It was a normal Friday evening and all of us on duty at Presidents House expected a quiet weekend. We expected to see President Paul Kagame wearing his fancy tracksuits and bouncing around in his tennis court, or jumping in one of his expensive fast cars and ourselves speeding behind him trying to catch-up in Toyotas Pickups filled with bodyguards, most times ending up in fatal accidents loosing comrades due to his irresponsible high speed.

 

We were expected to stay on high alert (standby class1) believing that His Excellence Paul Kagame might pop out in a rush ordering us to drive off anyhow. At the time many of us believed that Kagame’s acts of uncertainty, unpredictability, inability to trust anybody, paranoia and worrying all the time was because of him being a very important and influential person in the country.

It was normal for all of us body guards to stay standby with a thought that we might be leaving in the next minute even when Paul Kagame was in deep asleep. Whoever would be found taking of their boots would be punished by our immediate commanders. I later realised that even the commanders themselves weren’t aware of Kagame’s programme. It’s now evident that even Kagame himself didn’t have a clue of what he was supposed to do for the day due to his condition.

We would be served food and instructed to eat in no minute thinking that we were leaving any moment even when Kagame had no plans of going anywhere.

On this specific day, we continued to wait, we waited Friday, Saturday, Sunday all went without seeing Paul come out of the house. There come Monday he was not seen out of the house, now I started to get concerned if everything was ok! And none of us was supposed to enter his house let a lot asking if he was alright.

I reflected on having seen Dr Emmanuel Ndahiro constantly visiting his house over the weekend and hardly any visitor came, not even family which was very unusual for President Kagame’s weekends.

So as I was still asking myself what could have gone wrong, Captain Willy Rwagasana now a Lt Col asked me to drive two of the kitchen assistants to a safe house. These two kitchen assistants had been part of the close body guards prior to being assigned kitchen duties, and had been trusted enough to become chefs.  The two soldiers had enjoyed the luxury of travelling on trips abroad and spending time in luxurious hotels with Kagame.

Deep down in me I was sceptical and I knew it was their turn to be paid back by the guy they had served selflessly like all of us. But then again I believed that probably they had got involved themselves in money laundering or misusing state house funds.

It was later whispered to me by Willy Rwagasana that the two soldiers were suspected of poisoning HE Paul Kagame, of whom he said that was having diarrhoea and vomiting for the last three days therefore confirming his disappearance.

At that moment I was gobsmacked, I kept quiet for about 15 seconds, then took a deep breath. In me at the time I felt helpless, angry, betrayed and frustrated, I had survived a number of accidents trying to protect the man and now had been poisoned by our own boys?

I started reflecting and remembering many commanders whom we had lost in such mysterious and unexplained death.

But I was totally wrong again, the man was experiencing a condition in which faeces are discharged from the bowels frequently and in a liquid form. A range of symptoms including diarrhoea and vomiting, but due to the paranoia that we all shared Dr Emmanuel Ndahiro had declared that the president was likely to have been poisoned. The main cause of the suspicion was due to the fact that one of the kitchen assistants was a brother to famous Alfred Kalisa (BCDI)  a millionaire who was once Kagame’s close friend but fallen out due to finance issues.

When the second doctor came to investigate, he ruled out the poisoning however the boys had already been tortured and it was too late to be returned in Kagame’s kitchen let alone being of any use to even their own families.

When I raised my concerns with Willy Rwagasana about how the matter had been handled, he said to me that this had nothing to do with us because our job was to maintain Kagame’s security and those responsible for investigations was Intelligence Officer Maj. Silas Udahemuka and the Doctors who reported the poison scenario.

I reminded Willy Rwagasana how vomiting and diarrhoea was not a new thing to HE Paul Kagame, with reference to when I had to clean his vomit on our way from Kigali to Butare on the highway. But Willy Rwagasana cautioned me never to mention vomiting incidents which were usually caused by among all his ulcers.

 

The Butare incident is still traumatic in my mind due to Kagame’s brutal sadistic actions on the day. What happed was that while we were in our convoy, Kagame being driven in the car in front of the one I was driving, vomited in the car and we had to stop. I took out my cleaning kit and ran to clean the back seat he had messed up.  When I was cleaning the mucous, Kagame pretended to have a short call around the nearest bush but when he returned I had not finished because I was polishing the seats.

Instead of waiting for the car to freshen up Kagame brutally punched me in the head using his elbow, it was abrupt and so painful that my head was swollen for two days. I again jumped in the rear guard vehicle I was driving seated with our Head of Bodyguards Tom Byabagamba who is now imprisoned. He giggled and asked me why my eyes had turned red. I said to him that I had eaten a lot of hot chilli before setting off from the base, then he said that unless Kagame’s elbow felt like chilli. He never said anymore words, but obviously had been watching through the window when Paul Kagame punched me.

To me this was so sad of Kagame, I had been hit by several times for no specific reason, but I didn’t believe he would hit me when I am trying to clean his mess. I expected him to thank me for having been sensible enough and be equipped with cleaning kit among all of us and being able to cater to his bad health.

 

Looking back after many years, the causes of diarrhoea:  Diarrhoea is usually a symptom of gastroenteritis (a bowel infection), which can be caused by: a virus – such as norovirus or rotavirus. Bacteria – such as campylobacter, Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), Escherichia coli (E. coli), salmonella or shigella; these can all cause food poisoning.

 

Kagame’s anger and frustration always led him to hitting those around him, he was always irritable with some signs/symptoms of mental illness such as mood swings, impulsive behaviours, severe difficulties with relationships, Devaluing people (often switching back and forth from idealizing them) Disturbance about self-image Paranoid ideation (thinking someone is after him)

 

Noble Marara