Burundi's own Romeo and Juliet story
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Haruna had dropped out of high school and was driving a city bus, which Anita rode to school. He began eyeing her - and soon asked her out. She declined. He was, after all, 22, and she was just 16. "He's a big man," she recalls thinking, "and I'm just a little girl." Also, her friends warned her not to date a Hutu. Yet she admired his driving and his clothes and soon decided "no other boy was like him." In a teenage swoon, she even envisioned that "he would be the only boyfriend I would have for my whole life."
He, too, was smitten. "I love that girl," he thought to himself, "and I don't love any other." A month later he asked her out again. They went for sodas - and sealed their bond. Haruna recalls the moment with an impish grin: "When we shared the Fantas, she was mine."
* * *
When Anita's mother discovered her daughter was dating a Hutu, she began beating her. "Don't you know what they have done to us?" she wailed, still mourning the deaths of her two daughters. Soon she gave Anita an ultimatum: Stop dating Haruna or leave the house. So, Anita moved in with Haruna.
Her mother's friends lamented that Anita was "lost." Referring to Haruna, they'd ask, "Has he killed your daughter yet?"
Yet Haruna and Anita weren't the only ones uniting across ethnic lines. In Kamenge, even during the crisis, groups of residents, mostly women, had talked about the need to return to harmony.
Soon a grass-roots group called Cadeka was promoting unity - through a modern-day application of a Burundian tradition called
bashingantahe, whereby a group of respected elders served as guardians of the collective good. If a dispute arose, they would call together aggrieved parties, hear their stories, proclaim the official truth, and mete out judgment - such as payments of damages. Their overall focus was always reconciliation, and they ended their sessions by pleading, "We enjoin you to become brothers as before."
Over several years, Cadeka began holding workshops in Kamenge with the help of a Kenya-based group called the Association for Co-operation and Research in Development. With clusters of Hutus and Tutsis crowded into meeting rooms, local leaders inveighed against politicians who'd created the troubles. "In the poor suburbs we have killed each other, but in the rich suburbs, where the politicians live, they didn't kill each other," Adelaide Uwimeza, president of Cadeka, would say.
Using a bit of wisdom perhaps applicable the world over, Ms. Uwimeza also argued that as long as their neighborhood remained deeply divided, no one was safe: "If you chase someone away, you are not sure if they are plotting to come back."
Soon workshop participants would be part of an "hour of truth" during which they'd divulge how they'd been victimized - and, sometimes, crimes they had committed. Across years of tit-for-tat violence, many had been both victims and perpetrators, which made them more willing to admit both how they'd been hurt and the harm they'd caused.
Then participants forged and signed "community contracts," pledging to prevent violence - and help reintegrate neighborhoods. Now, delegations from other areas come to learn Kamenge's process.
In the end, some 4,000 residents attended workshops - including Anita's mom.
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RICH CLABAUGH - STAFF
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