‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

In a few days, exactly on October 15 I will be disconnected from my UNESCO-IHE email and all facilities who were accessible to me since I started to work at the Institute thirteen years and eight months ago. For twelve years I didn’t miss one ‘New participants arrival’ except the 2007 one because of my hernia surgery and this year’s one on the edge of my career switch. It is a strange feeling that on the day the new academic year starts I will not be part of the club anymore but as a friend of mine always says… ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

I send a big salute to all those I have worked with during all those years, to the ones I was close with and also to the few lost souls with whom I had a complicated relationship.

For sure my thoughts are going to the most prominent in rank, The Participants {8,9 on my magnitude scale [Richter’s largest recorded] Logarithm (Base 10) of maximum amplitude measured in microns}, as they were in all the aspects of my job and activities, always the center of my attention. I have gained a lot of friends from those few thousands coming from the four corners of our planet and this is something which I am very grateful for. 

If today I’m in Rwanda trying to realize  an old dream then you can probably imagine this is also related to the Institute and as said before: ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

In October 2005, exactly ten years ago, a first group of Rwandan participants arrived in Delft and for one reason or another we quickly became close. The French language? Maybe, but probably more the immediate sense I felt, that eleven years after the Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda we were welcoming some people who have survived a massacre, people who came to the Netherlands to help to rebuild a nation. While I reached my forty years of age in 1994 in the mid of the killings I remembered the refusal of all spokes-men and women of the different US departments to pronounce the G Word. 

After this first bunch went back to Rwanda I immediately visited the country in July 2007 to meet them over there. This was the beginning of a long ‘love’ story that continues nowadays.

* I will also not forget the warm welcoming in Ethiopia that same year 2007 and in Colombia in 2013. *

When I met (now H.E.) J. P. Karabaranga in 2010 at one of my yearly visits to Rwanda, during a memorable ‘sports day’ with a group of friends I couldn’t imagine then, that a few years later that same gentleman would become the Rwandan Ambassador to the Netherlands and also not that he would incite and encourage me to write a paper about vocational dance education and professionalization of dance in Rwanda… ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

That was only five years ago… Also then, at the start of my first dance workshops with the Abatarutwa Troupe in Kanombe. This I did because the regretted Prof. Kanimba Misago Célestin, at that time the Director of the Institute of National Museums of Rwanda and father of one of our 2005 Rwandan participants, asked me. ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

And now, on this rainy Sunday in October, the first day of what is maybe the belated start of the short rainy season, I’m writing this few sentences in my apartment in Kigali, to finalize an era and embark on a new one. On the same day that new participants arrive in Delft,  I’m saying goodbye to all of you with a smile and some tears. 

The best of luck UNESCO-IHE!

P.S. 

Last week H.E P. Kagame, the President of Rwanda was in The Netherlands for a very successful Rwanda Day and for tightening the bounds between Rwanda and the Netherlands. Some people have suggested that I should have gone to NL so they could introduce me to The Man. I replied that if they want they can do it here as I’m living less than three hundred meters from my distinguished neighbor. 

I told you, ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

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