The opposite of scurvy

If there is a disease one could get from eating too much fruit (please no one tell me there is) I'd probably be in trouble. We have fresh fruit at every meal- pineapple, papaya, mango or oranges. I have to say that when it's pineapple I am not shy at all about asking if the others are going to finish their slices and sighing deep inward sighs if they do. All the fruit is incredibly delicious and was probably grown within 50 miles or so and brought down from the mountain piled in an impossible way on the back of a bicycle.

The amount and kinds of things you see strapped on the backs (and fronts and sides) of bicycles here would make John Musial remove his bike helmet in a gesture of respect and awe. Manioc bunches higher than the cyclist's head (manioc- looks like a green banana, tastes like a potato), dozens of ten foot lengths of PVC tubing, grandmothers sitting sideways on the rack, children in upside down chairs lashed to the back and perhaps my favorite, a live goat. I've looked at these bikes up close and they're mostly very worn, repaired with all kinds of spare parts and the bike rack is made of wrought iron grating. Coming down the mountains is pretty easy, they don't even have to touch the pedals and could ride side saddle like grandma if they wanted. Going up is another story. They have to walk them up unless they catch hold of a passing truck. The trucks will often have a large tree branch stuck through various handles on the back and I can't tell if this is meant to make it easier or harder to grab hold but sometimes as many as five bikes will be in tow.

I noticed that I hadn't seen any women on bicylces (aside from passengers riding on the back) and asked Alexia about it. She said the bicycles are mostly used for transporting things or people and this is not work that women do. But I've also seen men who appear just to be commuting to work and since women do work outside the home I wonder why they don't bike instead of walking or taking the bus.

'Cause let me tell you about the bus. I don't think there is a bus company, just a bunch of people with blue and white vans stuffed full of seats, each with a name custom painted on the back. Things like 'Grace a Dieu' & 'Ami de Jesus.' Inside there are five rows of seats, seating for one on the left, for two on the right. Once these seats are filled and the whole back row of five, the next person to get on flips down a jump seat which takes up the whole aisle between the second to last row and two people will sit on that, then the next person flips down the next jump seat and so on until the van is packed. The buses have something like a regular route going between the outer districts and downtown but there's no regulation of how many buses go which ways. I think the first person to get on says where he's going and the driver and conductor go around until they fill up the bus and then go downtown or to Kamenge or wherever. Adrien says you can get on a bus anywhere along the route. They want to be as full as possible so they're happy to stop and let you on. Getting off you have to do at certain designated places. Though by designated I don't mean that there are signs or anything. You just know. So pretty much the best thing is to get on a bus that's almost full, otherwise you'll have to Chinese puzzle your way out plus who knows how long you'll be looking for more people to full the bus. So that's how we'll be getting to and from Kamenge every day.

By the way, I guess we were on the Burundian news last night. Alexia saw footage of me dancing in a sort of conga line with the Minister of Youth and Culture and some of our other friends said they saw footage of us on the grandstand. We were easy to pick out because A. We were among the few- though not only- white people and B. Andrew is very, very tall. It's absurd of course, but. Think about what would happen if 4 middle class black people came to a country where almost everyone else was white. Then think about what that says about the world.