Death by machete or death by gun ?
By Louise Uwacu, Special for US Daily Review

    Of all the controversial issues in America, my favorite has to be the Gun Rights and Gun Violence dramas. What can I say? I am from Rwanda. Ever since I came out of that horror movie story of a war, massacres and genocide that was brought to you by the international media, the survivor I was forced to become, has come to discover that: <Uwambaye ikirezi ntamenya ko cyera>. This is a sophisticated saying in KinyaRwanda, the language of Rwanda, that intends to communicate that He who is greatly blessed, is the one who does not really know or appreciate how supreme his blessings truly are.



    Yesterday it was Rwanda, in the not knowing and not appreciating zone. And today, this greatly blessed Nation, which does not know or appreciate how supreme their rights and liberties truly are – is today’s American people. Particularly those who have already been convinced into getting rid of your guns and letting your government be fully in charge of thy defense, thy self-defense and thy surviving. I seriously have very low admiration for the amount of trust you have placed into your government!



    Few will ever tell you that one day, one government, one somebody black or white might just have the genocidal idea of attacking a defenseless population and exterminating it for who knows what excuses!



    All my years after surviving Rwanda, I have been wondering what a huge difference it would have made in numbers of dead people, if we could have had an educated, trained and armed population. Ready to defend itself from the so-called regular, random daily incidents or from the highly organized tyranny of a dictatorship.



    I am not American, just North American now. But my new country of Canada, the quiet one, who always lets big brother America shine in all the wars we co-fight, does not say much about this gun issues either. So I have to look at things from my Rwandan side of life my experience, in order to find the audacity to question this new generation of Americans on their future United States of Dictatorship, as they seem to keep taking for granted their constitution. Without ever keeping a serious eye on their employee – the government – to check if they are truly respecting the Nation’s main values.



    I remember back in Rwanda, as a teenager, during that infamous genocide of 1994, my parents gave me a lot of money at some point. They said; just in case we get separated, here is the money you will use if you have to negotiate with your killers. They said; if I pay the killers a lot of money, I could live and if worst comes to worst, I could also pay them to shoot me with a gun and make sure they kill me with one bullet. Instead of the usual cheap death of being chop-chopped in pieces by a machete.



    Back then, of course I said thank you, and I felt so much luckier than the poor people’s children, who could not afford such luxuries and so you know how they died. But then again I thought to myself; couldn’t they have bought me a gun instead? Couldn’t they have sent me to Karate school already? Why oh why should I just have to accept my tragic fate? And only settle for these negotiations on the cost of my “chosen” path of torture to my final breath?



    So when I hear this new generation of Americans toying with their rights to have guns… I don’t even know what to say to them anymore. If I met one of you (and I don’t even know if we should meet)… I would just tell you that you are so deeply asleep dreaming of the “American Dream” that you have no time to notice how you are loosing it in broad day light, or in the senate, or through presidential signatures and so on… But I guess I can still wish you “Bon Voyage” on your way to dictatorship.

This has been a Tough Love letter to America, from a girl who survived war, massacres and genocide in Rwanda. Through the help of money, bribes, and zero humanity from the heavily armed.


By Louise UWACU. Author of <The Nightmare of a POSITIVISION*> and <The WRITIVIST* WAR is WRITE>. Talk Show Host and Executive Producer of U&I TALK SHOW. Based in Vancouver, Canada.




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