Misadventures in Akagera

 

It was a bad sign when the driver of the vehicle we were renting showed up an hour late to pick us up. He said he had had a “problem” with the police. It was a worse sign that the vehicle was not the RAV4 we thought we were renting, but an awkward Belgian monstrosity of an SUV that had an appearance closer to faux elegance than ruggedness. But really, what could go wrong?

After doing paperwork in his office and filling up the tank, Lise and I were finally on our way around noon. It wasn’t an ideal start, but the feelings of excitement and freedom brought on by having control of our own vehicle made up for it. When traveling, we are usually slaves to public transport, and its rigid routes and schedules, or hitchhiking, with its different set of drawbacks. But with our own car, we could go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted. And we had enough cargo space to bring whatever we wanted. In fact, we briefly considered not even going to Akagera National Park, and creating our own adventure in the Rwandan countryside instead.

We picked up supplies at the market in the little junction town of Kayonza. The market had charm because it had yet to be turned into a semi-enclosed multi-level wannabe modern monstrosity like the markets in most Rwandan towns.

Soon we were on a flat dirt road, in a russet-highlighted landscape that had nothing to do with the plunging jade valleys and rice paddies of my Edenesque corner of Rwanda. We were arriving at the edge of Rwanda’s scrap of savannah at the eastern end of the country. It was stirring not because it looked the Africa of most westerners’ mind’s eye, but because it looked so drastically different than where I had lived for the previous year.

By the time we filled out all the paperwork and paid our fees at the park’s front entrance, it was disappointingly late in the day. We had time for a short drive before we had to head to our campsite. The area we went to was supposed to have giraffes and some antelopey or buffolo-like creatures. We aren’t too into nomenclature.

After a steep, rutted and rocky descent to a plane downstairs from the welcome center, we saw little more than controlled brush fires, and weird little birds that slowly waddled away from us down the middle of the road. It took about an hour to understand how the map worked, but by this time, we needed to head towards the campsite, empty-camera-ed.

We crept the car along the top of a ridge, past the gazebo that abutted what we half-assumed to be the camping area. As we admired the view of Lake Ihema and wondered whether there were other places to camp further along, our friend, a giraffe, appeared out of nowhere a few dozen meters off the side of the road. (S)he interrupted his treetop dinner a couple times to glance at us casually. I felt like (s)he would have waved at us in a friendly way if it was easy. We gawked like nerds for longer than necessary, then went back to set up camp.

As we pulled in, I noticed a smell of gasoline. I didn’t think much of it, since I was pretty sure I’d been smelling it all day. So we set up our camp in the big open area between the gazebo and the fire pits. 

We had the whole site to ourselves, with far more firewood than a person like me should be allowed access to and a view that we don’t deserve. For dinner we made one of my camping staples that falls somewhere in between jambalaya and Mexican red rice. No secret to anyone that knows me that camp cooking over a fire is one of my favorite things. Especially when accompanied such fine libations as powdered “juice” mix and plastic bottle gin. We stayed up late, dancing around the fire to the music we were blasting from the car. The dichotomy of light and dark caused by the fire and the night let us forget that we were in the wilderness, allowing us to feel free to disrespect the environment around. Later in the night, the glowing green eyes of foraging impala appeared just outside of our illuminated realm. It was cool to see them, but it felt a little like passive aggressive neighbors were telling us to go to bed.

We forced ourselves up just in time for the 6 AM sunrise over Lake Ihema. We needed something immediately gratifying like that to justify the early morning wake-up. After a quick breakfast, we packed the car and headed on our way. On the way out of the site, we hit a big stone that had somehow strayed from the fire pit. It scraped some of the car’s underside, making an unsettling racket. I hopped out and when I looked under the car, I noticed a trickle of liquid coming out of one of the pipes. The damage was not from hitting the rock, but it was still something we needed to look at. The puddle forming under the car was gas. It had been a heavy stream, but after turning off the car, it slowed to a trickle, then nothing. That meant that it probably hadn’t been leaking all night, but we still couldn’t tell how much gas was left. None of the gauges worked.

We wondered if we should go back to the visitor’s center and make our plan from there, or just continue on, hoping that we wouldn’t get stranded. We chose the latter, knowing that even with a leak we would be able to cover some distance, since we had started with a full tank.

