BURUNDI: If you think Corrie and Fair City are gripping, you should try their equivalents in Burundi. Declan Walsh in Bujumbura recently joined 85 per cent of the population who listen in.
From the start, the affair looks doomed. As Burundi's civil war swirls around them, Nathalie and Mbazumutima fall hopelessly in love. But their peoples are enemies - one is a Hutu, the other a Tutsi - so angry relatives forbid a marriage.
Mbazumutima is captured by the rebels and disappears into the bush. Months later Nathalie, thinking him dead, is betrothed to another, this time a man from her own tribe. Her family are delighted; the girl is heartbroken.
Then on the eve of this unhappy marriage, Mbazumutima escapes his captors.
He rushes home to halt the nuptials. But will he make it to the altar before his heart's love is stolen forever? Romance, hatred, tribes and tribulations - such is the stuff of Our Neighbours, Ourselves, Burundi's hit soap opera.
Coronation Street moved to a central African war, it is a runaway success. Twice a week entire villages and city streets hush as people power up their battery radios for the latest soap fix. Some 85 per cent of adults listen, according to the makers.
"The war drove Hutus and Tutsis apart," says the director, Michel-Ange Nzojibwame. "We want to show what they have in common."
With relatively few televisions and newspapers, radio is Africa's most powerful medium. In the wrong hands, it can be capable of great evil.
During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the notorious Radio Milles Collines fuelled the slaughter of 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
"The graves are not yet quite full," urged one presenter. "Who is going to do the good work and help us fill them completely?"
Our Neighbours, or Umubanyi Niwe Muryanga in Kirundi, has the opposite aim.
Started in 1997 by a group of unemployed actors - fear of grenade attacks closed their theatre - it holds up a mirror to Burundi's ethnically driven war and shines a light on possible solutions.
Now on episode 518, the cast has swelled to include more than 60 characters - a truly confusing African extended family. The plots are inspired by street gossip or bar-room jokes, mixed with political developments and forwarded to Marie-Louise Sibazuri, a Burundian exile living in Belgium.
The finished script is "subtle, perceptive - about rumour, stereotypes and prejudice", says Lena Slachmuijlder, manager with the US-funded Studio Ijambo behind the soap.
Which characters are Hutu or Tutsi is deliberately kept obscure. "In daily activities, there is no separation between Hutus and Tutsis. They go to church together, trade at the market or sit in buses. It is difficult to tell one from the other," explains Rose Marie Twajirayezu who plays Mukamunwa, the village gossip-monger with a taste for beer.
But, she admits, "they are still unsure of each other, so they return home separately".
Sometimes the action cuts too close to the bone. Police once tried to arrest the director following an episode depicting corrupt cops. Another time a high-level civil servant, who recognised himself as a character, tried to block an episode mid-broadcast.
The actors are Burundi's equivalent of movie stars. The difference is that fans recognise them by their voices. "Even in a disco or a bar, people can know you," says Adolphe Ntibasharira, who plays a scheming politician.
Last week a Tutsi president peacefully handed power to a Hutu, Domitien Nzayizeye. The cast, like most Burundians, are only cautiously hopeful. "We are waiting to see. There are so many maybes, but nothing is sure," says Michel-Ange Nzojibwame.
War has bred black humour in Burundi, where happy endings are few. So it is also with Our Neighbours. In the original love story, Mbazumutima arrived too late to stop Nathalie's marriage. "Just like in real life," smiles Michel-Ange.