Burundi is a small country in Eastern Africa – it takes a considerable amount of time for some of the Virtual Nomads to place it. When the adult Nomads hear the words: the Hutu and the Tutsi, there is a moment of silence. For the younger Burundi sounds exotic, and maybe something they would have never heard of if it wasn’t for Virtual Nomad. 

In 2023, the GDP of Burundi was 3.1 billion which, in economic terms, makes the tiny Burundi the second poorest country in the world (still the same situation in September 2024). According to the United Nations Human Development Report 2023-24, (which takes into account more measures than just the GDP; including life expectancy,  years of schooling, Human Development Index values; effects of climate change), Burundi is the world’s 7^th poorest country. Hammered by a long civil war (1993-2005), Burundi continues to face significant socio-economic challenges. 

But first, as always – food.

No abundance of meat – the Burundi night

The Burundi night is again a big Virtual Nomad stop. We have fifteen Virtual Nomads around the table. Present are quite a few of core Virtual Nomads: my partner JK, my daughter L (17) and her boyfriend NA (very recently turned 18!), my stepchild FK (15) and Virtual Nomad’s Special Advisor CH (who has been to around 140 countries and counting). My son A (11) is away travelling in faraway places and will miss Burundi this time. Also in attendance are seasoned Virtual nomads AK, DK and their 2 adult children. And then we have five newbies to the group: my old friend L* and her daughter S* (who was my daughter L’s first friend in Australia after immigrating from Europe) as well as my good friend SA and her husband and son (15), the JJs.. It is a really crowded and lovely night of good food, reconnection, lively music and conversation. The main topics, apart from Burundi and its recent history, seem to be high school gossip (for the high schoolers), work (for adults), the alarming ibis (also called bin chicken) invasion in Northern Sydney and of course – the food tasting.

JK prepares the main dish, considered by some the national food, called Boko Boko Harees – a very simple dish with grain and chicken, and very little else. Consumption of meat is limitedt, so there are not too many other meat dishes in the Burundian cuisine. Approximately 80% of the Burundian population rely on subsistence agriculture which has led to significant food insecurity, more than in many other Sub-Saharan countries. Many Burundian dishes are vegetarian which makes Boko Boko Harees a dish served on special occasions. It originates from the Middle East and it is said that hundreds of years ago Arab settlers brought the dish with them. Boko Boko Harees is almost porridge- like and gets its yellow colour and flavour from turmeric. JK’S Boko Boko Harees is well received with present Virtual Nomads calling it simple but delicious. 

My brave friend L* who participates in her very first Virtual Nomad night, brings ‘Ugali’ . Although we usually give easy recipes to the newbies, this was not the case this time. Luckily L* is a very skilled cook and her Ugali has a wonderful texture, albeit a quite bland taste. It is similar to some other foods we have previously prepared for Virtual Nomad, such as Angolan ‘Funje’  and Botswanan ‘Pap’. It is a side-dish more than a main one and its bland taste is meant to accompany more substantial dishes which of course at times is difficult as Burundi has food shortage at times. Ugali is also considered a national dish, and it is basically a porridge made of cassava flour. 

I prepare a dish called Maharagwe – it is a vegetarian stew made of beans, potatoes and other vegetables. It is a popular dish in Burundi but also in other East African countries, especially neighbouring Tanzania. As meat is scarce, beans provide an alternative source of protein. Maharagwe is typically made from red kidney beans so I follow that. The receipt I am following uses potato, tomato, garlic,spices, and a little bit of coconut milk. Maharagwe is said to be a family meal which is often prepared together as a communal practice. To be fair, it is not the most exciting dish, so while the nutritional value is well recognised, the taste itself is not very thrilling. 

