Deodorant?Antiperspirant?

Because there is a difference between banning perfume and banning anything that might prevent thirty teenagers from smelling like thirty teenagers.

9. Pre-Tests

What do you mean we have exams EVERY Wednesday afternoon and EVERY Saturday morning ariko after all Twaje kwiga and that's the only thing we do😭

And the funniest part is that while we already had pre-tests, we could still have another CAT during normal studying day.

10. Studying Even on “Day Offs”

Day Off apparently meant “ Uniforms Offs” It meant we could go to class without the normal uniform. By “without uniform,” I mean without the shirt and instead wearing a school T-shirt.

If you thought ko twagendaga twambaye imyenda isanzwe you're healing from the trauma gake gake.

And yes, we would only study before lunch, which at the time felt like the greatest luxury known to mankind. Ofcourse we had to wait ko 3 or 4 pm zigera so that they open the dorms

The list is long, might do a part 2 soon.

I had such a beautiful picture of you in my head. I genuinely thought that by the time I became an adult, I would have everything together. I would wake up in a beautiful house, and not drink igikoma(ofcourse this was a big deal), get into my pink car, and drive off to do adult things. Perhaps I would go buy everything my mom refused to buy for me muri Expo. Or hangout with my Pilot bestie Paula. Honestly, you sounded like a very luxurious experience.

So, Adulthood, I have to ask: where exactly is my pink Range Rover? Because according to the plans I had at twelve, I should be driving it by now. I should have a beautiful apartment, a wardrobe that requires its own room, and enough money to casually say, “Let us go to Paris this weekend”. Instead, I am calculating whether something is a need, a want, or simply a terrible financial decision.

And the funniest part is that I thought you would come with certainty. I thought becoming an adult meant finally knowing who I was, what I wanted, where I was going, and what I was supposed to do with my life. Yet here I am, changing my mind, questioning my decisions, discovering new things about myself, and disappearing when someone asks “ where do you see yourself in 5 years” Ah! What do you mean five years😭 mbaza the next 2 hours.

But I will admit, Dearest Adulthood, you have given me things I never knew I needed. You gave me the freedom to choose my own people, make my own decisions, fall in love, be loved, walk away, start again, discover myself, Be me, love me and build a life that actually belongs to me. You taught me that growing up is not necessarily becoming the person I imagined as a child. Sometimes it is becoming someone that little girl would have been proud to meet.

You are certainly not as dreamy as I imagined. You came with responsibilities, uncertainty, heartbreak, bills, awkward decisions, and moments where I sit and question myself if there's something I am doing wrong and genuinely wonder whether there is an adultier adult I can call. But you also came with independence, self discovery, deeper connections, better boundaries, Loving souls, beautiful friends and the strange but beautiful realization that I am allowed to create my own definition of a good life.

So, Dear Adulthood, I suppose I owe you an apology for judging you too quickly. You are not exactly what I ordered, but perhaps you are still worth keeping. I would, however, like to revisit the matter of the pink Range Rover.

A slightly confused adult who is still waiting for the luxurious package she ordered at Eight,

N🤍

I have been trying to find a softer way to say this, but perhaps the truth only knows how to arrive as itself.

I am sorry.

I am sorry for all the times happiness keeps stole me away from you.

Every time life becomes beautiful again, I disappear. My phone lights up, someone sends me a reel, another message comes in,it's like someone says, "Come outside," and suddenly I am gone. I leave the house with a laugh that echoes down the corridor, kiss your cheek too quickly, tell you I'll be back soon, and then I become difficult to reach. You call my name from another room and I answer, "One minute," while smiling at something on my screen that wasn't important enough to remember the next day.

I give my happiest hours away so carelessly.

I spend entire afternoons laughing with people who make my stomach hurt from joy. We text until midnight. We talk about everything and nothing. I reply in seconds. I never run out of stories to tell them. Somewhere in the same city, same house, you are there, and I tell myself we'll talk later, as though later has ever been promised to either of us.

Then life changes its mind.

The laughter ends. The conversations become quieter. Someone leaves. Someone disappoints me. My heart remembers how fragile it is. And without thinking, my feet know exactly where to go.

Back to you.

