A Love Letter to Burundi
‘I didn’t know the value of my culture and its beauty until I lived in another land’
By Edna Thecla Akimana
If I lie in bed with my eyes closed, I can almost taste icayi c’amata. My mother would wake us up with that tea and milk, accompanied by umukate wo kwa KAPA n’ivoka (bread with avocado), croissants, or ibitumbura. There is no start to my morning as sweet as they were in Burundi, waking up to beignets with my mother moving us along toward the day.
To be able to move to and settle in the United States due to security reasons was a privilege. However, I wasn’t ready to leave my country, take responsibilities, and live alone overseas, but I knew I would take my special childhood memories on this new adventure to a new land.
I was taught the United States of America was the cleanest country with loving people and healthy food. Growing up watching movies and documentaries, I thought that America didn’t have homelessness, hunger, violence, or economic and health issues. The media and many white people consider Africa to be the poorest and the continent most in need while taking from our country what they want.
I was shocked to come to the U.S. and see children asking for food in the streets and elders standing in the roads holding signs, asking for money. I saw teens sleeping in front of gas stations in the cold. I was 19 years old, exposed to a new culture, new diet, and new environment. This wasn’t what I expected. Almost everything has sugar in it, foods are made of chemicals, often lacking taste. When making the decision to leave home, I thought about the friends and family I wouldn’t see every day, never really considering the dramatic loss of food that is the core of who I am.
Oh, how I miss everything about you, my motherland! Burundi! Your food gave me strength and energy to run outside all day and play with my peers at school. The fresh taste of food that can’t be compared with food here.
It took me months to get used to the taste of everything, even of water and milk. Everyone around me seemed to run to fast food restaurants. I get it; convenience is appealing. I started to eat burgers and fries, too, and was gaining a lot of weight. My body was changing in ways I couldn’t seem to control.
Back home, I’d get out of class and run home, always to find lunch or dinner well prepared at the table. The natural taste of fruits and vegetables; french fries with a mayonnaise au citron; rice, peas, and beef. The tasty cakes that were sold downtown Bujumbura close to Cathedral Regina Mundi! I remember the time when I was 5 years old and refusing to eat, running in the yard with the babysitter because I didn’t want to eat anything, and now I wish I could go back to that time. I was very picky, until being picky was not an option.
Now, I think about all the food I didn’t want to eat. Hearing mention of salmon reminds me of umukeke wokeje n’uburobe — the natural salty taste of fish accompanied with lime, onions, and plantains. I daydream about the meatballs, cheese, and jambo found at Nouvelle Boucherie Charcuterie. Isombe (cassava leaves). I’d save my own money to get Triano’s cake and bread. I would make special trips to get Agatoke, Isambusa (samosas), washing them down with Fruito or Fanta Citron.
Besides the taste of food, I miss celebrating. In the Burundian culture, there is no small celebration; every celebration, whether it’s a holiday, birthday, or wedding, is a big day. We do everything big. We eat, we dance, we celebrate all night. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, living far away from my loved ones. I feel the difference. I didn’t know the value of my culture and its beauty until I lived in another land.
There’s no remedy for being homesick, no replacement for my motherland.
I do try to cook the recipes I used to eat in Burundi using the ingredients found in the U.S.; however, there is still the taste missing — the taste that starts with walking to the market, picking vegetables from Burundian soil, and getting the milk from my dad’s cows. I was wrong, the way I pictured the United States of America. Although I am grateful for what I have learned so far while living in the land of the free, I cannot forget the homesickness, the food, the memories. It won’t ever go away. Burundi, as beautiful as it is, that is where my heart is!
Edna Thecla Akimana, 24, emigrated from Bujumbura, Burundi, in East Africa, to Portland, Maine, at the age of 19. She writes to advocate for other youth and helps reveal the perspective as a young adult female/immigrant living alone in the United States.
