In our last edition in this category of “Share with the World”, Life In Humanity focused on an amazing man- Pontien Niyonambaza. We additionally promised that we would produce a series of stories around you, Niyonambaza, till we attempt to exhaust your optimal repository of experiences and inspirations. As we then did, we first took time to maximally thank you for providing us with your extremely both poignant and comforting testimony. We again seize the occasion to be grateful to you from the bottom of our heart. In the last issue, we said that you are one of absolutely rare and stunning cases: not only regionally but also globally. We reiterate it unreservedly.
Narrating your story is like, if it doesn’t surpass them, recounting the stories of some of the most successful personalities on this planet such as Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, and so many others. These are people who have faced apparently insuperable life adversities like you. Their stories and yours are optimally inspirational. Reading or listening to them while you are struggling with seemingly undefeatable difficulties, you feel hope and energy restored in you. Your story is an utterly strong weapon even re-strengthening us, while we are also grappling with intense challenges of life. Your current success is benefitting not only you, but also some others in the country of Rwanda.
For instance, we know that there are some interventions that you conduct with Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB). Your farming company employs numerous people. We also know that there is another farming business that you manage on behalf of a foreign investor whom RAB referred to you when he approached it, asking for advice on a reliable person with whom the investor would entrust his company’s management. All this substantiates your great importance not just for your local community but also for the entire country. However, while you were still a child, you perpetrated suicide and fortunately God intervened to save you.
If the suicide had unfortunately become successful, it could not only be your parents, your community and even the country that could now be suffering a huge loss, but also the world. Even Brainae University where you are pursuing your Master’s Degree in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economy has suggested it, saying “Your achievements inspire us all.” Sharing your experiences is so vital that if you hid them, it could also constitute a huge loss for the world because your story won’t be read by only Rwandans but also people worldwide who understand this language. In other words, you will contribute to relieving the suffering of countless people over a long period of time since there exists no country that doesn’t have people needing such stories.
Niyonambaza with a policeman and in a barracks after
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: Meanwhile, let’s first remind people that, according to an American company-SingleCare- with its 24 January 2024 article headlined “Mental health statistics 2024”, mental health challenges are pounding a significant number of humans worldwide. This background serves to buttress the importance of the dialogue that we are going to hold with Niyonambaza because his testimony can help those who are grappling with these health challenges.
Anxiety affects 284 million people in the world. Depression pounds 264 million people. Alcohol use disorder affects 107 million people. Drug use disorder strikes 71 million people. Bipolar disorder hits 46 million people. Schizophrenia affects 20 million people. Eating disorders affect 16 million people. Statista, widely regarded as a reputable and reliable platform for statistical data and market research in the world, points out that as of 2017, 970 million people suffer from any mental health or substance use disorder worldwide.
According to a 29 August 2024 article by the World Health Organization, Suicide forms a global serious public health problem. This UN’s agency in charge of health worldwide highlights that more than 720 000 people die due to suicide annually. It further underlines that suicide stands as the third leading cause of death among 15–29-year-old people. It also underscores that for every suicide, there are many more people who attempt suicide. “A prior suicide attempt is an important risk factor for suicide in the general population. Every suicide is a tragedy that affects families, communities and entire countries and has long-lasting effects on the people left behind.”
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is a U.S. government agency dedicated to research on mental health. Part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIMH focuses on understanding, treating, and preventing mental illnesses through research. The NIH is composed of 27 separate institutes and centers, each focusing on specific areas of research. The NIH form a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the primary federal agency responsible for biomedical and public health research.
The NIMH says that stressful life events and interpersonal stressors carry the capacity to contribute to suicide risk. “Especially when they occur along with suicide risk factors.” Stressful life events include the loss of a loved one, legal troubles, and financial difficulties. Interpersonal stressors involve shame, harassment, bullying, discrimination, and relationship troubles.
The NIMH adds that warning signs that a person may be experiencing the immediate risk of trying suicide are various. They include talking about wanting to die or wanting to kill themselves, talking about feeling empty or hopeless or having no reason to live, talking about feeling trapped or feeling that there are no solutions, withdrawing from family and friends, taking great risks that could lead to death such as driving extremely fast, and talking or thinking about death often, among others.
