What is the best gift you would give someone donating their organ to save your life? Probably marry that person. That’s the fairy-tale story of Jean-Claude Muhire and Marie-Reine Uwera Ingabire.

Many remember Muhire, who last year launched a passionate campaign to save his own life from the chronic kidney disease he was battling, advancing fast, putting his life in peril.

Luckily, Muhire was able to raise the funds and the support needed to get treatment in Cairo, Egypt, where he underwent a renal transplant, to replace his damaged kidney.

Fate has its own way of doing things. Their story is one that had all the signs that they were meant for each other.

"We got to know each other in 2012. We were both singing in the church choir. We are both Catholics by faith. I used to sing tenor and she was singing in soprano. One time in the choir we played a game called cacahuète,”

"By chance, we picked each other and that's where the relationship began. At the time she was still a high school student at Lycée Notre Dame de Cîteaux,” says Muhire, though he doesn’t recall the month when they said ‘I love you’ to each other, but it was in 2015.

Jean-Claude Muhire and Marie-Reine Uwera Ingabire take oath during the civil wedding last week. |Courtesy

Thursday, August 12, 2021, will forever be a memorable day for the couple following their vows in a civil marriage, committing to live together for the rest of their lives.

"We had our civil wedding yesterday (August 12) and we are planning a church wedding in the next couple of months,” a beaming Muhire says. For him, Ingabire is not just a fiancée, but someone who really means a lot in his life.

"Three years ago, I was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. She was the one taking care of me,” Muhire says, adding that as the condition advanced, he wanted someone to urgently donate a kidney to him before the condition became fatal.

Normally people say that for a kidney donation to be successful, it has to be a sibling or close blood relative but for Muhire who was born alone, with no brother or sister, there was no sibling, hence the only option he had were friends who were willing to volunteer.

On the list of six people, Ingabire was first on the list and medical investigations started with her.

"They do a lot of tests, including all chronic conditions. By chance, we got to match. The process was also challenging because transplantation is not done in Rwanda and this was also during the pandemic period,” Muhire recalls, adding that luckily they found a hospital in Cairo.

Through a GoFundMe campaign, Muhire was able to miraculously raise more than $23,000 in just three days as his condition quickly deteriorated. With a donor available, the couple travelled to Egypt in October, albeit in a very critical state.

Fortunately, the surgery which was done on November 30, went well and on December 27, Muhire and Ingabire travelled back to Rwanda.

"I'm okay now. I do regular checks to see how my situation is but so far everything is moving on well,” Muhire says.

With his health restored, Muhire couldn’t think of anything else but to marry someone who has been close to him in bad and good health.

Though he insists he didn’t marry Ingabire because of the kidney, it did become a motivation because if someone can give you her organ, she can as well easily make a decision to spend the rest of her life with you if you are the right person.

"I married her because I knew her before. Even before donating the kidney, we had plans to get married before I discovered that I was sick,”

"She is someone I really loved. She loves to pray and sing. We got to know each other over the years. It’s been nine years now. She is also someone who is very caring, not only me because I was sick but she loves taking care of the needy and vulnerable, Muhire says.

The duo was connected by their passion to support the vulnerable, particularly orphans and the needy.

"She loves what I do and she is also someone I expect to spend the rest of my life with,” Muhire says, passionately describing Ingabire as ‘one of a kind’.

Muhire, 30, and Ingabire, 27, have an interesting testimony, one that is bound by love and commitment.

On her part, Ingabire says she defied odds to stand by Muhire, to the extent of donating her kidney to him, when everyone was discouraging her, terming her as ‘crazy’, while others told her that she was endangering her own life.

On April 1, Muhire made a life decision to propose to Ingabire and as they say, the rest is history.