ABSTRACT
The region of Ngozi in Burundi is important to the world because it remained peaceful when a savage violence raged all around. As Elise Boulding writes in the Cultures of Peace, peoples must do more with best case thinking, in order to understand when ones abilities to think critically and creatively can override the rising emotional tides of a rush to war. For Americans, the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 or the arguments for the Vietnam War. It is important for understanding the warrior culture that surrounded the Tillman story, a culture that is bred by the armed forces yet shielded from public view because of its violence and the casualties it produces among its own ranks. A curriculum that promotes sustainable peace and development, something we are trying to build at the University of Ngozi, would expose the truth about the darker sides of policies and practices, important lessons for Burundi and everywhere else.
