New career as a tourist guide

Recently we’ve been quite busy entertaining visitors. In Sudan, except for our parents who braved the heat, no-one ever came to visit us. Yet ever since we’ve moved to Burundi, tens of people have lined up to come and stay at our little palace. What they don’t realise is that there isn’t much to do in Burundi. Honest. Now, I have to concede - there IS a nice beach, green hills and the Congo mountains, grilled fish and tasty meat brochettes, and mango/pineapple smoothies. But drive a few miles outside Bujumbura and that’s it, you’ve seen most of this beautiful (yet very small) country.

So it was an extremely pleasant surprise when our friend M announced that he and his 3 kids would be coming all the way from Khartoum to stay with us over the Easter week-end. Despite some major glitches along the way including DHL, laborious visa processes and the loss of yellow fever certificates, they all made it safely and we had a wonderful time. We went to the “Musee Vivant”, a small and dingy local zoo where the star attraction is the feeding of live hamsters to sleepy crocodiles, leopard or great python. We were slightly worried that M’s kids (all aged under 6) would find the experience traumatizing but instead they seemed to take great pleasure in cheering for the poor thing to “Run!Run!Run!” before it was finally snapped by a mighty pair of jaws. Other highlights included touching chameleons or snakes and letting them crawl around your neck, which the kids – adults less so – absolutely loved.

R and her new friend

E and her new friend

About 90 minutes south of Bujumbura, a new resort has opened on the shores of Lake Tanganika. With little huts on the beach, a tennis court and a volley net, Blue Bay is the perfect place to relax away from town at the week-end. We drove there for an afternoon and ate pizzas and swam in warm (and crocodile infested?) waters. Finally Easter Sunday was spent relaxing in our garden with a couple of friends, and playing croquet.

G helping with a game of croquet, in his own way

One day after M and the kids had returned to Khartoum, my good friend L visited from Kinshasa. Determined to relax from the chaos of Congo, she came armed with books, nail polish, cute dresses and one word: “hippos!” So I took her to the Rusizi reserve, the closest wildlife park to Bujumbura where hippos, crocs, antelopes and birds abound. One memorable moment was when L – who had never seen hippos until then –asked the guide if he couldn’t lure them to the shore (where we stood with an armed guard) so that she could approach them and get a better shot. Luckily she didn’t get his reply in French, nor saw the smile on his face.

All in all it’s been a very nice few weeks and given a few more visitors, we could well become the next official tourist guides of Burundi.

The Rusizi channel, with the Congo mountains in the background

Come to mama L...

Gym Tonic

I’ve put if off for too long, but now I HAVE to tell you about one the funniest things in Bujumbura. It’s called Gym Tonic and at the risk of sounding as naff as the girl introducing each session on my fitness DVD, “it’s incredibly hard”!

I found out about Gym Tonic through a friend, who insisted that it is a really good work-out. But while I nodded with a polite smile, my smug self thought that it couldn’t possibly be true, and that judging from my experience of Africa and sports (or rather of Sudan and OMG-are-you-kidding-why??-no sport), I should be treading on safe ground.

And at first, I clearly thought I was. Most Gym Tonic participants, Burundians for the vast majority, are either males in their mid-forties with a significant beer belly or as Mma Ramotswe would put it, “traditionally-built women”. As I handed my $2 entry fare to the attendant, I believed that those years spent in Sudan doing crazy aerobics by 40 degrees on a roof terrace were finally going to pay off. Well, they did not.

Enter the instructor, a Burundian athlete of Olympic proportions. There’s no time for small talk here, so quickly he starts the session with accelerated techno-dance music. The pace is unbelievably fast and for the next 90mn it will not stop. I look around and my neighbours, who appeared so inoffensive at the start, have now mutated into über-humans. The whole experience feels like a boot camp, with everyone shouting and grumbling in unison as they kick and punch the air.

But worse is to come. After 30mn of fighting to catch my breath, the instructor decides to put on some Congolese music while staff helpers lay steps in front of every participant. The ordeal continues with more jumping and clapping to reach a climax as the instructor screams “Now daaaaance!” and everyone with no exception starts swirling around their step in perfect rhythm. Everyone but me.

I cannot say what amazed me the most. Was it the fact that I was so unfit despite all my Sudan efforts? Or rather the sight of all these people who managed to keep pace despite... well, their shape?

In any case my friend was right. Gym Tonic is a good work-out, it certainly rivals any well-polished Western class and I will kick and punch and dance on anyone that attempts to mock it in the future.

(You didn’t seriously think I was going to post pictures as well, did you?)

A visit to the Batwa

In my not so many years of traveling through Africa, I have met a few people for whom my heart was broken. Among them were the elegant Peuls in the desert of northern Senegal, farmers fighting the drought in landlocked Burkina Faso, HIV positive women sewing beads for an income in Burundi, or landmine victims learning to live with their injury in Sudan’s Nuba mountains.

