I find new roads, often paved or in solid ground, where there were only paths, meandering through perfectly cultivated fields and eucalyptus woods, fruit of World Bank projects. Houses sprout everywhere, built in hard material with a zinc roof: the poor and nice huts in straw and mud had almost disappeared. Rice, manioc and beans fields stretch as far as the eye can see in the Ruzizi Plain, alternating with green and luxuriant banana plants and reaching the heights of the Congo-Nile range. The streets tingle with happy people, who greet with enthusiasm and move on foot, by motorbike, by taxi, by minibus. The bikes are a show: run by strong men and young people they are carrying everything from a huge pig to six bags of rice, from huge bales of cassava leaves to a row of chairs rising undaunted towards the sky and defying the laws of physics. There is an entire family on one bike, followed closely by another with a huge bundle of poles or planks. Where once you could only meet the missions, international and government agencies or wealthy merchants’ cars now arrive taxis and motorbike-taxis at the economic service of the entire population. Along the main roads, solemn public buildings alternate with smart banks, shopping centers of all kinds with well-equipped mechanical workshops for cars and bikes, carpenters with stadiums. In the centers, I frequented and now I’m visiting, I discover with surprise a number of schools, colleges, and vocational training centers: all elegantly built in bricks, well kept, often with gardens and small parks adorned with flowers. Along the roads, both the main and of the interior, people sell everything from charcoal bags for the city to fruits and vegetables. Long rows of stones and bricks accumulated at the edges of the roads alternate with brick-ovens and blocks in mud and straw - just as in the Jews’ days in Egypt -: an unmistakable sign that people look to the future with optimism and confidence.

How different is the country that I left shortly after October 20^th, 1993 coup d’état and the killing of President Ndadaye, democratically elected only a few months before, by the army and the UPRONA Tutsi party! It was an environment of fear, suspicion, reserve that I had found, climbing over the military barbed wire and entering the country with refugees returning from Bugarama in Rwanda, to the parishes of Cibitoke and Kabulantwa where I had worked as a missionary for 8 beautiful years. It was this reason, perhaps, that brought me here to these places! It was too sad keeping that image and I feel happy to be able to replace it. The enthusiasm with which the people I recognize greet me is great; with pride they speak of when young ones used to come to the mission for catechism and literacy classes then called "Yaga Mukama", Speak o Lord.

Something surprises me, which I did not expect at all: everywhere there are churches of cheerful Protestant communities and tiny mosques, empty and silent, which seem to be saying, "Here we are too". On the other hand, the parishes where I worked are thriving: public schools - which welcome more than 90% of the children - replace now literacy schools; several ancient chapels have become parishes; many churches are rebuilt 4-6 times wider; professional centers for orphans and recovery schools for those who left arise everywhere; new sanctuaries attract many faithful. So naïve are you! I tell myself, while people known and unknown shake my hand and hug me enthusiastically: when I was here in the 1969-77 years the Ruzizi Plain was not very populated. Did not an old missionary tell me that until 1957 a herd of elephants cut off his path to the mountains, forcing him to go back! Had I not gone, before the 1972 massacres, hunting for antelopes and gazelles?

Here is the past that comes back violently. On my arrival, Burundi, with its like heart shape and its 27,834 km2, had 3.5 million inhabitants. In '72, 200,000 people were killed and even more refugees. Yet, despite these and other massacres perpetrated by the Tutsi army against the Hutu, and vice versa from the Hutu guerrilla against even innocent Tutsis, and the consequent exodus of refugees, the population exceeds 10 million today with the youth population growing steadily.

A prosperous, happy, peaceful and confident country in its own future, then?

The reality that I see, is it typical of this area or of all Burundi? For all over the country they tell me, except for certain ecclesiastical structures. Since the Ruzizi Plain started to be populated only during the 60s, there was a need to create new dioceses and increase the number of parishes, while in the other parts of the country the Catholic Church structures had been consolidated in earlier decades.

Why then, I ask myself, is there a clear resentment and condemnation of Western public opinion towards the current regime?

When they arise, the questions become unstoppable such as waves intruding in all fields. Where are they, or where will they pass, I ask, the water pipes and drains to serve decently all these houses? How to distribute electricity to all? The dictator Bagaza wanted, without success, to force people to leave the traditional mihana (banana plantations) and gather in villages to take advantage of services such as running water, electricity, and toilets inside the houses. Now people do it spontaneously, but in great disorder. Is there an urban development plan in the country? Bujumbura, the capital, has grown enormously, is well organized with a large group of "mamas" -women often widowed or abandoned - that keep it exquisitely clean and adorned with bushes in bloom, but what about the rest of the country, especially the areas in the countryside where the majority of the population lives? I see, like 45 years ago, swarms of children and girls - many of them barefoot and dressed in rags -, girls and women, looking for water carrying cans on their heads. In the countryside, little roads full of holes and dust alternate with modern arteries. In the classrooms I enter, I find pews for a hundred students who, they tell me, come to school as in the old time without having any breakfast. What can they learn? The image is then of a happy country because it is carefree, since it does not look to the future because it is afraid of the past, with a government without structural plans because it is unable of thinking or afraid of doing it? The fact that Pierre Nkurunziza, the current president, in 2015 did not give up power and was re-elected against the Constitutional mandate, leading to death, exile, and disappearance of about 7,000 people, how much weighs on all this? On the other hand, is there something more subtle and hidden? Is it not that Museveni, in Uganda, and Kagame, in Rwanda, with the change of the constitution are and will be in power for decades? What is the difference?

For Western governments and public opinion, is the difference in the fact that Nkurunziza governs the country as an evangelical preacher without showing the expected qualities of a statesman and that his fellow guerrilla generals are not of much help to him? Museveni and Kagame, on the contrary, showing long-term plans, delude banks and governments. Kagame above all.

A big question, then, gathers thick, dark and tragic clouds on the future of Burundi and Rwanda itself: where is the agricultural land that could ensure food to such a galloping demography? In Burundi, I saw schools, stadiums, housing and commercial complexes, professional training centers, private houses and public buildings, even churches built in bulk on the best agricultural land. The need for currency has pushed the government to exploit the subsoil to the detriment of agriculture, such is the case with the gold mines granted to the Russians. Where will people find food in the near future?

A radical reform of the land system will not be the only guarantee of peace and democracy for the years to come, will it? Unless! A cruel doubt suddenly emerges from the past. The international press also insinuated it in 2015. Contrary to a Nkurunziza anti-constitutional re-election, there was not just a group of Hutu politicians eager for change, due to the evident limits of the ruling administration, but also the hidden hand of Kagame and the never-ending dream of the hima or Tutsi Empire, either way you want call it. For decades, it has been thought that the only "democratic" outburst to the demographic explosion of Rwanda and Burundi is in the neighboring Congo. If this country, with its immense and uninhabited savannahs, forests, and plains opens its doors, would give solution to the two small neighboring countries populations’ problem and at the same time level the path to a surprising future of progress to which the subpopulation of so many of its isolated regions prevent it now. The Democratic Congo does not seem willing to open its doors, and therefore the hima dream comes about as a natural alternative: let there be a united, single country Burundi, Rwanda and the east regions of the Congo River. A bright, or illusory or demagogic dream, destined to drown in a new bloodbath?