Power as Resilience : a study of the life-projects of primary school children in Gitega, Burundi

(1)

Power as Resilience: a study of the life-projects of primary school children in

Gitega, Burundi

Julien LESCOP

Master’s Thesis in International Development Studies December 2014, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

(2)

COLOPHON

“Power as Resilience: a study of the life-projects of primary school children in Gitega, Burundi” Julien Lescop – 10701109

julien.lescop@gmail.com

Thesis submitted on December 13th_{, 2014 in partial fulfilment of the}

MSc International Development Studies

at the Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Supervisor: mw. dr. Jacobijn Olthoff Technical advisor: dr. Lidewyde Berckmoes Second reader: drs. Graciela Paillet

Cover page: drawing by a 16-year-old girl at Nyakibingo primary school. The translation of the legend is: “Three inseparable persons acting together for the development of Burundi” (Burundian proverb).

Last page: drawing of a 17-year-old boy at Nyakibingo primary school. The translation of the legend is: “I would like the dove to bring peace to Burundi”.

(3)

ABSTRACT

Burundi is a small landlocked country in the southeast of the African continent, with Rwanda to the North, Tanzania to the East and South and the Democratic Republic of Congo lying to the west, with a population of around 10 million. It regularly ranks towards the bottom of international development charts and the bulk of its population is under 15 years old. It has suffered several cyclical episodes of violence fostered by ethnic tensions since it achieved independence in 1962. However in the last decade Burundi has experienced a period of peace and the children of today have no directly experience of civil war and other exactions, and it is these children that represent the future of the country.

This thesis fits into a larger research project on the intergenerational reproduction of violence and resilience for primary school children. The fieldwork has been conducted in Gitega, the second largest city of the country. The focus employed throughout the thesis is to scrutinize the aspirations and potential of primary school children. I aim to relate their life-projects with elements of the socio-economic context and investigate what are the determinants and underlying reasons and implications of their conception and predictions of their future. In order to do so, data has been collected through a combination of surveys, focus groups, interviews, drawings and observation thus the methodology employed derives from mixed-methods analysis techniques.

The primary theoretical foundation of this investigation is composed using the bio-ecological environmental framework of Bronfenbrenner, which allows this research to construct the reflection with the child as both the subject and the actor of his or her development. The dreams and hopes of the children are presented, analysed, and put in contrast with the structural violence of their reality.

The principal finding of this thesis is that the conceptualization of the projects of the children in Gitega is driven by the desire for power, under several forms and at a number of different levels. I argue that children consider power as a means to cope with the harshest elements of their reality and as a strategy to protect themselves in the future. Power is thus seen as an active resilience mechanism. Interpretation of the data leads to the conclusion that the ownership of their livelihood is of utter importance and that life-satisfaction is the result of a bargain between power and its retributions. School is considered as a place of shelter and as the most powerful trigger towards the realization of their projects but at the same time can also be a source of frustrations, particularly due to the huge differences in quality of education between private and public schooling. Physical violence is still widespread at school from the part of the professor and there is a process of internalization of violence from the part of the children, particularly concerning punishments. In the conception of their projects, the children make categorisation of the activities they hope to undertake in the future and have positive or negative considerations about certain categories.

Keywords: active resilience, forms of power, life-projects, Burundi, primary schooling, structural violence, mixed-methods

(4)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Je voudrais en premier lieu remercier tous les enfants qui m’ont aidé à accomplir ce travail qui, je dois le dire, a été de longue haleine. J’espère pouvoir vous recroiser un jour et voir comment vous avez réussi à accomplir vos rêves. Ego, vraiment.

Ce mémoire n’aurait non plus jamais vu le jour sans le soutien de ma famille, d’ici ou d’ailleurs, mon frère François et mes parents, Jean-Pierre et Gladys, je vous aime et vous remercie pour tout ce que vous avez fait, toléré et provoqué pour que je puisse finir de telles études.

Para mi gente de Perù también, me fui a otro continente pero es para regresar todavía más fuerte, ténganlo por seguro. Los quiero.

Mes amis de Lorient, de Paris ou d’ailleurs en France, vous savez.

I also would like to warmly and deeply thank Jacobijn Olthoff and Lidewyde Berckmoes, my supervisors, who have accompanied me in the conception and redaction of this thesis. Your pieces of advice, recommendations and critics have guided me, helped me, and made me learn a lot. I consider this thesis as a collective work and it would have been impossible to achieve it without your participation. It is a collective work and I am proud to have been trusted by you. Super bedankt! I also have to mention all my comrades of the IDS master, along whom I had the chance to discover the world with a researcher perspective, a chance that is definitively worth it. I also thank all the team of the master, for the insights, support and knowledge they provided me.

Enfin et surtout, je voudrais remercier tous mes amis au Burundi, ce beau pays où je sais que je retournerai. Saida (les dames d’abord) Aubin et Cédric (ordre alphabétique désolé) particulièrement, qui m’ont tellement aidé dans mon travail, mais m’ont aussi accueilli dans leurs cœurs comme je les ai accueillis dans le mien. Toute l’équipe de l’Alliance Française de Gitega, avec qui je me suis senti plus que collègue, ami. Gérard et l’équipe du Centre Culturel également, je vous adore. Christian et Yannick à Buja, on va se revoir ne vous inquiétez pas ! Tous les compatriotes volontaires ou travailleurs qui m’ont fait une place pour dormir et avec qui j’ai eu tellement de plaisir à siroter des Primus en regardant les matchs. Sans oublier toutes les personnes qui m’ont donné accès à leur travail et m’ont aidé dans ma recherche.

A tous ceux à qui je pense aussi sans les nommer, je vous aime et vous le savez. Merci. JL

(5)

ABBREVIATIONS*

*French abbreviations have been translated into English.

