Friday July 1
Things seem to happen at a different pace in Africa. Well, in Burundi, anyway. A slower pace of living, in their own good time. It's kinda like the shock I received when my family moved from Kansas City to Greensboro, North Carolina when I was 14. We were invited to dinner at six by another family. We showed up at six. They weren't ready, not even close, they weren't even dressed yet I think. Think of Burundi as being in the deep South, really deep.
Take this one time some runners showed up at their hotel's restaurant for dinner! Now, these runners were hungry, but tired. Jetlag will do that to you, doncha know? All they want to do is eat and shower and sleep. The dinner menu comes out, it's got one or two choices for the categories (meat, veggie's, carbs, desert). They all order, and then they talk while they wait. Lit candles arrive (mistaken for birthday cupcakes by one of the sleep-deprived's waking hallucinations). Time passes. The earth cools. Tectonic plates shift.
The conversation begins to take on a crazed, sometimes repetitive nature as our fatigued runners' minds make jokes that probably aren't even funny, but everyone laughs hysterically. Yours truly apparently recounted the exact contents of the previous night's dinner menu, and then later can't recall the having done so, or even that there was a dinner the previous day. Few can even be sure what day of the week they were in at the moment (it was Thursday). Elizabeth describes a Kurundi word – muzumba, meaning a white female. Makes sense, seeings how muzungo is Kurundi for white person. (It's later revealed to me that there's no such word.)
Eventually, the dinner begins to arrive, slowly, one item at a time. First the bread. Then the vegetable soup. Mixed veggies. Rice. Fish. Chicken (a whole chicken! Or was that a hallucination too?). Melon fruit sundae (really really good). The bill. By this time, two and a half hours have passed. Michael and Tessa have taken a taxi to a pizza place, which was booked, taxied to another pizza place, had a pleasant dinner, taxied back to the hotel, and been talking to us for awhile.
But seriously, the people at our hotel are awfully nice, and the food's been quite good. And there was probably just a few cooks back there making everything from scratch for the whole mess of us.
Anyway, you're probably wondering what all we've been up to, other than eating and making questionable jokes. Alright.
Well, for starters I went for a little run around town yesterday (Thurs.) morning. It was not your usual week-day run around Austin's Town Lake. Bujumbura has a small middle or upper class, but the overwhelming majority of folks are at or below the poverty level. The African poverty level, which has no resemblance to the American poverty level, aside perhaps from a few Indian reservations. I saw people getting up in their lean-tos on the side of the road or just blankets to sleep on. People going to work or whatever mostly on foot or on rusted-out beat-up bicycles, a smaller number of cars. Most looking extremely destitute, obviously wearing the same worn clothes for days or weeks at a time. Most had either an apathetic or grim, resigned looks on their faces. A sprinkling were in better spirits, shouting mizungo (white guy!) at me, and some laughed when I waved & smiled in response. I never felt personally threatened, and no one made any moves toward me. But, I wouldn't recommend the gals run this area alone.
Later Thursday we met with a couple of folks from the Catholic Relief Services, who's putting a lot of time, money and effort into helping the people of Burundi. You can read about it at http://crs.org/countries/burundi
Then a handful of us took our rented bus to exchange money, U.S. Dollars for Burundian Francs. That took awhile, and left us with huge stacks of bills. The guard outside with an AK-47 or similar was, umm, different. Along the way we stopped by the transportation management compound to arrange the billing (I think) for the bus we're renting for our stay, and met with the facility's manager. Back to the hotel for lunch, where I accidentally ate some off of some other group's buffet line (oops!). Everyone else had to order and wait. And wait :)
Other places we were looking to visit that afternoon turned out to be closed early since Burundi Independence Day was the next day. So we went to the beach, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. Quite a beautiful lake, with surprisingly big waves. It's a pretty big lake, though, it runs down the entire eastern border of Burundi. Here's some pics from there. There was quite a contrast between the condition of the beach at the public access and the private resort (club de Lac) for tourists and the rich just a short distance down the shore. Visited a supermarket on the way back, and then the dinner fiasco previously described. I was so very tired! I skipped the group run Friday morning and slept 9-10 hours, the first decent sleep I'd had since Monday night.
Today, what'd we do? Well, it's July 1, Burundi's Independence Day, so most businesses are closed and there's festivities going on at the stadium and near downtown. We took a walk late this morning from the hotel through a nice upper class neighborhood. Which means nice houses behind brick or stone walls on wide, less-traveled streets. These are the folks I expect that work office jobs and such. A very small percentage of the population, to be sure! Onward towards downtown, where we watched part of a parade with army folks and such in various uniforms. A bunch of white folks (mizungos!) stick out like a sore thumb in Burundi, so we avoided the stadium and the more crowded streets. Pics below.
Then a short stop at what I understand is about the nicest coffee shop in town, way way nicer than most establishments I've seen so far, the Aroma coffee shop. Taxi back to the hotel (quite an experience in itself! Traffic laws, if they exist in Burundi, are apparently in the every-man/woman-for-himself vein. And then on to the Club du Lac , where we spent a relaxing afternoon in a ridiculously (for this country) posh pool-side country club atmosphere.
Tomorrow, we drive to Gitega, visit an orphanage, and the Primus brewery. Can hardly wait!
Pics are at the bottom, and here's some other blog links you'll not want to miss:
Dan
Some Bujumbura street scenes. Bet you haven't seen a guard in the middle of a traffic circle before!
Yes, that's the Obama Shop! They sell things like cellphones.
Our walk to and at an Independence Day parade.
At the Aroma Coffee Shop
Some fun at the beach.
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