Clemantine Wamariya Quotes

In Malawi, I used to write my name in dust on trucks, hoping my mother would see my loopy cursive and realize that I was alive.

We’ve created these categories that divide us as humans, and in doing that, we miss each other. I want to bring people together and remind everyone that they have permission to know themselves and others beyond labels.

Often, still, my own life story feels fragmented, like beads unstrung. Each time I scoop up my memories, the assortment is slightly different. I worry, at times, that I’ll always be lost inside. I worry that I’ll be forever confused.

I want to really live in the present, and find love and joy in the world around me.

I thought if I stated my name enough times, my identity would fall back into place […] But a name is a cover, a placeholder, not the whole story. A name is a basin with a leak that you need to constantly fill up. If you don’t, it drains and it’s just there, a husk, dry and empty.

My life does not feel logical, sequential, or inevitable. There’s no sense of action, reaction; no consequence, repercussion; no plot. It’s just fragments, floating.

It’s strange, how you go from being a person who is away from home to a person with no home at all. The place that is supposed to want you has pushed you out. No other place takes you in. You are unwanted, by everyone. You are a refugee.

I lost myself anyway. Every little thing. I had always loved the fancy soaps at my aunts’ houses. I loved the ones that smelled like geranium and lilac best of all.

The reunion was one of the deepest, most joyful moments.

We don’t write about the human emotions of conflicts; we write about the political and economic aftermath. I wanted to write about those feelings.

I now felt I’d made a mistake in Uvira. I’d let my guard down. I’d allowed myself to feel I belonged. But there was no real belonging—not anymore. There was only coming and going and coming and going and dying. There was no point in letting anybody get close.

I needed to see the world in front of me clearly so I could perform my part well. I needed to crack the code. So many times, in my former life, I’d had to become someone else in order to stay out of a refugee camp or out of jail, to stay alive. I had played a mother. I had played a yes ma’am younger sister. I had made myself a nobody, invisible. Now I had to become this strange creature: an American teenager.

Anything to help me connect with my strength beyond suffering.

There is so much human pain and suffering in the world. I want to honor all those difficult experiences and acknowledge their aftermath.

My body is destroyed and my body is sacred. I will not live in that story of ruin and shame.