I will always remember the day I met the Batwa pygmies of Burundi. I first came across them four years ago when I was working for a development agency and I saw them again last month. They are among the poorest of the poor.

Although the Batwa are the oldest recorded inhabitants of Burundi, they were subjugated in turn by Hutu, then Tutsi tribes around the 15th century and have since been a minority. Illiterate for the major part, they are under-represented in all aspects of life in Burundi. They have often been evicted from their land and have been deprived of their rights. As a result, they get the least fertile, most inconveniently located land, which no-one else wants, where they live in small communities withdrawn from the rest of the world, often in utter poverty. Women eke out a living by making pottery, while the men work for food by carrying sacks of grains or other goods for people to and from the market.

Of course poverty is a difficult concept, and I will not attempt to compare ethnic tribes and establish which ones are poorer. But what strikes me with the Batwa is their reluctance to change.

For a start, they see themselves as a separate people. When asked which tribe they come from, most Hutu and Tutsi will insist that they are Burundians. A pygmy will reply that she or he is a Twa. Then centuries of submission have made them understandably very suspicious of foreigners. Development workers often find it much more difficult to teach Batwa ways to improve their lives (such as building more sustainable housing, sending their children to school, taking up agriculture or adopting some basic hygiene and sanitation) than their fellow Hutu and Tutsi citizens.

I value the work of organizations that run projects specifically designed to help the Batwa. Yet I cannot but ask myself how long and what it will take for an entire generation to learn to trust others, to do things in a different way, possibly even to embrace a new culture so that they will survive. If anyone knows the answer, please let me know.

the Batwa (pygmies) are smaller than the average Burundian person

A Twa building his hut, made of wood and leaves

A Twa child

Pygmy woman curious at the visitors

The angels of Gitega

Despite a dramatic journey upcountry, a lovely surprise awaited us in Gitega, the second largest town in Burundi. A few miles past the centre of town, Youth for Christ runs an orphanage for about 25 kids. Most of them have lost their parents to various diseases, including HIV-AIDS, or were abandoned by a single parent that couldn’t cope.

I had never been to an orphanage before, and at the risk of sounding terribly naive, I was somehow obsessed by images of places in Romania where children have barely enough to eat, get beaten up by their wardens and live in abject poverty. Romania being far richer than Burundi, I just didn’t know what to expect.

As we step out of the car, a horde of children run towards us with huge smiles on their faces and one by one, start distributing hugs to each adult. “What is your name?” they ask in broken English and are terribly proud when they can reply “my name is Laurette” to the same question. Not impressed by the colour of our skin, the children pass by us and jump on the Burundian leader of the project who's visiting with us, tickling him and burying their face in his chest. There is incredible joy and love in this place and I feel humbled.

We visit the dormitories, tidy brick barracks where about 4 children share a room on bunk beds. We are told that for the first time in their life, children can have their own bed, whereas in Burundi most of them will usually share their bed with their sibblings. The place is clean; the children are well-fed and look genuinely happy. The house mothers nod graciously as tell their protégés not to overwhelm the visitors. One child takes my hand and for a few moments, we stand there looking at each other in silence, content. Suddenly I am at peace.

Youth for Christ’s vision is to raise a generation of young Burundians who will be healthy, educated and God-loving – men and women of integrity who will be ready to take up the challenges of their country. For 50 US dollars a month, they house/dress/school/feed a child. The project is so popular that the local authorities have granted YFC permit to build another site on the opposite side of town. If every child in Burundi could grow with the grace, unconditional love and support that these orphans receive in Gitega, the face of the country would certainly change in 20 years.

Laurette looking very cool

Kids having fun during a class break

Learning hard

Tea break at school...

...and the all so popular football

The road accident

Last week, a friend from Great Lakes Outreach invited me to join a tour of their projects upcountry, which I gladly accepted. For 3 days, we travelled with a group of Americans from South Carolina who had been supporting school construction and orphanages in various provinces of Burundi.

We split our group of 13 in two 4x4 vehicles and hit the road on a bright Monday morning. Burundi is a beautiful country, so we happily rolled up and down the green hills, chatting along and watching life go by in the small and picturesque villages. Sometimes we stopped at a major junction where fruit and vegetable sellers would come and offer us fresh produce through the car windows, and we marvelled, albeit with some concern, at the cyclists who patiently waited for a truck to drive up the hill only to hang on to its back and get a free ride to the nearest pass. I did feel a bit nervous at times, since cars, coaches and taxis tend to drive incredibly fast- there is no speed limit in Burundi, while its Rwandan neighbour has imposed a 60km/hour limit - and will overtake you with no visibility beyond the next curve, and we did have a few near misses with pickup trucks.

