Let me tell you what I know.
I was recently doing some internet research, looking at what other people put in their blogs and how often they update them (incidentally, it’s more than once every three months), and I came across an interesting passage, and I think this is what ‘blogging’ is all about:
“I need writing. I need a space to share my thoughts and beliefs with others, and to converse with others. I need to spill my guts so I can make sense of them. I hate the walls people put up in their lives to keep people out, and I want to try to break down mine, and see if other people will let theirs down too.”
A lot of people have been asking me (don’t you love paragraphs that begin with that phrase?), why don’t you write more? They’re right, and when you’re on Katie Reardon’s Internet favorites, I think you have a certain responsibility to keep it interesting and updated. But I do a butt-load of writing: from reports, updates, proposals, budget narratives, and countless e-mails… I get a little tired of writing. But it’s true that we need writing, and I think it’s probably about time I updated this blog and, perhaps, talked about Burundi for a change. So here’s what I’ve written about Burundi recently:
September 2006:
“In early September, Alice Nzomukunda, Burundi’s second vice-president and a leading member of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, resigned, accusing the current government of both corruption and violations of human rights. Her comments come on the heels of several troubling events that have left many criticizing the current state of human rights in the country and led UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to express deep concern. In August, the Burundi intelligence service arrested a group of politicians and soldiers, including former President Domitien Ndayizeye of the FRODEBU party and his former deputy Alphonse Marie Kadege of UPRONA, and reportedly tortured them, on allegations of planning a coup d’état. The government has yet to present any proof of such a plot. That same month, reports emerged of the summary extrajudicial execution of several individuals in police custody. The events have further divided the government and media, leaving many to speculate on the future of freedom of expression in the country. Still, there is positive news to report. After a long period of negotiation, the government signed a cease-fire agreement with the PALIPEHUTU-FNL, Burundi’s last remaining active rebel group. However, it is important to note that many of the recent abuses committed have not involved the armed struggle with the FNL. While the signing of the cease-fire improves the country’s overall security situation, it is human rights that are in the greatest danger in Burundi.”
January 2007:
“The recent crackdowns on members of the political opposition and on the media have called into question the stability of democracy and peace in Burundi. In November, trials convened for the seven people accused of plotting to topple the government, including former President Dominitien Ndayizeye and former Vice President Alphonse Kadege, with the state seeking life sentences for the accused. The testimony of Alain Mugabarabona, a former head of the FNL (National Forces for Liberation) and one of the accused, forms the basis for the government’s case. However, Mugabarabona denies the charges, insisting that his confession and subsequent implication of the other accused were only made after being tortured. Also in November, amid growing tensions between the government and the press, two journalists from Radio Publique Africaine (RPA) and the Director of Radio Isanganiro (Mathias Manirakiza) were arrested and immediately jailed, accused of broadcasting news that jeopardized the public security. The Directors of RPA and Radio Bonesha fled the country amid the crackdowns. While relations have since improved following a series of meetings between President Pierre Nkurunziza and members of the press, as well as the acquittal and release of the jailed journalists in early January, the underlying conflict and threats to freedom of expression in Burundi remain.
Meanwhile, progress in implementing the peace agreement with the FNL, including launching a disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) process for former combatants and repatriating the group’s leadership, has been slow. On the other hand, the government has taken an important step towards resolving the country’s daunting land crisis. The National Commission on Land and Other Goods (CNTB), has begun meeting with the land owners, returnees and refugees in Tanzania to get a sense of each group's grievances and find a path toward mediation in preparation for the planned return of thousands of refugees in the coming year. Unlike previous land commissions that have addressed this problem with force, the CNTB has been committed to dialogue and mediation.”
If you’re interested in reading the program updates, check out the SFCG website
http://www.sfcg.org/, the new ones will be up shortly.
The thing about Burundi that has kept me hung up for a few weeks, and which, if you must know (“We must, we must!”), is why the December installment is coming out at the end of February. And I think it gets to the core of what blogging is all about. More later.
OK, here’s the thing, I’ve been to prisons. My dad works with the prison system, so I’ve visited a few prisons in my day and even been inside one or three. I’ve never actually visited anyone in prison. And I’ve never actually been personally affected by the sort of things I write about in my carefully worded (can’t appear too biased) program update context sections (see
http://www.sfcg.org/ !!!!!!). So take a quick re-glance at the January context, if you will (We will, we will!).
I know Mathias Manirakiza, his office is in the same building as mine, his radio station was launched by journalists who used to work for Search and has been supported by Search regularly since it was launched in 2002. So when I had a 20-page annual USAID report to finalize, I was in Mathias’ office, finalizing the section on ‘how has the American government’s support to Radio Isanganiro (via SFCG) yielded positive, peacebuilding results, blah blah blah.’ So you’ll understand the weirdness when this little report writer from DC is driving out of town, rumbling down a dirt road with erosion corridors destroying the rubber tires of a car never meant for off-roading, headed to the Musaga prison for an old-fashioned, visiting Dad at the office, prison visit.
