Throughout the project’s life span, we will regularly publish notes written by team members and guest researchers. These short pieces offer reflections on the methodologies, concepts, findings and experiences of scholars working in environmental humanities and Central African studies. In the fourth research note, FORAGENCY PhD candidate Etienne Gontard uses a fieldwork experience to reflect on the fraught microhistories of development in Burundi and on their colonial underpinnings.
Research Note #4: Fieldwork stories, Busekera, May 26th, 2024.
On May 26th, 2024, we were standing on the side of a tarmac road crossing the village of Kibigoye, on a mountainous range part of the Congo-Nile Divide. On that day, slopes were veiled in fog. The Congo-Nile Divide is a rather ambiguous geographical term describing the section of the Albertine rift severing the Congo and Nile drainage basins, stretching over the northwestern fourth of Burundi, lowering abruptly westwards on Lake Tanganyika’s coastal plain and eastwards to the hilly plateaus covering most of the country’s surface. Hydraulic traffic from the Lake turns into fog clinging to the ridges, rendering an already complex landscape of accidented and dense montane forests dotted with fields and settlements an almost unreadable space. The purpose of this stop was somehow as nebulous, given we planned to visit a place described as a “Batwa village” by Vénérand Nsengiyumva and Melchicedec Nduwayezu, the Burundian socio-anthropologists accompanying us. Both the “Batwa village”, and Kibigoye, are located near Bugarama, a small town we had visited three days earlier. After spending the previous days on the hilly plateaus further southeast conducting oral history interviews, we were on the way back to Bujumbura, the country’s former capital, on the northeastern shore of the Lake. On that day, we were spatially just above the fog, and scientifically in the midst of it. In many respects, historical research resembles wandering in the fog. Unclear and blurry shapes inhabit the visual and mental landscape, and eventually become clearer, carved out by the motion of both vision and position. On that day, many ideas and preconceptions we had were still veiled in fog, yet we felt like we could at some point get closer to these silhouettes on the hills.
The montane forests covering this part of the Congo-Nile Divide is now forming the Kibira National Park, established in 1933 by the Belgian colonial authorities as the Congo-Nile Ridge Forest Reserve, a discreet reminder of the exogeneous and colonial nature of this denomination. Sanctuarizing this area implied expelling its numerous human inhabitants. Among them were Batwa, a group previously known as “pygmies”. Batwa, the plural form of Twa, is an ethnonym designating semi-nomadic human populations, usually perceived as “others”, living largely unnoticed existences in the forest, and sometimes interacting with the other human populations who label them as Batwa. Nowadays, Batwa are among the “indigenous populations” in the glossary of international conservation policies, usually both marginalized and strictly monitored. Their social situation in Burundi shifted with the Kibira’s sanctuarization which rendered their vernacular lifestyle illegal for most parts, while forcing them to relocate outside of its boundaries. Batwa were ambiguous element of the colonial authorities’ domain. They were elusive, able to escape most of the control and constraints of being involved in the national economic production. They were nevertheless present, sometimes unavoidable in the production and circulation of certain products, notably ivory. In the racial historicity colonial authorities applied to this part of the world, the Batwa were the first inhabitants, before being pushed out to the forests by the banana-growing Hutus, themselves dominated by the Tutsi herders descending from Ethiopia. Colonial attempts at ruling the Batwa connected these politics to the precolonial, or even prehistoric, setting.
Hence, we only had a vague idea of what a “Batwa village” might be. It clearly was different from the row of wood and sheet-metal shacks on the side of the tarmac road crossing Kibigoye. Eventually, we followed a path uphill above Kibigoye through patches of eucalyptuses and pea fields until we reached what appeared to be an interpretation centre for the “Batwa village”. We entered the courtyard and were greeted by a dance performed by a group of supposed inhabitants, under wood panels listing various cooperation and development projects completed or underway. It was in stark contrast to any experience of rural life we’ve had before. As if our presence was part of a scene played out repeatedly, to which there was absolutely no surprise concerning our identity and motives. We were in a village like many others, a Potemkin village of foreign aid. Porosities between colonial management of space and conservationist doxa implied the existence of these places for internally displaced persons, falling on the wrong side of the fence separating valuable – as in biodiverse – spaces from those that were worth almost nothing. The “Batwa village” of Busekera was among these worthless places, between Burundi’s largest tea plantation and the southernmost tip of the Kibira National Park, inscribed on the country’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites. Ideally situated just an hour’s drive from Bujumbura’s comfortable hotels and their grilled mukeke fishes served with fries and iceberg lettuce, industrial beers rarely found in countryside bars, and long queues outside petrol stations with no supplies, Busekera offered foreign visitors and donors alike the opportunity to experience unforgettable moments. Like being greeted by a welcome dance. We were trapped in a complex nexus of feelings and information, equally unforgettable.
Over the course of the collective interview with three seniors whose grandparents all used to inhabit the montane forests, answers to our questionary on their childhood’s everyday life set the stage for what could be a history of développement. As a corollary, Paul’s (70), Sylvestre’s (76) and André’s (52) memories seemed haunted by white presences. Busekera itself was said to have been planned by Patrice Faye, a French reptile-enthusiast who settled in the region and helped in some ways to build it in 2006. Surprisingly enough, he also fostered a beekeeping program following vernacular methods. Eucalyptuses covering the hills around us and reigning on the landscape up to the fringes of the Kibira were said to have been brought by a white man named “Biréné”, a yet to be identified Belgian colonial agent, probably a member of the Water and Forests service in the 1950s. Biréné brought a blessing which turned into a curse. The robust and productive Australian trees provided regular and rich timber harvests. In turn, villagers could maintain a constant production of charcoal. However, eucalyptuses were also described as contradictory to the local setting, disturbing symbioses between autochthonous cultivated and wild plants, and invasive once acclimated. Analogies between eucalyptuses and late colonial and post-independence développement were recurring. Both eucalyptuses and the développement were dual objects, both promising and demising. Three days prior, in a forest close to Bugarama, we witnessed the harvest of fallen eucalyptus leaves for manure and ground cover for eggplants.