AF Franco-Burundian Alliance of Gitega

AISSR Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research BIF Burundian Franc

CNDD-FDD National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy

EUR Euro

IC4D Information and Communications for Development ILO International Labour Organization

IPRED Pastoral Initiative for the Reinsertion of Children in Difficulty ISTEEBU Burundian Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies MPI Multi-dimensional Poverty Index

NGO Non-Governmental Organisation

PBEA Peace-Building, Education and Advocacy PCDC County Planning of Community Development PPCT Person-Process-Context-Time

PPP Purchasing Power Parity

PQIP/DCTP Inter-Country Quality Cluster for the Development of Technical and Professional Skills

UN United Nations

UNDP United Nation Development Programme UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization USD United-States of America Dollar

REGIDESO Water and Electricity Production and Distribution of Burundi

(8)

LIST OF FEATURES, TABLES & GRAPHS

List of figures: Figure 1.. ... 15 Figure 2. ... 17 Figure 3 ... 22 Figures 4 and 5 ... 23 Figure 5 ... 26 Figure 6 ... 27 Figure 7 ... 28 Figure 8 ... 28 Figure 9 ... 29 Figure 10 ... 30 Figure 11 ... 31 Figure 12 ... 32 Figure 13. ... 39 List of tables: All tables created by Author. Table 1 ... 34 Table 2 ... 46 Table 3 ... 47 List of graphs: Graph 1 to 7 ………35 8

(9)

INTRODUCTION

“You are in an oasis in Burundi, an oasis of knowledge in a desert of ignorance”, my new friend, Jean Marie1_{, tells me. Jean Marie is 18-year-old and in last year of schooling at the Seminary of Mugera. I}

am in the library of the Alliance Franco-burundaise de Gitega2_{(AF), the francophone cultural centre}

of the city. And I am impressed: plenty of books in a clean and cosy space, computers with Wi-Fi and TV with satellite channels in front of which politely seat two dozen children, who are watching cartoons. There is an electricity outage and part of the group go to the library to try to decipher some comics whilst the others go out to play knucklebones or one of the other numerous games they know. I have just arrived to Burundi, and have not seen much so far of this country apart from its superb green and ochre hilly landscape from the bus. And being in this “oasis” makes me feel doubtful. It is clear that this place does not correspond to the image one imagines when looking at the statistics of the country and which depict one of the poorest countries in the world. In 20063_,

81.3% of its population lived under the international threshold of poverty of USD 1.25 per day in PPP4_{(World Bank 2014), the education and health sectors are characterized by their fragile}

infrastructures and hunger and access to water are also chronic issues (Kassegne et al. 2011, D’Haese et al. 2010). We continue our discussion and Jean Marie tells me that I ought to go to different schools to note their differences. In front of the AF is the American Corner, which is dedicated to the English language. Again, it has thousands of new books, and its insides are full with youth quietly reading. I am definitely in a peculiar place of the city, and I will have to move around to grasp the full reality of it. Thankfully, it is not too hard to see the differences when circulating a bit. There are still children everywhere, but they are not undertaking the same activities as the ones at the AF. Some of them are carrying crops on their heads; others are selling peanuts, samosas or doughnuts. There is little doubt that these children do not have time or occasion to watch TV. I only saw them playing football with a little ball made out of rope about one hour before twilight, before going to sleep after having been walking and working all day long. Are these children working for their daily life, or are they saving for other projects aside from going to school (it is summer holidays)? What could these projects be? Are they different than the ones of the noticeably more privileged children at the AF? Where do these projects come from and what are their implications? These are some of the questions I asked to myself and I investigated, and the answers I found will be presented in this thesis.

1_{All the names have been changed to respect anonymity.} 2_{Franco-Burundian Alliance of Gitega}

3_{There is no more recent data.} 4_{Purchasing Power Parity.}

9

(10)

There are parts of the world where children are the majority, and such is the case of Burundi, where 37% of the population were under 15 in 2012 (UN 2012). What it means is that the majority of the population in this country was born after the horrors of the lengthy civil war that tore apart the country between 1972 and 2006. In a way, they represent a “fresh” generation who have not been directly impacted by the civil war’s cruel outcomes. But that does not mean that there are not still dealing with the aftermath of the protracted armed conflicts that occurred in Burundi since its independence. That they did not directly experience war themselves does not mean that past war does not affect them at all. War and conflict are of the most destructive of inventions of humanity, and unfortunately their effects do not stop with the end of war itself; it is easier to destroy than to build. The effects of conflict are multi-dimensional; not only does it destroys capital and infrastructure, it also retrocedes economic development (Collier & Duponchel 2013, Serneels & Verpooten 2013). In addition, it also strongly impacts psychologies, politics and more broadly, several layers of social relations (Miller & Rasmussen 2010, Spitzer & Janestic 2013, Ghobaran et al. 2004) as consequences often the shift from the visible towards more abstract forms of violence. The fact that killings have stopped does not mean that people stop suffering all of a sudden. Galtung (1996) has outlined the difference between what he calls positive and ‘negative peace’: negative peace is the mere abolition of objective violence, the cessation of physical fighting or discrimination, whereas ‘positive’ peace is the resolution of the deeper root causes of the conflict, thus reaching the subjective forms of violence and only the last concept can guarantee a sustainable peace. In the construction of such types of peace, education plays a major role in the building of peace in a country where youth are the majority. It is in a similar context that most of nowadays population were born in Burundi, and there is a consensus among researchers that Burundi is still regarded as a post conflict context, which can re-erupt in violence at any moment (Vervisch et al 2013, Curtis 2012, Vervisch & Titeca 2010). A memorial of a high school in Kibimba, some kilometres from Gitega, where 59 students and 4 professors were massacred during the events of 1993 is there to remember that violence is part of Burundi’s recent history and that education was often the target of the attacks, a sad feature that has unfortunately not much changed since (UNESCO 2010). Fear was also still present among the children, who often count on God to protect them from the stories they were told at family gatherings or at social events.

Nevertheless, it rapidly appeared that there was certain optimism about the future of Burundi, a feeling that the worst was in the past and that now was the time to put aside former decried differences and to move ahead, with everybody participating in the development of the country. The children had a strong feeling of unity and were proud of their country and of being Burundian. Most of them considered that it was only by common work that their country would

(11)

thrive. The drawing on the cover page of the thesis represents this sentiment. As the three stars on the flag of Burundi, it depicts a triangle of three persons, each one having a different activity: one is harvesting, one is reading and the last one holds the national flag. I was explained that this representation is because of the three stones that support the pot in which people used to cook. The three stones in triangle are the most stable disposition for the pot not to topple, like how the work of everyone would lead Burundi to stability and development. And indeed, the legend says, “Three inseparable persons acting together for the development of Burundi”. I was interested in what could be the kind of work they were thinking to do later to participate to this national plan and some of their thoughts were interesting and surprisingly well elaborated for their age!

But a wonder remained: good will and hopes are something, reality is another. And the reality of daily life in Gitega looked hard. Most of the children had to work to help their families; a lot of them could not afford three meals a day. It is likely that the hard conditions they live in have an impact on their development (Ferguson et al. 2013), and to that can be added the few economic opportunities I was able to observe in a middle-sized town such as Gitega. Also, there was a big concern regarding overpopulation and the unemployment it was said to be provoking. Children often talked about unemployment that they saw or heard about, and this was in contrast with their optimism about finding a livelihood in the future. All of these problems could lead to frustrations and conflicts, because the confrontation with harsh reality can lead to possible tensions and competition for a job or another resource. Also, political polarization could play a role in creating scapegoats.

