MAKE ME STRONG

I am holding tight to the cloth of my mother's dress, the instruction clear:

"Mussa, hold this. Hold tight. Don't let go." We are fleeing Rwanda, crossing the border in the DRC, heading to Goma – my family a drop of water in a sea of people.

My parents are carrying my little sister and the luggage. They do not have enough hands for me.

A man pushes past.

I am three years old.

I let go.

I climb a little hill, scramble to the top, scanning faces, calling Mama! Mama!

Mama!

It is only later in the orphanage when they're trying to trace my family that I realise that I do not know their names. Every other child on the hill was calling Mama too.

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My daughters are four and two. It was a struggle at first, being a father, having not had my own father to teach me how to do it, but I'm getting better now.

One thing I make sure is that they know my name. I make them practice it. I wake them up, ask them, what is my name?

Mussa, they say, Mussa Uwitonze.

It used to be that it was a mark of disrespect in Rwanda to call your parents by their name, but not . I want them always, always to be able to find me.

I teach them 'Mussa', not 'Samuel', the Roman Catholic name I was given in the orphanage. Mussa is a Muslim name. I cannot remember my parents' faces, but I remember the call to prayer, waking up, going with them to the first of the five daily prayers.

So my children call me Mussa and with that name they remember their father. And I remember mine.