StapleBurundi
Ubugali
Cassava and maize flour cooked stiff, the base of nearly every Burundian meal. Torn off, rolled in the palm and used to lift beans or sauce.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
The 1972 Burundians
Hutu Burundians who fled the killings of 1972 into Tanzania, were settled in three great camps in the western forests, farmed there for four decades, and became the longest-standing refugee population in Africa before Tanzania offered them citizenship and then hesitated.
Identity
Population: Around 200,000 at peak; roughly 160,000 naturalised or in process since 2007
Location: The Old Settlements of Ulyankulu, Katumba and Mishamo in western Tanzania, and returnee communities in Burundi
Language: Kirundi and Swahili, with Swahili dominant in the second and third generations
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (J60, Rwanda-Rundi); Swahili (G40)
Traditional governance: Settlement administration under Tanzanian authority for four decades; naturalised citizens since 2014, with residence and relocation questions still unsettled.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Ulyankulu, Katumba and Mishamo
The three Old Settlements, each effectively a town of tens of thousands.
The naturalised
Around 160,000 granted Tanzanian citizenship from 2010, most of them born in the settlements.
Returnees to Burundi
Those who went back after 2002, often to land occupied in their absence.
Culture
Clothing: Tanzanian dress; kitenge and kanga; Burundian ceremonial dress kept for weddings and for the older generation.
Food: Maize, cassava and beans grown on settlement plots; the settlements became tobacco producers of national significance, which is part of why Tanzania valued them.
Ceremonies: Weddings with Burundian drumming; funerals; church services in Kirundi and Swahili; commemorations of 1972 that Burundi itself has never officially held.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in the Burundian pattern in the first generation, increasingly Tanzanian practice since; extensive intermarriage with surrounding communities.
Initiation rites: Schooling in Swahili, which produced a generation fluent in Tanzania and unfamiliar with Burundi; the citizenship application itself functioned as a passage for many.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Burundi and Tanzania, at national rather than community level — 20 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
Burundi
8 dishes
National dishBurundi
Ibiharage
Red kidney beans fried with onion, garlic and a great deal of oil until they break down into a thick savoury mass. Burundi's most-eaten dish and its national plate.
Serves 6 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking
Street foodBurundi
Mandazi
Cardamom-scented fried dough triangles sold with tea at markets and bus stations across the Great Lakes. Slightly sweet, and eaten at any hour.
Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours
Festival & feastBurundi
Boko Boko Harees
Cracked wheat and chicken beaten together into a thick savoury porridge and topped with fried onions. Arrived on the Swahili coast from Arabia and travelled inland to Bujumbura.
Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes
Regional specialityBurundi
Mukeke
Lake Tanganyika fish grilled or fried whole and served with plantain and tomato sauce. Mukeke is a Tanganyika endemic, and the lake supplies Bujumbura daily.
Serves 4 · 45 minutes
Regional specialityBurundi
Isombe
also Pounded cassava leaves
Cassava leaves pounded and cooked for hours with palm oil, aubergine and groundnut until dark and smooth. Eaten across the Great Lakes and made most patiently in Burundi.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Regional specialityBurundi
Renga
also Smoked fish stew, Ndagala stew
Lake Tanganyika's small ndagala fish, smoked and then stewed with tomato and palm oil, eaten along the Burundian shore with ubugali.
Serves 4 · 40 minutes
Drink & sweetBurundi
Urwarwa
also Banana beer, Impeke
Banana beer fermented with sorghum flour and drunk through long reed straws from a shared pot. Central to Burundian hospitality and to every negotiation of consequence.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 5 days
Tanzania
12 dishes
StapleTanzania
Ugali
Maize meal cooked stiff and turned out as a mound, eaten with fish, beans or greens across the whole country. The measure of a cook is whether it holds together cleanly.
Serves 6 · 25 minutes
StapleTanzania
Makande
also Maize and bean stew
Maize and beans simmered slowly with coconut milk, the Chagga and Pare version of the East African staple. Richer and looser than Kenyan githeri.
Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes, plus soaking
National dishTanzania
Nyama Choma na Kachumbari
Goat grilled slowly over charcoal, chopped and eaten with a tomato and onion salad. Ordered by weight at a nyama choma joint and shared standing around the board.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
National dishTanzania
Mchemsho
also Boiled one-pot
Everything boiled together in one pot — plantain, potato, cassava, carrot, beans and meat — in a light broth. Northern Tanzania's household dinner, and what a Tanzanian cooks when feeding a crowd.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodTanzania
Chipsi Mayai
A chip omelette cooked flat in a pan and cut in wedges, sold from every street griddle in Dar es Salaam and Arusha. Cheap, filling and universally eaten.
