Simon Guillebaud

“The only thing I know for sure is that I have no idea what is going to happen.” So said a friend of mine over lunch. It sums up the situation in Burundi right now. Nobody has any idea how things are going to turn out. Every event is seen through radically different lenses depending on which side one supports. The international community is pressing relentlessly for regime change and squeezing the government through withdrawal of aid, whilst the regime is trying its hardest to survive as the economy and security plummets and paranoia soars. The Twittersphere is buzzing with […]

It’s 5am and still dark as I lie listening to Lizzie’s peaceful breathing next to me. I went to bed last night knowing that a gun battle was taking place in a suburb of Bujumbura where maybe fifty of my colleagues and friends live (with their precious children), and as usual I’m impatient to find out by logging onto Twitter what the results of that carnage were. It’s become a macabre daily ritual for me, and one shared by hundreds of thousands of Burundians in the diaspora who are aching at a distance as they follow what is going on […]

I wanted to share the below with you (with permission). It’s from one of my best buddies on the planet. He’s a key Burundian leader, very gifted, and willing to lay down his life for the cause. He gave up a very secure international job which guaranteed paying his children’s education to follow God’s call back to working in Burundi. He’s the real deal. May what he writes move you to further prayer for our nation, and beyond that to helping him if you can. It also gives a picture of how things currently are. Notwithstanding the grim situation, it remains […]

Choices are pretty stark these days in Burundi. Stay or flee? About 250,000 fled over the last few months, and you have to be pretty desperate to flee. Once fled, stay fled or return? About 180,000 have stayed away, whether in miserable refugee camps or eating away at fast-diminishing life-savings in rented accommodation in Rwanda or Uganda. About 70,000 have returned, many having run out of money and been forced to return, others hopeful that things are improving. Food or education? September is the start of the academic year, so there are school books and uniforms to buy. Education trumps […]

Greetings from Burundi! I wanted you to be one of the first to know about my new app, the Choose Life 21 Challenge, now ready in the app stores. Wanted or Unwanted, Bitter or Better, Inclusive or Exclusive… there are, unsurprisingly, 21 challenges which you can now receive weekly over the coming few months.   People were asking me if Choose Life (the book) was available as an app and this is the result. It takes 21 of the 365 reflections in the book and adds a new twist, a practical challenge to stir you to put your faith into action each […]

A story from last week: “A young married woman had left her husband to move in with her mother-in-law. She was demon-possessed and all the regional witchdoctors they consulted couldn’t set her free. Our team showed up, prayed for her, and delivered her. She returned to her own home, and came back the next day with all her charms to burn them. Four people decided to follow Jesus on the back of this miracle.”  A cheerful working group with boots donated by the previously-suspicious local police This year’s outreach could not have been more challenging. It was a victory in […]

My heart is thumping in my chest as I write this, and I’m asking you to pray urgently over what is going on in Burundi right now. I don’t want to be alarmist or sensationalistic – it’s hard to predict what is going to happen – but General Adolphe is dead, and the Twittersphere is rammed with very scary rumours and plans of retribution/retaliation by his side, who saw him as a hero.   I’ll just paste this Agence France Presse article to fill you in:  “The general killed, Adolphe Nshimirimana, was widely seen as the crisis-hit central African nation’s […]

It’s 1141pm, and I’ve just finished a Skype interview with the BBC discussing Burundi’s political situation. Twitter is telling me every few minutes of the shooting going on in different parts of Bujumbura. Tomorrow is election day, the climactic day that we have been building up to for many months. How will it go…?  I don’t want to write too much, but let me share the following, written to me by one of my closest brothers in Burundi, Charles:  “Last night was terrifying because of all the gunshots and exploding grenades. My wife is the most traumatised in our household. […]

I’ve been preaching on the Isle of Lewis for the last few days, and having read in the past about the Hebridean revival of 1949-1952, I’ve been looking forward to coming for a long time. I also wanted to compare the dynamics of this revival, having heard from my Grandparents their stories about the East African revival – how, for example, they heard loud wails and weeping one night at the boarding school they were working at, and they rushed to the girls’ dormitory to find all of them prostrate on the floor confessing their sins as the Holy Spirit […]

People are asking for an update on Burundi, so I’ll weave one into this reflection on what it’s like to be a rich refugee.  Sometimes I can’t understand why I am so blessed/fortunate/lucky (choose your terminology). I review how the family got out of Burundi and it has actually brought tears of gratitude on occasion, particularly when I compare our experience with that of many of my precious friends and colleagues within Burundi’s borders or scattered elsewhere around the world because of the current crisis.  To recap: as the situation deteriorated three months ago in Bujumbura, I wanted the family […]

