 everyone to another episode of Talking Point. My guest today is Faustin Rosengawa, his recently published book, My Exile to the World, is an extraordinary testimony of a young Grandin who fled his country in 1973 when he was a teenager because of the ethnic violence there. He fled on a bike and continued his journey across many countries in Africa, then found his way to Canada and then the US and finally settled in Davis where he lives today. Thank you so very much for taking the time to be on the show. I must say that your book, My Exile to the World, is so captivating and so beautifully written that I couldn't put it down. It's an amazing tale. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. Now, my first question will be, is it really true that you keep your original bike still? Yes, I had my bike at Kuneven. I think it was 1975. That's when I got my bike in my first times. Yes. I still have it and I bring it here with me. But it's local difference. It's almost like brand new bike. Yes. Repair has a match I called. I give my bike a treat very well. You can't even tell the same bike. Well, that's great. This interview requires some imagination on my part because you already had two articles in the local paper, the Davis Enterprise, and you were interviewed by the BBC. So now I have to focus on a couple of other questions. And one of the things that I'm going to ask you is, you spent five years in Burundi. You left as a teenager because of the ethnic unrest in your native Rwanda, and then you went to Burundi and tell me, what made you continue your wonderful journey? Reena, I'm telling you, my country, when I was younger, was very, very difficult. I've grown up in a war, you know, conflicts for my tribe, Hutu and the Tutsi. And when they look like very, you can't even tell which is which one was fight was almost like from nothing. Same people, but the tribe was a very big issue. A lot of people died at times. So when it was the Tutsi, it was a huge, huge problem. We didn't have a connection with the government. It was very hard. My dad lost a job, my education, my brother, my sibling. It's not just me. All the Tutsi, we had a lot of problems because of that, our ethnic. Yes, I left Rwanda in 1973. I believe I was about 17 years old and I had to come to refugees and when I arrived in Burundi, you know, I was a new country. It was different, you know, just to feel in my family because my family then left with me. They stayed there. They don't want children to be there. They want just to go. They're okay to die, but not their children. So that's how I ended to Burundi. So after five years, so, you know, I was like a free young and that's how I left Burundi with the basic one. I ended to Holland. So I didn't even plan to go to all the different countries. I was the one who got to Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, which is today's Congo, and come back to Burundi. So when I go in Kenya, everything changes for me. That's how, that's my dream. And you had fantastic adventures and some were extremely good experiences and some were terrifying experiences and you survived basically living in tents in the forest. You even slept on a tree and you were almost assaulted by an elephant and, well, did you know at the time that elephants are vegetarians? Well, I know I was a vegetarian. I then accepted to meet the elephant that night. And yeah, it's true. Creep was very, very difficult. I have a part that was so beautiful when I met wonderful people, when I discovered I could see pyramids, to see night, to see all the different tribes I met in the wrong way. So that was very press. But, you know, that time wasn't on internet. It wasn't on phone. It was a completely different world today. When you look today, you know, you can look immediately. Everything is in your hands. You can look everywhere. But that time was a very different world. And yes, sometimes it was very, very tough across a lot of national park I didn't know. I don't know map. I don't know how to read at that time and read all right. It was a very, was miracle, even today for me to be here. Yes. What would you say was the most memorable experience from your journey? Terrifying experience. Yes, you know, it's many, many. You know, to me, when I saw ocean my first time, Indian Ocean, I think I was the end of the world. I has never experienced that because the way I come from is a thousand years. That's the name of my country, the 100,000 years. The years and the years has never seen ocean in my life. That was my first time. I was excited. I could not believe it. You know, when you look like a pyramids, you know, there was, you know, yes, huge imagination to see people did that. Yes, was unbelievable. You went all across Africa and then North Africa to Morocco and Algeria. I mean, it's amazing, amazing how many miles. And then I have to say that this book has also gone on a very long journey, hasn't it? It was first tell us about it. Was you first dictated it in French? Yes, you know, when I start, you know, my country uses speaker French, it's a French colony in Belgium, Corona, actually. So is this French speaker? Yes. So when I started studying in Burundi, that was in 1982. Yes. So we started in French, then roasted connection with friends who were helping me to write it. We roasted connections. I was working for Duke University at that time in a project they have for working with Petrol. Was it like to study actually in the left valley? Yes. So I went to Kenya, my friend ending in Tokamuni, Canada. We roasted connected. So miraculously, you have, you know, book, it has been writing, you have Carine, you know, North. Yes, yes. So I was thinking this thing was the end and the sunlight from a group, he just called me. He says I'm here in Canada, I got your phone number from friends. So that project come right again. And then, of course, this, these notes in French lived with you for many years, right? And then what happened? When happens, I started connected with him. He was living in Ottawa, Canada. Yes. So I used it to fly to Canada or sometime I come sometime working