My other dish for the night is Isombe which is richer in taste than Maharagwe, and the secret to its success is peanut butter that brings body and substance to the otherwise rather bland dish. Isombe includes cassava leaves which are a common ingredient in Burundi due to nutritional value and easy availability. But in Sydney, I do not have access to cassava so I use spinach instead which, of course, is not the same but nutritional anyway. In Burundi, it is considered to be a dish reflecting the agricultural practices and most times is not consumed on its own but with side dishes such as Ugali, beans, plantains and meat, if available. The Isombe I prepared included spinach, eggplant, cabbage, tomatoes, coriander, spices and peanut butter. While Isombe is quite a simple dish, it was the clear favourite of the Burundi dishes with its creamy taste.

A divided country

What is known of the early history of Burundi is that it was first inhabited by the Twa people, who were Pygmy Peoples. Burundi was later populated first by the Hutu (around the year 1000) and the Tutsi (around the 16^th century) who then became the ruling class. In the 17^th century, the Kingdom of Burundi emerged with a Mwami (king) as the ruler. The bones of the hierarchical class structure included Tutsi on the top, Hutu beneath them and Twa as the lowest class. 

In 1890, Burundi together with Rwanda was claimed by Germany and became part of German East Africa. After World War I, the League of Nations played political monopoly and Burundi/Rwanda was transferred to Belgian control. Both Germany and Belgium favoured the Tutsi undermining the majoritarian Hutu population – which is said to be one of the seeds of tensions between the Tutsis and the Hutus. 

Independence was gained from Belgium in 1962 (and Burundi and Rwanda officially separated). Initially a monarchy, the coup led by Michel Cicombero transitioned Burundi into a republic country in 1966. But political instability, and conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi never went away, and Burundi went through several periods of ethnic tensions and violence. The 1972 Tutsi-led genocide killed between 80,000 and 120,000 people (and resulted in mass immigration to neighbouring countries). A one party system followed which again favoured the Tutsi. A devastating, long civil war between Hutu and Tutsi from 1993 to 2005 – starting with a Hutu-led killing of Tutsis, resulting in over 300,000 deaths. When peace was finally achieved, Burundi’s population  still faced untrusting co-living, poor infrastructure, food insecurity – and its effects are still felt today. Burundi is also one of the countries with most displaced refugees (12^th in the world in 2022), struggles with rapid population growth, inflation, corruption, sanitation problems, prevalence of HIV, limited access to water, lack of broad electricity cover, human rights violations, and persecution of human rights activists, opposition members and LGBT people.  

Books from Burundi: the cycle of violence 

Petit pays (Small country) by Gaël Faye is based on Gaël’s own experience (although not strictly autobiographical). He was born in 1982 in Burundi to a Rwandan mother and French father. In 1995, during the Burundian Civil War (1993-2005), his family relocated to France. Apart from writing, Gaël is a songwriter and hip hop musician. His art is inspired by his Burundian childhood and Rwandan and French background, and his books and music often deal with issues related to cultural heritage, identity and displacement. In 2018, he received the Victoires de la Musique Award (for his music). 

When Petit Pays/Small country was published in France, it became a bestseller and won many awards. It is an astonishing book that shows how conflicts build up slowly, in how the first signs are seen in the trivial and mundane,  signs becoming more visible over time. 

It is of course not the first book written about a conflict from a child’s perspective (there are many) – but where other books can fall short, Petit pays  is really effective in its delivery. What begins as a sun-filled childhood as a privileged ‘white kid’ in Bujumbura (the economic capital of Burundi), with besties occasionally stealing neighbourhood mangoes and eating them in an abandoned combi, slowly moves into a demonstration of the corruptive and insane mindset of ethnic conflict. Story-wise, the writing is fantastic. At times, particularly in the beginning, I found that the story lingers in small, daily details, appearing to be a bit too descriptive – however, this is deliberate. The book describes life as we know it: moments that come and go, but then that lightness and hidden solace of banal life fades away as the conflict grows closer – and the quotidien, the ‘ordinary’ as we know it is gone forever. The narrative also tells about how for the privileged, the conflict does not really materialise until war is on their doorstep. The main character Gaby is really well written, struggling to make sense of the situation, struggling to stay neutral, struggling with the separation of his parents, struggling with the loss of innocence and childhood, simply embedded with complex, 3-dimensional struggle. When the year changes to 1993 near to start of the book, the reader of course knows what is coming but for Gaby it takes time. The civil war in Burundi, but also the genocide next door as he has family there, touch upon his life greatly. I read it and I wept. 