I called the guy we had rented from a half dozen times before he returned my call. He told me that even though the gas gauge doesn’t work, the “low fuel” light would come on eventually. From that point, we would have enough fuel to go about 50 km. So as long as we didn’t stray terribly far from the park entrance, we had a decent chance of escaping, while still spending time in the park. We had spent too much money on the park fees and car rental to turn back so soon.

There isn’t much to say about the day. It was enjoyable, although a little stressful. We saw a little bit of wildlife here and there, most notably plenty of giraffes, the sexiest animal on earth.

 

In the early afternoon, we really felt like we should make a move. We were starting to doubt if that low fuel light was actually functional. We headed toward the visitor’s center and park entrances. As we pushed up the last few hills toward the visitor’s center, the car stalled. With no illuminated warning from the dashboard, our car was out of fuel. We were maybe 2 kilometers from the visitor’s center. Lise’s phone was dead, but mine still had a tiny bit of juice left. I called the visitor’s center, wondering what we should do. As I was put on hold, my phone went dead. I had told them I was out of gas not far from the visitor’s center, but whether they understood or sent someone for us, we did not know.

We waited in the merciless sun for about 30 minutes, before we saw another vehicle. It was a large, shiny SUV, and we waved it down. A middle-aged white man rode in the passenger seat, and I tried to explain our situation. The Rwandan driver stopped the car and they got out. There was a family in the back. They said they would go drop off the family, then come back to tow us. As we talked, I found out that the white man lived in the same region of Rwanda as me. I told him the name of my village, and he said he lived there too. It turned out he lived just 100 yards from my house and was the manager of the cement factory in the village. I had seen him around a couple times, usually playing tennis, but had never actually met him. It was the strangest of coincidences.

Thirty minutes later, the driver showed up with an empty car. He explained that they had talked with the park officials. The officials had said that they would not allow him to tow our vehicle with his. It had to be done by park staff, a service for which I would have to pay. We got in his car and drove to the visitor’s center. After chatting, I found out that the driver’s son went to the school I teach at, and he had actually just attended our boys camp.

We waited awhile for the park vehicle to arrive. When it did, I hopped in with them and we drove back to our car. They tied a rope from their hitch to my bumper and started crawling up the mild hills. 100 yards before arriving, the rope snapped. The guys driving the other car didn’t notice, and they just kept going. I watched as they pulled into the parking lot, got out, and had horrified faces when they realized that the car being towed was no longer there. This was followed by immediate looks of relief when they saw me way down the road.

Lise and I begrudgingly paid the $30 service fee, then tried to get back in touch with the owner of the car. Luckily, the Rwandan wife of my neighbor let us borrow her phone. She had insisted on waiting for us as we got sorted out, offering to wait for us to make phone calls on her phone. Her husband (my neighbor) was clearly getting impatient. I felt bad, but we were really stuck, with two dead phones, and the park refusing to let us use a phone.

Our communication with the owner of the car was spotty, but it seemed that he was coming to get us, and maybe sending a mechanic. After an hour or so, a couple of mechanics from the nearest town showed up and started working on the car. I was worried because I didn’t know if we would have to pay for the repairs, and if so, I should probably have negotiated the cost beforehand. After another couple of hours, the owner showed up in a small car with a Rwandan friend and a Belgian friend. Each friend brought a four or five year old boy. It wasn’t sure why he had brought the entourage, but he mentioned something about how they had been doing work together in the morning, so they all came together on this little adventure.

Lise and I were exhausted from stress and heat. We had no idea what further costs would be incurred for repairs, lost gas, the owner driving out to rescue us, etc. It seemed that the possibility of extra charges could be endless, if the owner demanded them.

It wasn’t until after 4PM that we finally were on our way. The mechanic had repaired the leak with his random assortment of rusty tools and scraps of plastic and rubber. We drove back to the small town of Kayonza where we stopped for dinner. The owner of the car treated us to a buffet plate, while he ate three chapattis dipped in a stein-sized mug of hot, sweetened milk. I was disarmed by his kind and apologetic nature, as if it really was his fault that the car had broken down. We were uncertain about when we had first smelled the gas, but we never said we thought it was our fault. He must have been aware that the car he had rented to us was a piece of junk, and wasn’t even the same make or model that we had asked for.

We arrived in Kigali well after dark, and he drove us back to our guesthouse, which was a considerable distance away from where he lived. In the end, he gave us a fair estimate on how much gas we probably used, and didn’t mention repairs, or the cost of him coming all the way out to the park to help us out. He was a businessman, not a swindler, and new that if he had tried to take advantage of us, he risked garnering a bad reputation. He expressed his apologies and suggested that we refer our friends to him for tours and car rentals. We were simply relieved get out of there without any costs that would have inflicted me with a severe bout of poverty.

