Word: urundi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...everything was ready. Hoare's plan was to send a diversionary column of 100 mercenaries under Major Alastair Wicks up the road from Albertville in the south while his main assault force-160 men-stormed ashore from an "invasion fleet" composed of one ancient gunboat, the lake steamer Urundi, two barges and five patrol boats. His code name for the mission was "Operation Banzai...
...neighboring Rwanda, and thus a sworn enemy of Ngendandumwe, who happened to be a member of the Bahutu tribe. For centuries the Bahutu had served the towering Watutsi aristocrats (some measure 7 ft. or more) as cattle-tending serfs on the alpine slopes of the former Belgian colony Ruanda-Urundi. Independence, in 1962, established a tribal equality of sorts, but both Bahutu and Watutsi quickly sought more than that. A Belgian-backed coup gave the Bahutu control of the new Rwanda government, while Burundi remained under a Watutsi king, Mwami Mwambutsa...
Genocide, then, is not an inappropriate description of what is happening in Rwanda. Violence between Tutsi and Hutu has long been imminent. For centuries, the Tutsi held the Hutu in a type of feudal boundage. The Belgians allowed Tutsi domination to continue when they took over Ruanda-Urundi (now divided into Rwanda and the Kingdom of Burundi) after World War I. Only in 1959 did the Hutu overthrow the Tutsi's jealously guarded hegemony...
...Ruanda-Urundi...
Well, to begin with, Ruanda-Urundi is actually two countries, which the natives call Rwanda and Burundi. Once a part of German East Africa, they were mandated to Belgium after World War I and administered as a single trust territory. Slightly larger than Maine, they lie along the slopes of the Mountains of the Moon between Tanganyika, Uganda and the Congo. For 40 years, Belgium tampered little with the feudal tribal structure of either territory and ruled through the giant-sized Watutsi tribe (average height...