A Voyage Never Ended

Abstract

I am an African journalist, born in Burundi 32 years ago. I grew up there, in Bujumbura, the nation's capital, where I also went to university to learn my profession. Located in Central Africa's Great Lakes region, Burundi is a war-torn country, lost in genocidal passions in a region of genocidal passions that Americans know through the name not only of my country, but our even more murderous neighbors: Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo. During the 1990s, as a reporter, I saw intimately the murderous consequences of my country's passions, and the cost in lost lives - hundreds of thousands of lost lives, lives of men, women, and children that included dozens of my own relatives. I am a Tutsi, and in covering my country's civil war, I saw before my own eyes the wholesale murder of Tutsi and Hutus alike, both sides hypnotized by the passions our shared - and tortured - history inspired.