Refugees living in Tanzania return to Burundi after 36 years only to find
that their spouses have remarried and they no longer have homes.

 RUYIGI, BURUNDI (RECENT) REUTERS - 
 The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has been conducting a voluntary
repatriation operation for refugees living in Tanzania that has seen thousands
return home to Burundi. 
    An estimated 700 refugees arrive in the country every day. Under a two
year programme, UNHCR will assist the return of more than 46,000 Burundians
who fled their country during the 1972 and 1993 civil wars.
    Upon their return to Burundi, the refugees receive a cash grant of
50,000 Burundian francs (43 US dollars) to help them with their initial
resettlement costs. 
    However, it's been nearly 36 years since most of the refugees left
Burundi, and many no longer have property left in the country and no means of
making a living. 
    The years spent in exile have seen the breakdown of many families.
    Jean Marie Sinandugu kept two wives while living in the Tanzania camps
but now has no idea how to care for both families now that they are being
repatriated, and will soon be forced to fend for themselves.
    "This woman has two children, the other has five, amongst them
twins. I don't want them all, they must build and farm. We were given hoes,
it's no problem, the land is big. What else do they want? Anyway, if this
woman wants to go gallivanting and prostitute herself, I would never find out.
She must just accept and farm, that's it," said Sinandugu. 
    Audacine Mpawenimana, one of Sinandugu's wives, is a 26-year old mother
of two and no longer wants to live with her husband. Cases of domestic
violence and abuse were common in the camps.
    "When he proposed to me, he told that he was a widower. Later on,
I discovered that he has five children with another woman. She joined him in
the refugee camp. Now, we are all going back home together. He told me that
when we get to Burundi, he will beat me, that's why I don't want to go back
with him because he will kill me," said Mpawenimana.
   UNHCR has observed an increase in such social phenomena. According to
the agency, it's usually due to the fact that many men took additional wives
after they arrive in the refugees camps. Many of them also left families
behind in Burundi when they fled the fighting. UNHCR says it will give
priority to women and children when deciding how to deal with such complicated
cases.
    "We have decided not to send them back to their districts, they
are now going to Cendajuru. We have stopped their transfer, the wife has gone
to get her bags. Tomorrow, when both parties are calmer, we will sit and
listen to them and and try to find a solution. Now that the wife has decided
not to go back with her husband, we will assist her and her children, and
because she said she has a place to go, we will accompany her to her home. The
husband is going back home, and we will communicate that to the district in
case her husband tries to disturb her. The police will monitor, and we will
notify our partners, the human rights group 'Ligue Iteka' to follow up on such
cases," said Lydia Gebrechristos, UNHCR head of repatriation in the
Burundi's Ruyigi district.
    Burundi is emerging from more than a decade of an ethnic conflict that
killed more than 300,000 people in the nation of eight million and the
problems facing this couple is just one of the many problems the country will
have to overcome on the path to recovery.