Men in Burundi once recited poems to their long-horned cows as they
led them to pasture, before civil war decimated the prized stocks. Now
the country is rebuilding its herds, but at the cost of forsaking
tradition.
Burundi’s whole civilisation was built around cattle. So noble were
cows considered that under the monarchy the same word was used for the
stomach of the king and the stomach of a cow — quite distinct from the
word used for the belly of a mere mortal.
“Before the civil war (of 1993-2006), we had 800,000 head of cattle,”
Eliakim Hakizimana, the country’s top official in charge of livestock
at the agriculture ministry, recounted. “But the conflict had terrible consequences on cattle, with only around 300,000 left at the end of the war,” he said. After 13 years of fighting and peace bids between the traditional
ruling caste in the Tutsi minority and the rebellious Hutu majority,
when an estimated 300,000 people lost their lives, Burundi is trying to
build up its herds. The Tutsis are mainly herders and held most of the cows whereas the
Hutus tend to be farmers. During the war the cows became a prime target
for militia fighters, seeking not only food but the destruction of what
their foes held most dear.
“Before colonial times, before the Europeans came at the end of the
nineteenth century, the cow was not just a domestic animal in the
kingdom of Burundi,” explained Adrien Ntabona, a retired anthropology
professor at Burundi University. “People talked to their cows, reeled off their ancestry. They had
different poems they recited when they led them to water, to pasture,
brought them home or milked them. A cow was seen as a person.” Cows are traditionally given names that describe either their beauty,
such as “she who came down from the moon”, or their character. With their long horns and slender forelegs, Burundi’s Ankole cattle were held to be the epitome of beauty. Poets in this small central African nation applied to cattle attributes normally reserved for either women or warriors.
Times of day were expressed in relation to activities concerning
cows, with morning known as “grazing time” while early afternoon was
“time for the calves to come home”. “When someone wanted a house, a favour or even a wife, he would give a
cow,” said Pierre Nduwimana, a peasant farmer in Matana in the
country’s south. “A wife was referred to as a two-legged cow who could
carry water and cut wood.” “Burundi’s whole civilisation revolved around the cow,” Ntabona said.
“Cows served as a link between people. They weren’t treated like
goddesses in the way they are in India but they were relatively sacred
and had to be treated as such.”
Long before the civil war erupted, the arrival of colonial forces, a
population boom and the shrinking of pastureland in a densely peopled
country had all already taken their toll on this traditional way of
life, much to the chagrin of some Burundians. “My father had cows, just like my grandfather and my
great-grandfather but I can’t afford to keep a herd,” said Pierre, a
civil servant. “I feel very guilty about that — as if I’d betrayed my
parents.”
Since the war ended in 2006, when the last major rebel group, the
Forces for National Liberation, signed a ceasefire, the cattle
population has risen and it is now at 600,000 head, according to
official figures. But to acquire a cow today you either need to be rich, as one cow
sells for $1,000 (almost 750 euros) — a fortune in one of the world’s
poorest countries — or to be a beneficiary of a cattle donation scheme.
This scheme launched by the authorities has distributed 25,000 cows
since 2008, Hakizimana said. The aim is “to modernize the sector to make
it productive in milk, cheese and fertilizer,” he added. Emmanuel Nibaruta, a 35-year-old farmer living on one of Burundi’s
thousands of hills in the northern Ngozi province, says he is “still
thanking God for having given me my first Friesian cow”. While his bulky black and white animal may lack the grace of a
traditional Ankole, Nibaruta concedes, it gives him 16 times as much
milk every day. But a major problem for the productivity scheme is the absence of
outlets where farmers can sell their milk and have it turned into
yoghurt and cheese, Hakizimana acknowledged.
Bujumbura’s one and only milk processing plant was shut down 20 years
ago at the beginning of the civil war. Milk is sold by cyclists who
ride through the streets of the capital. “It’s very demotivating for those of us who produce milk because we
end up throwing it away, while cattle feed and veterinary products are
so expensive,” lamented Anicet, a civil servant who also owns a farm. Burundi lags well behind the east African region when it comes to
milk production, estimated at 71,300 tonnes in 2011. Neighbouring Rwanda
produces almost twice as much, and Kenya 30 times as much as Burundi.
“We’re really lagging behind. That’s why we’ve got to move away from
the idea of the cow as a prestigious status symbol to the idea of a cow
that has to turn a profit,” Hakizimana said.
“We have a long way to go,” he predicted.