As an international development student interested in the relationship between education and the job markets, I felt strongly curious about the links between the two and I decided to research them, their origins and what they imply. I was given the opportunity to do so in the frame of a bigger research project, the Peace-Building, Education & Advocacy (PBEA) programme in Burundi, of which one of the objectives was to document and analyse the determinant factors of the transmission and reproduction of violence and resilience at the community level, with special focus on the school environment. This was an exciting and challenging opportunity. The freedom provided in the definition of the research project at several levels, from the definition of the research question and exact location to the choosing of the methodology, as well as the continuous support and advice at all the stages of the development of this thesis have been a source of great value, learning and experience for me. It was decided that I would investigate the following research question and sub-questions:

(12)

What are the strategies, means and implications of primary school children life-projects in Gitega, Burundi?

- What are the life-projects of primary school children and how are they conceived? - What are the conditions in which life-projects are formulated and what is their impact on them? What is the role of schooling in their livelihood aspirations?

- Are there resilience mechanisms set up by the children in response to potential adverse conditions they live in?

The following chapters of this thesis will describe the answering process of this question. The first chapter will be dedicated to providing more elements on the context of the research, its relevance and the geographical and historical context of the research location. In the second chapter, I introduce the theoretical framework that has been constructed and used to frame the results and discussion forwarded by this study. The research methodology is presented in Chapter 3, which also includes some ethical considerations. Chapter 4 is the core part of the thesis, where I collate the data before subsequently presenting the analysis and findings from the field. At last, the concluding chapter will wrap up the thesis and present some tracks for further research.

1 CHAPTER 1: CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH

I will detail in this section the broader conditions under which this thesis has been produced, in both its conception and implementation. This Master’s thesis has two roles. Firstly, it aims to contribute to the academic literature regarding education and conflict in the context of Burundi. Secondly, it forms part of a larger project initiated by the AISSR5_{and UNICEF Burundi, with the scope of studying}

the intergenerational reproduction of violence and resilience in the school environment in Burundi. In the first part, I introduce the broader programme this work is part of before detailing the genesis of the subject, location and main aims.

1.1 The PBEA programme

The Peacebuilding, Education and Advocacy (PBEA) programme is a four year initiative (2012-2015) funded in partnership by UNICEF, the Government of the Netherlands and the national governments of participating countries and other key partners. It aims to look at the particular factors susceptible of causing the reproduction of violence and conflict in thirteen post-conflict or conflict-affected countries worldwide. Contrary to the majority of studies on this theme, which focus on macro drivers of conflict, such as the political situation or sociological differences between different groups, this programme looks into more micro factors such as integration and the reproduction of violence, 5_{Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research}

12

(13)

in particular in the primary school environment. Thus, this programmes values a child-centred approach, “looking at how they experience and reproduce violence throughout the different stages of their lives, […] to implement interventions that strengthen community and individual resilience to violence, thus interrupting the cycle” (UNICEF 2014).

The AISSR and UNICEF Burundi have recently come to an agreement in order to develop research in this field, in Burundi. This project consists of several phases, this thesis being part of the first one; which focuses on the collection of primary data in an explorative way. Three International Development Studies students went to the field, each one in a different location and with a particular focus on the issue of reproduction of violence for primary school children. Freedom was left to the researchers to choose their subject and location, with the advice of the technical advisor and thesis supervisor. This research shall be followed by a second batch of students who will be able to go deeper in the themes that will have been identified as the main issues by the report, in order to gain further understanding about the factors underlying the reproduction of violence. Moreover, this following phase will involve the collaboration of Dutch and Burundian students, allowing for a knowledge sharing beneficial for the quality of the research.

1.2 Gitega, former capital of Burundi

There is limited research about Burundi, be it academically or for the purpose of consulting. Moreover, the difference between the amount of research done in the capital city compared to the rest of the country is striking, and this difference can have a big role in avoiding generalizations in a country where every context is primarily defined by the locational characteristics. These include the recent history, population, resources and the socio-political climate, which are key determinants in the understanding of issues that could seem similar at the first glimpse, but whose intensity and outcome could differ accordingly to the current setting of these characteristics. I decided that this research would take place in Gitega, the second largest urban centre and former capital of Burundi until the independence in 1962. Gitega was chosen because of the perceived opportunities to engage with children despite the public holidays; internet-based investigation pointed out the presence of certain structures susceptible to be good entry points. Being the first city settled by the German colonisers in 1912, it is in Gitega that the first formal schools were built in Burundi and the “commune”6_{now counts 56 schools.}

1.2.1 Burundi

Burundi is an east-African country of 10 million of inhabitants, bordered by the Democratic Republic of Congo at the west, Rwanda at north and Tanzania at south and east (Statistiques-mondiales

6_{A commune is the equivalent to a county.}

13

(14)

2014). The territory of nearly 28 000 km2_{is a former Belgian colony, after having been colonized by}

the Germans who had to “cede” it, along with Rwanda, after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Burundi proclaimed its independence from Belgium on July 1st_{1962. If little is known about}

pre-colonial history, since independence, Burundi has been struck by cyclical internal violence, mainly due to ethnic tensions and afferent political power. The objective here is not to make a full account of the political history of Burundi from its independence until the more recent conflicts, for which the reader may refer to Uvin (1999), Reyntjens (1993), Lemarchand (1998), Chrétien (1998) or Crippa (2012). However, it is important to understand the context from which the project in Burundi is situated, notably the consequences of cyclical violence, which has been catalysed by multiple coups and assassinations. This violence was often polarized, typically with State power or the army against rebels, and found its origin in the disequilibrium of power between parts of the population who had integrated the identifications given by ethnic theories (Laroque 2013). There have been also other factors, such as the international community non-intervention to regional political situations (Daley 2008). Burundi’s history has been crossed by, but not reduced to, several movements of violence that implicated soldiers as well as civilians. There have been episodes of harsh violence in 1965, 1972, 1988 and from 1993 to 2000. Particularly, 1972 and 1993 crises are deeply anchored in the collective memory of the Burundians by their brutality and genocides that were perpetuated. In 2000, the Arusha accord was signed under the lead of Nelson Mandela and president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere. The situation remained tense until the elections of 2005, which saw Pierre Nkurunziza become president. These different outbreaks of violence not only caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, but also the large scale migration of refugees, who are later repatriated, creating problems regarding their re-integration, particularly in relation to land tenures.

