Danger? What Danger?

Friday! It’s been a hard week. I’ve just received an “official” letter from the board of the school advising me NOT to cycle the 100 km to Gitanga. During the day I really can't see the problem – I must nonetheless abide by this advice. The locals seem far more nervous than the visitors. Ah well. I'll save my energy for a ride through Rwanda.

Teaching in Burundi

July 12, 2011

Did not bother to run today. I love the morning yet the teaching is so tiring I slept in 30 minutes.

I now have 12 students. I tried to instill some discipline at school today; admittedly things go better yet young kids like these need new stimulation every few minutes. None can read or write. Piorot and Guy shout the answers piercingly loud yet luckily with good English pronunciation. Sam dares barely a word and spends his time looking down or behind him. Niclolet says nothing at all. Carlos grabs a dead balloon and starts to eat it while Frank once again wants to go to the washroom for the fifth time this hour. I do team work games, draw monsters and make spiders out of black paper with accordion legs. I clap in time to Raffi’s “There’s a  Spider on the Floor” and dance a jig - to their delight - as I have my paper spider crawl  my body. I look at my watch. Still another 30 minutes of class…

July 13^th

Anna and I are falling into step with the rhythm of life here. We learn to dodge the piles of silt that are deposited on the pedestrian part of street daily in ever increasing numbers. We ignore the calls of “Muzungu”. We wave at the mini buses full of Burundians chanting in unison, at the toothy women with babies stuck to their backs and at the cyclists who heave beneath piles of firewood, rice sacks and bricks.

We know the best orange and banana sellers as well as where to buy bread, change money and email. We’re accustomed to the back outs at 7:30 each night and haul out candles and flashlights.

We’ve found the mosquitoes like to hang around in the evening. They’re not at all like their Canadian relatives but are much more insidious. They’re small and don’t buzz or whine but prefer to come stealthily under dim candlelight. They don’t make an appearance by day and are more like a thief, working only in the shadows. With Burundi having the highest rate of malaria in the world, I dutifully take the anti malaria drugs each day, sleep under the mosquito net and spray bare ankles.

On The Congo and Hippos

Sunday July 11^th

I rode out on the ribbon of tarmac in the morning to the Congo border. The very name “Congo” stirs excitement in my mind: Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, Jane Goodall’s dense jungle, replete with gorillas and monkeys. The hideout of Chez Guevara and his rebels. More recently gun smugglers. Neat stuff.

As usual, Sunday morning brings out runners in large groups. They look silly as the warm up: a circle of say 50 men all shaking out their morning limbs or doing push ups over a ditch (not really sure why they do this yet it may look manly to some.) I bike past runners cheering and chanting and swerve cyclists with giant loads of rice or lumber perched precariously on the steel bikes. I ride through Gitanga where I’m forced to slow down. The poor town stretches for miles. Past run down shacks that proudly say “Boulangerie et Gallettes” or “Coiffeur pour les Femmes”. I meet the self proclaimed “chief” of the village who jogs beside me for a time. He speaks perfect English.

I arrive at the Congo border. A yellow barricade and a sign that reads “Democratic Republic of the Congo” with a yellow barrier across a shaky bridge is the only resemblance to a border.  Men hang around joking and pointing at me. I share an orange with one and the jokes seem to get more hilarious. A blue clothed official wags his finger at me when I produce a camera. I take a photo of the Congo anyway.

Hungry, I get back to The House as Anna is just finishing breakfast of a pineapple slice and tomato omelet.  A 40 km ride before breakfast – perhaps I won’t descend into obesity as I envisioned.

Following breakfast we decide to share a taxi to the Ruzusi Nature Reserve in the hopes of a) finding it open (all parks have been closed for years and b) seeing some crocodiles and hippos we’ve heard hang out here. Josef, a taxi driver is an older man who seems reliable. (Never trust the young.) So we are off. The rickety jalopy has 280,000 km and is definitely ready for the heap. Wires poke out the dashboard and doors and windows have long since ceased operating. Josef is amiable and obliging. We hesitate over the entrance fees to Reserve; approx $90 for a boat ride and $15 each for a walking tour. We opt for the walk, wondering if we really will see wildlife. Everything seems so tired and worn out. A jumbled pile of crocodile and hippo skulls adorn a table. A faded map on a fence post and a battered sign reads WARNING / DANGER (of what?). A bored Burundi woman takes her time drawing lines on a page for us to sign our names, country, intentions and observations. We sign in finally, wondering why she could not have drawn up these lines before hand. 