It wasn’t the adventure we were expecting, but it was an adventure nonetheless. We had a fun time with a far greater diversity of emotions than we could have expected, and somehow, it seems better that way.

Burundi, Part 2

Burundi Continued

I gave too much of my day in Bujumbura to the previous night in Bujumbura. I woke late and disappointed in myself. I’d had a good time, but I really wanted to explore the city all day. It was clear from the start that my immediate future would only include breakfast and beach. I walked towards town, found some kids selling little sachets of frozen juice, which was a life saver. I like the environment, but I like cold drinks in bags more. I stopped somewhere for an omelette and coffee and got right with the world.

Erin had recommended her favorite beach to go to. After asking around about how to get there, I was told I needed to take a taxi. I hate when I get that response, because it is usually just because the person I am asking thinks white people just can’t or won’t take buses. I did give in and hire a taxi. I bargained hard and still I found the fare to be pretty steep. Then, 20 minutes later I realized why. It was far!

I walked through pathways of lush greenery, past a fancy restaurant and went right up to the shore so set up a beach spot. I didn’t realize at the time how the beach was set up. When Erin told me there were a bunch of different beaches, I didn’t realize she meant that there is one long beach with a bunch of different fancy restaurants lining the shore. My students have talked about going to “Saga Plage”, but Erin said that one was totally passé. The place she sent me to was the IT place to be. It was clear that she didn’t know me very well. After going for a swim and accumulating a crowd of beach kids, I did go up to the restaurant, thinking it would be easier to relax and read. The restaurant had a pool! Next to the beach! I always feel that there should be a law against pools within a certain proximity of perfectly good lakes and oceans. Lake Tanganyika is clean and beautiful, and the sandy beach was dapper.

I hated myself for staying at this place where the wait staff refused to converse in the local language and the prices are outrageous. However, I took solace in the fact that I had stumbled into some good people watching. Next to the pool were a couple of Chinese guys, with their Burundian prostitutes, chain smoking and drinking Orange Fantas. On the other side of the pool were a bunch of guys that looked like they had probably been in a fraternity a few years earlier. They were swilling Heinekens and diving into the pool. It wasn’t until they moved to tables closer to me that I realized they were Uruguayan soldiers serving the UN peacekeeping mission across the border in Uvira, DRC. They were enjoying themselves, pulling out bottles of Johnnie Walker and watching videos on their net books. They seemed rowdy, but probably fun. At another table sat a couple of Indian guys who just seemed up to no good. The younger guy had a potbelly, tight clothes and just the longest, thickest most, united eyebrow I’d ever seen. The other guy was a lot cleaner looking and sported an impressively bushy mustache that he wore with an old school swagger. One was constantly talking on a cell phone, the other on a radio with a three-foot long antenna.

While the rich Burundians and array of expats populated the beachside restaurants, a variety of locals, wedding parties and street/beach kids enjoyed the beach itself. Hawkers of sambusas, boiled eggs and frozen juices walked up and down the beach. I saw a couple of boys walk down the beach with coolers. Frozen juice! I paid my tab and walked briskly in their direction. They were moving fast, and I was always a few hundred yards behind them. It gave me a good opportunity to see all the beachside resorts and restaurants. Walking around Bujumbura, albeit only for a few hours in all, I saw almost no whites. I now realized that they were all at the beach, at these fancy restaurants. All of a sudden I heard somebody shouting my name. I turned and saw a white running towards me. It was one of the guys from the party. He said that he was with friends at the adjacent restaurant and invited me to join. I had been gaining on the frozen juice kids, but decided they would pass by again.

There were about ten people sitting at a table in a large, open-air, fancy-thatch-topped restaurant. I recognized almost all of them from the night before. They had spent the morning sailing and now were enjoying fruit smoothies and waiting for orders of pizza and fresh fish. Clearly, they were living the life. Luckily I had already eaten and was able to forego ordering any food. The smoothies themselves cost more than I would be willing to pay for a meal. I spent a couple hours there and, like the night before, I loved their company. They were funny, interesting and worldly. I did end up buying a beer, which one of the guys, who had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, paid for, recognizing that he knew what it was like to be on my budget. Surprising to nobody, but annoying to most, the food took FOREVER. By this point, I was hungry, but had no intention of ordering. Score, leftovers. It was an awkward feeling, but one that I’m becoming used to. I’ve been in this situation in Rwanda too. I don’t like to hang out at fancy restaurants catering to expats, but nobody wants to go to the dives that I want to go to. So I go with the crowd, order almost nothing, and frequently live off the fat of kings.