Nowadays, Burundi is experiencing a relatively stable period of peace, though daily security feeling is still hindered by some “latent” threats and “peace uncertainty” (Berckmoes 2014). During my stay in Burundi, I was surprised that the opinions about the upcoming election strongly rested on the present context and recent news of the situation in the country; depending on the ongoing events, people went from being confident about the election process to being suspicious and even fearing them. In addition, some threats were revealed by the media, such as the training of the “Imbonerakure”7_{in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. I argue along with Berckmoes (2014),}

that some Burundian youth have a feeling of “fear and hope” about the potentialities of the reality, leading to uncertainty about the future. In my opinion, the political context of Burundi is now less polarized around the notions of ethnicity and much more around the political parties themselves, which are no more solely representative of one ethnic group or the other. The fact that the political 7_{The name given to the youth affiliated to the ruling party.}

14

(15)

spectrum is not constructed around social ideals, or the defence of rights but more on the defence of privileges and acquired positions is something potentially harmful for the future of Burundi, whose governance risks following the “Politics of the Belly”, where an elite continues to confiscate the wealth and does not redistribute it to the people8_{(Bayart 1993).}

Unemployment was a recurrent theme of conversation when I was in Burundi, both with children and adults, and it is also one of the major official preoccupations of the authorities. A recent report of the inter-country quality cluster for the development of technical and professional skills for the African youths (PQIP/DCTP 2014) describes the current situation of the job market; 33.3% of the total population are considered in an age of activity, that is to say that they are between 15 and 64 years old; at the country level 19.3% of this active population are unemployed, taking unemployment definition as for the ILO9_{. Regarding the labour market, the structure is the following;}

78.8% of the employed population are in the informal sector, 7% are civil servants and 14.2% are employed by the private sector. The primary sector of activities (Agriculture) represents 48.9% of the available jobs, the secondary sector (Manufacturing) has a share of 14.5% and the tertiary sector (Services) proposes 28% of the jobs.

Figure 1. The red dot represents Gitega. Source: burundiembassy-usa.org

8_{Several Burundians, when talking about the actions of the politicians, told me that they were “eating a lot but}

not much more”.

9_{International Labour Organization. Three conditions: not having worked even one hour during a reference}

period; being available for a job in a reference period, having looked for a job during the reference period.

15

(16)

1.2.2 Gitega

Gitega is a commune consisting of around 150,000 inhabitant in 201410_{(PCDC 2013), of whom 60%}

are youth under 25. The commune, which is 315.44km2_{, is one of the 11 communes of Burundi and} chef-lieu 11_{of the Gitega province . As such, it counts several administrative institutions such as police}

station, courts, provincial public administration and also a prison. It is also by far the biggest urban centre of the area, thus concentrating most of the non-agro activities of the province. As for the rest of the country, more than 90% of its economic activity is based on agriculture. The rest divides between services such as crafting and dwelling, public services and few value-added activities (mainly coffee processing first stages, avocado oil making, beer brewing12_{). The administrative}

separation of Gitega is of nine neighbourhoods for urban Gitega and 11 hills for rural Gitega. Of the 56 primary schools of the commune, 48 are public and 8 are private. The total amount of pupils in public schools was 33,219 for school year 2012-2013, of which 17,138 (51.6%) were girls. The average number of pupils per classroom is 77 and on average there is one teacher for 35 pupils, compared to the national average of 40 pupils per teacher (PRGE 2006). Additionally, there are 8 private primary school which welcomed 1,860 (of which 967 girls i.e. 51.9%) pupils for the same school year. The school drop-out rate in 2012 was 4.2%. We will see in this thesis that the main factor for dropping-out is poverty. For other sectors, the Plan Communal de Développement

Communautaire 13_{(PCDC 2013) presents the commune of Gitega as having as much potentialities as}

weaknesses. Its status is the one of a middle-size city rapidly expanding, whose principal lacks are in human capital (physicians, professors, trainers) and concerning the underuse of existing capacity (silos, water capacity). The plan designates the urban centre as key location in the broader

commune, as it represents an important market of civil servants and other non-agricultural workers.

The most striking feature of my research location had to do with infrastructure; or rather lack of, as power cuts frequently occur. The reason for this problem comes from the fact that Burundi is not energy auto-sufficient, with only one dam to power the whole country. The consequence is that in big cities as Bujumbura and Gitega, there is always one neighbourhood which is cut off for one day per week, on a rounding basis. If this lack of electricity is more inconvenient for adult workers and services, it also triggers problems of access to information for the children in Gitega. This lack of access to information is for me one of the most important limits to the full development of children. In fact, the large majority of children have access to only two sources of information; radio, which functions with batteries and social discussion in the form of interaction

10_{This estimation is based on applying the growth rate of 2.4% per year to the figures of the census of 2008.} 11_{Equivalent to the regional capital}

12_{There is also a growing factory of traditional beers brewing in Giheta.} 13_{County Planning of Community Development}

16

(17)

with parents, relatives or friends. Discussion with the professors is rare, in part due to the classes being overcrowded. Radio is an interesting means of information, but as with television or newspapers, it only provides an unilateral, or passive information in the sense that the viewer or the reader has no interaction with it; one merely listens to, reads or watches without being able to question, compare, or interact with the subject. None of the schools I visited or the children I asked told me that their school had a library. One source of information that allows for participation is numeric information, nowadays provided mainly by the internet web and phones. There are debates around the uses and misuses of these new information and communication technology for development, broadly known as ICT4D (Simpson 2010, Kleine 2013, Mthoko & Pade-Khene 2013, Philip et al. 2012, Arora 2012). In my view, access to more sources of information would bring a critical benefit in the form of critical thinking development.

Gitega is a growing peaceful city enjoying its central position in Burundi. The city has several external aspects, depending on the neighbourhoods which can be noticed as being more or less poor. It is a centre of attraction for people not only coming from the surrounding areas but also from further, such as Muyinga or Mwaro (Gitega had the second largest migrant population in 2008 - ISTEEBU 2008). In 2008, the survey led by the Institut de Statistiques et d’Etudes Economiques du

Burundi14_{(ISTEEBU 2008) showed that 38.8% of the migrants came to Gitega looking for a job, 22.7%}

to follow one’s family and 15.8% in order to finish the studies. It is also a culturally active city, concentrating both contemporary and traditional cultural activities such as the National Museum of Burundi, the culinary speciality of the “brochettes15_{”, the tambourines of Gishora but also the}

leading reggae band, Lion Story.