The same girl who rushed out of the house glowing returns without knocking. She doesn't have clever explanations this time. She comes back with no pictures to show. She doesn't have stories. She doesn't even have words. She has swollen eyes, trembling hands, and tears she can no longer hold back.

You never ask why I remembered your room only after remembering my pain.

You simply make space.

Your arms do something I have never seen the rest of the world accomplish. They never hesitate. They never ask whether I deserve them today. They never remind me how unreachable I was yesterday. They only hold me as though grief is lighter when carried by two people.

You make my bed and wipe my tears “ Pole mwana wa” , You stroke my hair until breathing becomes easier. You ask me if I wanna eat something. You pretend not to notice how guilty I look. Somehow, in your hands, heartbreak always becomes survivable.

I wonder how many mothers quietly accept this arrangement. Their daughters belong to the world when they are happy, but return home when they are broken. And somehow, they never lock the door.

I wish I loved you with the same urgency that I love everyone else when life is going well. I wish I remembered that joy deserves to be shared with you too. That you should hear my loudest laughs, not only my loudest sobs. That you deserve the version of me that dances in the kitchen, not just the one that cannot get out of bed.

I don't want our relationship to become a hospital that I visit only when I am injured.

I want it to be a home I never really leave and I am glad I am not too late.

So if tomorrow I crack a funny Joke before opening my tiktok, if I sit beside you while laughing at something too silly to explain, if I tell you about my happiest days before they become memories, know that I am trying.

Trying to love you before I need you.

Trying to remember that the safest place I know should not only witness my storms, but my sunshine too.

I am sorry, Mama.

Not because you ever asked me to apologize but because your forgiveness has always arrived before my apology did.

FOUR YEARS.

That’s longer than all of high school. Longer than we spent accompanying each other to the toilet during break times, revising for saturday pre-tests, planning what braids we will get after high school and swearing we’d be each other’s maids of honor.

We didn’t fight. We didn’t drift because of drama. Life just… happened. She had a job in Kigali. I went in Uni. We said “we should link” every December and never did. The kind of friendship that doesn’t end, it just pauses.

I remember my first birthday after high-school, she was working at Simba Kicukiro, she told me to take anything I wanted she would pay. I remember grabbing some Samosa and Inyange Apple juice we sat outside Simba as we ate and I was telling her about me wanting to go to Uni, the number of times I visited Simba Kicukiro in my gap year because of her are countless

So……..

I was busy doing the laundry because I had an exam the next day that I was supposed to be reading for, I wasn't supposed to be on WhatsApp but somehow I found myself there, this way you see someone’s status updat at “ à l'instant” so I had to view it. That's when I realised. I started shaking, this way you're trembling on a sunny day. At first I couldn't believe what I just saw.

The memories I had of Auntie started playing in my mind, the visiting days at school, the Christmas of 2022, the Gutora campaign,…. Soon as I got out of the exam hall, packed 2 or 3 Diras and headed straight to Kigali- Masaka.

I found her outside the house for a moment my brain glitched.

We were 17 again.

The way she stands. The way she covered her Mouth when she saw me, The way she hid her pain behind her smile, the way my heart jumped when I saw her, the way we always called each other Mathieu. This felt like one of those days when we would meet at school after a 2 weeks break, the excitement, the love the stories,…..

But we weren’t really 17.

Because, we weren’t in those navy blue skirts stuffed with toilet papers . We were not bald. I was in a long diras, sweating. She was in a black dress that I know she hated, We didn't have a welcome test to study for, We were adults. And we were at a funeral.

We hugged. And I broke.

People probably thought I was only crying because we lost a mother but I would have also cried if I saw her at Simba for a coffee. I would have cried if we bumped into each other at Kigali Heights in jeans and sneakers. I would have cried if “ Let's link up soon “ made it out of chat.

Because I missed her. God, I mmissed my Mathieu.

I missed the version of me that only exists when she’s around. The girl in the navy skirt who thought friendship was a permanent thing. Not this… fragile, adult thing you have to schedule. The girls who sat at the back of the class in preps sharing secrets and jokes, the girls who held hands to a mandatory mass at 5am.

After the burial, we went home together, we shared dinner this time it wasn’t Akawunga or Rice, we slept in the same bed again, we also slept late AGAIN not because we were waiting for the nuns to finish the inspection so that we can share a bed but because we waited for visitors to leave and we were scrolling a little on our socials.