When they all left, I stuck around the beach for a couple hours, exploring. I ended up having a beer at Saga Plage, the place that my students talked about and Erin had said was passé. I actually really liked the atmosphere. Unlike the other restaurant, the tables were actually on the beach, and they blasted good, fun African music. A lot of locals were hanging out there and a wedding party was relentlessly posing for photos. Street/beach kids were peering and sneaking around a bamboo fence, getting a taste of the fun beach atmosphere.

Before it got dark, I went to the highway and easily found a bus headed back to the center. I felt foolish for not being able to figure out how to get a bus from town to the beach.

In town I wandered for a little while. I stopped by the French Cultural Center to see if there was anything interesting going on. It had just closed for the day. Rwanda is missing out by not having a French Cultural Center. I understand that there are a lot of politics and tension between the two governments, but these centers, which exist in dozens of countries in Africa, breathe a lot of life in the local arts scenes where they reside. Rwanda would benefit greatly from one.

The next morning, I left Erin’s house to explore the city before heading home. I wandered the center for a while. I happened upon a complex of basketball courts where 3-on-3 games were going on. It was an awesome sight. I’ve felt that Rwanda is unique in its attitude towards sports. In most African countries, soccer reigns supreme. It does in Rwanda, too, but many other sports, such as volleyball, basketball, rugby and handball are also very popular. I am always happy when I see a population embracing basketball. It was one of my favorite things about the Philippines, the only country in the world where basketball is the most popular sport.

I walked to the “Musee Vivant”, or living Museum. I had heard about it’s zoological exhibition, but assumed there was more to it than that. Not really. I hesitated to pay the $4 to enter, but figured I had nothing better to do. The place was interesting for the animals, yes, but also the depressing spectacle of it all. The first cage I saw held guinea fowls and rabbits, which I thought was pretty boring. Then I realized that these were only holding cells for the crocodile’s food. Visitors could buy rabbits, guinea fowls or guinea pigs to feed to the crocodiles. It was the kind of spectacle I don’t approve of, but was tempted to take part in nonetheless. I didn’t. The aquariaum was inside a dark, concrete compound. It was lackluster and I wondered if the fish were meant for food for larger animals. I was happy and sad to see a large exhibition of snakes. I don’t entirely disagree with zoos. They can be great for preserving endangered species or beneficial for research. When they are for spectacle only, it’s is inevitably depressing. As a lifelong herpophile, it was cool too see such a variety of mambas, cobras and constrictors. I did, however, feel bad for their conditions.

A snake's cage.

Look closer.

The leopard was chic and beautiful, and deserved better than the cage it had. I did enjoy watching it stalk the staring children, just as large cats had done to me when I was visiting the zoo as a child. While I was watching the leopard, I overheard the father of the Burundian children telling them to look at the white man. I’ve often felt like I was an animal in a zoo the way people shamelessly stare at me. When I was actually at a zoo, though, and a father was telling his children to look at me, in the presence of a wild animal, I realized that I really am a zoo animal to many people.

The best part of the zoo was the adult female chimp in an 8’x10’ cage. For a while I just stood and watched her pull apart a mango. I definitely felt voyeur guilt but this animal was fascinating. After ten minutes, some German tourists in shorts came with their guide, cameras and water bottles. All in good fun they started messing with the chimp. She would reach it’s hand out of the cage to shake hands. One of them nervously grabbed it. The chimp played friendly for a while, until she lulled the round white man into relaxation. The chimp raised her left hand up and out of the cage. As the tourist reached for it, the chimp thrust her right hand out of the cage and grabbed his bottle of water and pulled it into her domain. She opened it with expertise, then laid on her back and  poured half of it into her mouth without spilling a drop. She proceeded to taunt the man with the bottle, holding it outside of the cage, waiting for him to grab for it, then pulling it back. I felt very vindicated by watching this caged animal repeatedly make a fool of this free person. As she continued to mess with him, she somehow managed to get a hold of a plastic bag he was holding. She put the bag over her head and would run happily around the cage in a way that I pretended meant that she was having more fun than the tourists. At their expense nonetheless. It gave me a small feeling of redemption for these animals that I felt bad for, even though I was still enjoying them at their expense like everybody else.

