Ok, break's over.
Last Thursday we went up country with a bunch of people from the clinic. Up country, by the way, is pretty much anywhere outside of Bujumbura. The way I think of it, Bujumbura on Lake Tanganyika is the lowest point in the country. So pretty much anywhere you go from there is up.
We got a bus with 18 places and here is who we filled it with: me, John, Red, Alexia, Odette, Jonathan, Katia, Jocelyne, Samual, Marcelline, Jeanne, Adonis, Clovis, Eric, Grethe, Dina, Mireille and a young woman whose name I never got who had been volunteering at the clinic for the past few days. We were not quite as shoe horned in as on the regular bus to Kamenge- we were 4 to a seat instead of 5 but it was still quite cozy.
Our destination was Source du Nile, one of several purported southern sources of the Nile River. I did not wear a watch for my entire time in Burundi so the nearest estimation I can give of how long it took us to get there is about 1/2 the day. On the way Jocelyne would periodically pull some snack out of the magical bag at her feet and pass it around the bus. Bowls of peanuts, a bag of cookies, these great doughnut tasting things I may have mentioned before, muffins, bread with jam. And Fanta. Of course Fanta. Katia and I took advantage of some of the time to actually write down the words to the song she'd been trying to teach me. So now though I'm still a little shaky on the tune, at least I know all the words.
I think my favorite part of the whole trip was Jocelyne and Odette's radio program. An hour or so into the trip Jocelyne decided we needed entertaining and so she announced the beginning of her radio program with co-host Odette. It was periodically a bilingual program in Kirundi and English with each taking turns translating for the other. They had a theme song, they had callers (most frequent call in guest- Jonathan, call in name- LoveYou, very funny), they sang songs on request, gave news reports, did person on the bus interviews. For hours and hours they cracked themselves up (not to mention the rest of us) in a tour de force performance and I wished for the millionth time that knew more Kirundi because, alas, they did not always translate. Late in the day's programming they called upon me to give a report in Kirundi. I summoned up all my vocabulary reserves and managed to make a statement in 4 complete sentences expressing my appreciation for the country's tall hills, its good children and it's many people. Each sentence was greated with applause which almost never happens when I speak English.
At the first police roadblock (of maybe a dozen throughout the day) the officer decided that there was a problem with the papers of the driver. Alexia, Samual & Marcelline got out and had an extensive discussion with the officers of the roadblock. In the end the 'fine' was paid and we were allowed to pass. As we approached the next roadblock we happened to be singing one of the Kirundi songs I know, "Imana yacu irahambaye" (Our God is an Awesome God) and the officer waved us right through without stopping us at all. After that as soon as we approached a roadblock, Odette or Jocelyne would launch into that same song and the rest of us would join in and keep singing until we were through. Though we were still usually stopped, no one had any issues with the driver's paperwork from then on.
We arrived at Source du Nile which is commemorated with a smallish pyramid on the top of a hill- no water of any kind in sight. We climbed the hill, some of us also scaled the pyramid, took many many pictures of each other and sat down for a lunch of meat pastry and, yes, Fanta. We walked back down the hill to the bus and a local man offered to walk us to the place where you can see the water. Turns out they collect water which runs down from the top of the hill and channel it into a pipe which spouts out of a concrete block onto a concrete slab and then runs down the rest of the open hillside until eventually it finds a stream which joins another and so on, until it joins the Nile. The point of the pipe, I take it, is to give everyone something to point at and say, "There it is, the source of the Nile." We all rinsed our hands in it.
Then it was time to pile back into the bus, resume the radio program and head home. This was easier said than done. Somewhere fairly early on we took a wrong turn- easy to do when none of the roads are paved, let alone marked. We drove quite a while out of our way before we realized and after that we stopped at every crossroads. Inevitably this would draw a crowd of locals- not even because of us muzungu. A bus of city folk from Bujumbura was by itself an unusual occurrence and cause for pointing and staring. By the time we reached the lake road which we'd follow north all the way back to Bujumbura it was quite late in the afternoon.
The officer who stopped us at the next roadblock spoke to the driver for some time. Not because of any knowledge of Kirundi but simply by reading the universal language of gesture as he pointed to his wrist where a watch would be if he had one, the sky and the road I could tell he was saying he didn't think we'd make it back to Bujumbura before the roads closed for curfew. And it turns out he was right.
We were about two hours away when the roads closed and we had to stop in the town of Rumonge. Alexia called a friend she knows in the town to find out where 18 people plus a driver could spend the night til the roads opened in the morning. Now here's what I find really amazing. Once we realized we wouldn't get home and our day trip had turned into an overnight trip, there was not one word of complaint or concern or frustration. This in spite of the fact that we had several mothers among us who had children at home and Odette had an exam- the final exam of her final year at university- at 8am the next morning. People just calmly made phone calls and alternate arrangements went along with the thing they had no control over anyway. I think I can safely say this would not have happened on a bus full of Westerners. And I think the thing is, any of the adults who were alive during the war, most likely had to hide or relocate themselves on short notice for their safety. (In one informal and admittedly small survey I read 100% of the people said they'd had to hide during the war.) The benefits of a sense of perspective. And Alexia told us in the morning too that people were not worried because there was so much more security now.
Alexia's friend directed us to a guest house run by a Pentacostal church where we secured 3 rooms and the Burundian sense of hierarchy divided us up thusly: John and Eric in one room; Alexia, Red and I in another- each of us in our own small bed; and everyone else in a large room with 5 small beds. They pulled four of the foam mattress onto the floor to make one large mattress, leaving one bed for Jeanne (an older woman). All the others piled in together. Except for Adonis, too abashed or too proud to sleep in a room with women, who after an hour went to John and Eric's room and asked if he could stay with them. I have to say, I think it would have been fun to be in the big room and was a little sad to be sequestered away from the others. We all ate together in the big room a meal- as I've mentioned before- pulled together from the leftovers of the days snacks. Then early to bed so we could get up at 6am to get back into town. Odette made it back in time for her exam and believes it went well.
So that was our trip up country. It's strange to think and write of it now, a week later from my Chicago sun porch. It feels very far away in many senses and also sad to think of how long it may be before I get to hear the next episode of Jocelyne and Odette's radio program.
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