Figure 2. “There is overpopulation in Burundi”. Source: Drawing from Nyakibingo. 14_{In English: Burundian Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies}

15_{In English: skewers}

17

(18)

2 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The aim of this section is to outline theoretical foundation upon which the analysis section is structured. The different focuses and tools presented in this section will be useful to interpret and understand the findings we will see in a following section. I will first present an overview of the conceptual framework, which encompasses and relates the different notions and concepts I use in this thesis. The objective here is to delimit these broad concepts and to detail the manner I will use them. At the end of the section, the reader shall find a graphic illustration of this framework in the form of a conceptual scheme.

The focus of my research is the children of primary school age, living in Gitega. More details about the children I worked with are to be found in the methodological section. The idea behind the conception of this research was to look at children, violence and resilience in Gitega; going beyond the idea of violence merely caused by poverty, deprivation and unequal redistribution or ethnic tensions, as if all the sources of violence in deprived environments were because of the fight over limited resources or racism (Crawford & Lipschutz 1998). If these are the undeniable reasons for the manifestations of violence, the opportunity to work with children permitted me to envisage other determinants for violence in the Burundian context. For instance, the reproduction of violence can depend on more factors than the reproduction of inequalities, be them psychological as the revenge feeling during the Cambodian genocide (Hinton 1998), historical in the form of tales of history and their implications (Campana 2009) or structural; integration of violence as a normal phenomenon, see Ng-Mak et al. (2002). As this study was more qualitatively oriented, it was an occasion to engage with children on their vision of their life and its difficulties.

One of the particular focuses of the project is to study the relationship between children and the school environment. For example, education is a means to acquire knowledge, culture and critical thinking (Mejía 2004) to be able to behave correctly in society and to interact with it, in order to form part of the broader system on an equal basis. For example, Hill (2011) analyses the role of education in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina in re-ensuring social cohesion. For Blum (2014), “educational aims for societies comprising multiple ethnic, cultural and racial groups should involve three different values—recognizing difference, national cohesion and equality”. But education is also a way to get the skills needed to have a livelihood; it is the basis on which a professional career builds up (Froerer & Portisch 2012). Education can also have negative outcomes (Bush & Saltarelli 2000), leading to frustration or to misunderstandings. I was interested in seeing the tension that can arise from the frustration of having hopes for the future but realizing that the system will not make them real. I wanted to know if this tension exist and if yes, how. Also, if education leads to employment, it was interesting for me because it gave me a strong link with economics, the labour

(19)

market being the engine of the economy. But there are also tensions that can appear: not getting the right job, having a bad employer, the competition of the job market, poor retributions are some examples. All these elements seemed to have some inherent violence in them, hidden at first sight but breaking out after some scrutiny; Lenta (2014) explores the relationships between the labour market and education systems in Europe where “unemployment, migration, limited access to resources, greater competition on the labour market and the more pronounced social stratification forc[es] a permanent reassessment of skills needed for employability and shap[es] the psychosocial identity”. The world of education and the job market are two spaces where a lot of decisions and actions are made. They can be prolific for a behavioural study and allow for a better observation of a multiplicity of reactions, relationships, strategies and limitations. So the project was born, I would try to unpack conceptions of violence by children in relation with their life-projects, and look if there was some resilience mechanisms that have been set up to cope with this violence.

The living conditions of children (economic and social, most particularly violence) have an impact on the way children think and conceptualize their future (Christoffersen 2012). Additionally, their relatives, be they friends, professors or family, may have an influence on the direction their aspirations take. After having shaped their aim, they proceed to elaborate a strategy to reach this aim. My research suggests that this strategy is mainly reflected by the importance put on schooling and the activities that enable them to go to school. The main finding of this thesis is that the life project is representative of a form of resilience to both the violence and harsh economic conditions in the form of a will for power. It is as if gaining power (in different forms) allows children to be protected against shortcomings of life. This concept of power will be introduced in the last part of this thesis, constituting a finding from the field. Now that I have summarized the broad picture, I will enter into the detail of these different concepts in order to delimit the precise extent and meaning of each of them and have an accurate analysis.

2.1 The theoretical backbone; Bronfenbrenner human ecology

We find a relevant and practical tool of analysis in Bronfenbrenner’s Bio-ecological theory of human development (1979, 1995, 2005) and the subsequent PPCT (Processes-Person-Context-Time) model as discussed in Tudge et al. (2009). This theoretical framework allows for a level and multi-systemic analysis of both the static conditions and dynamic processes in play whilst shaping children’s perceptions, reflections and actions in relation with their environment. It is important for the understanding of the bio-ecological model to mention the two steps in its construction (Tudge et al. 2009).

(20)

First, there has been the development of the contextual element of the theory, which will later become part of a more exhaustive model, passing from being ecological to bio-ecological. This element of the model is constituted of five layers, each of which analyses particular settings of the environment surrounding the subject of the study, which in this case are primary school children. The first layer is the direct everyday contacts of the children; their family, their school, their friends, their neighbours, which collectively constitute what is called the ‘microsystem of the children’. Second, the mesosystems represent the interactions between the microsystems of the children, for instance the relations between school and home. Swick & Williams (2006) see in the mesosystems the possibility “to move us beyond the dyad or two-party relation. [So] mesosystems are or should permeate our lives in every dimension”. Third is the exosystem, which is constituted by people around the children whose activities do not have a direct effect on them but can still have an indirect impact; if the director of the school does not pay the teacher, the latter will not come to teach and this will affect the children for instance. The fourth layer is the macrosystem, this represents the general political, cultural, economic and social conditions surrounding the children. For Boon et al. (2011) it is “at the macrosystem level that policy and planning take place which affect individuals and communities”. The last layer of the model is what Bronfenbrenner calls the chronosystem, which represents the dynamic movement of the other layers in time, which affects each child differently. To illustrate this, Tudge et al. (2009) claim that the chronosystem “refers to the fact that developmental processes are likely to vary according to the specific historical events that are occurring as the developing individuals are at one age or another”. The chronosystem is a transversal element in the delineation of this thesis, which attempts to reveal the dynamics of the children’s thoughts about the future. This first set of the model was mostly focused on the contexts, on the “factual” environment of the individuals, providing an analysis of the processes and characteristics of the interactions between the person and the different layers (Tudge et al. 2009), but not analysing how a person can affect these interactions. This is what was added after, and which took the form of the PPCT model. Some operationalization of this first model have been the following: microsystem questions about their daily life and the relationships they had with their relatives and professors; for the mesosystem were included children reflections on the differences between school and home, and the differences between the way they engaged with their parents and their professors for instance. An example of events embedded in the exosystem is the fact that in Burundi it is usual that the school director asks for the financial participation of the parents for any improvements made to the school environment and not supported by the formal administration. The money invested on these projects then has an effect on the other necessities of children such as good feeding, which in turn has an impact on the quality of the learning process. Elements of context which constitute the

(21)

macrosystem are provided mainly by secondary data on the general context of Gitega, either in terms of infrastructure, the schooling situation and the job market.

The second version of the model could be seen as both an improvement and an operationalization framework for the theory. The aim was to sharpen the different concepts emerging from the five layers previously described. Processes are refined as “proximal processes” which are “progressively more complex reciprocal interactions between an active, evolving bio-psychological human organism and the people, objects, and symbols in its immediate external environment […] on a fairly regular basis over extended periods of time.” (Bronfenbrenner & Morris 1998). These proximal processes are subject to change according to the different settings of the context and to the different periods of time; we do not experience events in the same manner when we are children as when we are adults. Typically, education fits this definition but unfortunately due to the period of this fieldwork (school holidays), I was not able to make extensive observations of the education process. The second element of the model is the Person. The Person is conceptualized through three characteristics which allow an understanding of the interactions between the person and the environment: Demand, Resource and Force. Demand characteristics are the factual attributions of the individual such as his sex, age and other visible attributes that communicate information to the others, thus provoking an expectation (we do not expect the same discourse from a child than from an adult). For Gitega children, this aspect of the person was very present, with external signs of poverty being taken strongly into account when assessing one’s own, but also each other’s statuses. By the same token, hierarchy was an important factor in the mental construction of relationships between children and their professors and other adults. Resources are the cognitive characteristics of an individual, comprising their past experiences, their skills, but also the assets of an individual, such as his network and wealth. Resource characteristics have been taken into account in this research; I endeavoured to unveil how the resources of children participated in their vision of their future, and also how these resources could constitute a protection as a resilient mechanism to the fatality and hazards of life. Finally, Force represents the temper of the individual, his will, his attitude towards difficult situations; “According to Bronfenbrenner, two children may have equal resource characteristics, but their developmental trajectories will be quite different if one is motivated to succeed and persists in tasks and the other is not motivated and does not persist” (Tudge et al. 2009). All these characteristics of the person must be taken into account to provide a thorough analysis of the interactions between the individuals and their environments through time; the context and time elements of the model already described above.

(22)

The model will be the baseline for the analysis of the interrelations between primary school children and their environment and how these interactions influence the construction of their views on the future. In addition to its theoretical richness, this model is also used by the other research projects participating in the UNICEF project and thus allows for their comparison and triangulation.

For this study, I had to selectively apply these holistic models to the realities in the field. In fact, I concentrated on the centre of the model; the children and their proximal relationships with peers, professors and relatives. I also looked at the macro-system, and it can be said that I study here the relationships that exist between the micro-, the macro- and the chrono- systems.

2.2 Violence

As said before, one objective of this thesis is to participate in the reflection on the intergenerational transmission of violence and resilience in Burundi. These two last notions deserve examination.

It is interesting to note that the word “violence” does not have a literal translation in Kirundi. Violence has several different meanings according to which kind of violence we are talking about. Here, we concentrate on four forms of violence, notably; structural violence as in Galtung (Galtung 2013) when he demonstrates how social conditions can impede the realisation of the individuals; symbolic violence as for Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1977, Nicolaescu 2010) in the form of the integration of violence schemes which are then seen as normal; direct violence (be it physical or verbal); and indirect violence (threats and fears).

Galtung’s definition of violence was a central theory of his Peace Studies. To him, the study of peace could not be separated from the study of violence, which is conceptualised in his triangle of violence (Galtung 2004, Mider 2013).

Figure 3. The triangle of Violence. Source: Galtung 2004

Broadly explained, the triangle is separated into two parts; violence can be either visible and episodic or invisible and systemic. Therefore, one corner of the triangle is direct violence (armed conflict, sexual violence etc.) which gathers all the forms of violence that can be experienced with any of the five senses, all visible violence. The two remaining corners are structural violence and

(23)

cultural violence; both are classified as being invisible. Cultural violence is concerned by social norms and discrimination patterns, all the mind-sets socially constructed than can lead to the eviction of someone or part of a population and to legitimate the use of direct violence or the existence of structural violence. Structural violence encompasses all the limitations (be they economic, political, or the result of injustices through time) that human beings experience and impede them to realise their full potential (Galtung 1990). There exists a close connection between structural violence and the more classical direct violence; inequalities and deficiencies in basic needs can entail brutal answers from those who suffer from them, either in a movement of revolt or in the form of spontaneous and individual acts of despair.

The most apparent limitations (and thus form of structural violence) are poverty and poor infrastructure, which in a way are related given that the quality of infrastructure is often determined by public spending, which in turn is dependent on the leverage of taxes. If the citizens are poor, it is straightforward that they cannot afford the taxes and thus public spending is low. In Burundi, due to this situation, a large part of the public spending is funded by external donors, be they foundations, institutional donors and foreign governments, or by the direct contribution of the population. For instance, in its five-year development plan for 2013-2017 (PCDC 2013), the county of Gitega budgeted a total of BIF 12,167 million (almost EUR 6,215,000) for the education infrastructure (construction of classrooms, latrines, rehabilitations…). Of these BIF 12,167 million, 7.5% are provided by the regional government, 9.5% are collected from the population (under a discretionary procedure, each school asking for its own needs), and the remaining 83% is provided by external donors. This situation raises issues about the accountability of the State, the inequality of educational infrastructures due to the inequality of needs, but also of the resources of the population in certain areas (the difference mainly being rural/urban) and the inequality between private and public systems. These two photographs can give an idea of the difference between a public and a private classroom in Gitega:

Figures 4 and 5. Sources: Author and SOS 2014

(24)

2.3 Poverty

The concept of poverty is arguably the most thoroughly investigated in development studies. If it has traditionally been seen as mainly economic deprivation, recent contributions have insisted on its multi-dimensionality. Several fields of academic research such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics and political science (Chiappero-Martinetti & Moroni 2007, Vu 2010) have studied the different aspects poverty can endorse. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) forwarded by the Oxford Poverty and Human Initiative in 2007, following the work of 1998 Economics Nobel Prize Amartya Sen (Alkire 2007) and published for the first time in the Human Development Report 2010 (UNDP 2010), also goes in the same direction; it aims to take into account more factors than merely income to more accurately measure poverty. In Gitega, material poverty is striking, even if there are some disparities in the degrees of poverty one can observe. In a way, the main distinction of the richest is that they own a generator at home and thus do not suffer from the electricity failures. I decided for this research to assess poverty of children on the basis of nine observable criteria, described in the methodology section of this thesis.