 I left the museum and wandered in the general direction of the lake. I heard drums in the distance. They got louder as I walked. I could hear them on the other side of the wall that I was walking past, so I climbed onto a rock and peered over. Twenty men were standing in a semi-circle behind waist-height drums. A few dancers moved frenetically in between fantastic leaps and acrobatics. It was incredible. I haven’t made much of an effort to see any traditional performances or arts in Rwanda, but it seems so rare. This peep into the troupe’s rehearsal was the most impressive display of artistic expression I’d seen in either country.

When they finished, I continued along the road and came to a public beach. This was completely different from the beach I’d been to the day before. There was less to see and do, but it was nice for just having a simple place to swim. Plus there were guys pushing ice cream carts. Ice cream barely exists in Rwanda, and it seems that most of it is consumed by foreigners. I will admit that my attempts to relax on the beach were stifled by the crowd of children that formed around me within minutes.

When I left the beach, I walked around the adjacent neighborhood for a bit, then hired a moto to take me to the bus station. The weekend was almost over. I found my bus, bought my ticket and grabbed a window seat. The window was overwhelming. There were so many things to buy through it! A quarter of pineapple, a cold bag of juice, hot sausages! I just kept buying. One man even came to me selling a cheap little electric razor. I’d never seen such a low quality shaver. He offered it to me for $10. I offered $3. I didn’t really want it, but he eventually met my price, so it was mine.

The ride back to the border was uneventful, except I saw so many great spots that looked good for lazy river tubing. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do here, and this flat, beautiful landscape surrounded by mountains seemed like the perfect atmosphere for it. As we neared the Rwanda border, I could see where the northern end of the Ruzizi Plain tapered off and was pinched tightly in between the mountains on either side of the Rwanda-Congo border. It was from there that the Rusizi River emerges from its long tumble down from Lake Kivu and lands in the open space where it languidly continues its journey to Lake Tanganyika.

It’s hard to say exactly what I learned about Rwanda from my short time in Burundi. For one thing, I could definitely see the different administrations’ effect on the culture and national psyche. I also felt that I could be more forgiving of Rwandans’ sometimes strange and anti-social behaviors. Burundians seemed slightly more relaxed and friendly. Less uptight. I feel like Rwandans feel under a lot of pressure from their leaders. Pressure to speak English, to be “serious and correct”, to be successful and self-reliant, to forget their ethnic identity in favor of their national identity, and to be better than neighboring countries. I get the feeling that this pressure takes a lot swagger out of people’s stride.

Burundi, Part 1

Burundi

I have wanted desperately to visit Rwanda’s neighbor for months. I had so many questions for it. Rwanda is a strange and unique country, to say the least. I have been constantly baffled by it. A lot of my confusion is that it is in Africa, but so completely different from all the other African countries that I have been to.

I constantly wonder why it is the way it is. Rwanda’s geography and small size left it isolated and untouched by foreign powers far longer than its neighbors. It was a small, fairly homogenous kingdom in the highlands on the eastern side of the Albertine rift before being colonized by the Germans before Germans had ever stepped foot into the territory. It is one of the rare African countries that has one language and one culture. Its neighbor, Burundi, shares so many of Rwanda’s characteristics. It has nearly the same language, culture, and ethnic makeup of Hutu majority, historical Tutsi dominance and Twa minority. Their colonial and pre-colonial history is very similar. They were separate kingdoms, with slightly different hierarchies, but they were still comparable. At the time of independence things started to diverge. Rwanda democratically elected Hutu majority leaders, while unelected Tutsi military leaders ruled Burundi. Both countries had decades of simmering ethnic tensions that occasionally erupted into massive slaughters. They were different situations on either side of the border, but the politics of it all were interrelated. Both countries’ problems started to come to a head in the early 90’s. Rwanda was facing threats from a powerful Tutsi military power based in Uganda, while the Tutsi regime of Burundi was being forced into a power-sharing deal and democratic elections. The conflict in Burundi started first, with reprisal killings of Tutsis after the recently elected Hutu president was killed in a coup d’etat. Months later, Rwanda’s Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana’s airplane was shot down after signing Peace Accords with the RPF, the Tutsi army based in Uganda. This sparked the Rwanda Genocide, which killed nearly a million people in a few short months.