Serves 2 · 25 minutes
Street foodTanzania
Mishkaki
also Marinated beef skewers
Beef marinated in papaya, ginger and spice, threaded on sticks and grilled over charcoal on every Tanzanian street corner after dark. The papaya is what makes it tender.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating
Festival & feastTanzania
Pilau
Spiced rice with beef or goat, made for weddings, Eid and Christmas. The onions must be fried genuinely dark, which is where the colour comes from rather than from any powder.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastTanzania
Mkate wa Sinia
also Vitumbua tray bread, Rice tray cake
A soft, faintly sweet rice and coconut cake steamed or baked in a tray, cut into diamonds and served at coastal weddings and at the end of Ramadan.
Serves 10 · 1 hour, plus 6 hours soaking and rising
Regional specialityTanzania
Mchuzi wa Samaki
Fish curry in coconut milk with tamarind, from the Swahili coast. The tamarind is what separates the coastal version from anything cooked inland.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
Regional specialityTanzania
Ndizi na Nyama
also Machalari, Green banana and beef stew
Green cooking bananas stewed with beef until they take on the meat's flavour and thicken the pot. The Chagga dish of Kilimanjaro, and one of Tanzania's most beloved.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Drink & sweetTanzania
Kahawa na Tangawizi
Black coffee boiled with ginger and sold from brass pots carried through the streets of Zanzibar and Dar, poured into tiny cups and drunk in one.
Serves 6 small cups · 20 minutes
Drink & sweetTanzania
Togwa
also Fermented maize drink
Lightly fermented maize and millet drink, sour and faintly fizzy, drunk cold through the day. Non-alcoholic, probiotic, and given to children and the sick.
Serves Makes 2 litres · 30 minutes, plus 24 hours fermenting
Stories & Oral Literature
1972Historical account
Following a Hutu-led uprising in the south, the Burundian army and government killed somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people over several months, targeting the educated: teachers, civil servants, secondary school pupils. Several hundred thousand fled, most into Tanzania. Burundi has never held an official commemoration, and the events are known in Kirundi simply as ikiza, the catastrophe.
The Longest WaitContemporary account
Tanzania settled the refugees on land in the western regions and let them farm it. Forty years later they had built towns, schools and a substantial tobacco economy. In 2007 Tanzania made an offer almost unprecedented in modern refugee policy: citizenship for all of them. Around 160,000 accepted. The certificates were then held up for years over whether the newly naturalised would have to leave the settlements, and the matter was only partly resolved in 2014.
Proverbs
“Uwutazi aho ava ntamenya aho aja.”
“One who does not know where he comes from does not know where he is going.”
Origin and direction, in a generation born in exile.
“We planted for forty years on borrowed ground.”
Farming without title.
“The paper came before the permission to stay.”
Citizenship granted and residence still questioned.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Imana as creator in Kirundi cosmology; Christianity dominant, with the churches of the settlements central to community life.
Beliefs: Roman Catholicism and Pentecostal churches; the settlements' churches functioned as the main institutions outside the administration; ancestral practice attenuated by distance from home ground.
Ancestors: The community's dead are increasingly buried in Tanzania rather than Burundi, which is itself the strongest argument the naturalised generation makes about where they belong.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Imana
The creator of Kirundi cosmology
The churches of the settlements
Not deities, but the institutions that held the community together across four decades
Abazimu
The ancestors, whose graves are mostly in a country the younger generation has never seen
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Planned settlements laid out on a grid by Tanzanian authorities and UNHCR in the 1970s, since grown into substantial towns with markets, schools and clinics.
Building techniques: Mud brick and thatch initially, fired brick and sheet roofing as the settlements consolidated; tobacco curing barns are the characteristic structure.
Village layout: Villages on a surveyed grid with allocated farm plots behind, a layout designed for temporary accommodation and inhabited for fifty years.
Artifacts
The Old Settlements
Heritage site
Ulyankulu, Katumba and Mishamo, planned camps that became towns.
Tobacco curing barns
Livelihood
Structures of an export economy built by people without citizenship.
Naturalisation certificates
Archive
Documents issued to around 160,000 people from 2010, then held up for years.
Burundian drums in exile
Instrument
Ceremonial drumming maintained across two generations away from home.
Historical Timeline
April–August 1972
Mass killings in Burundi; estimates run from 100,000 to 200,000 dead, concentrated among the educated.
1972–1978
Around 200,000 refugees are settled in three planned settlements in western Tanzania.
1980s–2000s
The settlements become self-sufficient and a significant tobacco-producing region.
2007–2010
Tanzania offers citizenship; around 160,000 apply and are approved.
2014
Certificates are finally issued after a long dispute over whether the naturalised must relocate.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNHCR: Burundian refugees in TanzaniaUNHCR
- Britannica: Burundi — historyEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources