Finding Joy in Burundi

I might have left the impression in my last post that Burundi is a joyless place – because it ranked last among the world’s countries on the “happiness” index. I know a lot of people who would take offense, for a variety of reasons, with this assessment. I’m actually one of them. It’s true that based on the criteria used in the study out of Leicester University I referred to, people in Burundi have a lot of reasons not to be happy: high mortality rate, short life expectancy, lack of educational opportunities – not to speak of the poverty and violence that are normal parts of life for most Burundians.

There are some other things about Burundi (and countries like it) that would challenge these criteria, however. I’ve attached a slideshow of smiling faces in Burundi to prove the point. (Thanks to my friend, Fuzz Kitto, for allowing me to filch some of his photos – all of the really good ones you see here.) People really do find reasons to be happy even in the worst of circumstances, and this is important to remember. And, of course, it’s equally true that not all people who have all the things named in the criteria for happiness are happy people. Duh.

Rather than writing a sermon here, I want to share the recent newsletter of Jodi Mikalachki from Burundi. But first, I have to tell you a little about Jodi for those of you who don’t know her. I first met her a year ago this past April in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the home of Steve Bonsey, a mutual friend. Jodi was a parishioner at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Cambridge where she had met Steve a number of years ago. Steve, Jodi, and I were preparing to go to the Amahoro Gathering in Rwanda. But Jodi was also preparing to leave before that for Burundi, where she had just signed on to work for the Mennonite Central Committee at a rural school among the Batwa people. Now Jodi is not your typical missionary teacher. She was a tenured English professor at Wellesley College for many years, but has now given up her position (and her tenure) to teach the poorest of the poor in what some consider to be the unhappiest little country in the world. Jodi writes the most incredible newsletters from the ground there. I want to share what she wrote just two weeks ago, with her permission. I think you’ll see her joy – mixed with a lot of sadness – in the experiences she describes. The woman in the last picture you see is Jodi.

Dear Family and Friends,
It's been great to hear from many of you over the last few weeks. We're about to start exams at the Hope Secondary School. Please do hold our students in your hearts. They've worked so hard and sacrificed so much this year, and for some of them, it's going to be a very close shave if they pass their year.

I have another story I'd like to share with you. I love the stories you send me, too, whether it's an exceptional period such as a sabbatical, or the hopes, concerns, longings, and joys of everyday life. It helps me feel connected to you, and to the part of the world that has shaped me.

Love, Jodi

Story: Weddings Bells in Mutaho
Two Saturdays ago, I attended the weddings of at least 75 Batwa couples in Mutaho. There's a movement afoot to formalize Batwa marriages, which have had neither the legal status of papers signed at the municipal office, nor the cultural status of a "dotte" (bride price) paid by one family to another. Formalizing marriages is a good thing in many ways: it helps Burundi develop its social security network by identifying couples and families; it contributes to the restabilizing of domestic and national life after the civil war; and it gives women and children some leverage when a husband or father does not fulfill his responsibilities. So I've been excited and happy for my night guards and their wives (and children) as they've gone through the many stages of this process over the last few months. When they invited me to the legal ceremony in Mutaho, I accepted with joy, as I did their request that I buy their wives imvutanos (ceremonial dress) for the occasion.

There is however, a downside to this movement. Numerous Batwa men (like many of their counterparts in other cultures) walk out on wives and children to start new families with younger women. One of the leaders of the Batwa community in Nyangungu left his first wife, Kejuru, the mother of his nine children, to marry a younger woman. He has since provided no support to Kejuru or his children with her. When Kejuru wanted to remarry herself, he told her he would kill her if she did. So she's remained a single mother, raising her large family (two of whom have died) on the little she can scrape together herself. She's an intelligent, graceful woman who still commands respect in her community, despite having been abandoned.

The eldest son of the second wife is now fifteen, and one of the brightest students in our 7th Grade. He has a great sense of humor, and I really enjoy talking with him when he comes by my house from time to time. When I first heard that his parents were preparing to formalize their marriage, I was really happy for him. Although I knew Kejuru was his father's first wife, I thought of it more in terms of a western divorce—unfortunate for her, but nothing to stop his father from making good on his second marriage. That was before I heard several Batwa women bellowing at the father all the way across our long schoolyard. They were outraged that he could think of formalizing his second marriage while his first wife was still alive. Kejuru and the leaders of our organization tried in several ways to stop him, but he remained determined to marry his second wife formally.

So I set out this morning with some mixed feelings—happy for Lazare and Luminata, for Joël and Luce, and even for my student, but very unhappy for Kejuru and other women who might be in her position. My night guards had arranged a motorcycle ride for me, which I underwent in my imvutano, clinging (against all cultural norms) to the drivers' shoulders as we wound our way through the hills on rutted roads. We arrived in Mutaho to find a crowd of brightly dressed women, many with nursing babies, and somberly clad men waiting outside the municipal offices for the ceremony to start. As I began to greet the women, I noticed Kejuru among them, dressed as finely as anyone, and hugged her along with the others.

About two hours after the stated time, a municipal administrator arrived and started calling couples into the hall, two at a time. I stood by the door to watch them come in, recognizing many from Nyangungu. I was moved to see many of the older people I shake hands with on the road coming forward after however many decades of marriage, children and grandchildren to formalize their unions. There were others who looked to be no more than teenagers. Every woman under forty had a baby on her back or at her breast.

