The True Sources of the Nile
by Sarah Stone
I don't often read books more than once, but this one I have now read three times. Most recently to include it as my selection for Burundi. I first read it not long after returning from my first overseas assignment with the Foreign Service. I recall greedily devouring the aspects of the story that resonated with my own experiences ... especially the feeling of being energized and alive by the challenges of living in a developing nation, then overwhelmed and dismayed by the ease and abundance of life back home in the United States. This is something not easily understood by anyone without a similar life experience. That first foray into a U.S. grocery store is complete sensory overload ... row after row of bright, colorful produce; dozens of freezer cases with frozen, fully-cooked convenience meals; anything you want whether it's in season or out of season; 25 different kinds of toothpaste instead of the two or maybe three that were available where you'd just come from. The excess, not previously even noticed, was shocking and unappealing for a long time after re-entry.
The second time I read it, I had been back home for a while, and the reading was poignant and bittersweet. It made me wish to be overseas again, to be among those with sharply different lifestyles and to be keenly aware of things we often take easily for granted in the United States. This recent time, the third reading, my Foreign Service years are pretty far back in the rearview mirror, and perhaps it is only now that I have actually absorbed the plot of this remarkable story.
Anne, our protagonist, is an American who goes to Burundi during a peaceful time, first to work on public health and later, on human rights. She is aware of the great divide between the rich and poor, the long history of violence and resentment between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, and the significance of that particular moment in Burundi's politics, when democracy was bubbling up with fair elections that resulted in a Tutsi coming to power for the first time. There is much she does not know, however, about the real implications of these things. She naively falls deeply in love with Jean-Pierre, a Burundian government employee who does something with the Ministry of the Interior, ... something he never defines and about which she never inquires. Their romance is intense and passionate, and Anne is prepared to fully embrace Burundian society and culture in order to marry and stay with Jean-Pierre. Just as Jean-Pierre overcomes his hesitation about announcing their plans to his very traditional family, the unimaginable happens and nothing can be the same again. Anne is returning from a work trip to a remote area in Burundi's countryside, and finds herself in the aftermath of the Hutus' brutal massacre of Tutsis through the country. Fearing for their own lives, she and her co-workers race through village after village, witnessing the horrors of what is later characterized as a genocide, not understanding and not able to help anyone. A brief few days later, Anne is whisked to safety by the U.S. Embassy, returning home to her family in California to process the trauma and the guilt of surviving such horror.
Jean-Pierre comes later, but he is deeply changed. He has lost many family members and is despondent, grieving, and unfocused. Anne, too, is deeply changed. Struggling to settle back into ordinary life near her family and with the comforts and safety that the American suburbs provide, she nonetheless cannot fathom returning to Burundi and wants him to stay with her in California. But Jean-Pierre feels more responsible and committed to his country than ever before. As they work to resolve this question of geography, Anne learns that Jean-Pierre has many secrets ... about his work, his past, and most importantly, his ideological beliefs about his country and the great divide between the Burundian people. The True Sources of the Nile is about our human inability to truly escape where we come from and our equally human tendencies to seek the safety and comfort of home, no matter how good or less good we may assess home to be in other moment of our lives.
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