Odiedo Stephen

   the Rwanda Genocide is an African Catastrophe. Africans continue to suffer the aftershocks of Rwanda Genocide The Kusi Ideas Festival has come and gone. Hosted at the swanky Intare Conference Arena the two day event was headlined by His Excellency Rwanda President Paul Kagame and graced by the luminaries of the African industrial, political and intellectual firmament. The Nation Media Group treated the audience at the conference centre and those online to the ideas of the saintly headlined speakers. Saintly because in their pre-event media blitz , the keynote speakers were haloed like the saints that the church used to halo as a marker of their sanctity and sacred beings. The keynote speakers and the select audience were the elite of Africa. These are the ideas merchants of the continent. Into the belly of the beast                http://odiedostephen.com/kwibuka-x-the-kusi-ideas-festival/     GE...

Remembering the victims, preventing Genocide You look aghast at the peremptory and righteous decrees, laws, regulations and fiats which daily come out of the government decree machine in Kigali, Rwanda and you shake your head at the sheer at the follies des grandeur of it all. You marvel at the shortness of human memory when you look at the strenuous attempts the rulers in Kigali are making to erase the past and rewrite history and you marvel at the breathtaking arrogance of it all. And then, when one has dismissed Kigali's shortsightedness there always comes something more out of Rwanda which makes one to think again. On 26 th September 2019, Rwanda welcomed the first group of refugees arriving in the country as asylum seekers from Libya.   These asylum seekers have travelled a traumatic journey to reach the calm and safety of kg, Rwanda. In 2017, the world watched riveted as reports filtered in from Libya of slave markets where South of the Sahara Africans were b...

http://odiedostephen.com/imanna-an-epic-poem-on-the-rwanda-genocide/ Rwanda 1994: it’s been 25 years of this abiding nightmare Apocalypse: When Rwanda looked deep into the heart of the abyss, the abyss looked deep into the heart of Rwanda I.            Th’ first surface to air missile shrieked straight Skywards over Kigali's sunset-red Skies ’n’ struck the Dassault falcon true at eight Twenty five. Th’ second missile struck for dead Home but moments after: the first one bled Out Rwanda, that missile a stab rending Th’ heart, th’ vitals - Rwanda’s dead. Life’s fled: Ablaze, the plane - all vitals torn, bleeding Ichor gushing is death: th’ state is exploding Stanza I of IMANNA an epic poem in Spenserian Stanza written to commemorate the Rwanda Genocide and remember its victims a quarter of a Century after the tragedy. Stanza 1 of IMANNA , the epic poem I have written on the Rwanda Genocide. ...