Both countries were extremely bloody in the mid-‘90s. However, Burundi’s conflict dragged on for over a decade, while Rwanda had restored peace within a few years. There are things about Rwanda that are unique culturally, but I have been trying to figure out what can be attributed to it being a fairly isolated kingdom in the highlands of Central Africa and what has to do with the deep scar inflicted on the country in 1994. More so, Rwanda has an immensely powerful, charismatic and influential leader that has had a greater effect on their country than any president I have seen. I’ve always wanted to speak with a foreigner who knows Africa, and also is familiar with pre and post genocide Rwanda so they could tell me what characteristics of Rwanda are just Rwanda, and which are a result of the trauma of the genocide and the country’s subsequent dynamic leadership. I haven’t found this person yet, so my next best thing is to visit Rwanda’s neighbor who experienced a less dramatic, but longer war and continues to have instability, volatile politics and a less domineering leadership. I had hope that I would be able to sift through the differences of Burundi to help me better understand the country I’d spent nearly a year and a half in. In a weekend. Tough task.

The border between Rwanda and Burundi was a strange place, as borders often are. The Rwandan immigration office was clean and simple. In fact it was less than a year old. This didn’t surprise me a bit. Rwanda has been in a relentless effort to update and modernize its country for years. The strange part, though, was when I realized that the immigration office was for both countries. I had found it strange when I saw the portraits of each country’s presidents on display behind the desk. It took me a while to figure out that I would need to fill out Rwanda’s exit form and Burundi’s entrance form at the same time, then move from one window to the other, effectively changing countries faster than I’d ever done before.

Now, because an actual town doesn’t lie immediately on either side of the border, the immediate difference wasn’t apparent. But it came quickly. A lone moto drive approached me. He was middle-aged and bleary-eyed from early afternoon drunkenness. This already was a change. Most Rwandan moto drivers are young, fresh and wearing the required vest to show they are licensed. His moto was the same exact model as those in Rwanda, but it was in tatters. The motos in Rwanda are always shockingly powerful and shiny. I’ve never had a break down on a Rwandan moto. Could Rwanda’s leadership that insists on being “correct and serious”; that discourages drinking; that loathes anything not modern and clean, have such a far-reaching effect as the cleanliness and road-worthiness of the motorcycles?

I didn’t want to take a moto at all, since I thought there might be public transport coming through or I could hitchhike. Plus I didn’t have Burundian francs. I meandered down the road for a moment, past a few drunk-looking men on the bed of a semi-truck, and found a little chameleon on the middle of the road. Already Burundi had better wildlife!

Within minutes, though, I realized my time budget wouldn’t allow any lollygagging, so I called old-man-drunk-moto and negotiated a ride to the town 8 km away. We puttered along on the rolling hills of the ever-flattening Ruzizi Plain. Five minutes from the town of Rugombo we got a flat tire. It was at this moment I realized how spoiled I was in Rwanda. The first flat tire on a moto I’d heard of in Rwanda was a week later. Another moto pulled up. There was already another passenger, but he told me to mount up. This was another surprise. In Rwanda I’ve only seen children in the village riding two or three to a moto. It was commonplace to have two passengers in Burundi. A moment of negotiation and he agreed to give me the lift for free.

The town of Rugombo looked like a typical tiny Rwandan town, except older and a little rougher. More bars, more idling people. It was hard to know how cautious to be in this new land. I was not allowed to travel anywhere in Burundi except the capital. There is still the occasional highway robbery or militant attack, but that is usually at night. Crime is also much more commonplace, so I’ve heard, but knowing that it is almost the same as Rwanda makes me feel comfortable.

I found a money change bureau and changed a $20 bill into Burundian francs. They were the most decrepit, filthy, flimsy bills I’ve ever seen. I handled them like fragile gold leaf. My goal was to make it to my host’s house in the capital before dark, but I was making good time. So I popped into a bar for a small meal. I ordered a beer and a brochette. They said they had cold beer, but the fact that that it emerged out of a fridge at a luke warm temperature was less than shocking. It was clear that keeping beer cold in a culture where cold drinks are not valued and in a country where the electricity is unreliable was a low priority. I didn’t mind. The brochette was big and meaty and the bar was grimy. The other old men gave me indifferent if not disdainful looks. I spoke Kinyarwanda, a near cousin to the local Kirundi, which seemed to pique their interest. One man struck up a conversation in the local dialect, but quickly switched to French. After finishing my small meal, I bargained over a local SIM card and found a bus heading to the capital.