Another landmark of développement were pine trees, introduced “in 1976 by the President”. Less ubiquitous than eucalyptuses, equally exogenous, they were credited for having brought along edible mushrooms, allowing for more food and more money for the foragers. It was not always clear which mushrooms were referred to. Three days prior, in a farm near Bugarama, one interviewee specified that several mushrooms were edible, among which one specific kind, “brought by a white guy named Miréné -certainly Biréné- in 1958-1959”. These mushrooms were called “cèpes” during the interview, a French ambiguous word designating several species of the Boletaceae family. The same interviewee specified that the “cèpes” had been brought by the whites for the autochthonous to spread in the forest for later harvests. It could be that “cèpes” are in fact Suillus mushrooms, probably introduced by accident during reforestation campaigns. Paul, Sylvestre and André remembered another white presence, “Bwana Decroix”, a yet to be identified Belgian colonial agent named Van Decroix, potentially an agronomist in office during the 1950s, and likely contemporary of Biréné/Miréné. He was credited with initiating flower and vegetable production in the region during the late colonial period, notably potato and leek, suitable for slots above 1900 meters of altitude. In Bugarama, this policy’s strong arm was an autochthonous agronomist named Paul Mirerekano, remembered for teaching villagers to maintain market gardens. He eventually became a member of Prince Louis Rwagasore’s party and had a tumultuous political life in the first years of independence before being executed for his alleged involvement in an attempted coup in 1965. Mirerekano seemed less haunting compared to Bwana Decroix, the first name to be credited with the vegetable harvests. He prompted improvements, more money and more food, and deteriorations.
Alongside potato and leek came insecticides, and the death of bees. Both phenomena were synchronous in narratives. The zero sum game of material production implied that bees, and thus honey, should decline in favor of eucalyptuses and flowers. Honey was sometimes foraged in the forest, but mainly the product of local beekeeping practices. Some of these were fostered in 2006 by Patrice Faye when he initiated his programme in Busekera, beside mushroom foraging. He – at least he was credited alone for this programme – did promote the use of vernacular beehives, crafted with woven or assembled vegetal fibers and covered with tree barks. He promoted – or did not prevent – vernacular practices of brood duplication. Beehives used to be stuck between two branches of certain trees, including eucalyptuses. Faye instead fostered placing them 1m20 above the ground, held by forked branches. Honey was mostly turned into mead, akuki in Kirundi. Mead production was also part of Faye’s programme, for which he emulated vernacular processes. A liquid base was prepared by mixing water with honey and refined using dried grass as a filter. Fermentation was then triggered by adding flour to the liquid base. Other fermented beverages produced in Burundi follow the same procedure. Banana beer, by far the most popular, would be obtained by replacing honey with ripe bananas. Most of the time, sorghum flour was used as a starter for fermentation. Here, it was finger millet flour instead. Both sorghum and finger millet were culturally very important and strongly resonating with the precolonial royal institutions and cosmovision. Développement slowly erased them from the landscape. Bwana Decroix’s horticultural program and Biréné’s eucalyptuses eventually covered the grounds previously used for finger millet cultivation. In the complex palimpsest of agricultural production in Burundi, sorghum and finger millet already belonged to the past, as flowers, peas, leeks and potatoes covered fertile patches and supplied households with food and Burundian francs. In Busekera, we were told that finger millet flour was mixed with honey and shaped in spheres. In Ruyigi, an interviewee described a different production process. It required to leave a filtrated mixture of honey and water to stand for several days before adding sorghum flour, the starter, and wait for fermentation to happen. Another interviewee, coming from the Rutana region, told us that mead did not exist anymore, and that the word akuki instead described a fermented beverage made of banana and sorghum, while the “real” mead, ingurire, was among other uses a gift to the precolonial royal institutions, whose provider could obtain land or cattle in exchange from the King himself.
On the 26th of May, we were not very sure to understand precisely what mead meant. As landscape and occupations changed, beekeeping appeared to be a survival option for those who could and wanted to improve their situation as the peasantry’s material conditions worsened. It also seemed like a refuge from colonial and post-colonial constraints, as a necessary yet unproductive sector to be developed. Agricultural reports we consulted in the National Archives of Burundi before leaving Bujumbura in the first place showed how colonial authorities intended to plan local beekeeping programs for wax production, a relatively valuable commodity. It furthermore was a meaningful feature of rural everyday life, as a significant number of the oral interviews conducted in the 1970s and 1980s by scholars for the Centre de Civilisation Burundaise we consulted in the Ministry of Culture’s archives in Bujumbura were expansive about beekeeping when it came to precolonial and colonial contexts. Honey, mead and bees made the foggy past of royal institutions, exceptional gifts and symbols-rich cereals a tangible figure.
When it was time for us to leave Busekera and ride back to Bujumbura, tumult began to stir the air. A white woman and her guide entered the courtyard and were greeted by a welcome dance. We seized this perfect opportunity to flee, passed by her parked off-road vehicle, and walked back to ours on the tarmac road in Kibogoye. Fog still veiled mead and its contradictory mythologies, beekeeping and its mutations, reforestation and its chronology, mushrooms and their vessels. On May 26th, 2024, we had made our way through the fog, navigating around collective narratives and recognizing shapes we had noticed before.
View of the landscape to the north of Busekera, May 26th, 2024. Picture by Etienne Gontard.