MEET THE AUTHOR: Is grass greener on the other side?

What you need to know:

No matter how many times I am asked this question, I still find it hard to answer it. Nevertheless, I truly believe that it never matters where you are.

I was never a political refugee. We left Burundi in 1986; I was only two years old. My father found a very promising job at COMESA in Lusaka, Zambia, where we spent sixteen years of our lives. I never really spent time in my home country. We went there for holidays, visiting relatives and friends. We also travelled to many other countries for vacation (Zimbabwe, Zaire now known as DRC, Kenya, South Africa, France, Belgium, Holland and the (USA). I attended French international schools, and a British system boarding school, sharing classes with children from all over the globe. I then decided to go to college in the USA majoring in electrical engineering. It was actually what my father wanted; I had no idea what I wanted to do. I met a few guys who were into music and followed them.

Growing up, my younger brother and I were sheltered by our parents. So we spent a lot of time playing just the two of us. We ended up being some really creative youngsters, creating characters, scenarios and many imaginary friends. It might sound weird, or funny, but it helped us in our creative endeavours later on in our lives. As I was inspired and constantly surrounded by musicians and songwriters in my late teens and early twenties, it only added to my already crazy way of seeing the world. When I came back to Bujumbura, after deciding to settle down in 2011, I had to get accustomed to some of the inevitable living conditions. I left my parents’ house to live in a tiny apartment on the other side of town. Now there are some major power cuts in our capital city. I had already experienced the party life, the travelling and the heartbreaks. I was involved in a major hotel project and always came back home late, tired and confused. In the summer, the power cuts became more common. That is how I decided to write, I needed to make sense of what was happening in my life.