As the rhythm of traditional royal drums echoed across Burundi on July 1st to celebrate 64 years of independence, a familiar echo resonated within the Kakuma Refugee Camp.
Locally known as Ingooma, these sacred Burundian talking drums were brought to life by the Abatimbo (drummers) in a bittersweet celebration.
On the flip side of the festivities, 100 Burundian citizens looked down at the disappearing dust of Turkana County from the windows of a humanitarian charter flight.
The cohort of exactly 100 individuals, who spent years as documented refugees in the expansive Kakuma Refugee Camp, voluntarily boarded a plane bound for Bujumbura.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Kenya, the flight is part of an ongoing regional framework designed to assist those who actively choose to return home.
But behind the seamless logistics of a UN-chartered flight lies a complex, deeply human calculus. To understand why these families chose this exact moment to return, Sifa FM spoke to several Burundian refugees within the camp.
Their voices, shared anonymously to protect their families both in Kenya and back home, reveal a choice driven not just by patriotism, but by a modern battle for survival.
The physical journey from Kakuma to Burundi spans over 1,200 kilometers (roughly 750 miles). By air, a charter flight bypasses a grueling, multi-day overland journey across international borders, cutting through the skies above Uganda and Lake Victoria to touch down at Melchior Ndadaye International Airport in just a matter of hours.
For many children boarding the plane, the flight marked their first time leaving the arid northwest of Kenya. For their parents, it was a bridge spanning a decade of displacement.
“People look at the plane and think we are just homesick,” an anonymous Burundian mother of four narrated to Sifa FM. “Yes, we love Burundi. But look at our life here.
The food cuts are breaking us. Every month, the World Food Programme ration card buys less and less. My children are growing, but their portions are shrinking. When the belly is empty, the long distance home doesn’t feel so scary anymore. At least on my own land, I can dig the soil and plant cassava.”
Another 19-year-old youth, who requested his identity remain concealed for security purposes, expressed a different kind of inner conflict.
“My parents are staying in Kakuma, but my older brother took the flight,” he stated. “He wants to see if our family’s land in Gitega province is still there. I am torn. Kenya is the only home I really know, but here I am always a refugee. In Burundi, I will be a citizen, even if starting over from zero after 1,200 kilometers of traveling is terrifying.”
As the humanitarian charter flight taxied down the runway, leaving the dry plains of Turkana County behind, it left an invisible question hanging over the thousands who watched it go:
If a hundred of our neighbors can find a way to step onto that plane and cross the 1,200-kilometer divide back to Burundi, is it finally time for us to do the same, or is staying in exile our only guarantee of safety?
For the approximately 38,000 Burundian refugees still living within the Kakuma Refugee Camp and the adjacent Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, this is not a hypothetical query; it is a daily, agonizing choice.
With food rations in the camp shrinking due to severe international funding shortages, families must constantly weigh the harsh economic precarity of remaining a refugee against the profound uncertainties of going back to a homeland many haven’t seen in over a decade.
To contextualize this choice, the UNHCR officially categorizes voluntary repatriation as the absolute “preferred durable solution” to refugee crises worldwide. Rather than keeping displaced populations in a state of permanent, aid-dependent limbo, the UN views a successful return as the ultimate restoration of a person’s dignity, autonomy, and legal citizenship.
According to UNHCR frameworks, repatriation is highly favored because it allows refugees to actively rebuild their own lives, reclaim ancestral lands, and contribute directly to post-conflict reconciliation and development in their native country.
Ultimately, the decision to return remains a delicate tightrope walk. On one hand, the government in Gitega insists that peace has returned and actively encourages its diaspora to come home. On the other hand, humanitarian funding shortfalls hitting East African refugee hubs have made camp life increasingly untenable.
Deep cuts to food rations and essential services have turned what was once a safe haven into a daily economic struggle, forcing refugees to risk the unknown for a chance at true independence.
