Overdue 3/23/13

One of the things I've neglected to do with this blog is tell you about the history of Burundi.  I've been meaning to post this for sometime now.  It's important people know Burundi and its history, and this will tie into one or more of the future blogs I post.

Years ago, I remember sitting in my home room in middle school watching the news.  It was 1993.  I was watching Channel 1 news, a news program especially good at simplifying news reports so children could understand them.  I don't remember any other news report from that year, but I do remember the report on Rwanda.  I was horrified by the pictures of bodies washing over a damn in the river.  There were so many people killed.  The dead were gathered and thrown in the river for disposal.  The event was unimaginable. 
 
Somehow...Rwanda got the spotlight, and Burundi was invisible, and in many ways, still is invisible.  Months after the president of Burundi was assassinated, a plane carrying the new president and the president of Rwanda was shot down, sparking the genocide in Rwanda.  Below is more information,  mostly from wikipedia.  Accounts vary, and even Wikipedia isn't clear on some things.

For more than 200 years, Burundi was a kingdom. Burundi and Rwanda became a European colony called Ruanda-Urundi in the early part of the 1900s.  Germany and Belgium controlled the area. 

There are three groups of people in Burundi.  The majority is the Hutu, the next is the Tutsi, and the significantly smaller group is the Twa or bushmen.  How do you tell a Tutsi from a Hutu? I've heard different accounts, but one account is that the Europeans measured people.  The tallest ones were deemed Tutsi, and shorter people were called Hutu.  The Tutsi was put in charge of the military, and most of the wealth and power.

After World War 1, Belgium controlled Ruanda-Urundi, but the people of Ruanda-Urundi governed.  Starting in November 1959, there was civil unrest.  Many Tutsis were killed by the Hutu majority, and many Hutus were killed by Tutsi police and military.  Burundi separated from Ruanda-Urundi, and was "pronounced" a republic by the ruling party about 1966.

In 1972, six years later, some Hutus targeted and killed Tutsi.  The Hutus retaliated and the death toll is estimated to have exceeded 100,000.  The event is considered a genocide.

In Burundi's history, the government has changed hands between the Hutu and Tutsi a number of times, and there has been some attempts to have a multi party system.  A new constitution in 1992 proposed a multi party setup.  A civil war started in Burundi.  From 1972, it's estimated that 250,000 people were killed...mostly Hutus in 1972, and mostly Tutsi around 1992.
 
A new Hutu president was elected in June 1993, then assassinated by Tutsis the following October.  An additional 300,000 people, primarily Tutsi, were killed after the assignation, making it the second event classified as a  genocide in Burundi history.

The road to peace was long.  There were additional struggles and violence up to 2008, and I here mentions of war in 2006, but I don't know many of the details yet.

Today there is over 8.5 million people in Burundi.  Punishments were not given to some people involved in previous conflicts.  The current party is largest Hutu rebel group, CNDD-FDD, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy.  The CNDD-FDD was once the largest Hutu rebel group.  The current president is Pierre Nkurunziza, and the vice president is Terence Sinunguruz.  One is Hutu, one is Tutsi.  The military is a mixture of Tutsi and Hutu.  With help from the UN, the government is designed to include both Hutu and Tutsi.

Since I have been here, I have not seen conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi, and I don't know who is Hutu and who is Tutsi, but I know our school has people from all three ethnic groups.  I have seen some resistance to authority.  In some cases, I have seen some hot tempers, heard shouting, and I suspect some gang mentalities and hierarchies with some groups of people.  Drinking alcohol is prevalent, and a problem here.

I'm thankful to say I haven't seen many guns, I haven't seen any violence, and I haven't heard any gun shots.  The UN and many other organizations are now concentrated on restoring the economy, providing health care and medicine, and helping educate people. The fact my mail doesn't come testifies there is still a lot of corruption.  HIV/AIDS is a problem here, but that's not something I have witnessed.  I have seen some progress toward equality of men and women, some of which I've already written about.

The majority of the people here are Christian, and you can see God working to repair a broken country.  :)