the phone. Then we get busy. American life. We roast it again. And we work it together again. We roast it again. And you know, really, but here they are then later and he passed away. So when he passed away, everything was on me again, you know, just I have material and they had another material. So I started again from the beginning. So I started to look somebody in terms of like a student to help me in terms of someone I can look into a French who understand the French. So it come very, very difficult. I give up again, work on it to give up, you know, just then return. I say in America, nobody will speak French. Nobody will read the deal. So I just translated me English. So from there, it come wonderful move on. I just move on myself. No, you ended up in North Carolina and you were a student at Duke University. How was your experience there? No, I never went to school. I was looking for Duke in Africa. When I come to North Carolina, I was visiting in North Carolina. So that's how I came. Actually, when I came North Carolina, I finished. Yes. I didn't even know. So when I started from scratch again, my life has been up, down, up, down, up, down. I started from new again. So I stayed there for almost two years. I come here, one of my friends, he was again married, those people I was looking for. He was a guy married in Davis. I moved with Davis in the wedding. I met her from Africa from all over. Yes. I went back in North Carolina and I said, I have to move back to California. That's our ending. And you still like Davis very much. To me, it's the paradise. These days, there's a lot of talk about Black Lives Matter and all that. Have you experienced racism in the United States? That's the easy question for me. To me, I've grown up with the two tribes, Hutu and the Tutsi. Yes. You're a Tutsi, and of course, yes. My family died in the genocide. I was going to ask you, so all your family died in the genocide? Million of people, they say about a million of people died in the genocide. Hutu and the Tutsi, one person. He was a brother in the Bible. So racism to me, it should not exist. But again, I'm experiencing more what people experience it. I've grown up with very much. Same place, same people. So I want to say something. I think we should make all the beautiful. We've had everything. I think racism is the last thing we should be very losing time on it. Well, this is what comes through your beautiful book is the optimism and the poetry that is in you about the beauty of the world and all the people who have welcomed you and helped you in your journey. And this is so real in your book. So it is a very inspiring book. Are you going to write another book? No, this one is taking me 40 years. I would be hundred and fifty or hundred and forty. Do you still bike? You know, it's very interesting because Davis is said to be the bicycle capital of the world. So you fit in very nicely. So do you still bike? Or not really? A little bit. Very, very not very much how I like to. But I'm so lucky just to see bike. You know, Davis is one of the in America. I think he's the number one people expected bike, riding a bicycle. He kind of touched my life any time I go. I used to go to you see Davis. Just to stop Arasso to see all of those students just crossing. That was in my gift. Once maybe a month ago, maybe hour. It was so beautiful. It touched to me. Another question from me in the book, you talk about young women you met in your journey. You were young and handsome and you met many women that were very nice to you. Would you say they enriched your experience in life because you were so young and when you left, you only knew people, your extended family and the young women in in Wanda. So tell us about that. No, I met a woman in my trips. It was so beautiful. When I was in Brunda, I met a lady. Actually she was coming from Rwanda in 1973. So she was beaten very badly. I met her in the refugee camp in Brunda. So she touched to me very much. We had the same problem. It was very serious and we come very, very good friends. I respect her. She accepted me. We have the same. I was worried about my family. She was beaten very badly. I had to heal. So when I left, I felt very bad. But she encouraged me to go too. That was so good. She was a very small party. She said something so beautiful to give me. Brasserie, Shikoromi, ambassador of refugees. It was very nice, emotionally. So that was very nice. And they also met a very beautiful woman. You have four children now and you're married and you have four children. So they're all in school here in Davis. Yes. My kids are very brus. Because they have rifle, I never have. Yes, of course. I very appreciate it for that. That's a gift. I can feel very, you know, I don't know if we look the same way because sometimes you have to have a compel. Yes. So they don't have a compel. I know what I want immediately because I know that side and I know this side. Them they don't know. They know only one side. So it's kind of a bit harder for them to figure out other side because they never see. That's right. And to that effect, do they ask you about your background, your stories, your family? Are they interested in it? Oh, no, we talk a lot about that. We talk about very much. Sometimes when we're having lunch or dinner, you know, sometimes I talk a little bit about my life about how I grown up. Sometimes they listen and they look at me. That's a true story. Well, I imagine that for you too, sometimes you must feel that you've almost dreamed all this, you know, elaborate about that. Because I know for people who grew up in a totally different world and have had extraordinary experiences, sometimes they think, what they say, have I dreamt about all this? Do you have that feeling sometimes? To me, I cannot think enough what I have today. You see, I've grown up with nursing, you know, war, everything we had, they take it. And you know, my family has a nursing. It was time we come very poor. You know, we rented a refugee's, went to Missionary, when we come back home, everything we had, it was taken, everything. So to bring it back up, you