Currently based in London, 28-year-old Ndayishimiye is giving hope to refuges across the world.
In the book, he is also criticizing the neo-colonial and racialized knowledge structures on which the international refugee system is based.
Speaking in an interview, Ndayishimiye said he has decided to share his true refuge life experiences through the art of writing and plans are underway to officially launch the book this year.
Ndayishimiye said his first book contains historical lessons on the causes and consequences of the genocide and refugee experience that include traumas and triumphs.
He said the book also contains a love letter from father to son on the power of will, hope and self-examination over the darkest echoes of history.
According to Ndayishimiye, since the 17th century, no tragedy of historical scale has taken place in African independent of European colonialism and his book traces the cultural divisions seeded by foreign intervention to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, when he was forced to flee his ancestral home and leave everything behind going to Dzaleka Camp.
“From that fateful day, through this book I tell the story concerning my journey of healing and self-discovery, from a refugee camp in Malawi to a new life halfway around the world as a scholar of the very systemic injustices which sent me and my family into lifelong exile,” he said
Gabriel is also the Founder & CEO of LivenBooks. He created LivenBooks to attract the growing number of refugee and immigrant intellectuals who are writing about displaced people and the historical impacts of the colonial experience in so many countries.
Many of these writers, like Gabriel, have tried to find traditional and even niche publishers but it’s such a competitive market. He has made it his mission to create a new and inclusive space for these writers to get their works published.
Gabriel holds a Bachelor of Arts: Honors Specialization in Globalization Studies from the University of Western Ontario. Currently, Gabriel is a BIEA-RSC Graduate Attaché, University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) and the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA).
