The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

“If God was just extending an invitation, you could decline, right? You could say no thank you and stay where you were.”

When her mother’s friend dies, Wamariya’s mother says she “responded to God” (13). In her innocence, Wamariya believes someone who does not want to die can simply decide to remain on Earth. This passage foreshadows the loss of Wamariya’s innocence as a refugee. As she travels through seven African countries, she witnesses violence and death, and she sees bodies lying in the river and in ditches. In Kigali Wamariya is “young and spoiled” (14), and her father smacking her face when she is too loud is “the most cruelty I’d ever seen” (17). The contrast between peace and protection in her childhood and the horrors she witnesses as a refugee makes her retelling of her experiences all the more powerful.

“And then what do you think happened? Can you guess what happened next?”

As a little girl in Kigali, Wamariya has a nanny named Mukamana who tells her fantastical stories. Wamariya especially loves that Mukamana’s “stories never [have] a set ending” (15), that she lets Wamariya determine the plot herself. She recalls how in one story, the girl who smiled beads escapes into the distance and eludes capture, leaving beautiful beads in her wake. Because Mukamana allowed her to dictate the story, the girl who smiled beads became “a means to bend and mold reality that I could grasp and accept” (210).