A trawl of sights and thoughts from my final few days
As usual I am writing the last, at least for now, of my Burundi blogs on the way home. I had a good last few days. I finished off my teaching with a group of students that I have known for the last three years, right from their first year. Given that they are learning and responding to assignments and exam questions in a third language, one they had very little familiarity with before starting at BCU, it has been a joy to see their progress and the development of their skills and abilities. That is an encouragement to any teacher. I have renewed old friendships and developed new ones with many people around the university and beyond.
I spent a very relaxed last couple of days. Starting with a trip to a small project being developed by some German gentlemen. It is a little tourism business where a group of local fishermen take small groups of tourists out onto lake Tanganyika. They use their own little boats, go out under power and catch the prevailing wind to sail back in. The “sail” is nothing more than a tarpaulin spread out to catch the wind. An incredibly simple and ancient method of harnessing the wind. A small and poor local community earning a few tourist dollars just makes things better for everyone. All they need are the tourists, a role I was happy to play for a morning.
Later that day I passed the beginning of a wedding, all the usual joy and excitement as friends and family gathered, multiplied by Africa. When I came back the same way about an hour later the wedding was in full swing, the choir was singing and the bride and groom were swaying in time to the music in front of the altar, members of the congregation were joining in the dancing. It all felt joyful, relaxed and hopeful.
There is, however, and unsettled edge to the city. Everywhere one goes there are heavily armed police. There are soldiers too, not large groups but in ones or twos, reinforcing the police. All the talk is of the war, now only about 30 km away at Uvira, in the DRC. And there are tens of thousands of refugees coming into Burundi. While many of my Burundian friends do not think that the M23 rebels will attempt to move across the frontier into Burundi there is a fear that the fragile internal peace prevailing in Burundi will fall apart, possibly with the encouragement of the M23 or their international backers. Given that the previous bout of instability is still only 10 years ago and the country really has not recovered from the genocide of the 1990s, that is not entirely implausible. Add to the mix a parliamentary election from which the leader of the main opposition has been banned from taking part and the whole idea becomes increasingly plausible.
Passing that wedding on the way home again on a Saturday afternoon I think of the language of Jesus, about marrying and being given in marriage right up until the disaster of the apocalypse. I wonder about my students about to finish their degree and become ordained, about the challenges they may face. I wonder about the future of the young couple swaying happily together before the altar. Will the world they all hope for collapse in chaos and violence around them or will they live into old age, seeing their children and their children’s children grow to prosperity and peace in Burundi? I very much hope and pray that it will be the latter.
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