One of the Batwa elders was seating them on benches—three couples to a bench made for four people. When half the benches were taken without making much of a dent in the crowd, there was a pause while two men went off and returned with one additional bench. Seating resumed until all the benches were full, leaving at least as many outside as in. There was another pause while the same two men went off and came back with one more additional bench. That was immediately filled, and from then on, it was standing room only.

After more waiting, something official seemed to be starting. When I saw Joël and Luce step forward, I went to stand with them, assuming they were being married, and wanting to show my support. The municipal official, a tall slender middle-aged woman who could be a model, smiled at me and began a long conversation with the Mutwa elder sponsoring the couple. Finally, she motioned me to sit in a chair at her side and explained that I could not be the bride's maid of honor because I wasn't a Burundian citizen. I apologized, explaining that I had naïvely joined them simply to offer my support.

While I was sitting there, a middle-class Burundian man walked up and spoke vigorously to the official. She turned back a page in her book and scratched out a pair of names with a flourish. Then pandemonium broke out. The middle-class man had come to stop one of the marriages from proceeding because the husband was legally married to another woman. Much shouting went up from other men, and finally a Mutwa elder brought calm. He asked a question, and I heard the crowd answer, "Nta numwe"—None! I realized he was asking if there were any other men in the same situation. The moment the crowd answered, "Nta numwe," the matrons of Nyangungu rose in a body to say there was indeed another man whose first wife was still living. Kejuru approached the official and I presume made her case. Because her union with the father of her nine children was not a legal marriage, however, she was powerless to stop him from formalizing his second marriage. [My colleague Béatrice has since informed me that in Batwa culture Kejuru's marriage was and is legal. Her husband's own sister, now quite elderly, walked from another province to try to stop her brother's remarriage. She slept that night in Kejuru's house.]

About an hour later after the uproar was quieted, the municipal secretary arrived, wearing something like a graduation gown in red, green and white, and an engineer's cap in the same colors with streamers of red, green and white hanging down the back. He put a deacon's stole in the same colors on the other official, and they started calling couples to the front. In a voice that all could hear, he asked each person if they were willing to take the other as their sole man/woman. After they affirmed that they were, the woman official grabbed their hands, stuck their thumbs on an ink pad, and then on a page in her register.

I thought this was a bit of a shame, especially for the women who'd made such an effort to dress so beautifully. Although it is the case that most Batwa old enough to marry don't have much formal education, many have recently taken adult literacy classes and can at least sign their names. (My night guards, for instance, sign every month for their salaries.) But no-one seemed to mind.
I was sitting next to representatives of two NGOs working with Batwa. They had come with boxes of soap and airmail envelopes, each of which held 1000 francs (700 francs is a day-laborer's wage). After being thumb-printed and applauded, each man and woman received a bar of soap and 1000 francs "to encourage them," as the lovely young Burundian woman working for a German NGO explained to me. She asked me to hand out envelopes so she would be free to take pictures. I shook hands with each couple, saying "Muragira ngeni," the appropriate form of "congratulations" for weddings. After a while, I saw that the back of one of my hands was blue with ink from the stamp pad. "I'm married, too" I announced to much laughter.

After a while, the municipal secretary asked couples to come up in groups of ten to save time. That's when the whole thing took on the air of the Moonies for me. But I kept handing out envelopes and saying "Muragira ngeni." When Kejuru's husband, whom I know fairly well, came towards me beaming, I handed him his envelope with a smile only. ("Muragira ngeni" literally means, "You're making a bride.")

As things were winding down and the young woman from the German NGO was preparing to leave, I asked her if I could have two bars of soap for Kejuru, whose situation I had already explained to her. "Yes, indeed," she said. I put them under the folds of my imvutano and carried them across to Kejuru. Later, when beers and soft drinks were being passed out to the couples, I took her a Coke. The following Monday, I sent her two thousand francs with Hélène, who is a good friend of hers.
Once the beers came out (also, I presume, "to encourage them"), things started getting a little out-of-hand. Lazare made his way through the crowd to say it was time to leave. I worked my out after him and waited for my motorcycle driver, who took me safely and slowly home in the cool evening wind that heralds the advent of the dry season. About halfway there, he gestured out over the lush valley and forested hills to our right. "Abantu benshi barapfuye hariya," he said—many people died over there. Since he had showed me moments before where his father and brother had land, I asked him whether he had lost any family during the civil war. "Ego," he said emphatically—yes. "Ntakundi," I answered—I'm sorry. "Were they killed by other people from this area, or by soldiers?" "Ego," he said again. I guess there was plenty of killing to go around—civilians killing civilians with clubs and machetes, and soldiers killing civilians with guns and grenades. Nothing could look more pastoral now than that valley and the hills on the other side.

Along our way we passed Joël and Luce, Lazare and Luminata, and many other couples on bicycles, the husbands pedaling, and their newly legal wives sitting side saddle on the back in their bright clothes, holding their babies. We all waved to each other and called out greetings. Everyone looked very happy. [end quote]

Happiness, indeed.