Melodic greeting between women in Burundi is at risk of being lost

NGOZI, Burundi — 

The hug betwixt the 2 women looked similar it would past forever. A spirited 85-year-old had embraced a younger pistillate she hadn’t seen for months, and she chanted a fig of questions successful the peculiar yodeling regular of her ancestors.

How are you? How is your husband? How are the kids? How are your cows? Are you connected bully presumption with your neighbors?

And truthful on.

Prudencienne Namukobwa paused successful the melody to let the younger woman's rhythmic affirmation, a signifier she has mastered implicit the decades.

“Ego,” Emelyne Nzeyimana replied implicit and implicit successful the section Kirundi language. “Yes.”

A radical of neighbors watched successful amazement. Many were seeing their archetypal show of the accepted signifier of philharmonic greeting, known to Burundians arsenic akazehe. It is performed exclusively by women connected a scope of occasions.

But akazehe is fading, contempt its unsocial presumption successful this cardinal African state that is amended known for its world-famous percussionists. That's according to taste officials, teachers and others who accidental the signifier is worthy preserving.

They cited the menace from nationalist wellness measures that discourage unnecessary interaction during illness outbreaks, successful summation to the perceived nonaccomplishment to beforehand akazehe among school-going youth.

Among young Burundians, it is hard to find radical who cognize what akazehe means and adjacent harder to find idiosyncratic who tin execute it.

“At a definite time, unfortunately, it was abandoned,” said Sandrine Kitonze, a civilization advisor successful the bureau of the politician of Ngozi province.

She said akazehe and its minutes-long clasp "made you consciousness that the idiosyncratic who greets you loves you.”

Some academics person noted akazehe’s imaginable relation successful fostering societal cohesion successful Burundi, which is present mostly peaceful aft a play of deadly civilian warfare followed by governmental instability.

Annonciate Baragahorana, a teacher successful the state of Bujumbura, which includes the commercialized capital, told The Associated Press that portion she was not calved successful a spot wherever akazehe was wide practiced, she was astonished arsenic a young miss erstwhile women embraced and addressed her successful the polyphonic mode during visits to different regions.

“The women who often did this lived successful the cardinal plateau provinces. When we went determination during the holidays, a pistillate from the interior of the state kissed you powerfully portion wishing you wonders and she hugged you for a agelong time,” she said with a chuckle. “I wanted her to decorativeness quickly, adjacent if it was saccharine words to hear.”

Baragahorana said she feared “tenderness successful societal relationships volition disappear” among Burundians amid threats from contagious diseases specified arsenic COVID-19 and mpox.

“People greet each different from a region for fearfulness of contaminating each other,” she said. “This volition lend enormously to the demise of akazehe.”

In Ngozi, a hilly state successful Burundi’s north, akazehe remains acquainted to immoderate locals, and women specified arsenic Namukobwa are awesome astatine performing it.

She lives successful a decaying location acceptable successful the broadside of a verdant hill. One caller morning, she was sitting connected a mat extracurricular erstwhile she glimpsed Nzeyimana, the visiting girl of a erstwhile neighbor. She overcame her atrocious hep to emergence and invited the woman, whom she addressed arsenic if she were her biologic daughter.

“I felt that the archetypal emotion she had erstwhile I was conscionable a miss is kept until now,” said Nzeyimana, a broadcaster successful Ngozi. “This means that I americium inactive her daughter.”

Akazehe tin look similar a contention to cleanable accord, a hunt for harmony, successful the interwoven vocalizations. While astir questions are routine, immoderate tin beryllium unexpected. Nzeyimana said afterward that she had been anxious implicit perchance facing a question for which she was not acceptable with a affirmative response. There was none.

Serena Facci, an Italian student astatine the University of Rome Tor Vergata who has written astir akazehe, said that adjacent by 1993, erstwhile she went to Burundi for probe successful ethnomusicology, “this beauteous pistillate greeting wasn't precise communal successful the mean life.” Its continuing disappearance could beryllium owed to changing lifestyles, she said.

A customized specified arsenic akazehe should beryllium preserved astatine each costs due to the fact that of its relation successful protecting families, said Isaac Nikobiba, an anthropologist successful Bujumbura. Among communities that practiced it, women could alert parent figures to immoderate turbulence astatine home, triggering supportive measures from the extended family, helium said.

Nikobiba called the imaginable disappearance of akazehe symptomatic of wider taste losses stemming from modernization.

“Normally, earlier starting a location successful accepted Burundi, the miss would archetypal person proposal from her paternal aunt who would archer her, ‘I volition travel to greet you aft a definite time. If you announcement an anomaly successful the home, you volition person to archer maine everything,’” helium said. “In short, if she does not find idiosyncratic to whom she tin confide her marital intimacies, she spends each the clip successful a precise atrocious intelligence atmosphere.”

Floride Ntakirutimana was among the tiny radical of women who gathered to witnesser the spectacle of Namukobwa greeting Nzeyimana. She said she grew up successful a farming assemblage wherever nary parent could execute akazehe, and lone heard of it done vigor programs.

The speech she watched near her feeling she wanted to larn akazehe herself.

“I consciousness better, and I saw that it was good,” Ntakirutimana said.