The Boy Who Fixed Radios

-

 A Story of Passion and Possibility

In the quiet village of Rubaya, there was a boy named Elie. He was 15, shy, and always curious. While other boys played football in the fields, Elie spent his afternoons digging through old electronics behind his father’s house broken radios, dead phones, even shattered cassette players.

No one taught him how to fix anything. He just tried.

He’d take broken radios from neighbors, pull them apart, examine the wires, and experiment. Sometimes he got lucky. Sometimes he made things worse. But every failure was a lesson. Every spark or click told him something.

People laughed.

“Wasting time on junk,” they said.
“He should be doing something useful.”
“None of those things will ever work again.”

But Elie didn’t stop. His hands were always stained with dust and solder. He didn’t care about praise—he just wanted to understand how things worked.

One day, during preparations for a village wedding, the local community center’s big public radio system broke. It was the only one loud enough for music during the event. Panic spread. Hiring a technician from town was too expensive.

Someone, half-joking, said, “Why not give it to the radio boy?”

People hesitated. But there was no other choice.

Elie sat quietly with the giant radio, opened it, and studied the inside. After two hours of silence, sparks flew, wires sparked... then suddenly:

Music played.

Clear. Loud. Perfect.

The elders stared. The neighbors gasped. And just like that, the “radio boy” became Elie the Fixer.

 What Happened Next

Word spread. Radios, torches, and even TVs started showing up at Elie’s door. He opened a tiny shop under a mango tree with a sign that read:

"Nta gikoresho kiza gupfa burundu: Nothing is too broken to be fixed."

Years later, Elie started teaching younger kids what he had taught himself. One of his students even won a national science fair. Elie didn’t just fix radios, he fixed people’s belief in possibilities.

 Moral of the Story

Talent doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it whispers through sparks, wires, and effort. Elie’s story teaches us that even when no one believes in you, keep working. The moment to shine will come—and when it does, let your passion speak for you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Unexpected Moment That Made Me a Videographer

-
The Unexpected Moment That Made Me a Videographer Have you ever had one small moment change your whole life? I didn’t plan to become a videographer. I didn’t grow up with expensive cameras or dream of directing movies but I used to do simple photo shoots like swamp shoots for students. In fact, my story begins in the most ordinary place you can imagine a small neighborhood shop where they sell translated movies. Yes, that’s right. The kind of shop where people gather to buy action films in local language, chat about new releases, or just kill time. That’s where I used to hang out. Not because I worked there, but because it was my favorite place to be. The vibe was always good, people passed by all day, and there was always something happening. But I had no idea that one simple visit to that shop would open the door to my future. A Stranger Walks In It was an average afternoon. I was sitting quietly as usual when an older man entered the shop. He looked calm but serious, hol...
Read more

The Girl With the Camera

-
Image
Irakoze story: Byiringiro Olivier Discovering a Voice Without Words In a small, quiet neighborhood on the edge of Kigali, there lived a girl named Irakoze. She was 14 years old, and very silent. Not because she had no voice, but because words didn’t come easily to her. In class, she hardly raised her hand. At home, she kept to herself. People assumed she was shy, or even strange. But Irakoze wasn’t silent because she lacked something—she was silent because she saw things differently. One rainy afternoon, while exploring her late uncle’s old belongings, she found a dusty camera at the bottom of a wooden box. It was scratched and half-broken, but something about it felt alive in her hands. She took it home. No one paid much attention. At first, she took photos of flowers and insects. Then she started taking photos of people: her mother cooking, her little brother sleeping, her neighbor sweeping the road, street kids playing with a plastic ball, an old man looking out a window. Ev...
Read more
-
Image
When the Lights Went Out A Night That Changed Everything It was just after 7 PM when the power went out. story by Byiringiro Olivier At first, no one paid much attention. Power cuts were common in the small town of Nyagasambu. People assumed it would come back in an hour or two. But as minutes turned to hours, the silence began to stretch. No music from radios. No buzzing of televisions. No lights flickering through windows. Just darkness and quiet. Phones were dying. Fridges were warming. Boredom started to creep in. But something strange happened that night. An old man lit a charcoal stove outside and started boiling tea. A neighbor, curious and tired of sitting in the dark, brought a chair to join him. Then came another. A group of children, free from screens and homework, began playing hide-and-seek by moonlight. Soon, the entire neighborhood seemed to spill out of their homes. Someone lit a fire and roasted maize. A young woman began singing softly. Another picked up a gui...
Read more