Let me back up.
It’s late November. I’m in my colleague Stéphane’s office, discussing either something important, like the USAID final report, or how many liters of beer we’d consumed the night before (School night!) – probably the latter, and my current record is 5.04 if you’re interested. In walks Mathias, as we’re laughing about how drunk we got in the local bar, with one of those looks that makes you say, ‘Jesus, what’s up with you, you look like death warmed over’. But I don’t know how to say that in French, so I said ‘Evening, Mathias, how’s it going? What’s wrong?” And he hands Stéphane and me a convocation to appear at a judicial hearing the next morning. He’d gone to a similar hearing in September, after Radio Isanganiro, Radio Publique Africaine (RPA – African Public Radio) and Radio Bonesha simultaneously broadcast a message, accusing the government of manufacturing the coup plot for which the former Pres. and Veep and five others were accused of planning. What it boils down to is that the government was allegedly planning to launch a fake coup against itself and blame it on afore-mentioned accused, in order to destabilize the country, bolster the case against them, and, effectively, silence the opposition. Nice!
OK, that’s heavy stuff; or as my great-uncle would’ve said, ‘heady stuff’. I’m not going to take sides ‘cause imagine CNN, Fox News and NBC simultaneously accusing the Bush administration of plotting to overthrow itself in a fake coup plot to destabilize the US (ok, well not Fox News, but you get the idea). Now, imagine, if they only cited ‘credible sources’ and didn’t give any space for an Arie Fleischer counter argument. Shit, I’d throw Brokaw in prison, too, I mean WTF? So this is serious, and although two journalists had already been arrested, Mathias thought he was fine.
So he went, he talked, he answered, and they told him to leave… like what the bartender said to the two neutrons when they asked for the bill… no charge. But as he’s leaving, a group of policemen are waiting for him, and they arrest him. And here I am a week and a half later, driving down a dirt ‘road’ in the sunlight of a Burundi December midday. Stéphane parks the car, we get out, sign in at a card table manned by two policemen in blue uniforms and matching berets, lounging under the shade of a large XX tree (if I knew more about African foliage than palm trees and saw grass, I’d be able to complete that sentence). There is a crowd of about 20 family members waiting amid the palm plants and rainy season heat, staring at the two bearded Muzungus coming to visit the new most famous journalist in Burundi.
So after the cop refused my VA driver’s license as proof of identity, he copied my passport number and we headed up the dirt path to the prison. I gave my cell phone at the front desk, and we enter the place.
This isn’t one of those heartfelt reflections by candlelight, nor is it a cathartic, thank god I got to Angola essay, so I’ve been trying to make sense of it and trying to organize my thoughts into some sort of coherent, hopefully entertaining writing piece. In any event, hopefully it will succeed in breaking down whatever barrier has prevented me from writing this for two months. Bear with me; I think this is going somewhere.
Where was I. Oh, right, so the prison looks like one of those old barns you come across, maybe in Central Pennsylvania, maybe in Central Nebraska, the kind of place where hay and corn was probably stored 50 years ago and maybe, just maybe an animal or two lived there. You can still smell the damp earth and dried shit. The wood is cracking, the metal rusting, the stale air hot against your sunburn face (Ok, Greg, MY sunburn face).
Now picture that same barn complex with two chained metal doors, 10 feet high, leading to a central courtyard. There’s a square whole in the bars about 6 feet up to pass through packages and letters. And hanging on the gate, is a wall of bodies, three thick in one-piece green prison uniforms, arms resting between the bars, necks contorted to get a glimpse out of this prison scene at the waiting visitors. And picture hundreds of others talking and whispering, yelling, laughing and cat-calling, or just lounging behind them. A prison meant for 800 people holds well over 1500. Add a group of about 20 policemen in blue berets, combat boots, rolled up sleeves, and faded blue pants inspecting visitors’ gift baskets, guarding the gate, ushering you inside, and surveying the conjugal visitors.
Stephane and I head to one corner of the room, find one of the prisoners assigned to monitor and manage visiting hours. “We’re here to see Mathias”, and the man is off yelling to the someone in the crowd of faces on the other side of the gate. 10 minutes later, Mathias arrives in the green, prison issue costume and we head to the concrete hallway reserved for all the visiting parties and commence the small talk.