On the tiny little battered bus I was in good company. An old couple sat to my left and a young woman with urban flair sat in front of me. I chatted with them in a mixture of French and Kinyarwanda/Kirundi. Everyone on the bus seemed more open and talkative than they usually are in Rwanda. I have a couple theories on the friendliness that I encountered in Burundi that contrasted Rwanda. Part of it might be because of the national psyche. Burundi went through the wringer. I can’t deny that, but the brief but intense hell that Rwanda experienced 20 years ago has left a large part of the population severely traumatized. No doubt that a part of this is Burundians’ comfort in speaking French. I’ve gotten that in recent years that speaking French in Rwanda is taboo. Although it was a Belgian colony, and the official language was French since colonization, Rwanda has slowly transitioned to English for more than ten years. The government has been operating in English for years and the education system formally switched to English as the language of instruction in 2009. The leadership is making a very concerted effort to move away from French. The Rwandan government has a serious animosity towards the French due to their prominent role in the genocide. For that reason it feels stronger than a simple change because of practicality. Yes, it makes sense to change to English because it is the dominant language in the world and in East Africa. However, the fact that the Rwandan leadership consists mainly of Tutsis that grew up in Uganda speaking English, rather than French, plays no small part. This is why I believe that most people don’t feel comfortable striking up conversations with me. Yes they are shy, but they also know that they aren’t supposed to speak French. They also are severely insecure in English and would never expect a foreigner to speak Kinyarwanda. This leads to many silent bus rides, as well as me being the witness to constant conversations about me rather than with me. Burundians frequently approached me with far more confidence and friendliness than I had experienced in Rwanda. It was refreshing, but it made me reconsider an aspect of Rwanda that I had generally found annoying.

The road continued on the widening Ruzizi Plain toward Bujumbura. I noticed that the main crop was corn. In this low, wet landscape the crop would most certainly have been rice in Rwanda. I wondered why this was. I know that the Rwandan government has a big say on which crops are grown where, but it could also just be that corn is easier and cheaper to grow than rice. I also noticed a lot more fields that looked empty and untended than I would have seen in Rwanda. The villages we passed through were filled with homes with thatch roofs, a feature that was banned in Rwanda in 2009. I also noticed that in these villages people were grilling brochettes right along the side of the road. This is also very illegal in Rwanda and never happens. However, due to the culture’s attitude toward food, it would not be a stretch to imagine that street food doesn’t exist simply because it wouldn’t be a marketable business. People don’t like to be seen eating in public. It’s a taboo that my students talk about disdainfully when discussing how they can tell when someone is Congolese or Ugandan. When we stopped in one of the villages to load and unload passengers, drunk old men came running up to our windows waving bouquets of organ meat brochettes. I bought one, mostly because buying things out of bus windows is my modus operandi, and I never get to do it in Rwanda (unless it’s packaged biscuits or bottled water or juice; boresville).

The road turned rough for a while, but within a couple of hours we entered the outskirts of Bujumbura. The bus stopped in a damp street where sleepy keepers of crude shops mugged mean. Indians on motos, women with fruit baskets and teenagers hawking mobile phone credit bustled around the muddy makeshift bus station. Just a cluster of coming and going scruffy vans tended to by hollering and waving attendants. My host in the city told me if my bus didn’t arrive in the city center then I would pay more for a taxi to her house. So I looked for a bus headed to the center, which was an easy task.

As we got into the city, Bujumbura immediately charmed me. None of the buildings were more than three stories and the streets had a relaxed and rustic feel to them. It was an amazing antithesis to the shining new city of Kigali, where high rises sparkled and the green spaces between boulevards were perfectly manicured. Kigali has a pretty face, but is empty and shallow underneath. Nice for a date, but not a relationship. I could already tell that Bujumbura had the kind of character and swagger I look for in a city. In fact, the best comparison I could think of was that going from Kigali to Bujumbura was like going from Bangkok to Phnom Penh. I mentioned this observation to an expat I met later and, having been to all these cities, said it was an accurate comparison.

The center was busy and crowded with all sorts of informal commerce typical to most African cities. I saw a man with a bucket of quartered pineapple and I said, ‘yes, please’. I ate it right there in the central square. I could tell that people were looking at me a little weird and it was clear that eating in public here was still not entirely normal, but definitely wasn’t as frowned upon as in Rwanda since there were so many snack vendors around the town. I popped into a Forex bureau to change a hundred dollar bill. I was able to get a better rate than the official one by foregoing the receipt, making the transaction less than legal. This was a nice compromise between paying the official rate and dealing with the scheming moneychangers on the street.

