Dear Guy,
It has been a tough decision but after several
months of introspection and deliberation with partners and friends you made the
decision to leave your beloved Rwanda.
Several reasons have influenced your decision.
I only mention a few.
During your last visit in Europe you were
confronted with a serious health problem. This has been fixed but it made you
think about what, seen your age, could have happened or what can happen from
now on.
At fifty we all think that we still have a lot
of time to pursue goals and dreams. The above mentioned event made you realize
that the time guarantee expired and that you are living in surplus now, already
more than two years according to the doctors.
Your return to Rwanda was not that obvious but
you made your objectives clear to everyone.
During those last few months you were able to
finalize your proposals to professionalize the Rwandan dance field. You have
produced a debate paper, a road map and a comprehensive proposal for a full
time dance education. Those were based on an advanced insight since almost five
years. Now it is up to the decision makers to implement fully or partially what
has been proposed.
Seen your privileged contacts with decision makers,
build trough the Rwandan Embassies in The Hague and Brussels and several
dedicated local supporters, you are hopeful that those proposals will have a
chance to succeed.
On the field you created with a few colleagues
a local NGO and coupled thereto a dance creation and reflection center.
You should be happy that a few young dancers
will continue the NGO and that your colleague Wesley Ruzibiza from AmizeroK and
E.A.N.T Festival took over the studio campus. This guarantees that the
activities you were developing within a professional dance environment can
continue.
You were also running, together with E.A.N.T, a
dance education pilot program in nine schools spread over the country and seen
the positive reactions this program will continue.
You were able to work within existing companies
to focus on the quality of movement. Your only regret is that you were not
working more with dancers and companies instead of spending so much time relentless
writing proposals.
Now the time has come to take some distance.
You told your counterparts that if Rwanda calls you to implement your proposals
you will certainly pick up the phone and engage yourself for a determined time.
One always wants to see its’ own child growing up, is it not?
You told me lately that being born under the Flemish
towers, thrown between rivers and the beaches of the windy North Sea, a kind of
home sickness gradually nestled in your heart. We realize that once one leaves
the cradle there is a continuing unrest in someone’s mind. You were torn
between here and there but despite the climate change you said to need to re-experience
the four seasons before it is too late and time catches up with you.
Rwanda has a fixed place in your heart and faithful
as you are, people there will always be in that mind of you wherever you go. You
will continue to find ways to support what you have built there to preserve the
spirit of reconciliation and development of this little wonder in the middle of
that huge Africa. No one will stop you from thinking that dance has a role in
this. It is a Made in Rwanda product for export and internal consumption, you
always said.
Guy, your and Rwanda’s ways are breaking up,
perhaps temporarily but I know that you need to recharge your batteries in the
hope you can continue and hopefully discover new horizons.
Shall I tell them?
With your love to them all, Rwanda farewell.
Guy.
