I stood alone on the grassy quadrangle and watched Gerard walk back down the lane toward his home. That was the last I saw of him for a very long time.

His name was on the list because his mother was a Hutu and his father was a Tutsi. My name was not on the list because my mother was Tutsi and my father was a Hutu. Since ethnicity passes through the father’s loins in Rwanda, according to this idiotic logic Gerard was considered a despicable Tutsi and I was considered a privileged Hutu. Had the parentage been reversed it would have been me walking down that lane of guava trees with my head down.

I cannot tell you how much I loathed myself that day for having been lucky. It was the first time I became aware of myself not as “Paul” but as a “Hutu.” I suppose this dark epiphany is an essential rite of passage for anyone who grew up in my country, one of the most physically lovely places on the globe, but one with poison sown in its heart.

I have to tell you more.

One of those beads I mentioned on our necklace is 1885. This was the year of the famous Conference of Berlin, which put the seal on what was to become nearly seven decades of colonial government in Africa. This was also where Rwanda ’s fate was to be determined.

Representatives from Austria-Hungary, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Spain, the United States, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, and Norway met to sort out the conflicting claims their agents had made to vast pieces of real estate in Africa-most particularly, the forests of the Congo that had been turned into a private reserve for King Leopold II of Belgium. The Berlin conference was remarkable not just for the lack of African participation, but also for laying out a few key principles.