Stéphane asks about the food and if they’re treating him ok; I say something stupid like “Any news on a trial date?” And the conversation continues. We then talk about the upcoming election in December of the next Radio Isanganiro Director. Mathias has been talking a lot with Dominitien Ndayizeye (see update!) about a number of issues and Ndayizeye gives him a piece of political advice that only a former transitional African president could give: “You should run your campaign from prison, people love to vote for prisoners.” And we laugh, except I didn’t understand it, so I laugh 30 minutes later when we take our leave, retrieve our cell phones, and have the scene explained to me in idiot language and hand gestures. Anyway, luckily, it took long enough for Mathias to arrive that we catch the last ten minutes of the visiting period and are allowed to stay through the next visiting period. Sort of like a BOGO sale. Also, we’re not the only ones visiting him: the head of the UN, the Belgian Ambassador and several others were there that very morning.
As the next wave of visitors and visitees arrives, a pregnant woman walks up and smiles at us. She and Mathias share a hallmark moment glance, where neither says anything and they don’t have to, just long enough to make you start to feel a bit invasive, but not too long to make you look away and pretend to be interested in that chipped concrete spot on the opposite wall.
She appears to be like 15 months pregnant and is all smiles, refusing to let either her husband’s seemingly impossible situation or the third trimester prevent her from providing just the kind of cheerful, rock-like support that her husband so desperately needs. In order to further extend the visiting period, she decides to wait for the third visiting session, postponing the Prince’s return to the exiled world of political purgatory for another 15 minutes.
The conversation ends with a brief pow-wow about the current issues at the radio station, including a bureaucratic battle with the government’s regulatory commission for communications over the prospect of installing satellite internet. So, basically, nothing.
After walking out of the prison, we hop in the car, rumble up the path and head back to the office. There’s work to do, after all, a fact made all the more clear from the afternoon’s field trip.
On the drive back, and just when I thought I couldn’t feel anymore in the Twilight Zone that day, Stéphane starts telling me about the road we’re driving on (named 28th November for the country’s independence), his old neighbor Mugabarabona (see update), and a little story about the FNL shelling his neighborhood in 2004 after Mugabarabona broke with them to try to sign a peace accord with the government. The road we’re driving on was as close as they got to the neighborhood. Mugabarabona’s compound was protected by a UN South African contingent. Stéphane put his son in the center of the house, in a room surrounded on all sides and above by stone walls. The kid slept through the whole thing. The next morning, 28th November was covered in the dead bodies of the 10-14 year old FNL soldiers who had attacked the city, on orders from Mugabarabona’s replacement, ready to inflict African vengeance on his precedessor, and any innocent neighbors who happen to live in the vicinity… oh and their innocent young children.
So that was enough to make me sit back in the small Toyota four-door and stare out the window at the Burundian faces who no doubt would have their own horror stories to tell about that day, though certainly not with the benefit of a UN contingent of South Africans armed to the teeth and furiously protecting them.
Except that he went on. The authorities left the bodies there for three or four more days, enough time for the kindly residents of Bujumbura to pay their respects, spitting, stamping, kicking, and sneering at the dead carcases, taunting them for their failed ethnic massacre, probably on a sunny, breezy day, not unlike today, with the calm waves lapping against the lakeshore about a mile to the West, and 80 employees tapping away on laptops a mile to the north at the Search for Common Ground office. And maybe somebody in a four-door Toyota racing along 28 November amid UN and NGO land cruisers on their way to buy groceries and imported scotch at the local expat (expatriate) market paused to reflect that day on the state of the world.
…
As chance would have it, I’m back in Angola, finishing up this third reflection. So why am I telling you all this? I’m not really sure; maybe I shouldn’t, maybe it’s not interesting, maybe it is. But there’s something strange about meeting people that have lived through these stories, have met the people in the BBC, Reuters or IRIN news articles. And it’s even stranger coming away empty-handed when I try to find meaning or reason in these stories or think about how I might have changed having heard them.
Mathias was freed on January 3, along with the other two RPA journalists, with the Director of Bonesha being acquitted in absentia. Before heading back to Angola for three weeks, I found myself in Stéphane’s office for a bit of déjà vu (French keyboard still got it), discussing the unbreakable 5.04 liter record once again, with Mathias walking in. He’s since been re-elected as Director of the station (people love to vote for prisoners) and last week had a drop-in visit from President Nkurunziza (people love to vote for people who visit prisoners), himself. In other news, his baby girl was born the week after he got out, and she apparently weighs more than he does (the punch line of a bad prison food joke I had to laugh at).
And to be honest, I haven’t given this story a second thought since that day in the car. How is it possible not to be completely floored by these things? Let’s be honest, stamping on dead child soldiers is FUBAR, whether you brick wall it out or not.
Maybe that’s another one of those African ways of things for which you throw your hands up, tilt your head back and be glad that you come from a different place.
Or perhaps that indifference is just another wall we put up to prevent the full impact of the experience from knocking us out of our day-to-day lives, or in my case, my African vacation, and to keep others from questioning it. And it’s only through writing these things down that you’re able to start to make some sense of them…
… and share them with others.
…
p.s. My brother is the man.