The morning after, we said Goodbyes( they were as hard as they have always been or maybe even harder) we promised each other not to wait for a funeral to meet again ( I badly wanna keep this promise)

I miss her. I miss her. I miss us in those navy skirts and I’m not waiting for another funeral to say it again.

I don’t have a clean ending. We haven’t met again yet. It’s only been two weeks but I have a message for her.

P.S If you’re reading this, Mat, I’m free this Friday. Maybe we can go to Bunz.Just us. Mandazi’s on me.

In 2016, I did not have Facebook. I did not have Instagram. I did not even have WhatsApp. What I had was a tiny Huawei phone that my mom dashed after upgrading to Tecno. It was touchscreen, it came with a little pencil, and for all I know its relationship with the internet was purely theoretical.

So while everyone else is posting photos, I have nothing to contribute except a collection of old notebooks and the realization that maybe that's also okay.

Because my ten-year reflection is not going to be about how much taller I have become, how much weight I have gained or lost, how long my hair has grown, how my face has changed, or whether my skin is lighter or darker than it was back then.

My ten-year reflection is about words. About thoughts. About wishes. About dreams that were so serious to a twelve-year-old girl and so hilarious to a twenty-something-year-old woman.

In 2016, I was in Primary Six and very busy deciding between Joining Nyange Girls or staying at KPS, I would have wanted to stay at KPS but God forbid a girl wanted to know what it felt like in a boarding school, lol.

At the time, my cousins and I were obsessed with Nickelodeon. I was busy doing “ 100 things to do before high-school “ inspired by a series that gave 100 tasks of unrealistic things okay maybe they are realistic but not in Rwandan schools because what do you mean you're staying quiet the whole day at school? Unless you wanted some correcting( Rwandans know what I mean)

And there's this page

The girl who wrote it was convinced that secondary school would be exactly like Victorious. She thought friendships would be magical, every day would be an adventure, and people would probably break into song every now and then.

The reality? 5 am cold showers, The nuns that nearly gives you a heart attack, MARKS, in movies they care about everything but studies and marks. I should have known that those posters in the ways wouldn't be the “ LET IT SHINE” but “Periodic marks”

Another thing I desperately wanted was to study outside Kigali. Not for educational reasons. Not because I was seeking personal growth.

I wanted the drama.

I wanted to call my mother and casually announce, "I'm in Nyabugogo," before boarding a bus back to school somewhere far away. I had seen how students returning from boarding schools were treated. They arrived carrying bags, stories, and a certain mysterious importance. Twelve-year-old me wanted that energy immediately.

I was also counting down the years until I could wear eyeliner and maybe a tiny bit of red lipstick. Growing up in an SDA household, this felt less like just makeup but nta nubwo nzi uko nabivuga, applying a black eyeliner felt like liberation. In my imagination, adulthood was mostly just owning eyeliner , applying it and not wiping it before knocking at the door back home.

I also found a note from my P6 deskmate. We weren't allowed to talk in class, so we were chatting in a book. We were talking about the latest episode of a soap called “ la Triomphe d'amour “romance and agreed that we would never French kiss our future partners because it was disgusting and, in our professional opinion, not very Rwandan.

The funniest part? That same deskmate is now married and has a beautiful daughter.

I remember that I also saved money and bought an iPod that nobody knew of except my deskmate kuko we used to listen to “ Naramukundaga by King James” on our way home.

Ten years really is enough time to change your mind about a lot of things.

What makes me smile most is how confidently wrong I was about almost everything.

But I was also wonderfully hopeful.

She filled notebooks with plans. She wrote in giant letters that took up half the page. She dreamed about high school before she had ever seen one. She imagined freedom before she knew what freedom actually meant. She thought the future would look like television.

And honestly? I am glad she did.

Because ten years later, I don't have a photograph to post. I can't show you the girl I was.

But I can show you her dreams.

And if you ask me, those survive time much better than pictures do. ❤️

And for US? June is the month of remembering how to take up space.

It’s the month we trace back to bricks and voices that said “enough.” It’s the month we count the years since the first time we saw someone like us and didn’t look away. It’s cookouts with chosen family. It’s the text you recieve at 11am : “Happy LOVER'S day It’s the quiet bravery of existing, again, for another year.

