Tragedies

Watching the gruesome news of the Virginia Tech shootings when I got back from the field last week and returned to Burundi’s capital of Bujumbura, I cried. But it is not something I brought up to anyone here. Why? The number of people who have died in Burundi since 1993 is 5,000 times the number who perished at VT. While this in no way lessens the tragedy of the shootings, it made me uncomfortable with broaching the subject.

In America and many other parts of the world, we assume that we will be safe. We are shocked when violence tears things apart. This is also why terrorism is so effective against us – it shatters our sense of security. I know the lovely and interesting Burundians I’ve been working with would have been sympathetic if I brought up the Virginia Tech tragedy, but I shy away from any subject that touches on the deep tragedies that they themselves have faced. If we as Americans gave as much news coverage to parents in Burundi, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Israel, and Palestine, showed pictures of the brothers and sisters who perished, the children who died, the grandparents...maybe there is too much tragedy in the world to show it all with the same intensity. It’s natural to be hit hardest by tragedies close to home – the perplexing grief of something senseless and random. But while not as random, the violence that has occurred or is occurring in each of these countries is just as senseless, and parents mourn with the same depth of grief, if not with the same shock.

But, as with much of my time in Congo, the thing that strikes me most here in Burundi is that I can barely imagine a war. Yes, I see soldiers. Yes, I they have guns. But people carry on with their lives, children smile at my camera, and old women shake my hand. And I leave it at that, because the truth is that I don't want to imagine the suffering. I'm selfish like that.






I know, it’s almost as hard as “Where’s Waldo?” But if you stare long enough you might be able to pick me out of the group.