As we will explain it in our next dialogue, Niyonambaza has perpetrated suicide twice, but luckily the suicide has not claimed his life; which is fortunate not only for him but also for probably countless people as already mentioned. Before doing it, he first nourished those signs as you will learn it too. So, Life In Humanity wishes the 970 million people battling with the mental health challenges obtained the opportunity to comprehend such testimony. We don’t doubt that it would pave the way for them to embark of the journey of recovery. He decided to perpetrate suicide, because of feeling empty, hopeless and having no reason to live, among others.
Niyonambaza, you can now start your story.
Pontien Niyonambaza: In the 4th year, my life became completely a mess, I then considered three options. I first opted to join the military but it turned impossible. Secondly, I decided to join the police but this option refused too, in fact God holds a different destiny for you, because in 2004 I went to live with soldiers who were living there in the volcanos region (in Rwanda). I approached their commander and told him my case and he agreed for me to live in the barracks. They considerably helped me to return to a normal line. I ate exactly the same food as the soldiers and I enjoyed the life there, but I didn’t succeed in joining the military. Instead, I eventually quit the barracks since I maintained a close bond with a classmate who asked me to go with him home in Burundi. His father was a police man here in Rwanda but his mother was living in Burundi. Arriving there, we crossed to Tanzania, you understand that I was starting to think about other ways of getting a living than a living generated by schooling.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye:Where did you earn the cash for those trips?
Pontien Niyonambaza: Ah, there are things extremely difficult to explain! But, since his father was a policeman, I relied on him for the trips. As I have told you, he knew me very well since we had been studying together, and his life was so pleasant that it was very easy for him to obtain such money. For me to get into the barracks, it is because I first lived with his father in Musanze District (Rwanda). Imagine, the policeman’s child went to school and I stayed with his father, cooking food for him! That is how I was acquainted with the soldiers in an unexpected way.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: How much time did you live with the policeman and the soldiers?
Pontien Niyonambaza: I lived with them for a period amounting to a year, in fact for around two years my parents heard that I stayed at school, but afterwards they remained unaware of my whereabouts.
Niyonambaza walking to Kampala in Uganda
Pontien Niyonambaza: After the year with the policeman and the soldiers, I moved to Kampala and I didn’t go in a bus since I and other young men decided to reach there by foot as we could get no transport fees. We walked through Kisoro and other places which abounded with food. Everywhere you reached, you found food left on the road. For example we got to a place where people had just been trading in roasted maizes so that some of them had been left and we picked them up and began eating them.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: It means that you were behaving like street children.
Pontien Niyonambaza: Yes, exactly. We eventually arrived in Kampala, but some of us unfortunately died because of extremely bad living conditions that we were facing.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: How many of them have passed away?
Pontien Niyonambaza: It’s only one I haven’t known where he has disappeared, but I know that 2 guys have deceased, and I finally learnt that the other one came back to Rwanda. Reaching Uganda, we lived in total chaos since we looked contemptible, no one knew us and we didn’t even know a local language which could support us there. They then arrested us and detained us in a center of vagrants. It was in the 2005s. After observing that the life was completely bitter and that it could result in my death, I decided to come back so that I didn’t pass much time there.
Niyonambaza back to Rwanda and becoming a street boy
Pontien Niyonambaza: I came back in the same way, since I walked back to Kigali. There are issues to which you are accustomed, so that while going through them, you never even think about them, even though they are normally regarded as impossible to execute. Even today when I ponder on this situation, it becomes baffling since I also fail to understand it. But while you are experiencing this situation, you accept it as your normal life.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: How much time did it take you to arrive in Kampala from Rwanda and vice-versa?
Pontien Niyonambaza: In fact, it took long time. They say that while you are going where you don’t know, you don’t actually bother estimating “It will take me this period of time to get there”. You just go and if you get tired, you stop the trip, and on the next day you carry it on till you arrive there. So, it can take you 2 weeks or one week, depending of different situations but I can’t remember the period. I didn’t trouble myself counting the time either, especially as I didn’t believe that there would be time for me to narrate this history. While you are in such a situation, you never think that there will be time in the future when you will tell your experiences as past events, since you believe that this situation will never end. That is why it is irrelevant for you to think of certain issues like time, and there are lots of things you even forget completely.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: What happened to you, when you arrived in Kigali?
Pontien Niyonambaza: In Kigali the life remained extremely harsh, but eventually I found people who helped me; which I call God’s direct rescue. There is a family which took me in a funny way from a place where I had passed a night, because for the person to take me, she attracted me by providing me with food. I was in Kiruhura and some people know it, there are even people who know me in that life there. In fact, street children possess a lot of tricks.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: Do you want to say that you were a street boy?