“For the most part, Mamie’s neighbours were Rwandars who had left their country to escape carnage, massacres, wars, pogroms, purges, destruction, fires, tsetse flies, pillaging, apartheid, rapes, murders, settling of scores and I don’t know what else. Like Maman and her family, they fled those problems only to encounter new ones in Burundi – poverty, exclusions, quotas, xenophobia, rejection, being made into scapegoats, depressions, homesickness and nostalgia. The problems of refugees.” 

“This poisonous lava, the thick flow of blood, was ready to rise to the surface once more.  We did it know if yet, but the hour of inferno had come, and the night was about to unleash its cackle of hyenas and wild dogs.” 

My second book from Burundi is by Marie-Thèrése Toyi, a Burundian academic and lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Burundi. She has also been a member of the Pan-African Parliament. She has written several novels, Weep Not, Refugee being the most famous one. It is a tough, tough book. It is about the life of the unwanted, the despised; refugees in camps living in brutal, inhumane conditions.

“A loud voice calls: “Start again. No architect should be discouraged by earthquakes shattering his work into pieces. Man passes earthquakes. Hunger, disease, orphanhood and widowhood, all that must be surmounted. Wipe out your tears. Weep not, refugee, architect of your tomorrow. Stand up and start again!’”

A teenage girl loses her whole family while escaping the horrors of the civil war in Burundi. She is raped by her mother’s murderer, then rejected by other refugees, who hated her father. She gives birth to a boy, the narrator of the story, who describes growing up in a circle of poverty, violence, discrimination and hunger – and the social, financial and political insecurity and limitations of the life of a refugee. The boy, Wache Wacheke Watachoka (his name means ‘Let them laugh, they will eventually get tired and keep quiet’), goes through several different challenges and hardships in life. His tale is a homage to survival in precarious situations; the cruel lesson that even if skilled and clever, your life is unwanted and worthless in the hands of natives of the host country, to the point of sometimes being hunted. It is a touching, descriptive and raw depiction of the life of a refugee. And, of course, clearly visible in Marie-Thèrése’s words is the small, underlying reason for it all, the ethnic conflict between people whose noses were different shapes. 

“There are lessons we learn from life. Their own life had never introduced them to a refugee experience. What would they understand if they had never had experience of being sick without any hope of treatment, being hungry with no hope of food, sleeping under rain, being refused in school and in a job for which you were highly qualified, simply because you are a refugee?” 

My last book for Burundi is Boho! by Roland Rugero. It is the first Burundian book translated into English – a book about the lingering fear, mistrust and miscommunication after a long war. In the story, a young mute man tries to find a way to a toilet from a young woman in rural Burundi. His gestures are understood to suggest rape – which launches a chain of unfortunate events. The young man becomes a target for post-war frustration and mass hysteria. The ethnic dichotomy is not an issue in this particular story, but rather the widespread cultural hangover from the monstrosities of war. The chapters are short and usually start with a proverb in Kirundi. As the narrative is based on oral communication in Burundi, the book becomes simultaneously interesting and fragmented. The story is told from various points of view from a rich variety of characters. It is an interesting read of a universal topic (false accusation of sexual violence) with a local flavour: Burundian storytelling, Kirundi proverbs, rural setting in an imaginary town in Burundian countryside and the obvious references to recent history. 

