Burundi - Ida

Ida lives in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi. She is the president of a women's neighborhood association on the outskirts of the city. She is a short, elderly Tutsi woman who is very energetic and dynamic.

Since the crisis began in 1993, more than 300,000 Burundians have died. Many people have had to leave their homes and Ida's community has been split in two. Before the massacres, Ida's association was comprised of women of both ethnic groups - the women owned communal land and shared its harvest amongst themselves. After 1993, it wasn't safe to live in mixed neighborhoods any longer and all the Hutu families fled across the river in fear for their lives. For eight years no one dared to cross the river to the other side.

In 2001, Search for Common Ground started the Women's Peace Center in Bujumbura. It was created in response to women who had expressed a desire to work for peace. It was designed as a safe haven for women from all ethnic backgrounds to come and participate in various training programs on topics such as conflict resolution and how to run a women's association. Perhaps more importantly, it provided a space where they could speak openly to one another and express their pain and suffering caused by years of terrible war.

After participating in several of the Center's programs, Ida decided to reach out to her old friends and colleagues. She believed that the women of both sides were sisters, not enemies, and she was determined that they should be re-united. During a period of intense fighting in their district in which many people's homes were burnt down, Ida came to the Women's Peace Center to ask for help in organising a meeting to bring the Hutu and Tutsi women of the community together. Her initiative took a lot of courage--she was perceived as a traitor by her own people as her neighborhood had recently been attacked. By reaching out to the other side, she was considered to be helping the enemy, but Ida knew that bridges had to be built to stop the madness.

After much support from the Women's Peace Center, which acted as a go-between to encourage the women from both sides to participate, a meeting was set. On the day of the event, Ida gathered about 100 Tutsi women to cross the river with her to meet the same number of Hutu women on the other side. Laden with gifts for their former neighbors, they all crowded together into a small building for their meeting. Many must have felt what one of the women expressed when she said that she never thought she would be able to sit in the same room again with the mothers, wives and sisters of those who had killed her sons.

In spite of the sounds of fighting nearby, the women held their meeting. They gave speeches and sang, all chanting "We want peace now!" By the time the women had exchanged gifts, their joy was so great they began dancing and embracing each other with complete abandon, to the point that even the sounds of gunfire outside were drowned out. People said they had never seen anything like it.

Ida is a courageous woman who took a tremendous risk to try to reunite her neighbors. She has inspired many other people to hold similar events to help heal their fractured communities. These events, which the Women's Peace Center facilitates throughout Burundi, are called Positive Solidarity Days. During the crisis in Burundi, the word "solidarity" came to mean siding with your own ethnic group against the other, no matter what the situation. Ida, with the support of the Women's Peace Center, is reclaiming and re-defining the word "solidarity" to mean inter-ethnic unity, above all else.