One of the causes and consequences of this overwhelming poverty is the lack of possibilities to find a good livelihood. I say “good” because children almost always find a way to earn at least enough to buy food, but these means cannot be considered as good by the general norms of society (begging for instance). Although Burundi laws prohibits children’s work (Nimpagaritse 2007), it has to be acknowledged that they do not apply to reality. Again, depending on the socio-economic background of children, children’s work goes beyond the tasks of helping at home and partaking in informal employment is often the only possibility for them to contribute to their school fees and ability to obtain food. For Nimpagaritse (2007), children work has always been something seen as natural in Burundi, given the fact that the majority of the tasks were to help the family in the fields or at home, being thus part of the education of the child for his future as a husband and a father having to provide his household. But for him, things have changed with the new form of the economy, where formal education comes into conflict with these traditional modes of informal education, and this tension leads to an unacceptable form of children’s work. It can seem a bit cynical to state what is a good livelihood for children, as the predominant discourse among international institutions is that children should not have this kind of concern and should enjoy the opportunities of playing and being educated, on the other hand, these views are questioned by children themselves (Liebel 2013, Abebe & Bessel 2011, Nieuwenhuys 2007), many of whom want the right to work. In the present study I will differentiate between children helping at home in the form of tasks that can be assimilated to ‘home-helping’ (taking care of the animals, working in the fields in the limit that it does not influence on their capacity to attend school) and children working

(25)

to earn money at the expense of their education (making bricks or helping the construction of someone else’s house). This difference is important because it helps to better gauge the socio-economic level of children and their level of acceptance of their living condition, as well as understanding the differences between them that can stem from different perceptions of leisure and work.

2.4 Resilience

Resilience is a term which has been extensively scrutinized. Coming from hard science, where it is applied to the resistance and capacity to come back to its original form for a material, it has rapidly integrated the space of social sciences. I will present here some of the most important features of the notion for this thesis. In the definition of resilience-vulnerability/risk-protection developed by Rutter (1987), Ungar and Liebenberg (2009) and Ungar et al. (2007), authors describe resilience as both an outcome and a process that allow people to cope with adverse situations, in the form of their capacity to return to normality after having experienced a stress. For them, “Resilience is both an outcome of interactions between individuals and their environments, and the processes which contribute to these outcomes” (Ungar et al. 2007; p.288). For Rutter (2006), resilience pays “attention on coping mechanisms, mental sets, and the operation of personal agency. In other words, it requires a move from a focus on external risks to a focus on how these external risks are dealt with by the individual”. In our case and looking at resilience as a process, resilience would be the mechanisms by which primary school children protect themselves from the adversity of the context of violence surrounding them and the difficult socio-economic conditions they live in. These mechanisms can take the form of psychological answers and practical actions. As an outcome, they are considered resilient people that have experienced stressful situations and have developed some strategies that constitute a “shield” against future stresses of the same nature. Recent literature on resilience goes beyond this actor-centred approach and emphasizes the importance of the environment itself for the resilience of individuals (Bullock & Zolkoski 2012, Ungar et al. 2013, Masten 2014). The importance of resilience in this study is directly linked to the objective to contribute to the insights of peace-building mechanisms; the aim is to gain knowledge on the processes that could hinder the reproduction of violence.

The following figure gives a graphical perception of the conceptual scheme of this thesis, the interrogation mark are what we are answering in this thesis. The dotted arrow represents the interactions between the child and the different layers of the theoretical framework.

(26)

2.5 The conceptual scheme

Figure 5. Made by Author

3 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The governing principle of the methodology is that what we seek is the experiences of children in the fields of violence, resilience and their intergenerational reproduction. This means that the focus has been on the collection of their histories, sensations, feelings and views on their environment, its possibilities and restrictions, particularly when trying to increase the validity and representativeness of different backgrounds. I tried to make use of different data collection methods and analysis, employing both qualitative and quantitative techniques, as well as collecting primary and revising secondary data in order to have the broadest view possible on children’s realities. In this section I will present the locations where data collection took place, the sample of children that were studied and the reasons underlying these choices. I will then move to a description of the different techniques implemented, their pertinence, contributions and limitations. I will finish with a discussion on ethical considerations that arose whilst collecting data.

(27)

3.1 Locations

A general outline of the city of Gitega has already been provided in the first chapter of this thesis. I will pass then to a description of the different locations where data has been collected as well as some activities I carried out during my fieldwork that helped me familiarise with the children and their environment. The choice of locations has been driven by practical and methodological considerations. Practical because some locations were suggested to me during informal chats with local people and interviews with speakers, but also just by discovering the city and encountering children at the end of the day when other works were finished, to play football for example. Methodological because I always tried to balance the locations and the subsequent sampling between areas that seemed privileged and others where poverty was more obvious, as well as the will to have a contrast between urban and rural areas. It was a way to gain in representativeness and contrast the results.

3.1.1 The Alliance

Franco-burundaise

The first place is the Alliance

Franco-burundaise (AF) de Gitega, a cultural

centre inaugurated in 2010 and where around 400 youths under 18 were registered during the summer 2014. It organised learning courses in French, Kirundi and Kiswahili for children and adults and is endowed with a library of 6,000 books, with a substantial share

dedicated to children. All these books can be borrowed. The centre, which is opened six days a week, is equipped with four computers connected to the internet and wireless connection access for users. It also contains a TV room with satellite reception aiming at the promotion of the French language. Once a week there is a movie projection for the children. Throughout the year, the AF organizes free cultural promotions and sports broadcasting for the residents of the town, but also promotes all its activities in the broader region of Gitega. The objective is to make available for the majority of people the infrastructures of the centre. Nevertheless, one important aspect is that membership to the centre is worth BIF 10,000 per year (almost EUR 5), an amount not all the families are willing or able to pay. During the holidays, it was forecast to organize an introduction to computing and I proposed my services in this field in exchange for the possibility to be in contact with the children frequenting the AF. I put in place a 3 session program per week which allowed me

Figure 6. Credit: Author

(28)

to initiate around sixty children to basics skills in computing. Additionally, as the centre was crowded with children during the holidays16_{, it was decided to organize a}

holiday program with animation and lecture activities once a week, activities that ended up with a show at the end of August. Children registered at the AF came every day in little groups, accordingly from where they were living. They passed their time between internet and TV when there was electricity and playing outside or reading books when there was not. This setting gave me the possibility to observe and participate in their games and other activities. These children constitute my first unit of analysis; I will detail them in the next sub-section.

