Butera Knowless speaking during the campaign in Bugesera district
Celebrated artiste Butera Jeanne d’Arc commonly known Butera Knowless has paid tribute to the Rwanda Patriotic Front(RPF) Inkotanyi flag bearer Paul Kagame who saved her life.
Butera shared her story of humble beginning. She said that the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi left her with three family members who would die later on, leaving her with only one person who was a teacher.
“The person used to go early morning, leaving me alone in a small house, ikibahima, and because I was afraid, I adopted a tactic to shout and scare them,” Butera said.
Time to start school, Butera enrolled in Primary school, but thought that she would not afford money for secondary. Amidst her dilemma, the government paid her the secondary school education and then university.
“Excellency, at this level I had started this profession of mine as an artist, and I has started making some money,” she said.
“I married my husband Clement and we started thinking about a home and looked not far, but Bugesera, a hill called Karumuna. People discouraged us saying that we are going in the forest, a dilapidated place,” she recalls.
“We were not ready to give up because we could see the vision you had for Bugesera your excellency. We actually invited more people like Tom Close, Platini and others. We are now a big family of celebrities here,” she said.
Butera told the RPF candidate, the incumbent Paul Kagame, that she has now got children and her art is not found on despair, but the pride to grow and prosper in a beautiful country like Rwanda.
Butera requested Kagame who has country home in Bugesera “to invite his neighbors-the Bugesera dwellers-to come and have get-together in the farm and celebrate the cows-inyambo-after the campaign.”
The candidate said that indeed he is planning to meet them.