A young guide and a guard with a lethal weapon accompanies us – I suppose to shoot that croc or hippo if we were to be attacked. So all this looks hopeful after all. The route is lovely with high grass and eucalyptus trees fringing a brown and lazy river. Suddenly two antelope spring across our path – within seconds they are gone and we catch a fleeting glimpse of dappled bodies and lithe legs built for speed. Wow.

The next stop is for the hippos. Obese, mottled gray and round as if their bodies certainly were created first and the tiny ears, piglet tail and midget legs were an after-thought. They lie lazily in a large family in the shallows, the babies occasionally yawning in the heat and tossing their out-of-proportion heads. I am thrilled. Still hard to believe these benign looking creatures kill more humans than any other African animal. No crocs in sight. All well. I certainly got my money worth.

The "Dangerous" Outskirts

Friday July 9^th

“Do NOT venture out of Bujumbura,” the Canadian Embassy warning reads. Burundi is awarded a 5 on a 6 point scale, a “6” being do NOT travel places such as Sudan and Afghanistan. “Avoid Kayenga especially,” the warning reads.

So looking right and left for both rebels and corrupt armed militia, we take a mini van to the very heart of Kayenga. This is the “slum” where Kat, the American volunteer, has a clinic. Children mobbed us: beautiful, high energy, chocolate skinned kids with threads hanging off their shoulders – yet so excited to see Westerners. We’re evidently the rich here. It’s disturbing to come face to face with poverty in the shape of these children, jarring to find ourselves in the middle of a street used as a living space with an open sewer running along the side.

Muzugu!” they shout and clamor to see the photo I take of them. Twenty midget fingers try to touch my camera screen and I jerk it away in jest. They pose and dance around us in absolute glee. The African delight of living is intoxicating. Poverty does not necessarily bring depression.

The Woman’s Friendship Center where Kat works is run on funds donated by American Quakers. It is impressive as it is thoughtful. A mixture of health care, trauma treatment and micro financing for women equates to a superb balance of ideas that seem to be working. We tour the facilities: clean yet small. The staff is terribly dedicated and prove what a balanced program can do to empower the lives of women in this country. Anna and I help with the wall building, carefully checking each brick for “poisonous “ spiders. Then a large lunch of beans and rice. Some donated funds will definitely go here.

Kat is right. We must look at the BIG picture. If we keep throwing money at problems, keep investing in ideas that are proven to fail, and continue to feed our egos by focusing on the need to reach their goals.

Complaining eases my frustration for a while, much in the same way that chocolate can help a bad mood, But then it wear off. Seeking to understand achieves far more than stamping my feet. The children here have very different early years to those in Canada. There’s little stimulation here and now, rather than helping tomorrow by starting to educate our Burundi children, we will continue to create the same problems that those before us have faced. Most people of Burundi want to get there one day. People CAN change. If we love them, work with them and invest our time to help them develop skills, connections, ideas and inspiration they when young: few toys, no concerted effort to read, play or spend time with the very young. Babies spend their first year strapped to a mother’s back. Three year olds play in the dust and squeal in excitement when a Mazungu appears in their field of vision. Their young lives look, to me, boring and monotonous. No wonder they stare vacantly in class, or play obsessively with a worn out balloon. 

Worlds Away: the Start of Africa

BURUNDI June 30^th 2011

The Air Brussels flew over the Greek islands, the Sudan, over the Nile, over mile upon mile of dessert with little islands of rocks desperate to stay above the shifting sand. Of course it is pitch black upon arrival in Bujumara yet excitement is tangible. The small airport is on the outskirts of the capital, Bujumbura. The terminal has intricate roofs and domed metal structures that resemble astronomical observatories. It is the kind of place that seems designed to say here you leave the past behind, the future has arrived. That point on the map I’d been gazing at for half a year. I am finally here.

 Asel met me at the disorganized crowded airport with lights so dim it was a feat to fill out the landing card. I squinted and was jostled by rude Europeans as family members made a fuss over their relatives. An hour later my bike arrived on the carousel. It was wonderful to be greeted by Asel - be loaded all in his Toyota and meet Asel’s affable wife of six children.  She is more outgoing than Asel yet both are hospitable, warm and generous. We have a lot to learn in the West.  Over an Astral beer and under the stars, he told me about the school, the 15 year war and the somewhat untrue perception of this country by Westerners. I’ll discover truths and untruths for myself. Midnight came fast. I slept hard.

D

On to Burundi

I hiked the Haines Valley today with Ian. There was a plethora of bird chirps and the forest heaved with chlorophyll. Steam rose from the trail as the day heated up. The local mountains were still festooned with snow. I was once again reminded why I live here.

I fly 8:30 tomorrow via Montreal and Brussels. Then to Buju Burundi. Excited. Flipping through an old diary I found this poem - advice I think yet the speaker is definitely not me.