3.1.2 The Parking

The second location was the “Parking de l’ancien marché central”17_{, which is the central place of}

Gitega and was formerly the central market but has now been converted into a terrace. There, as it is the crossroads of the main road to Bujumbura

and other key urban centres in the east and south-east of Burundi (Karuzi, Rutana), the ambience is different. It is the parking area for the buses going to or coming from Bujumbura and is located near the new central market and is thus the meeting point for several street dwellers, in particular children who sell peanuts, samosas and other little foodstuffs. After having met there and bought their wares, they spread throughout the city or stay there waiting for the buses to sell to their windows. This parking is

also a place where mechanics are available, little restaurants and retail shops. It is also the junction between several neighbourhoods of the city: the Swahili neighbourhood, the popular neighbourhood of Magarama and the ancient centre of Musinzira. I decided to collect data on street

16_{The AF registered an increase of 103 children during the month of July.} 17_{In English: “Parking of the Old Central Market”}

Figure 7. The children section of the AF. Credit: Author

Figure 8. Credit: Aubin Irakoze

28

(29)

dwellers because it appeared to me that the children at the AF were not at all representative of the majority of all children in Gitega, as often I saw children from the AF playing outside and some other children who could not afford to attend, looking at them. I had the chance to meet one of my translators, Claver, a 30-year-old civil engineer who was planning to open a pharmacy and had just made the acquisition of a little local on the edge of the parking. The street-dwellers were often meeting at the entry of his pharmacy, mixing with other children who were begging or buying their merchandise to the mamas seated on the stairs. The main limitation of this location is that there were no girls; all the street dwellers are boys, with girls work being more reserved to domestic duties until they reach an age where they can help in construction for example. But it gave me access to children that came to the city from diverse locations and who were working for different reasons, among them trying to earn money for schooling. The interest of working with children at the parking was that they were working children and it therefore could be said that they were already somehow in the job market. Due to their young age, I was curious to know if they were only working or also going at school. Work appeared to me as a resilient way to adapt to the harsh conditions they lived in, but work could sometimes replace school and then it was interesting to see the difference of perception between working and going to school as two different strategies to have a better future.

3.1.3 The IPRED

Third, I went to the Initiative Pastorale de Réinsertion des Enfants en Difficulté18_{(IPRED), which}

welcomes street children since 2007. This centre is a shelter for 164 street children. Its functioning is

18_{In English: Pastoral Initiative for the Reinsertion of Children in Difficulty. See}

http://www.ipred-gitega.com/index.html.

Figure 9. Claver’s local. We can see a group of street-dwellers at the left, and their providers for wares sitting on the stairs. Credit: Aubin Irakoze

29

(30)

the following; street children are reported or can come by themselves to ask for the help of the centre. The children are, depending on the severity of their situation, put in school, placed in families, and also attend activities at the centre such as sports, handcrafts and music. They also benefit from having regular meals (which they prepare themselves), are given basic education in the form of preparatory courses in the view of their reintegration in the formal system and from some prevention sessions on drugs, HIV and hygiene education19_{. Beyond the practical entry point that the}

IPRED provided, it seemed to me to be pertinent to interview these children because they already were in a dynamic of deciding that their lives had to change. In fact, there was no special mechanism of retention at the centre. If a child was there it was because of the incentives the centre provides and by his own will. It is as if these children already had to make a choice about their future, and the reasons underlying the choices children make for their life is part of my investigation. Also, many of these street children were orphans, and as such did not have a role model in the form of parents, neither the advice nor the constraints parents can give to their children. I was expecting that these children could give me other answers than the one at the parking area.

3.1.4 Mushasha

Mushasha neighbourhood is the fourth location where I interviewed children. Mushasha is a hill outside of the city centre. It was one of the first neighbourhoods constructed by the German missionaries, where they constructed their mission and erected the first schools. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Gitega and still an important educational hub in the commune, counting more than five schools, both private and public. It is peaceful and quiet, with the majority of its activities dedicated to religion or education. One of my translators, Jean Marie, a last year student at the Seminar of Mugera, lived there and proposed me to interview children of his neighbourhood, with

19_{Interview with Libère Ndayishimiye, coordinator of the IPRED.}

Figure 10. Evelyne and the children of the IPRED. Credit: Author

30

(31)

the permission of the Chef de colline20_{. The public school there counts with an outdoor big sports}

field where children, both boys and girls, came to play. Mushasha public school was in a state of disrepair, with the classrooms being messy as if they had been burgled. Some of the children in Mushasha also came to the AF on a regular basis, and they were not all part of the same school, some being in private and others in public school. The level of living there was medium-low, with some of the inhabitants having a little piece of earth to crop, others working for the archbishop. It can be noted that even if public schooling is free in Burundi, there are still costs to go to school; what is free is the tuition fee but all the material is still at the expense of families. For Mushasha II21_,

I calculated a cost of BIF 15,00022_{for a uniform, to be added to BIF 5,000 for papers and other}

practical material. It looked to me that the children there were representative of the middle class in Gitega, as they shared their time between working and playing during the holidays. With Mushasha being the religious neighbourhood, it was also thought-provoking to see if religion had an influence on children’s projections in the future, because becoming part of the Church can be considered as a livelihood in the Burundian religious communities, which are also implicated in some productive activities such as the brewery of the traditional beer or handcrafts.

Nearby the public school of Mushasha is the SOS Village d’enfants23_{, an}

international foundation created in the 1949 by Hermann Gmeiner, an Austrian philanthropist. The idea was to welcome at the village orphans and children who cannot live with their parents any more, where they will be provided a home with a ‘mother’, ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. They differ from an orphanage in the sense that each child can grow up as being part of a family with a mother and relatives, and having friends who also have their own family. The SOS Village d’enfants of Gitega was created in 1979, and now welcomes 130 children in thirteen houses24_{. In 1996, it was}

complemented by a primary school where 430 pupils are registered: the children of the Village and

20_{In English: Chief of the hill}

21_{Mushasha II is one of the primary school of Mushahsa, which counts two of them} 22_{10,000 BIF is equivalent to EUR 5}

23_{In English: SOS Children’s Village. See}

http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/where-we-help/africa/burundi/gitega.

24_{Interview with Joseph Katihabwa, director of the SOS Villages d’enfants of Gitega} Figure 11. Mushasha I primary school. Credit: Author

31

Power as Resilience : a study of the life-projects of primary school children in Gitega, Burundi