Broken Object

The contents of this book are dear to me. They represent a part of my life that I have had to live and deal with. We are a broken object. We are all broken in different ways. Some of us in a small piece, some in a big piece, and some in several pieces all over. As the author of this book, I was looking for those pieces I had lost, trying to puzzle over where they belonged and where they should be. It felt like I was picking up pieces of broken glass: it cut me every time I picked up one of the pieces. In the end, though, I found a way to merge them with a little bit of gold.

Her name is Chérissa Iradukunda, everyone calls her Cheri. She was born and raised in a small country called ‘Burundi’. She moved occasionally because of conflicts in her country. At first, she realized she wasn’t safe anymore, she was three. Her family fled to Tanzania, where her sister was born. After the war was over, they moved back, but nothing was the same. The war had destroyed everything, including humanity. When she was 13, her mother, her hero, made sure they were safe. They moved to another small country called ‘Netherlands’. She thought she had found peace, but she was wrong. As an orphan, she tried to survive with her siblings in a totally foreign country; they still do.