It is decent to respect the efforts of a man who sinks so low but still manages to collect himself together and get back up, even better when it is a country. So when one man literally did so, you would think wow and even better if that man is actually a woman. Depending on if you want to believe the Burundian press, a woman who has been dead for three good years, not three days, suddenly turns up. Not talking but chewing leaves, only this past week. And that has been the banter for folks, need I say in many languages. Somehow this riotously colourful country is finding the candour to juggle French and English in offices without any particular state coercion except for the eagerness to East Africanize, to put together a decent turn of tarmac roads at least in the city and a decent string of days without a power cut. Some of these things, the good dead teacher from the perennially hungry province of Kirundo will find peculiar in her supposed second life. But the penchant to string an unbelievable story into good banter still stands out for me. A Burundian friend who appears on the wrong side of his forties assures me that Madam Teacher indeed died and was buried by the whole village as a teacher should, leaving a grieving set of family – sad husband and teary children. This same set was bowled over this week when Mother just turned up, all smiling endlessly and chewing on leaves. Apparently, someone intends to go down six feet where Mother was kept away for good, to give it one last check, just to be sure that a true resurrection is on the cards. Good enough for the country, nobody really needs a doctor’s clean bill of health to verify that Burundi has got over its untidy stretch of gun-inspired tension. Apart from the macabre chaos and perennial problem of beggars, a sort of never ending entrepreneur spirit permeating the social fibre endures away from the surprising survival of a strong and self perpetuating multi cultural class – restaurants themed on Jazz or Rumba. Music, good life and a good serving of brochette with a cold beer on a sweaty evening that even a tough war-mongering period could not erase from a country is just but one of those endurances. Am not sure if anyone will come up with a factual explanation of what really happened to Madam Teacher in the last three years, but like many other hard to believe stories, I can only hope that the story remains stuff of the folklore. This country’s people need hope from every source, never mind if it is a story of resurrection three years after death. Whether it is an eagerness to embrace everything that comes from the near East or the ability to juggle with language in the global minefield of linguistic battles, Burundi seems to have made that much desired difficult turn for a brighter future. I wish you an optimistic Sunday. kelviod@yahoo.com
