#RwoT ON HISTORY AND DEPRESSION IN RWANDA

Since some people have been dismissing our experiences, can we take some time to understand how we came to this situation?
#Thread

Despite what many think, depression isn't a new concept in Rwanda.

@IntwaliBruce @Nyac_juru_jesse

Although it doesn't have a precise technical term, it is widely recognized as "agahinda gakabije". In precolonial Rwanda, a person going through depression was called "ingunge" as in "Runaka yabaye ingunge".

Ingunge is obviously derived from...

the verb "kwigunga" (staying lonely/self-isolating) and it's major symptom of depression.

So in order to fight it, Rwandans had developed a way of life that limited loneliness as much as possible. They believed that being there for each other, having a community around everyone-

would reduce pain as it was shared. The aim was to kill it with joy, love,pride and community warmth. "Ibitaramo/folk parties" were very essential in bringing people together and mourning (ibiriyo/kwirabura) lasted much longer and drew more people around the mourning family.

Families were much larger and clans had developed special ties with one another.

And because "agahinda k'inkoko kamenywa n'inkiko yatoreyemo" there was always that special friend (mwanywanye) whom you could tell what you could not tell anyone.

It maybe wasn't perfect but it was something, at least. Then came colonialism.

Colonialism committed 2 major crimes against the Rwandan people. The 1st was, as in all colonized countries, breaking and annihilating the national culture. "Itorero" was the backbone of the culture.

When it was banned, our culture lost its thought and form and it only survived in a few remnants of its form like "gusaba no gukwa" which also lost their meaning with time.

The 2nd crime was the institutionalization of arbitrarily assigned fake ethnicity which sought to...

to divide Rwandans. Mass gatherings remained only under political and religious forms. The politics was divisive and the religion was alienating, suppressing/replacing Rwandan ways with Middle Eastern and Roman ways.

The social fabric was torn apart and the seeds of mistrust and paranoïa were planted. Rwandans grew less empathic and adopted violence as the major means of communication.

1959, 1960s, 1973... Mass killings and deportations. Exiled Rwandans, dispossessed with fading hopes...

of ever returning back home went through long periods of depression.

In "A thousand hills" written by Stephen Kenzer, H.E talked about his father's depression. It was the same inside Rwanda, especially among the oppressed Tutsi.

And 1994 was the apocalypse.

It ended a whole century of the slow destruction of the nation.

More than a million (Tutsi) innocent lives lost, millions of orphans and widows, more than 3 million (Hutu) refugees... Destruction beyond imagination (and millions of Rwandans participated either

passively - bystanding - or actively in that destruction). A whole country of walking deads... Hell !

That's what we were born and raised in. We were probably not old enough to understand but we were affected too. A whole childhood lost. Is it our fault?

@bizzowben @N021019

We were raised by emotionally broken parents with deep psychological wounds, some with physical wounds too, and some of us didn't even have parents - they had to become their own parents & parents for others.

Can we talk about how abusive our childhood has been?