Burundi

baho!

by roland rugero

Roland Rugero, the author of Baho! (book 17 in my Read Africa 2022 challenge,) was born and lives in Bujumbura, Burundi. The book is translated from the french by Christopher Schaefer and has the lyrical quality so many french/english translations I have read over the past few months seem to have. Something else I’ve noticed in many of the books I’ve read, and that is also true for Baho!, is the allegorical subtext to the story. A layer of meaning and purpose lies just beneath the storytelling and frequently requires some context, or a deeper understanding of the environment in order to be mined.

In the case of Baho!, Rugero tells a story of a young mute, Nyamagari who, desperate for the bathroom but unable to speak, uses urgent hand gestures to ask a young girl, Kigeme, for directions to an appropriate place to relieve himself. His intentions are misinterpreted and Kigeme becomes convinced that she is in some danger from Nyamagari and begins to scream. Afraid of drawing attention to the situation and being increasingly misunderstood Nyamagari tries to cover Kigeme’s mouth with his hands, and the escalation draws a crowd who assume he is trying to rape poor, terrified, Kigeme. Frightened by the anger of the gathering crowd, of course Nyamagari runs away, which only confirms his guilt in the community’s eyes, and the rest of the story follows the crazed mob which, ignited by recent rapes in their town, pursue the young man to exact justice.

That is the story on the surface of the book, but what Rugero seems to want to point to, is the unrest and division within the Burundi nation. To understand this, requires some context of the country.

Landlocked Burundi shares a similar cultural and ethnic profile to its northern neighbor, Rwanda, a country infamous for the violent conflict between the Hutus and the Tsutsis in the 90s, and the resultant genocide that decimated their people. The Hutus form the largest portion of the population and are traditionally a farming people, but the Tutsi minority has historically controlled the army and the economy. Despite the fact that there are few cultural differences between the two groups—they both speak Rundi (Kirundi) for example, demonstrating a linguistic homogeneity which only reinforces the close cultural and ethnic ties among the people in Burundi—conflict between the two groups still exists. In his translator’s notes, Christopher Schaefer explains the fascinating and horrifying reason why: “Burundi is one of the very few countries whole post-colonial borders roughly parallel those of a precolonial political entity, an independent kingdom that ruled for over 200 years before the arrival of Europeans. It has thus been saved the kinds of conflict that plague so much of the postcolonial world. However, like other former colonial states, Burundi’s current strife owes much to European colonial policy. After Belgium took over the colony from Germany following World War I, every Burundian was assigned an ethnic identity based on racial theories in vogue at the time. Believing the Tutsis to have descended from tribes more closely related to Europeans that eventually migrated south to the Great Lakes region, those with longer noses, and longer necks, and owning more cattle (10 being the cut-off point) were determined to be Tutsi. According to this theory, Hutus were indigenous to the area and could be identified by their shorter necks, shorter noses, and fewer cows.” This racist assignation has split an otherwise closely related people in half.

In his novel, Rugero, exposes the violent mob, who are so quick to anger, so quick to judge, so quick to exact violent justice, without pausing to examine the nature of the criminal or the innocent events behind his so-called crime.

If it’s true that through art we can imagine a better world, then Rugero asks us to do this here. The underlying allegory in Baho! is the association of the mute boy, Nyamuragi—defenseless, helpless, voiceless, and misunderstood—with the tenacious spirit of the Burundi people who are trying to rebuild a life on the ashes the country's past. Nyamuragi runs for his life and finds an ally along the way.

Rugero’s message is present in his title, which translates as the command to "live!" Calling on Burundi's people to work through their divisions and distrust with the aim of building a peaceful future, together.