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.