My teachers

                                                      Jonathan & Katia at the clinic.  

The Long Goodbye

Friday morning Jocelyne, Red & I went shopping again for the rest of our gifts for friends and family.  I start to finish bargained for a pair of masks from the Congo all on my own and though I'm sure Jocelyne could have gotten a better price I'm still pretty proud of getting the price down from 20 for one to 17 for 2.  We went fabric shopping in the big market without any further incidents of spontaneous Sara dressing.  This time the woman attempting to sell me a dress tried it on herself.  I was quite exhilarated by my bargaining experience but I think I would find it both stressful and time consuming if I always had to bargain anytime I wanted to buy something.  

When we got home it was time for our farewell lunch.  Claire and Maxim who had not been able to join us on our trip came over along with Jocelyne, Marcelline, Desire, Eric and Samual.  We were given a gift of African cloth and many speeches were made.  Desire's speech was part dance, part game of Simon Says, all funny.  When it was my turn I slowly gave my whole speech in Kirundi.  Much was recycled from the radio show the previous day (recycling- very Burundian of me) and there was a lot of repetitive sentence structure (very Aaron Sorkin of me) but it was full sentences and I was quite pleased with myself.   Then as each person took his or her leave there was hand shaking and picture taking and promises to write.  Unfortunately there was some confusion I think about when I was leaving so some people who promised to see me the next day did not arrive before I left for the airport.  So I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Eric, Odette, Jonathan or Katia.  I'm particularly sad not to have been able to thank abagisha banje beza (my good teachers) one last time for all their help and patience.  

The next morning on the way to the airport there was one final speech from Marcelline and you know the rest.  I got on several planes and flew home.  And everyone wants to know, the Burundians, my family and friends here, will I go back?  To which I answer, yes.  I don't know when or quite how but yes.  Because Jocelyne says I'm no longer a muzungu but umurundikazi, a Burundian woman.  

Putting the 'Camp' in Workcamp

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.  

The (insert name of African migratory bird) has landed!

I'm here at the home of my brother and his wife in DC having survived the kajillion hours of flying without suffering either deep venous thrombosis or a pulmonary embolism. However, Step Up 2: The Streets was the most entertaining of the 5 movies I watched on the plane. Seriously. It addressed the major problem of Step Up 1- not enough dancing.
Welcome back to American culture!
I'm not actually awake right now by the way. This message is brought to you by a semi conscious, time zone displaced, culturally disoriented human. And by the letter Y.

Final morning

For the last certain time, I woke this morning at 6am to the sound of roosters crowing, male voices speaking Kirundi, the whisper-scratch of Jean Yves father sweeping up the leaves and blossoms of the plumeria tree which had fallen in the night and the smell of a charcoal fire burning.

Last breakfast of egg, bread and fruit- bananas, alas instead of pineapple. I would have liked one more pineapple. Maybe four more. Last cold shower.

I'm wearing a watch for the first time in a month and have only a few hours before I leave for the airport and have one last set of goodbyes.

I'll try in this time to catch up a little more regarding our trip up country on Thursday but in case I don't finish before I leave I just wanted to say, the blog will continue! I'll post pictures once I get home- it was too hard to do from here and try to finish out the at least several more thoughts I have about all of this. Whether it will continue past that is difficult to say. It requires a rare confluence of circumstances to give me both interesting things to write and time enough to write them. So read on while it lasts and I'll see some of you very soon.

A brief addendum on the subject of trash

I was packing this afternoon and generally tidying up my room here. I had a little plastic bag of the trash I've accumlated which I'll add to the larger plastic bag in the office which eventually Ciza will set on fire. As I was clearing the table of some things I'd used up I became transfixed by my empty sunscreen bottle.

It's one of those completely sealed, post CFC regulation aerosol kind of sprays. Therefore the bottle can't be opened and used again. The bottle is made of metal, which means it can't be set on fire. What is going to become of it? There's no place here for it to go. Then I reminded myself that there's no place for it to go in America either, it's just that where it hangs out while it's going no place is in some landfill where I can't see it and therefore no longer think of it.

Last night as we were cobbling together a dinner for ourselves from the leftovers of our traveling food, I brought out 3 ziplock bags of trail mix bars I'd been advised to bring to Burundi for myself in case I had a craving for something sweet or wanted the emotional comfort of some familar kind of food. Turned out I didn't need either so I'd brought them along on our trip intending to share them around as part of our traveling food. As they were passed around and opened (and in most cases, enjoyed) I became horrorstruck by the amount of trash that was being created by the growing pile of wrappers from each individually wrapped bar. I looked at the other food we'd brought. Peanuts we'd been scooping into bowls out of a single large plastic bag. Itambura- these delicious doughnut tasting balls of fried dough which also came in a clump out of a single plastic bag. Loaf of bread, single plastic bag. Glass jar of jam. Many bottles of Fanta. Three plastic bags in their first stage of life with other stages, previously discussed, ahead of them. Glass jar/bottles all destined to be reused. 18 single use wrappers.

I must leave Burundi before I destroy it with trash. I'm afraid I may pass out when I get home and am reminded of how much we throw away, that really isn't going anywhere at all.

On education- mine & Burundian

Here's what I was going to write on Wednesday night.


