Tuyage Twongere (Let's Talk)

Tuyage Twongere was aired twice a week on Radio Kwizera in the camps and on 4 stations in Burundi with overall national coverage. Organisers said that Tuyage Twongere had gained a loyal following among listeners in the camps, and had a growing audience inside Burundi.

The drama was researched and written on location in the camps and in Burundi by Marie-Louise Sibazuri, a Burundian playwright who is herself a refugee based in Brussels. During the course of a year, Sibazuri and the project team (headed by IRIN Radio) conducted 5 missions to the camps, also visiting neighbouring provinces of Burundi, to research and produce batches of episodes for the series. The project team developed the storyline and interposition of themes in the drama using a participatory and interactive approach. Focus groups were organised with refugees in the camps, as well as with returnee communities in Burundi, to enable them to discuss their daily problems and issues of concern. The voices of women and men, girls and boys, were incorporated into the drama. First drafts were then read back to community groups for their input and approval.

Sibazuri selected and trained an original group of actors from an existing refugee drama group in Ngara to enact Tuyage Twongere. With a sizeable refugee population still remaining in Tanzania, the project had recorded episodes of the drama on both sides of the border. Refugee actors recorded some episodes in Ngara, close to the camps. In the Burundian capital Bujumbura, repatriated members of the drama group recorded more episodes. The project technician trained Kwizera staff to make the recordings using the latest digital equipment. The technician edited the recordings into 20 minute-long episodes, mixing in sound effects to recreate the natural ambiance of the refugee camps.

The drama group called itself Yagirabandi, and as more and more of its members return home to Burundi as part of the repatriation process, the group was hoping to establish itself as a community drama association in Burundi. IRIN was providing training to its members to build capacity within the group.

Conflict, Gender, Health.

The series was aired by Kwizera, covering the camps and bordering provinces of Burundi, and by four stations in Burundi - the state broadcaster RTNB, and private FM stations RPA, Culture, and Renaissance.

According to IRIN, Burundians comprised the largest single refugee population in Africa at the time of the programme broadcast. Some 570,000 civilians were officially recognized refugees. There were at least 350,000 Burundi nationals living as refugees in Tanzania, having fled the civil war that broke out in Burundi in 1993 between mainly Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-dominated government. Although the civil war took place in the 1990s, Burundi had been in a state of violent conflict for over 30 years. Though it is one of Africa's smallest countries, in the last decade alone around 150,000 civilians were killed and 1.5 million more uprooted in the landlocked state.