I knew that a taxi to my host’s house was only going to be a few dollars, but out of principal I insisted on figuring out how to get there by bus. I had the name of her neighborhood and street. People seemed confused when I said the neighborhood, and I was pointed from bus to bus to bus to bus to bus until I had gone in circles around the bus lot. Finally a couple of people seemed to disagree whether the nearest bus was going to my street or not. I took the 50% chance. It was nearing dusk and my host had told me that I should just be sure to arrive before dark as the city is supposedly dangerous at night. So I hopped on and we headed out of the center. Within minutes I realized we were on my desired street. Then I saw that the address numbers (address numbers?!) were getting bigger, and I needed them to get smaller. So I hopped off and walked back the opposite way. I realized soon that the reason that nobody coud tell me which bus to take was because the neighborhood was within walking distance and no buses really went there. Twenty minutes later I was entering Erin’s compound next to the office of Catholic Relief Services.

Erin is a friend of a friend who agreed to let me crash at her place for a weekend. She is doing fellowship with CRS and had also done a fellowship with the same organization in Kigali. In fact, we figured out later that we had met once at an expat’s house in Kigali. She had just gotten off the phone with a regional director from CRS. He had offered her a position doing emergency relief in Central African Republic. I said congratulations, but the overwhelmed look on her face showed that she wasn’t sure it was the kind of position to feel honored about. Yeah, it’s a war zone, but it seemed like an exciting move. Her house was huge, as it used to be the CRS office. It had several sitting rooms, a big entranceway, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a yard, a garden and a parking lot. I got lost in it at one point.

That night we went to a birthday party for a couple of American expats. I’ve never been that interested in the expat scene, but considering she gave strong warnings about going out solo at night around Bujumbura, the party sounded like a good idea. Erin spoke great French, but it was fun to use my Kinyarwanda to help with the cab fare negotiation.

The party was far better than I could have imagined. Expats have a reputation of being stuffy, out of touch with the country they reside in and living opulently. Yes, these people lived nowhere near the living standard of a Peace Corps volunteer, but they were extremely easy to relate to. Almost all were almost young and pretty interesting. Although Erin said that the expat scene is much more diverse in Bujumbura than the “little-America” of Kigali, almost everyone present was American. Most of them worked in smaller NGOs. The vibe of the party was like a hip summer bbq. It was outside in a big yard with decorative lights hanging, a brick barbecue, a table of food and booze and an impressive DJ setup with good music. There was even an open mic portion of the night. It could have been a toned down house party from one of the places I lived at in Seattle.

Erin had said she’d probably not stay too late, but gave me a set of keys in case I wanted to stay out. She stayed pretty late, but as the party started to wrap up, she said she was heading home. I figured I would go with her, but some people said they were going to a club. I was tired and didn’t need any more night, but something kept me going. I got a ride with a group of mostly guys to a club called Kiss. Classy, I know. The driver was a marine who worked at the embassy. I noticed his big American truck had a Raiders sticker. Someone told me that the embassy had paid for his truck to be shipped from America. Even if it’s not the lifestyle I want to live, it’s interesting to be around it and meet the people who do live like the expats in the movies.

I’ve been to a few of Kigali’s popular night clubs. They can be swanky and expensive, like they are in most developing world cities. This club, however was on a level I hadn’t seen before. It should have been in Scottsdale (I mean, where else would a tacky name like “Kiss Club” fly?). It had a pool, which of course nobody was swimming in. The black box club was just ridiculous. The dance floor lit up in pastel squares, and the air was filled with fog and lazers. The clientele was a mix of wealthy Africans, NGO workers, foreign businessmen, uN Peacekeepers and various profiteers. It really was the kind of scene from a movie or a dramatic book about conflict in Africa. I felt like I might meet Danny Archer, Leonardo Dicaprio’s character from Blood Diamond. In fact, I did meet someone who was close. A Belgian guy just started talking to me in English, telling me he was a pilot. At one point he didn’t understand something I said, so I repeated it in French. We continued in French and he started telling me that he was flying a shipment of arms to Ituri Province in northeastern Congo on Monday. He repeated it several times throughout our conversation, and I have no idea why. He seemed excited about this. Arms dealers or smugglers or whatever he was, are not my favorite people in the world, but I really wanted to know more about what he was doing. Unfortunately 3AM in a loud club is not the most convenient time for these kinds of conversations.