We had just finished our lunch break and left the provincial town of Kayanza en route for Gitega when something caught our attention. We were driving up a hill where a taxi had come to a halt in the middle of the road. As the lead car of our group slowed down and was preparing to overtake it, we in the second car saw the taxi reverse towards our friends. Worried at first, we saw the wheels of the cab change direction towards the road’s side, where we assumed the taxi driver was going to park. But instead of stopping, we watched horrified as the powerless taxi gained speed backwards down the hill and ran over the cliff.

Now Burundi doesn’t have high mountains, but a jump over a 200-300m cliff when no-one is wearing their seatbelt is enough to kill you. As we pulled the car over and organised ourselves to help, we were fearing the worst for the passengers’ lives. A few of us climbed down the hill with dozens of people who had immediately gathered on the accident site. Thankfully, the car had stopped 100 metres downhill, resting dangerously on a large bush on its side and all the passengers – the driver, a woman and her baby who were just coming back from a visit to the local hospital – were alive. Quickly, they were helped out of the car, walked up the hill and sat down by the side of the road. The driver was staring in front of him, with a vague expression. The woman was sobbing in complete shock – she didn’t seem to be able to tell me whether she was hurt, so I checked for bleeding or broken bones and found nothing. Her baby’s face was smeared with a strange liquid, but we learnt that it was due to the antibiotic it had been given at the hospital and that it was fine too. Miraculously none of them even had the slightest scratch and I silently praised God for sparing their lives.

Later on we learnt that the taxi had run out of petrol up the hill. After waiting for someone to donate a bit of fuel, the driver decided to let the car roll down the hill to start the engine. But with no steering or brake power, he’d quickly lost control of the vehicle. It was a scary moment and I’m so thankful that everyone got out of it safe. But as we continued our journey, I was reminded of how vulnerable life can be and how good it feels to be watched over.

Of lemons and pumpkins

Brief update on the car situation: the license plates still haven’t been found, however the pumpkin broke down less than a week after we purchased it. Apparently something to do with the fuel pump, which we must replace.

But all is good, because one of our good friends helpfully explained that in his experience of Africa, you need to go through about two or three cars until you find one that's worth keeping. Since we beat the odds with our first purchase in Sudan (our old car turned out to be brilliant), probability says we’ll now need to go through 4 to 6 lemons until we find a good one…

Les Impôts (at the local tax office)

We’ve recently bought a car. Taking cabs has been fun for the first couple of weeks, but you quickly get tired of constantly having to agree the fare (which considering you’re Muzungus will be extortionate) before getting on it, and past 7pm it gets extremely difficult to find one at all, making social life a bit challenging.

So we found a car, in a reasonably bad shape, but we thought we’d rather invest in an old banger than witness mad motorcycle-taxis crash into our pretty new pumpkin. We bought it from a Burundian lady living nearby, whom I entertained with my conversational skills while Ginger Beer sneaked under the car to check the frame and engine. The lady then took a pencil and dutifully wrote a sales contract on a white sheet of paper, confirming that she had received the amount of XXX Burundian francs for the sale of a Geep, cross that out, Jeep to Monsieur Ginger Bear and Madame Nile Spatial. Never mind that there were children’s scribbles left by her son at the back of the page.

Once you’ve bought a new car, the next step is to proceed to a transfer of the legal documents at Les Impôts, the local tax office. After chasing the lady for a week to accompany me, we finally went together. Located at the back of a small street, between a bicycle repair shop and fruit stalls, Les Impôts is a very small office with decrepit green walls and 5 people sharing a couple of desks and 2 electronic type-writers. About 3 months ago, the Burundian government probably in need of money, requested all vehicles to get new license plates. While my lady friend disappeared in the back room to identify the old car plates kept in storage, I grabbed a chair and watched the flow of people nervously slipping into the office, armed with several papers wrapped in files of different colours. After they too were ushered into the back room, they came back and placed their file on the desk of a poor woman looking utterly bored, who was meticulously typing transfer papers VE-RY SLOW-LY with 2 fingers only, stopping every other minute to fan herself in a sigh of despair. An agitated taxi driver tried to sneak his file on top of the pile, but the wrath of the typing goddess left him shell-shocked and motionless for the next 25 minutes, during which he watched a lucky chap – who happened to know the woman – get his file promoted above his.

About 90 minutes later and with only 2 chapters left on the book I’d brought, my lady friend emerged from the back room with an air of dismay. “They can’t find the old car plates”, she announced, which didn’t surprise me as I had noticed the hill of plates left in a mess behind the woman’s desk. “But don’t worry”, she carried, “I’ve left him a little something to help him look for them. Once he calls me, probably this afternoon, we can go back and sort this out”. That’s right, I thought, the poor man just needs some encouragement to do his job. Or not, as it’s been 5 days now and the plates still haven’t been found.