When Jean Bosco Manihankuye was seven years old, his father was killed. Burundi was experiencing a civil war between the Hutus and the Tutsi. This civil war lasted from 1993 to 2005 and took the lives of over 300,000 people. Jean Bosco’s father was one of these casualties.
Bouts of ethnic cleansing and ultimately two civil wars and genocides during the 1970s and again in the 1990s left the country undeveloped and its population as one of the world’s poorest.
In addition to poverty, Burundians often have to deal with corruption, weak infrastructure, poor access to health and education services, and hunger. Burundi is densely populated and has had substantial immigration as young people seek opportunities elsewhere. The World Happiness Report 2018 ranked Burundi as the world’s least happy nation with a rank of 156.
Needless to say, life in Burundi is very difficult. So it was for Jean Bosco.
He was the third child among twelve, but nine of his siblings died of disease as a result of the hardships of life in Burundi during this period. After his father was killed his family fled to Tanzania, like so many others, to escape the persecution and warfare. His mother remarried but her new husband acquired HIV and needed much medical attention. This was in addition to the many needs of the oldest child, who suffered with epilepsy. The mother sold everything she had from her first marriage to pay for the family’s extensive medical needs. They also suffered poverty and hardship living as refugees. During this time of exile, Jean Bosco gave his life to the Lord during a church service his mother took him to. This began a life of total dependency on the Lord for young Jean.
The family moved back to Burundi after the war and Jean began to serve actively in a new church in Bujumbura. In spite of the extremely difficult lifestyle and all the hardships, he prospered in the Lord. He began to witness and preach on the streets. One day he went to a nearby city and was arrested for not having the required permit for outdoor preaching. The local authorities considered him a nuisance, so they planned to leave him locked up for a while. This was the first time Jean experienced the inside of a prison in Burundi. He began to preach to all the inmates and this stirred up quite a little contention amongst the inmates, as well as the prison guards. Jean realized there was a hunger for God inside that prison, and several inmates gave their lives to the Lord. But because of his preaching, the prison warden told the guards to release him the next day before he caused a riot!
God used this experience to put a desire in Jean’s heart to preach to men behind bars. He began visiting the local prisons in Bujumbura, and continued for several years while also serving wholeheartedly in his church.
Just Equipping Ministries, headed by Heaven’s Family partners Judy and Pierre Allard, went to Burundi to hold a Restorative Justice Conference to train ministers for prison ministry. Jean attended, and dedicated his life to restoring relationships between perpetrators and their victims in the Prisons of Burundi. With the help of Judy and Pierre, Jean started Barnabas Africa Prison Ministries. Ten years later he has 12 chaplains working with him who are ministering in 10 Burundi prisons. His ministry also supports and trains volunteers from local churches.
In the midst of poverty and hardships Jean and his team are taking the light of the gospel into the dark prisons of Burundi, reaping an eternal harvest of souls for the Kingdom of God. It is a great privilege for the Prison & Rehab Ministry to support these wonderful soldiers of Jesus.
The message of this story:
Neither poverty, nor extremely difficult life circumstances, nor death, nor disease, nor warfare, nor any wickedness of man can stop the gospel of Jesus Christ from bringing hope and life to the “least of these” in in the darkest prisons of Burundi!
