Happiness in Burundi
By NMK
Happy Belated International Day of Happiness (It was yesterday)!
You may have already read somewhere that Burundi has been ranked the least happy country in the world. The components used to come to this conclusion include per capita gross domestic product (GDP), healthy years of life expectancy, social support as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble, trust as measured by perceived absence of corruption in government and business, perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity as measured by recent donations. I cannot claim to specialize in many of these components, so I would like to discuss the two that I know to be true to the core.
Generosity (as measured by recent donations)
As children, my siblings and I shared many a meal with neighborhood children. It was something we came to expect from a very young age. I never even questioned why they ate with us. It was just part of our lives. Were their parents unable to feed them? Did they like our food better? I will never know the answers. What I do know is that my parents did not seem to mind taking on the cost of feeding 4 or 5 extra children. To be honest, I think Mama took a lot of pride in the fact that she could do so.
My point here is this: Burundian generosity cannot be measured by charitable donations to organizations. My family was never the only one that shared meals with neighborhood children. Even when I visit Burundi now, I recognize that gift of sharing all over the country. True, people are struggling. But halls are full of friends and neighbors who make contributions when a family loses a loved one. Visiting the sick in the hospital with a warm meal has always been and remains the norm. Weddings are still a community event at which food and drinks are shared late into the night with hundreds of people. Every single Burundian I know, in Burundi and in the diaspora, has made a certain amount of monetary or in-kind contributions to someone's event and expects to do so until such a time when there will be no more tragedies or joyful events to attend.
Social Support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble)
Total disclosure. I have never lived in Burundi. I have visited only twice. My love for the country was instilled in me by life experiences resulting from the fact that my parents were born there. I consider myself informed on Burundians' ability to support one another because I lived it in Burundian refugee camps. Anyone who has ever lived in any community knows that one cannot survive as an island. This realization is amplified when your community is made up of hundreds of thousands of refugees who each have nothing. Supporting one another is the only thing that keeps people alive in camps. Given that many rural Burundians are financially poor, I can only conclude that social support plays a huge role in their survival as well.
Burundians have a very strong sense of community. Parents are known to work hard and party even harder together. Children do the same, with a slightly different party. In many communities, life feels like a celebration every day because people truly find joy in spending time together. The stories our grandparents and parents tell us indicate a sense of duty to one another. We, the new generation, have inherited this. People travel across the country by foot, motorcycle, car, truck, or a combination of them all just to visit one another for a day or two. Farming is still something people do together to work faster and make it fun.
Social support is really one of the only means of survival in Burundi. The country's existence depends on it. It is true that a lot of work needs to be done to improve the standard of life for everyone in the country. Burundian people want a generation that knows no war. Much of the country is working hard to bring it out of decades old ashes. With more good news coming out the country now than we have seen in months, the people of Burundi will not let themselves be seen as the unhappiest in the world. We have seen it all and still push international limits unmet by anyone else in the world. There is much to look forward to, and I know I am not the only one who expects that supporting one another will be the way we forge ahead.
