Focus on displaced Batwa

Marie-Rose Sinankwakure is lame and pregnant. She lives with her husband and two children in a one-room mud hut protected from the elements by sacks that once contained flour. Some of the sacks drape over openings serving as windows and doorways. The family hut resembles the hundreds of others in Nyarumanga, a settlement in the Buterere suburb of the capital, Bujumbura. The site hosts 314 families, including 187 of the Batwa (indigenous people otherwise known as pygmies) who had fled fighting in Bujumbura Rural, Bubanza and Cibitoke provinces and were given some land in Nyamuranga on which to build themselves huts. Nyarumanga is surrounded by lush rice fields, but residents do not own land. Moreover, because they have little formal education, they cannot access jobs easily in Bujumbura. Unprepared for city life, Batwa in Nyarumanga have had difficulty adjusting to their new environment. Monique Sinzobakwira, who is too old to remember her age, said she used to make clay pots, a major occupation among pygmies, before moving to the city, where she has nothing to do. "I can't get clay here, and even if I could, customers are getting rare," she said. So, she scavenges Buterere's refuse dump to eke out a living. "Sometimes I find charcoal and sell it at 20 or 50 [Burundi] francs," she said. "If I'm lucky, I make 500 francs [less than US $1] per day, then I can buy two kilos of cassava flour and ndagala [small fish found in the Lake Tanganyika]." Unlike Sinzobakwira, the able-bodied pick up petty jobs or work in nearby rice fields for 200 francs per day. Others just beg in the city centre. Aid from NGOs Despite Sinzobakwira's condition, which mirrors those of hundreds of other families, Vital Bambanze, the secretary-general of the Union for the Promotion of Batwa, said Nyarumanga's residents fared better than other Batwa in the country, because several organisations were providing them with food and non-food items. CARE Burundi has built homes for 80 of the Batwa families. CARE also runs a health and nutrition project in Burundi that works with women and children to promote mosquito nets. CARE provides the technical information about the importance of such nets which population, health and information social marketing outlets sell to the population at a subsidised price, CARE said. Jesuit Refugee Services also provides medical care and school materials to Nyarumanga residents, and the government has backed that action by exempting pygmy children from school fees as it does for other destitute children. Although grateful for such help, some Batwa say such long-term aid could create dependency among members of their community and discourage individuals from trying to improve their lot. "One of these days, the assistance will stop and Batwa will go back to begging," Bambanze said. Landlessness a problem The only way out of the ostracism and lowly status to which they are subjected in society, he said, would be for the pygmies to be given land; this would open the way to education, which Bambanze described as the key to development. He said some 90 percent of Batwa did not own land, thus exposing them to all kinds of exploitation, including something akin to serfdom. "In Mukike and Mugongo-Manga, [two communes of Bujumbura Rural], building a hut on somebody's property entitles the owner to demand three or four days of unpaid labour per week. This is slavery," Bambanze said. Like many residents of the site, Sinzobakwira used to live on someone's land at Mubone in Bujumbura Rural Province, where her entire family were serfs. But now, even though she lives in the city and owns no land, she prefers her present condition, because she lives free and without the constant threat of eviction. Serfdom, which affected all of Burundi's landless, irrespective of ethnicity, was outlawed in 1976 by the then president, Jean-Baptiste Bagaza. Despite this measure, however, the nation's 50,000 to 60,000 pygmies say they have not seen any benefits. Their lack of land ownership still makes them feel like slaves in their relationships with landowners. But the vice-president of the National Committee for Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons and Refugees, Joseph Nzeyimana, said if Nyarumanga residents were found to be genuine war victims they would be given land like other war-affected persons. This, however, excludes some other Batwa who have not been so displaced but are nevertheless landless and, like other Burundians, aspire to owning a piece of turf.