June doesn’t ask you to be loud if you can’t. It doesn’t ask you to be out if it’s not safe. June just asks you to stay. To make it to July. June is the auntie who pulls you aside and slips you bus fare when nobody’s looking. June is the balcony at night when the city is finally cool and you can breathe.

If I had to paint June, I wouldn’t use one color. I’d spill all of them or maybe Seven. June is the sky five minutes before it rains ; too many shades to name. June wears sequins to buy tomatoes. June laughs too loud in quiet rooms and calls it survival. June is soft and sharp at the same time. June refuses to apologize for taking up the whole sidewalk.

So yeah. It’s June.

So if June means something good to you, I hope you stay close to that feeling. I hope you let it sit with you without questioning it too much. And I hope this month treats you gently, in the simplest way: by letting you be exactly who you already are.

Happy June.I hope you find your people, even if that’s just you, in the mirror, getting through another day.

Happy June.

To everyone who needs it most.

They told me that if I wasn’t a virgin, I shouldn’t go around shaming my parents for not raising me good,that I could atleast keep it a secret, because “good girls” don’t use these things. Another nun accused me of bringing tampons to pleasure myself and use periods as an excuse, and made me swear it wasn’t true. Only those who survived nun-led schools know the art of being accused of the unknown and forced to admit Even after I explained, they didn’t believe me. They threw my tampons away and forced me to buy pads from their shop,

As I picked up my luggage, questions crossed my mind. Why was I not allowed to do what gives my body comfort? Why did my body feel like it belonged to them, not me?

That day, I realized that virginity was never really about me.

I grew up in a world where virginity was treated like a family heirloom; something delicate, precious, and most importantly, something that didn’t belong to me. It was spoken about in hushed tones, protected by strict rules, and monitored by everyone except the person whose body it was attached to.

From a young age, girls are taught that their value is tied not to kindness, intelligence, or dreams; but to an invisible state between their legs. Virginity is presented as a gift, a treasure, a preuve de respectabilité. But it’s a gift you’re not allowed to open yourself.

Virginity, as society defines it, is less about morality and more about ownership. Women’s bodies became guarded spaces, monitored for signs of “purity,” as if we were sealed envelopes.

What’s interesting is how virginity is treated like a moral badge only for women. A boy who has sex is often congratulated, teased in a celebratory way, or simply seen as growing up. A girl who does the same is suddenly reckless, cheap, or “spoiled.” The act is the same, but the social consequences are completely different.

Virginity is tied to family honor. A girl’s sexual choices are treated as a reflection of her parents’ success or failure. Imagine carrying the weight of an entire lineage on a concept that isn’t even medically accurate. The so-called “hymen test” has been debunked repeatedly, yet it still controls lives, marriages, and reputations.

When women speak openly about sexuality, they’re accused of destroying culture or imitating the West.Controlling women’s bodies is not an ancient tradition—it’s a social structure designed to maintain male dominance.

None of this means that choosing to remain a virgin is wrong. Personal values, religion, and emotional readiness are all valid reasons to delay or avoid sex. The problem begins when virginity stops being a personal choice and becomes a social obligation. When a girl is not asked what she believes or what she wants, but is instead told that her worth has already been defined for her.

Real empowerment is not telling women to lose their virginity to prove they are modern, nor is it forcing them to keep it to prove they are respectable. Real empowerment is allowing women to decide what intimacy means to them—without fear, without shame, and without their decision being used as a measure of their humanity.

A society that measures a woman’s value by her sexual history is not protecting her; it is reducing her. And a value that can be “lost” in a single act was never real value to begin with.

I once dated someone who had a very good relationship with their ex. And to be honest, I respected that. They were friends in a genuine way. They spoke often, they understood each other, they had ended things peacefully.

I was never against that.

Why would someone be afraid of their partner being on good terms with an ex who did not harm them? Sometimes an ex is simply someone who shared a part of your life, someone who taught you things before you met the next person. Je comprends ça.

Their friendship never bothered me. Not at all.

Until one day the ex called and asked my partner to go visit. That was fine with me. Truly. I had no issue with that.

Then the request changed.

She asked my partner to stay the night.