Burundians are waiting. We don’t know exactly what we’re waiting for – or maybe we do but dread to mention it because it’s too bleak to contemplate. I don’t even want to allow my mind to wander and consider the various potential scenarios because the consequences will be so grim for so many people if as many suspect the country descends back into civil conflict. I’ve been re-reading some of my diary from 2000-2001. It’s depressing how similar the waiting game was back then. Here are a few entries: 29th February 2000 – It was an eventful night. Just after […]

I’ve been back from Burundi a few days, and it’s been a chance to decompress a little away from the pressures there. A number of you have been asking for details on my movements this summer, so here goes with my speaking schedule. But if you come, there’ll be no guarantee on which man will show of the below (MankiniMan, SuperPantsMan, MassageMan, or SeriousPreacherMan) – apologies for the offensive pose, it’s hard to make a blogpost on a speaking schedule very enticing to read… OK, I promise to be dressed appropriately and talk seriously at most of the venues below! It […]

The MV-Liemba is the oldest ferry in the world. She was built by the Germans on the eve of World War One as a battleship to assure their dominance of Lake Tanganyika. Later she became famous through the book ‘The African Queen’, and then the film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. Through several sinkings and reincarnations, she is now saving the lives of Burundians as she enables 1,200 refugees to be ferried to Kagunga in Tanzania every day, where over 50,000 destitute people are languishing. Why are they fleeing? They are frightened. Many speak of intimidation by the Imbonerakure […]

John Piper writes: “I feel like I have to get saved every morning. I wake up and the devil is sitting on my face.” Very rarely will a blog make an immediate impact on my life, but this one did. I read it last night and already today my day was different. You can read Piper’s blog in full here. Essentially he outlines six reasons why I am (and maybe you are) unwittingly addicted to social media and prioritise that in the morning over spending time with God to get the day off to a better start. So here are […]

I’m thinking of writing a book called ‘The Curse of Comfort’. Let me explain why by describing my visceral experience of worshipping God in community at church this morning. There were fifty of us adults, and thirty children. That’s under half of what we usually are, because many people have left the country due to the deteriorating state of security. We are Bujumbura International Christian Church (BICC), but the international representation today was down to a Congolese, a Russian, two Koreans and myself. Our community is depleted, hurting, and confused – but tight, trusting, and together. Lot of empty chairs, […]

On 7th May last month in Nyakabiga quartier, Jean, who was a member of the ruling party’s youth wing (Imbonerakure) was seized by a mob of supporters of the opposition, killed and burnt. It was definitely an own-goal by the opposition, who had been claiming the moral high ground in what was framed as a David v Goliath battle for the future of Burundi. As I looked at a number of pictures of this young man – his lifeless body, charred face and protruding hand – I thought of his Mother, his Father, and his sisters. What must they be […]

I’m sat in a café having a snatched lunch alone, and I’m crying. The sound of gunfire in the capital is normal now. Most people are petrified. Suffice to say, there’s plenty to make one weep right now after last week’s failed coup and the deteriorating political and security situation. Maybe I should be embarrassed to be crying, but I’m not. Those watching me no doubt save their tears for tonight at home behind locked doors. A Burundian proverb says: “Amosozi y’umugabo atemba aja mu nda” (‘A Burundian man’s tears fall inside in his stomach’) – men aren’t meant to […]

Brothers in arms – some of my favorite people, my Scripture Union colleagues, involved in planning today’s strategic outreach I’m so privileged to be here for ‘such a time as this’. I’m working with some of the most passionate and committed people on the planet. I’ve told you before, some of God’s best troops are Burundian, and having been here so long, I’ve identified some of the very best of the best to get behind. So we’ve banded together as an outworking of Great Lakes Outreach and formed an idea (not an organization or even a network, as the expectations […]

This downtown street would normlly be bustling with activity I continue to refrain from expressing a political opinion in this blog, simply relating undisputed facts as they have developed. I love Burundi so much, have dedicated my life to this country, and I’m aching inside at what is happening here. I’ve been at my desk writing emails, or in the shower, and suddenly tears have started flowing as I grieve the enormity of what is taking place in this precious nation and the hundreds of thousands of lives being shattered by events as they develop. The refugee situation is getting […]