Maggy Barankitse, founder of Maison Shalom

I am a Tutsi woman. Before the war began I already had seven adopted children, four Hutu and three Tutsi. When the killing began, people were demanding to know who was Hutu and who was Tutsi. But I said, you can’t separate children, I refused to separate them. But no one would protect us all, so we went to the Bishop’s house, thinking we would be protected in God’s house. There were many other people already there.

On 24 October 1993, the Tutsis came and demanded that we handed over the Hutus to them. I refused, but they beat me and tied me up and then covered the building with fuel. I was so frightened, but I remembered I had a little money and I offered them money to spare the children. They did, and allowed 25 of the children to live. Then they set fire to the building with everyone else inside, and killed 72 people in front of my eyes. The whole thing, it took from 9am to 3 in the afternoon. They let me go because I was tutsi. I was so frightened and distraught, but I could not see any of the children, so I went to the chapel to pray. I said to God, “show me how, show me how I can continue to live after this.” Then I heard my oldest child say ‘we are here’, and they were, all seven of them, hiding in the chapel with the other children. I saw then, I decided I needed to help create a new generation. It was my absolute conviction.

So I took my own seven children and the other 25 to the cemetery to try and find a safe place, I knew that if people saw the children they would try and kill them. We were very very hungry. I thought ‘where can we go to be safe?’ And Lysette, who was only four said ‘ActionAid can help’. So we went to the home of a German man (who was working for AA at the time), and that is where Maison Shalom begins.

The ActionAid support touched me, because it was not like a project, it was more like brothers and sisters helping each other out, at the beginning they gave me the money to go to the market to buy food for the children. Even when the money stopped, the collaboration and the partnership kept going. We both have the same philosophy, that of respect for the poor.  Our philosophy is the same – it is not to assist but to give people a chance to hold their lives in their own hands.

Every night I tell the children ‘’remember that you are the fruit of love – we are the same family, no Hutu, no Tutsi.” I know I can never stop the war, but I can stop it in my heart and in the hearts of the children. We now have children coming to us from Rwanda, from DRC, from so many places. I found Immaculate on the streets with no money.

I think to myself, ‘why are people always fighting? How can I stop it?’ so I think that if I build a cinema it will give them a chance to dream, to have a window on a wider world. We not just giving food and clothes, we want to also improve their souls.

We are now trying to stop mothers dying by setting up a mother and child unit. Our human vocation is to make others happy. Children of Maison Shalom never insult each other because of the ethnic group they belong to – they love and protect each other. I know that if I died today, the children would know this message and continue to spread it. Once a journalist asked some children who had been traumatised – now children of Maison shalom – what ethnicity they were, and they said 'Hututsi', it was really amazing. We won.

I would like to see no children living on the streets, no dying of hunger, no poverty. That I would like to see.

We want to change the programme to be about the community, not only the children. It’s the only way we can build the future.  At first, during the war we were getting three types of children: those who were themselves injured, those who were living on the streets because their parents had been killed, and the teenagers who were forced to do sex work and the like.

We now have over 10,000 children in Maison Shalom. I am against orphanages, those ones that keep their children in dormitories, how can children live like that? It is no good. They will have no personality, they cannot grow up to be individuals.

We now have 500 houses for orphans. Ownership papers often go to the children, unless there is a good reason that they cannot take responsibility. If they cannot own their own house, then they can never be truly independent. The houses we build are normal, we do not make them any different from other people’s, except that we make sure they all have water and electricity. We also welcome other children who are poor, but who are not orphans, they are welcome to come and have a meal with us. If a poor child comes, why can’t they eat? The authorities, they say to us ‘you must stick to the budget, you can’t feed everyone.’ But we are in Burundi. This is our culture, it is about sharing. I won’t lose my culture. A country is like a mother. Even when she is ill, as we were during the war, we can’t abandon her.

Some girls can’t go to school because they have to look after their younger brothers and sisters, so we have built a creche so that the older ones can now go to school. Then they can learn to laugh. In orphanages the children cannot be happy, they are like numbers.

If there are children from the same family, say two or three, then we will give them the title deeds, because they are a family. The older children can ultimately legally adopt the younger ones.  If they can’t have their own house, then they are nothing but numbers. The government doesn’t know they exist. But they are not numbers, they are human beings. It’s dangerous for the future to treat people like that. People who grow up to be fighters, rebels or terrorists, they have no identity. In the future they will be involved in war. When they grow up, where will they go? When you are registered you can marry, travel, get a job – you are always asked for your identity papers for these things. Without it, you are discriminated against your whole life. And people can do what they want to you – they can send children to Europe for adoption and the government doesn’t care.

We have 80 educators here who look after the babies, a lot are AIDS orphans. We currently have 53 orphans under 2 years old. We don’t want to take the babies away from their families if they have other relatives, such as an aunt or grandmother, so we support the families so that a lot of the babies can stay with  them. The rest come to this centre. We call this the fraternite centre.

The new hospital that we are building is dedicated to mother and child because there is no use dealing with problems at the end of the line, we have to stop them at the beginning. In Burundi we have 800,000 children in bad situations – if we do not help them then we have no future. My dream is to close Shalom House – then I will know that everyone has a house, a job, everything they need to live their own lives.

We have our own farms so we can produce our own food for the orphans, but there are still so many coming in that it is hard to be entirely self sufficient. We have five villages in Ruyigi, with three farms between them.

What we are providing here, it’s not charity, it’s only social justice. Only one percent  of people in Burundi are rich – 50% are incredibly poor. When a child is very poor they are more likely to be robbed, abused or hurt, when they grow up they will do the same to others unless we can get to them early and stop the pattern.

It is our philosophy to give the children life.

We want to change the mentality, in this hospital all will be welcome (unlike in the government hospital). We want to teach people how to take care of themselves. There is a lot of ignorance, people are not educated, we will teach them. We will give them education about hygiene, sexual health, HIV and AIDs, nutrition and so on. When this hospital is finished all in all there will be jobs for 500 people. 50% of the doctors will come from Burundi, the other 50% will be provided by an exchange programme from Europe, who will come over for a year to teach others.

Love makes us inventors. Without love, we will never be able to move on, we can never be inventive and change our lives.

I was very very angry during the war.

I love the song Imagine by John Lennon. Even during the war I wanted to show people that you can still dream. I call all these places ‘angels’ because the devil was in Burundi. He was everywhere, hurting, fighting, killing. I wanted to show that we are angels. We said no to death and yes to love. No to the killing and yes to life. I want Ruyigi to be a city of angels. I want us to say no to the war today and forever. Our dream was to create a Burundi without violence. To create a new generation that would have a little bit of light that would put out the darkness. We want to keep hope in country or else people will abandon their mother and leave for other countries.

The children themselves decide if they want to help another orphan by having them live in their house, and then we assess the situation and see whether we think they will be able to cope and be a good match. We are here to give advice and guide young people like a mother would, not to tell them what to do.

If there are any family members left we advise them to keep the baby if they can – they can give it the one thing that we can’t, which is love. We help materially instead. If for example a grandmother comes with a baby, we will help her with food and clothes in the beginning, but we also explain to her that for the sake of her own dignity, it’s better if she tries in some way to support herself how she can.

These children are like a little light in the darkness. If young people study, they can become anything. They can change social injustice.

Photo: Antonio Olmos/ActionAid
Maggy Barankitse was interviewed by Stephanie Ross