It was not an emergency. It was not some serious situation that required comfort at midnight. It was simply a suggestion. Stay over.

My partner told me they were going.

So I said something simple. I told them that spending the night there made me uncomfortable. I said they could go during the day, spend as much time as they wanted and come back in the evening.

I was not asking them to cut off their friendship. I was not asking them to choose between us. I didn’t say I hate their ex, I wasn't saying they shouldn't meet. I was asking for a small boundary.

But instead of a pause, instead of a moment of reflection, the response came quickly. They said they were going anyway. They reminded me that they had known their ex before they had known me. They told me how many people they let go because they questioned that friendship. And then they said something that stayed with me.

They told me I was becoming a “TYPICAL GIRLFRIEND.”

As if expressing a boundary meant I suddenly disliked the ex. As if wanting a little distance meant jealousy. But that was never the truth. I did not hate the ex. I did not fear betrayal. I did not even mind if they spent an entire day together.

What I was asking for was much smaller than that.

A little boundary. A little respect. Une petite réserve.

A moment where my feelings could exist inside the decision.

Because love, atleast to me, has always meant consideration.

When someone you love tells you something makes them uncomfortable, you do not immediately dismiss it. You do not rush to defend yourself.

You pause.

You think about them.

You weigh their feelings alongside your own freedom. Not because they are controlling you, but because their emotional safety matters to you.

That pause is love. Without it, the words “I love you” start to feel strangely empty. Because to be loved is not simply to hear the sentence.

To be loved is to know that somewhere in another person’s mind, your feelings are part of their thinking.

Love is not measured by how loudly someone claims you.

It is measured by how carefully they move around your heart.

We sat among the greens, surrounded by plants, the breeze kept passing through the leaves as if it had also decided to join the meeting. It cooled everything down. There were people around us, not so many that you felt lost in the crowd, but enough to make the place feel alive. Surrounded. Safe. The kind of safety that comes from knowing you are not alone in the world, even when nobody knows your name.

Then we started talking.

This is always my favorite part.

Conversations in the circle never begin like formal discussions. Nobody says, “Today’s topic is…” like we are in a conference room somewhere. Instead the ideas arrive the way good conversations usually do: slowly, curiously, like friends knocking on a door.

We talked about being yourself. About acceptance. About the strange pressure people feel to define themselves for others. Do you have to explain who you are and what or who you love in order to deserve people’s love? Do you need to present a neat definition of yourself before people can accept you? Or can you just exist in all your confusing, beautiful complexity and still be worthy?

These are not small questions. These are the kind of questions that make you sit back in your chair and stare at the carpet for a second.

Then the conversation moved to support systems.

What are your support systems? Who are the people who hold you together when life becomes too heavy to carry alone?

This is when someone said something that immediately caught my attention. They said that when a person enters your life, they should be like jewelry.

Jewelry.

I loved that comparison immediately. Jewelry does not come into your life to weigh you down. Nobody buys a necklace thinking, “I hope this becomes a burden.” Jewelry exists to add beauty. It highlights what is already there. It brings something extra, something bright.

So if someone is entering your life, they should add something good. They should bring something beautiful.

And suddenly I was sitting there realizing that this idea quietly solved a problem I had struggled with for years.

For the longest time, I tried to fit everyone into my life. Everyone. I treated friendship like unlimited storage space. The result was that I had too many versions of myself walking around at the same time. Version three with one friend. Version six with another. Version nine somewhere else entirely. Sometimes I even worried that if the friend who knew version three accidentally met the friend who knew version six, the whole system would collapse like badly arranged furniture.

And of course there were the draining people. The ones who arrived in your life not like jewelry, but like heavy backpacks you never asked to carry.

Growing up, we were always taught that life must be lived with others. Rwandan proverbs are very serious about this. We grew up hearing things like “Umutwe umwe wifasha gusara,” reminding us that one head alone can go mad without advice from others. Community is important. Friendship is important. Living among people is important.

But nobody ever explained the other half of the lesson.

Nobody told us that not everyone deserves a permanent seat in your life.

Nobody taught us how to choose people.

That is why this space feels so important to me. I have never learned about myself, about friendship, or about relationships; sexual or nonsexual; in such an open and honest way before joining the circle. People share their stories without pretending to be perfect. Their past boldness. Their mistakes. Their regrets. Their wisdom.

