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.