Filmmaking from Burundi 

Burundian audio-visual production did not truly launch until 1984 with the introduction of Burundian TV. The first full length feature film, Gito l’Ingrat (Gito, the ungrateful) by Leoncé Ngabo, was not produced until 1991.  Gito l’Ingrat went on to gain moderate international attention and festival success. The director founded the International Festival of Cinema and Broadcasting in Burundi (FESTICAB), which in turn was instrumental in the formation of the East African Film Network in 2014. The movie itself follows a story of a prodigal son who returns from France to Burundi with big plans and self-imposed arrogance, as he feels superior to his country’s people and expects big things to happen. As expected, life (featuring a love triangle) gives him a lesson in humility. While there are many interesting elements, from the subtle reflection on colonialism and the returning to one’s roots, the story itself is quite typical with the usual arc of protagonist self-realisation. It is a light-hearted film, and nothing really elevates it above average. Unfortunately, it does not help my enjoyment that it is difficult to root for Gito, the main character, and his expected descent is not even a fully satisfying one. However, being the first feature film from Burundi has its merit and the end credits reveal broad support from different Burundian ministerial departments to UNESCO, which of course makes the film a pioneer. 

Petit Pays (2020), written and directed by Éric Barbier, is based on Gaël’s book that I have read for the Burundi stop, mentioned earlier. As I knew the film version existed, I decided to read the book first, and am delighted that it is a very faithful adaptation and achieves justice to the narrative. It successfully brings Gaby’s story to life through gorgeous landscape and scenography. It achieves the sense of the loss of paradise and growing tension, first subtle and then explosive, and heartbreaking. It is a wonderful film as an extension to the book, with the right rhythm and space. It masterfully gives faces to the characters in the book, and to some of the devastating stories. The actors chosen for their roles are perfect – especially Isabelle Kabano playing Gaby’s mother. Fabien Lemercier (of CineEuropa) said about the movie: 

“A respectful approach to his [Gaël’s] literary model makes Small Country a vehicle both endearing and educational, a good example of great History clarified by the small one, and a sensitive (and widely accessible) perception of tragic events of which it is important to keep as many traces as possible in order to teach the depths of abysses and the virtues of resilience to those who didn’t know them.”

The Burundi Film Center, launched in 2007 with a small volunteer filmmaker group, that on their website says that it “promotes arts, culture, innovation and technology while facilitating the development and promotion of the industry”. The volunteers started to train young people (15-25) on film history, theory and production. The Center’s mission is to support Burundian film making through training, production, collaboration and promotion (domestic and international markets). The objective is to support a community of filmmakers that make ‘uniquely Burundian stories’ but also introduce contemporary media and professional journalism in the country. 

On their website, the Center showcases eleven short films that have been made with the support of the Burundi Film Center. While clearly still developing in film making, the short films tackle hard and pressing issues from refugees to sexual violence, HIV, cost of health services, unemployment, prostitution, single parenthood. Even if the difficult concerns in the stories are often narrative-ly resolved in almost miraculous ways, they are still raising awareness of important social problems. In the absence of feature films, these shorts offer a very interesting window documenting life in post-war Burundi. The shorts are nearly twenty years old, most from 2007 and the most recent from 2010 – which makes them filmed only a few years after the end of the conflict. Probably the most emotional for me is The Return of Old Kabura, telling of a 82-year-old man who fled Burundi after his wife and children were killed, and then returning after 38 years. 

Home Free

Produced by the Burundi Film Center, this documentary is written and directed by Canadian Christopher Redmond and Jessie Thomson. After 1972, more than 350,000 fled the violence and genocide in Burundi to neighbouring Tanzania. In 2007, the governments of Burundi and Tanzania decided to find a lasting solution to the Burundian refugee situation. The documentary follows three families with very different life decisions: one decides to return to Burundi after more than three decades, one decides to apply for Tanzanian citizenship, and one immigrates to Canada. The documentary reveals that 20% of the refugees (45,000 people) in Tanzania wished to return to Burundi – many without any means to do so, or even a place to go. 

Next stop: Bonus B

Thank you L for the proof reading