There is something deeply generous about someone saying, “I fell into this trap once. Please do not fall into the same one.”

We also grew up hearing “Umuhana avayo ntumuhana ajyayo,” the idea that you can't give someone an advice before they mess up. But is there anything better than learning from someone’s real life experience.

Proverbs give you wisdom. People give you maps.

And honestly, how generous can people be if not like this?

At the end of the afternoon we all stood up slowly, like people leaving a place they were not quite ready to leave. The breeze still moving gently through the leaves, the café still full of strangers living their own small stories.You realize that safe spaces are not always loud or dramatic. Sometimes they are simply a purple yarn carpet, chairs around it , a few thoughtful people, and the rare permission to be fully yourself without explanation. This Circle is a reminder that somewhere in this big, complicated city, there are still places where people gather only to understand each other a little better.

I walked away carrying something new in my mind. I kept thinking about that idea of people being like jewelry. Maybe life is not about collecting as many people as possible. Maybe it is about choosing the ones who add something beautiful. And as I stepped back into the busy streets of Kigali, I realized that the circle itself had already become one of those rare pieces of jewelry in my life.

I learned that love doesn’t always arrive as a forever, sometimes it comes as a lesson, sometimes as a mirror, sometimes as a beautiful distraction that still leaves a trace of lumière in your chest.

I discovered that I am both the writer and the story; I am allowed to edit, to pause, to rewrite scenes that didn’t feel like home, et à choisir une fin qui me ressemble vraiment.

I also learned to sit with my silence without trying to fill it, to drink my tea slowly, to listen to my own thoughts, to become my own safe place before asking anyone else to be.I realized that healing is not loud.it is soft, repetitive, almost invisible; like watering a plant every morning and trusting that one day it will bloom.

Lovely 22, I want to love without shrinking, to speak without fear trembling in your voice, to welcome people with open hands but keep my peace protected like something sacred. I want you to choose joy on purpose, to laugh without measuring it, to rest without guilt, to romanticize even the ordinary days because they are also a blessing.

22, i want you to become a home,not just a temporary shelter, but a place where your own soul feels safe, warm, seen, et profondément aimée.

Deatest 22, I wish you growth.I wish you patience. And I wish that you choose you; again and again, with grace☆

There are things I have learned to say out loud, and there are things that still sit quietly in my throat, like prayers I am not sure how to finish and this is one of them.

I have always known your love as something steady; like the way you would fix my clothes before I left the house, or the way you noticed when my voice sounded different on the phone. You have loved me in the practical ways, in the ways that keep a life standing. And I have held onto that love as proof that I am safe in this world.

But lately, I have been wondering something small that somehow feels very big.

I have been wondering if your love for me would remain the same if my life does not look the way you imagined it would.

If one day, I walk into a room holding a hand you did not expect me to hold; would you still see me first, before anything else?

If my wedding day looks different from the pictures you may have quietly carried in your mind; if the music is different, if the traditions bend a little, if the vows are spoken in a way you did not grow up with; would you still come and sit in the front row, your eyes soft, your heart open, your hands ready to bless me?

Maa, I want a home. And I want children’s laughter in the mornings, small shoes by the door, and stories before bedtime. I want to raise gentle, kind human beings who know where they come from. The only difference is that the road to that life might not look exactly the way you expected. But Maa, if I am not the one who carries them, will you accept them as your grandkids?

I am still your daughter, the one who laughs too loud sometimes, who writes too much, who loves deeply and carefully and a little bit fearfully. None of that has changed. None of that will change.

But I am growing into a version of myself that is more honest, more whole, and more at peace. And in that growth, there are parts of me I hope I will never have to hide from you.

Because what I want, more than anything, is to live a life where I do not have to choose between being loved by you and being truthful about who I am.

So I am asking you gently, with all the respect and love I have always had for you:

If my life unfolds differently than you imagined… will you still walk beside me?Will you still call me your child with the same pride in your voice? Will you still love me, not the version of me you expected, but the one that is real?

I hope the answer is yes.

Because my love for you has never been conditional. It has always been yours, whole and unwavering.

With all my Love, Your Daughter ♡