Melissa, to have the opportunity in my life to serve my country for 10 years as Minister of Finance and Planning was the best gift that my life gave to me. I was born under the colonial period. I experienced the independence of my country.

The power of this victory rests on the fact that it’s about public participation; a critical step in getting the landfills shut down. It was a personal mission as both landfills are very close to houses, and the area has high cancer rates – this is what motivated us to start the campaign.

Very happy, very proud, apart from the loss of many lives, which can never be corrected, or we can’t do much about it. It’s probably the most expensive part of the struggle. But to have won the war and won the peace for ourselves, because if you look at those years of the war, of the genocide, and they are brought to an end, and then we started building and rebuilding and a sense of reconciliation, a sense of allowing Rwandans to live together as a nation. And now a proud people of Rwanda, and socially made progress politically, significant progress, economically the same. I think we could not have asked for more.

But since then, I'm happy to report they've been gliding. They've been chairing the sessions. They've being rapporteurs. They've been actively debating on the issues, and I'm very proud of them.