The experiences I've lived fit through the dates, like pieces of an puzzle.Por example, are 25 + 5 years since I was born in Remera Rukoma (Africa) in Rwanda; 25 + 3 years since my mother and I had to flee there because of the Civil War; it's already 25 + 1 years since eleven and one Rwandan hill were filled with machetes or dead. The French called the country Le pays aux mille collines, in spite of everything.

At this point, the reader will have realized that the number twenty-five is quite special: the pair, the fourth part of a century or a percentage, the multiple of the number five… etc. Well, 25 years ago, my father last entered a cafe in Kigali and was very impressed. One, two, three, four… He found about twenty-five U.S. military who drank coffee peacefully, in the country of Tutsi and Hutus, in a dirty coffee. I don't remember much of that time. His father, however, returned to the Basque Country very badly altered. I don't ask too much at home, because life can be stopped if you remember too much horror. I think Colonel Roméo Dallaire and my father are doomed to be nightmares forever.

Going back to the numbers, this formula that I have applied in these years also seems useful for these times. For example, it’s 25 – 1 years since the Syrian or gas war began, and 25 – 4 years since the Western powers ignited the Libyan powder keg. If my father and I were to approach the capitals of Damascus and Tripoli, we would surely find cafés full of American and Russian soldiers.

Unfortunately, in Euskadi, more than 25 + 15 years have been thrown into a Basque prisoner, despite the fact that this arithmetic operation misses many of us; unfortunately, we know that in Madrid they love the theory of chaos.

Now it's time to talk about climate change and new technologies. Well, how will we be in 25 + 25 years? Average illness if we are able to perform the operation without a calculator.

Karlos Aretxabaleta Txapel

Euskera Professor