Pontien Niyonambaza: Yes, of course. What do you undertand I was? I was a street child, even more so than others.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: How?
Pontien Niyonambaza: Living in Kigali City, while you don’t have a job, a family or means; you are already a street child. I didn’t spend much time in street childhood, I passed 8 or 9 months in this state. A place I frequented is Jali Mount, there is a rock on which I often laid down; even when I go there, I visit the rock. When you get to Kigali, it is actually possible for you to live; especially since once you reach anywhere, you adapt to your surroundings and develop the astuteness needed to live there. In Kigali there are garbage products, when people eat food, there are food products which are left and then packed into sacks which they dump, some of the leftovers are still normal. That waste constitutes the food I used to eat and it’s that trash that those children consume.
You could sometimes be lucky to find a whole chicken leg or a big portion of maize flour bread, and you then ate it. It is a situation that you don’t dwell on, since you have come to accept this as your normal life forever. Another tactic you employed for you to earn food is that you requested people to carry their loads, and they paid you cash that you spent on purchasing instant drink powder used to produce the instant powder flavoured juice [instant flavored drink]. You mixed it with water and produced juice that you put in bottles you’d picked up and then sold the fake juice to rural people returning home, while fooling them that it is the real juice.
I have also done that. Cash that people paid ranged between 200 RWF and 300 RWF, nobody ever paid me 500RWF. After buying the instant drink powder, you selected some bottles from the waste bottles you had collected. We then went to the Nyabugogo River, filled the bottles with water, and mixed the powder with the water to make the juice. When you pour the powder into the water and blend it, the liquid turns red, if the powder is red and you cap the bottle properly. Thus people believe that it is genuine juice.
If the genuine juice normally cost 700 RWF and you offered to sell it for only 200 RWF, explaining that you are willing to sell it at a loss because you urgently need money, people generally did not resist. We did this, but the Government finally outlawed it, and I am so much grateful for that since people could contract diseases due to the unsanitary conditions. Yet while doing so, we didn’t actually intend to harm anybody, it was simply a way for us to live.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: How did you manage to deal with the cold of nights , and get clothes?
Pontien Niyonambaza: A person doesn’t usually think about this, you get so accustomed to the cold that you don’t even feel it. About clothes, when it is only one garment you own, I have observed that it doesn’t quickly get old, you can even wear it for 5 years.
Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye: How can this materialize?
Pontien Niyonambaza: In fact, in Kigali, some street children are so well-integrated that you might not even realize that they are street children. As someone who had been to school, I carried the knowledge of how to keep my clothes clean and present myself in a way that would not immediately reveal that I was a street child. Each morning, I would go to the Nyabugogo River, doff my clothes, and wash them.
I know various ways to wash clothes, without necessarily utilizing a soap. When you get a cow’s dung, you already obtain a detergent which will help you to wash your clothes cleanly. There in Gatsata there was a farm which comprised 4 cows, I don’t know whether the farm still exists there, but that’s where I obtained the dung which I employed to wash my clothes and then dried them on a rock. Though I was languishing in those living conditions, I behaved in a way which could not reveal you that I was penniless.
When I got that cash from the service of load-carrying and the trick of the fake juice, I could purchase cheap clothes. But as you understand, this didn’t occur for a long period of time since I finally met the person. She was an old woman who was living alone, and I’d spent a night near her home close to Kiruhura. She then took me home and nourished me. I always left and came back to eat, till she requested me to live with her at home, and we then lived together.
In our upcoming series, we will delve into the transformative journey that started with joining the family, a faith organization, and embracing a new path, despite the previous struggles including suicide which we will address in the series. We will explore in detail how overcoming such profound challenges can lead to a renewed and positive life. Stay tuned as we provide an in-depth look at this critical subject and how it offers hope and guidance for those facing similar battles.
Profound insights and hope from his journey
In conclusion, Pontien Niyonambaza’s remarkable journey offers profound insights and hope for those grappling with mental health and life challenges like abject poverty. His resilience in the face of adversity and his ability to transform profound struggles into a source of inspiration underscore the potential for recovery and positive change.
By sharing his experiences, Niyonambaza provides a powerful testament to the strength of the human spirit and the possibility of defeating even the darkest moments. His story serves as a beacon of hope, reminding individuals that despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, there always prevails a path to healing and success. For those battling with mental health issues and life challenges like indescribable poverty, Niyonambaza’s testimony offers not only comfort but also practical insights into navigating and surmounting profound difficulties.