I must introduce the newest faculty member at the University of Teaching Sara Kirundi. Her name is Katia, she's Jonathan's older sister and she's been joining us at the work camp for the last week and a half. She has huge almond shaped eyes, closely shaved hair which is the fashion for young girls and though she is much more shy than her brother her extremely innocent face hides a sneaky side. She's the inventor (near as I can tell) and master (certainly) of a game with which we occasionally while away the time we spend waiting for things to do. It involves tossing a small pebble into the lap of whoever is not looking at you. Then when you try to figure out who threw the pebble, all you see are fingers pointing at someone else. All while you're trying toss pebbles into someone else's lap without getting caught. This sooner or later devolves into a tickle off and the exchange of the English and Kirundi words for the phenomenon of tickling. (In Kirundi the infinitive is Kudigadigwa- very onomatopoeic.)



She joined in the Kirundi vocabulary lessons and when she saw that I was interested in learning songs in Kirundi she proceeded to attempt to teach me an entire, complicated song by rote. Fabrice, my other Kirundi song teacher and a grown up has only ever given me the chorus to learn, four or five lines at most and we write them down first. This was a full song and though I started bringing a little notebook with me to keep track of vocabulary, I didn't happen to have it with me the two days Katia was teaching the song.

She's pretty amazing. She'd sing a line for me and I'd try to sing it back. When I got it wrong- and I always did- she'd repeat more slowly. I'd try again and get closer. Not good enough. She slows down even more and carefully enunciates each syllable. She has it down to a science the breaking down and then stringing back together of words and phrases. If I get it right she says, "Encore" and makes me do it again. If I get it wrong and try to laugh it off, oh isn't it funny how I'm making a hash of this line, she never cracks a smile but gives me this total teacher look which says "Laugh all you want missy, we're not leaving til you get it right." Duly chastened I listen to her repeat the line and try again. By the end of our second session I was able to get each line individually but couldn't remember the whole song at once. She then taught me a simpler song, a children's song which is basically various repetitions of "I love you Jesus" in Kirundi, Swahili, French and English. All the songs I have been taught are church songs, everyone we've met is devout to their bones.



Tuesday David Zarembka, the founder of AGLI came to the clinic to visit and meet with the FWA staff and check in on things so Adrien, Jonathan and Katia's dad, was at the clinic all day and walked with us to lunch at the restaurant. On the way Jonathan and Katia showed me off to him like a prize spaniel. I was put through my paces of tree identification (which let me remind you involves not only knowing the Kirundi names but also being able to tell the difference between a mango and a papaya tree- without fruit!). Katia and I sang the easy song and Adrien pronounced it all well done.

Time and time again, Burundians have asked me why I'm bothering to learn Kirundi when I will be here for just a month and it is only spoken in Burundi. There are at least five answers: that it's something to do at night as a change from writing or reading, that I like puzzles, that I like to learn things, that every word I learn is one more little thing to pick out of the conversations going on all around me, that it's something fun to do with Jonathan and Katia. But the real and true 6th reason is that I'm delighted by how happy it makes the Burundians to hear me speak their language even if it's only a few words. And not just the people I've come to know who have watched my vocabulary grow, have tracked my progress and helped to teach me. Strangers on the street to whom I say Mwiriwe instead of Bon soir, even beggars to whom I say Oya instead of No or Non will laugh and ask how I know Kirundi. The effort to payoff ratio is very high.

I want to speak of Burundian education because it is so very important to the Burundians. I think if you ask any given Burundian what their country needs most, 'Education' would come second only to 'Peace'.

So here's my understanding of how it works. Starting at 6 years old in Bujumbura, 7 up country, kids go to primary school. This is free and lasts 6 or 7 years. The free part may only be recent, a program of the current president. Then comes secondary school and here's where it gets different. There are a small number of public schools which are inexpensive, good schools to which a child must apply for acceptance. If he or she is not accepted, private school is the only alternative. It is expensive and sometimes not very good because once they have your money they have little incentive to teach well. It is in secondary school that children begin to learn French, unless they are taught at home. Secondary school is therefore necessary to get any kind of government or service sector kind of job. It also takes 6 or 7 years to complete. University can take anywhere from 4 to 7 or 8 years, depending on what is being studied and is very expensive. Throw a 13 year civil war into the mix and you have a lot of people desperate for education and mostly at their wit's end about how to get it.

Part of what this means is that students both in secondary school and at university are older than their American counterparts. Some because the war interrupted their studies, some because they can only take classes at night or a few at a time as they work for the money to pay for them. It sometimes seems as if everyone we know here is a student. Odette, Jonathan and Katia's mother, just took her final university exam this morning. Marcelline is taking classes, so is Desire, so are both Marie Claire and her husband. Grethe just finished university. Fabrice hopes to go back soon.

Everyone takes their studies incredibly seriously having paid so much in both effort and money just to get in the door. I noticed it even just in our AVP workshop. We were each given a little paper notebook, the kind we use in the US for taking written final exams. The Burundians were avid note takers. They copied every word of everything posted on the wall, drew diagrams- sometimes even staying in through a break to finish- and also of what was said. These are people for whom education- any kind of education about anything- is a gift not to be squandered. And the part that kills you is that once they graduate, even with a university degree, jobs are still incredibly difficult to get. But what else can they do? Just keep putting one foot in front of the other on the path to the only hope they know.