I will not go into the day-to-day happenings of our shoot in Burundi as it was very haphazard and fragmented, it was also one of the hardest Tim and I have done for a long while.  I will however give a brief overview of our week in Bujumbura.

We flew over Burundi early on the morning of 21st of May and the first thing that struck me was how lush and green it looked, the second was the tiny airport we were about to land in.  It is made up of a succession of domes and looks like something from 'Tatooine' in the film 'Star Wars'.  I later found out that the dome represent traditional mud huts of the area, very quirky and quite contemporary I thought.  Adrien who was our next peace worker in the film was there to greet us and so off we went to our hotel not really knowing what to expect.  It was in fact a beautiful French style building set in lush grounds of flowers and trees backing onto the river.  All this for $60 a night with air conditioning, balcony with stunning view of the gardens and river and a great bed and shower with hot water... luxury!!!

For me I think the most remarkable thing about this country is the people.  In October 1993 Burundi's first democratically elected President, a Hutu called Melchior Ndadye was assassinated.  It was believed to have been carried out by the Tutsi controlled army and this sparked revenge attacks throughout the country with Hutu's killing innocent Tutsis and Tutsi's also killing innocent Hutus in the most brutal and horrific ways imaginable.  Men, women, children and the elderly were slaughtered with the figure of 300,000 believed to be the final death toll although most think it to be a far greater number than reported 'official' figure.  The real reasons behind the terrible genocide is long and complex and involves Rwanda and Congo and as always, devious politics.  

Nevertheless, the fact remains that for almost 12 years the people of Burundi suffered in a way unimaginable to, the accounts of violence and brutality paint a picture of a kind of 'hell'.

Amazingly here we are in 2007 and it would seem the people have found peace and as I look around Bujumbura both Hutu and Tutsis walk, work and live together in what looks like harmony.  The really amazing thing is that this has been achieved in two years, I can think of no other country that has managed to come to this point so quickly after so much violence and hatred.

We spent most of the week with Adrien who is the co-founder of JAMAA, an organization that promotes peace and reconciliation between young men from both sides of the ethnic divide.  He is a child born of a union between a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother (his father was killed by the Tutsi government when he was six years old, he witnessed his dad being stabbed and taken away from their home) and so when fighting broke out he found himself in an impossible position.  At this point he met his neighbour Abdul, a Tutsi married to a Hutu who was in a similar situation.  They came together and began discussing a way to bring the people together.  That was over ten years ago and JAMAA (translation in Swahili – Friends) is still going strong but unfortunately without Abdul who was killed in a car accident.

JAMAA started organizing football games and then what they call retreats for the boys, the retreats are held in quiet private areas and here the boys are encouraged to mix and talk with one another.  They have what they call 'Night of Truth' when they stand up and talk about the violence they were involved in  and the horrors that they witnessed.  All the youths from both sides killed and maimed out of fear, confusion or desperation and talking about it is a way to heal and move forward in a country that does not have the resources to offer counselling, how do you counsel a whole country anyway?  I don't think these boys will ever heal completely, you can see the deep trauma in their eyes, in their souls.

All the young men we met were kind and gentle but they were also naturally closedown.  One lunch time I was sharing a dish of local fish called Mekeke and some Cassava which is a traditional Burundian meal (incredibly delicious) and I couldn't help thinking that the hands that were breaking Cassava with me were the same hands that brutally murdered children, men and women.  It was so hard to reconcile those two different sides of these young men that I was getting to know, I understand that here, as in most conflicts around the world it is the young that are used and manipulated as tools of war and these boys are driven and forced into killing by rebel leaders and fear, but it is so removed from anything I have ever experienced (thankfully) that it is so very hard to accept.  I know for a fact that one of the boys I ate with slaughtered a whole bus full of people including an eight year old boy on his way to school after discovering all of his family dead in their home.  

Amazingly the young boy on the bus was the baby brother of one of the other young men sharing lunch with us, the fact that these two boys could not only sit in the same space as each other but they have forgiven each other and now count themselves as friends is a direct result of the incredible work of Adrien through JAMA.  Another guy at our table killed a mother and her new born by driving a bayonet through both of them.  I have read some of the accounts of violence and it is some of the worst nightmarish evil you can imagine, it was truly a killing frenzy in Burundi as in the widely reported Hutu / Tutsi massacres in Rwanda.  Burundi for reasons unfathomable to me never really got much press coverage and has largely been forgotten by the media.

Another part of our story focussed on the media in Burundi itself.  During the genocide in Rwanda radio was a powerful tool used to spread messages of propaganda hate, it was incredibly successful with devastating effect.  Yet next door in Burundi the complete opposite was happening.  'Studio Ijambo' made it their mission to implement peace journalism and responsible journalism.  They have used radio as a tool to spread the messages of peace and reconciliation and are dedicated to telling the truth no matter who is in power, it now broadcasts to over three million listeners in Africa.

There are some amazing organizations and individuals here trying to help maintain this delicate peace and we met a fantastic Swedish gentleman named Jan Oberg and an extremely committed and passionate woman from Eastern Europe named Ina Curic who has based her self in Bujumbura.  They are doing all they can to help the people of Burundi but without more money and aid and interest from the international community this brave small country will not be able to sustain the peace they have been working so hard to achieve.