An Admonition
(Joseph Brodsky)

Trekking in (Africa), spending nights in odd dwellings, in
granaries, cabins, shacks-timber abodes whose thin
squined windowpanes harness the world-sleep dressed,
wrapped in your sheepskin and do your best
always to tuck your head into the corner, as
in the corner it's harder-and in darkness at that-to swing an axe over your heavy, booze-laden gourd
and to chop it off nicely. Square the circle, in short.

II
Fear broad cheekbones (including the moon's), pockmarked
skin, and prefer blue eyes to brown eyes. Search hard
for the blue ones, especially when the road takes you into the wood,
into its heart. On the whole, as for eyes, one should
watch for their cut. For at last instant it's
better to stare at that which, though cold, permits
seeing through: ice may crack, yet wallowing in an ice
hole is far better than in honey-like, viscous lies.

III
Always pick a house with baby clothes hanging out
in the yard. Deal only with the over-fifty crowd:
a hick at that age knows too much about fate to gain
anything by attempting to bust your brain;
same thing, a squaw. Hide the money in your fur coat's
collar or, if you are travelling light, in your brown culottes
under the knee-but not in your boots since they'll find the dough
easily there. In (Africa), boots are the first to go.

IV
In the mountains, move slowly. If you must creep, then creep.
Magnificent in the distance, meaningless closer up,
mountains are but a surface standing on end. The snail-
like and, it seems, horizontal meandering trail
is, in fact, vertical. Lying flat in the mountains, you
stand. Standing up, you lie flat. Which suggests your true
freedom's in falling down. That's the way, it appears,
to conquer, once in mountains, vertigo, raptures, fears.

V
If somebody yells "Hey, stranger!" don't answer. Play deaf and dumb.
Even though you may know it, don't speak the tongue.
Try not to stand out-either in profile or
full face; simply don't wash your face at times. What's more,
when they rip a cur's throat with a swa, don't cringe.
Smoking, douse your butts with spittle. And besides, arrange
to wear gray-the hue of the earth-especially underclothes,
to reduce the temptation to blend with your flesh the earth.

VI
When you halt in the desert, make an arrow from pebbles, so,
if suddenly woken up, you'll fathom which way to go
in the darkness. At nights, demons in deserts try
travellers' hearts. He who heeds their cry
gets easily disoriented: one step sideways and-well, c'est tout.
Ghosts, specters, demons, are at home in the desert. You
too will discover that's true when, sand creaking under your sole,
all that remains of you is your soul. \

VII
Nobody ever knows anything for a fact.
Gazing ahead at your stooping guide's sturdy back,
think that you gaze at the future and keep your distance (if
that is possible) from him. Since, in principle, life
is itself but a distance between here and there, and
quickening the pace only pays when you discern the sound
behind of those running after you down the path
with lowered heads-be they murderers, thieves, the past.

VIII
In the sour whiff of rugs, in the burnt dung's fume,
prize the indifference of things to being regarded from
afar, and in turn lose your own silhouette, turning, thus,
unattainable to binoculars, gendarmes, mass.
Coughing in a cloud of dust, wading through mud, muck, map-
What difference does it make how you would look close up?
It's even better if some character with a blade
figures out you are a stranger a bit too late.

IX
Rivers in (Africa) are longer than elsewhere, more rich
in alluvium-that is, murkier. As you reach
for a mouthful, your cupped fingers ladle silt,
and one who has drunk this water would prefer it spilt.
Never trust its reflection. Crossing it, cross it on
a raft built with no other hands but the pair you own.
Know that the gleam of a campfire, your nightly bliss,
will, by sliding downstream, betray you to enemies.

X
In your letter from these parts, don't divulge whom and
what you've seen on your way. If anything should be penned,
use your varying feelings, musings, regrets, et al.:
a letter can be intercepted. And after all,
the movement of a pen across paper is,
in itself, the worsening of the break between you and those
with whom you won't any longer sit or lie down-with whom,
unlike the letter, you won't share-who cares why-a home.

XI
When you stand on an empty stony plateau alone
under the fathomless dome of Africa in whose blueness an airplane
or an angel sometimes whips up its starch or star-
when you shudder at how infinitesimally small you are,
remember: space that appears to need nothing does
crave, as a matter of fact, an outside gaze,
a criterion of emptiness-of its depth and scope.
And it's only you who can do the job

Vancouver June 19th

This time next week I'll begin in Africa as I've begun every other adventure in my life: brimming with visions that will almost certainly bear little resemblance to reality. It's the discovery of what is, rather than what is imagined, which remains the essential a gift of travel.