know, I use the look of my dad the first, you can see how much he was very stressful. You know, he was young, we laugh, we didn't know very much. But you know, his dad has, who I am today, is very stressful when you see kids that suffer. When you wake up in the morning, you say, what are my kids that we eat today? Yes, how are my family that we survive? How are they single for my dad? Yes. And that comes across very, very beautifully in your book. And it makes us, your book is a wonderful testimony because, especially in the United States, where yes, we have poverty, we have racism, we have a lot of things. However, we can't imagine sometimes what a country like Rwanda went through and your experiences as a child. What would you say is different in terms of human relations between the United States and what you knew in Rwanda for Sten? I think in Rwanda, you know, culture is very different. Our culture is very strong. It puts everybody together on the same page. I think that's gift no one can take from us. What do you mean puts everybody on the same page? Everyone in each other. I see, yes. So we know a neighbor, we know a village, everybody can come to your house or can go to their house. Basically, you know, everybody in the village. Yes. You know, here is completely different. You know, I can't even know, I know maybe one in neighbor or two. That is every, maybe three, sometimes you can't even talk, you know, just because no one in need of that. If you need anything, you have your credit card, if you need anything, you can call an ambulance there, if you need to help, the police would be there, 911. So that's different culture. If I have a problem, I would call my neighbor, neighbor call another neighbor, they would be there. That is only dependent. That's my 911 there. Yes. And this is probably some of this lack of a communality and family relations is probably one of the reasons why a lot of people here are so lonely. They have a lot, but they are also so lonely. So what would you think we should do to improve? No, it's too late. No, it won't work because the system has started, you know, money everyone have, his money, credit card, that's each one can leave his individual. Yes. So that is, I don't have the power to, I never come to door or say, cannot borrow your salt or cannot borrow you anything. Yes. It doesn't work here, but where I come from, that's how I work. I see. Yes. You look each other. Yes. You know, if I need anything, I come, say, I need to cannot borrow you $20. You know, you would give it to me, but here you cannot borrow, you say, you crazy, go to bank. Yes. You know, because it's how system is set up already, you cannot change the system. Yes. Yeah. First in, you went back to Rwanda after the genocide. You were here when the full blown genocide happened. So you went back and that must have been very tragic for you to see. Can you tell us a little bit about? Yeah. In 1994, when the genocide came and I was watching on TV, was one of the persons very to see, you can't really happen to something like that. You know, usually I see on TV, you look Vietnam, you look Cambodia, you know, but I never think in my country would be the same way. You look people, flooding and the river, I mean, news was all over. I couldn't sleep, I watched every day. I was thinking about my family, my brother, my cousins, my whole family, you know, even others. So I didn't have any news, I write it to Congress or Red Cross, you know, to see if my family, okay, was not communicated. So when the country did okay a little bit, I have to catch a plane. I went to Uganda. When I go to Uganda, I find another small plane to Rwanda. Everything was starting to open. But when I got there, everything was war zone. It was war zone. It was just everything, just tear out to buildings, windows, stop lights, you see a lot of sand, you know, just, you know, for bullets. It was very, very scary. People, you see a lot of injury in the street, you know, just a fresh injury. A lot of shoes in the street everywhere, people running. So that was my outcome, what it come to, to get into my capital. So my family, they gave about, maybe I would say, 20 kilometers, 70 miles from the capital. I went there, everything was gone. Yeah, how everything, so. Very good experience. There was something in the book for Stan that was really interesting. You said that the Hutu and the Tutsi were always a little bit, there was always a bit of tension between these two tribal groups. However, you mentioned that when the Belgian colonized Rwanda, they contributed to the separation. Can you tell us a little more about that? Yes, I think a colony, it did not give Africa a present. No, no, no. You know, it was a lot of work because the colony, what did they do to Africans, to continent, you know, map designs, all of those bring a lot of problems. So for us, you know, when it was the king, we have a king before. So King was very tough to them. He says, oh, my people, we cannot use them this way. I think that's where the whole thing become. So the colony changed to them. Those that they were the minority, another one was the majority. They went to Hutu, they tried to give them power. So they devised an ID. Everyone was a carry, like my ID was the Tutsi, Hutu was, that was a huge problem. Yeah, so we've grown devising. So that it bring a huge, huge, huge problem. That was a tank that's, and also our government, say, African, it did not help. He went to different directions. You know, some Hutu was very nice people. My neighbor, some of them was very wonderful people. We used to play with her as a kid. You know, when we come back from refugees, they bring us a full nighttime, you know, I mean, we got a lot of help from them. Was not everybody, but the government I think was bad. When the government turned it to us, everyone, you don't want to see because it will be on trouble. So I think that was two different things. It's a wonderful, wonderful tale. And we're, unfortunately, we are a little out of time. So I will thank you so much for the book for you and the privilege and the honor of knowing you.