UW to host African peacemaker undaunted by U.S. charity fiasco

Prosper Ndabishuriye is trying to restore his war-shattered country — brick by precious brick.

He believes each new house he builds for Burundi refugees can help bring the central African country that much closer to healing the wounds left by a bloody tribal war.

In a speech Tuesday at the University of Washington's Thomson Hall, Ndabishuriye will tell how, in the midst of that war 14 years ago, he gathered youth soldiers from warring ethnic groups — Hutus and Tutsis taught to kill one another — and persuaded them to join his mission to rebuild the country, one house at a time.

But what Ndabishuriye is unlikely to talk about is how his group was subsequently swindled by an Ohio-based charity that offered to reimburse him for building materials but later reneged, in behavior many involved in international benevolence call uncharacteristic of U.S. charities.

What happened has left Ndabishuriye deep in debt; his creditors in Burundi have threatened his life and have had him imprisoned seven times in a debtors jail.

Still, Ndabishuriye keeps building: His group, Youth in Reconstruction of the World in Destruction, has completed 3,000 adobe-brick homes in villages across Burundi, at a cost of about $1,000 per house.

"It's hard to promote peace among people who have no place to live," said Ndabishuriye, a Christian leader and himself a Hutu.

"We're not just only building homes, we're also building hearts. We're all Burundians — not Hutus, not Tutsis, but one people."

It's a story of inspiration and hope on a continent where both are often in short supply — a story Ndabishuriye has been sharing on stops across the U.S. in recent weeks.

His speech — free to the public — is scheduled for 3:30-5 p.m. Tuesday in Room 317 at the UW's Thomson Hall.

Ndabishuriye is trying to raise money on two separate tracks: a public plea for funds to help continue building homes across the country, and a more private appeal to friends to help repay the nearly 10-year-old debt to creditors he incurred after the charity backed out.

It's a steep challenge for a man from a country few can locate on a map. While the movie "Hotel Rwanda" alerted many Americans to the mid-1990s atrocities between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, few have heard of the simultaneous massacring in neighboring Burundi, one of the world's poorest countries.

By the time a cease-fire was reached a year ago, about 300,000 people had been killed and about 60 percent of the country's homes had been destroyed.

In the midst of all this destruction, in 1994, Ndabishuriye gathered a group of 153 young soldiers from both tribes to sit down and talk. He told them politicians were using them to destroy their own futures. And he persuaded 53 of them to join him on a mission to rebuild a crumbling country, house by house. He warned them they could lose their lives in the process.

It was not an idle warning.

Ndabishuriye and his group were stopped several times — first by Tutsi militia, then by Hutu militia — as their bus traveled across the country. Each time, the gunmen ordered members of the enemy tribe in Ndabishuriye's group to step off the bus and line up on the ground.

And each time, Ndabishuriye said, members of the gunmen's tribe stepped out as well, telling the gunmen they'd have to shoot them first.

The group never lost a single member. And as they continued to build, similar groups followed. Their mission was to bring the tribes together — back to villages they had inhabited before the war. "We couldn't build separate villages for Hutu and Tutsis," he said. "We encouraged them to come back and live together like we used to."

But Ndabishuriye's voice shifts when he tells the other part of his story — of how his group was defrauded by the Albert Schweitzer Society USA, whose officers promised to reimburse Ndabishuriye for the $152,000 he spent in 1999 buying building materials for 253 homes.

Ndabishuriye bought the material on credit, but the charity never reimbursed him. He sued the charity in 2001 — and won, but couldn't collect.

In an article that ran in the Dayton Daily News in 2001, the Albert Schweitzer Society's secretary/treasurer said the organization had no funds and that he didn't think Ndabishuriye had completed as many homes as he claimed.

Steve Haas, vice president of church relations with World Vision, a Christian relief organization, said the Schweitzer Society folded.

"It's a man-bites-dog story; so many elements are flipped," said Haas.

It's not often you hear about a U.S. organization defrauding a recipient, he added.

Haas said he has checked into Ndabishuriye's home-building efforts and has been impressed by what he found.

"I realized it was a legitimate ministry having good impact in Burundi," he said. "This guy's story touched me. His track record is solid. What he has built is solid."

Ndabishuriye admits he shouldn't have been as trusting as he was. But, he said, in Africa, "When an American says yes, you know you can take him at his word."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com