Volume 43, Number 10 · June 6, 1996
The Poisoned Country
By Philip Gourevitch
Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide
by René Lemarchand
Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Cambridge University Press, 232 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology, Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania
by Liisa H. Malkki
University of Chicago Press, 374 pp., $21.50 (paper)
Wherever you go in Rwanda and Burundi—to a private house, a bar, a government office, a refugee camp—drinks are served with the bottle caps on, and opened only before the eyes of the drinker. It is a ritual that honors the fear of poison. An open bottle is unacceptable. When, as with the potent banana beer which is drunk in quantity in rural areas, a drink comes unbottled from a common pot, or when a drink is to be shared, the provider must take the first sip—like a food taster in a medieval court—to prove that it is safe.
Review, 6463 words
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