Grocery Shopping - this is how we do it.

On the way home from Kirundo we stopped to do some grocery shopping, Burundi style.

vegetable stand on the side of the road

I bought all of this, and the basket it came in for about $8

Now, to figure out how to use this all up before it goes bad! Yum.

Long Weekends and Boat Rides

This long weekend I got a chance to leave Bujumbura and go ‘up country’. (Anywhere that is not Bujumbura is considered upcountry). I had a meeting my first week here with someone from the Spanish Red Cross about a grant that may or may not be announced by a large donor sometime in the next couple of months. The meeting went well, but the best outcome was that I made a new friend. Monique is originally from Peru and has worked in Burundi for two years. She has been an invaluable guide and companion since we met and I will be very sad to see her go when her contract is up at the end of August.

Monique and I, along with another Red Cross worker Maren, hired a Red Cross driver to take us up to the province of Kirundo on the Rwandan border. We were met there by Maren’s Rwandan boyfriend and together we had a really relaxing and enjoyable time.  We got to celebrate Canada Day and Burundi Independence Day by the lake. The trip up to Kirundo takes about 3 and a half hours and it gave us a great opportunity to absorb some of the beautiful scenery. This country is stunningly beautiful. Bujumbura is in a flat valley and the road out of the city is a breath-taking, heart stopping winding trail up the mountains. The vibrant red of the earth contrasted against the green of the countryside as the road rises and falls with the winding hills. The banana trees, the sorghum crops and coffee trees dotting the landscape and rice patties in the valleys give the impression of a lush and fertile land. It is the dry season now and so there is a wilted, muted quality to the green, as if there is a layer of dust over everything.

In the city it can be easy to overlook the full extent of the poverty in this country. Along the road in the rural areas it is at times painfully obvious. The tiny, shabby houses; the thin cows and goats with their ribs showing, the children playing by the road dressed in dirty clothes with their stomachs sticking out like something out of one of those commercials on TV that I hate so much. There is poverty here and there is hardship. But there is more than that and it would be unfair to the industry and spirit of the people here if I stopped at describing the heartbreaking poverty.  Driving through the countryside you can see everyday life going on as you pass by. People working in their fields, weeding and hoeing and watering their crops. Bricks are being made, some out of the mud and some out of cement, to feed the need created by the construction going on all over the country. Slate and rock have been dug up and carried to the road to be picked up by trucks. Carpentry, weaving and other crafts are available for sale along the road. There is a new private coffee company, cell phone towers, road construction and a factory for sunflower oil. The countryside is not a quiet, relaxing place. These people work hard.

We spent the weekend with some nuns on the shores of a lack just outside of the town of Kirundo, which is the main city in the province of Kirundo. We had breakfast by the lake, dinner away from the lake to avoid the worst of the mosquitos and we went to bed to the sound of the crickets, birds and frogs. Saturday we went to another lake, lac d'oiseau, and paid two boats to take us around the lake and over to an island. It was relaxing and beautiful and I'll let the pictures do the talking since this post is already long enough! Enjoy.

The Burundi version of a canoe

In some ways it reminded me of lakes at home in Canada....

...except the trees were a little different.

Two boats of Muzungus out in the sun

Settling in and Strategies

A lot has been going on around here since my last post. I moved into my new apartment on Monday afternoon. It is so great to have my own space and my own kitchen. The apartment is tiny but it is really cute and has a little terrace out the back and a garden. It is also right beside a busy main road so the peace and quiet of the garden is a bit of an illusion. Once I am a little more unpacked I will post a couple of photos here. Now I am busy trying to buy everything I need for the apartment, such as dishes and so on. After work on Monday I stopped by T2000, a store I am familiar with because of it's counterpart in Kigali, to buy some of the main essentials like a kettle and mugs, plates, a pot and pan, knives, forks and spoons, a pillow, sheets etc. Then I did a quick stop at a supermarket for some basic food supplies and went home. It soon became apparent that I had forgotten some of the main essentials of life. Like toilet paper and dish soap. Luckily my friend Monique took me shopping for a few more things at Mutoyi, a fantastic store that I will be spending a lot of time at. I am keeping a list of things that I still need. I added to it last night after trying to make dinner and burning my fingers on the pot. Oven mitts.

Also this week the new Director of my department at work started. She is spending most of this week on things like housing and finding a school for her kids but already I am feeling energized and like there is direction in my job. I never thought I would be this type of person, but guys, we have a Strategy. A Strategy! I am seriously excited about this. It is not done and so I will be spending part of my time over the next little while consulting with other staff members about it, but a strategy means direction, and purpose and steps that need to be taken. It means that what I do over the next five months will be part of something long term instead of a piecemeal mush of things that get forgotten after I leave. It means that this office will be better positioned to sustainably acquire and manage the funding needed to continue meeting the development needs of our communities. So while to some it is just a document of priorities and guidelines, really it is so much more!

I also had several meetings this week of varying degrees of interest. One was about a project that will be funded through one of our support offices and it was great to be part of the discussion about a peacebuilding project focused on children and youth in one of our communities. One thing about my current position is that I feel very removed from the everyday implementation and running of our activities in the field so it was great to finally see how my role fits into these field level activities.

This coming weekend is a long weekend. Did you know, Canada and Burundi share the same birthday? Burundi got it's independence on July 1, 1962. Monique and I are going to explore a bit upcountry, along with one of her colleagues and her colleagues' boyfriend. I haven't met them yet but I am really looking forward to getting out of the city. We're going to explore the Kirundo province which boasts some hot springs and beautiful lakes and we'll be doing some hiking as well. Lots of pictures to come!

Burundi.... Isn't that in India?

When I first started telling people that I got a job in Burundi I was met with a lot of confusion. Most people  had very little idea where Burundi actually was. While at least four people thought it was in India, most people knew it was somewhere in Africa but had no idea where.  So, I thought I would use this opportunity to educate you all about this tiny, beautiful country.

Burundi is a small country located in East Africa. It is bordered by Rwanda to the North, Tanzania to the East and South and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the West. The tiny country has a population of somewhere around 8 million people, most of whom live in the rural hills as subsistence farmers. The capital city is called Bujumbura and is located right on the north eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. This lake is large enough to have a small tide and lots of sandy gorgeous beaches. It is also home to hippos and crocodiles.

Burundi has just emerged from a 13 year long civil war and has had several conflicts, wars, coups and assassinations since its independence in 1961. The peace is still unstable and the country has a lot of obstacle still to face. A staggering 56% *of the population is aged 18 or below and one in every five people are children under 5 years of age. This means there is a huge burden on the under equipped education system and that the majority of the population is not being ‘productive’ in the economy. However, it also means that there is an overwhelming amount of potential for such a young country filled with so much promise.

The average life expectancy at birth of a Burundian born in the early 1970s was 44 years. By 1992, the average Burundian could expect to live almost ten years longer to the age of 54. But by 1999, average life expectancy had dropped to a new low of 43 years. In 2004, this had barely moved with an average life expectancy of 46.6 years. Maternal mortality rates have risen more than 82% since 1992 with an estimated 800 maternal deaths to every 100,000 live births, and infant mortality rate is as high as 106/1000. Mortality rates in children who are less than five years old is a whooping 385/1000 – this is more than twice the global average. In development these statistics are important indicators for the overall health of a population and of the health care system.  I know my friends who are doulas, midwives and who work in maternal health will find these statistics especially striking, and heartbreaking.

Burundi has two, and in some places three growing seasons and there is rain about 60% of the year. It is hard to believe that such a lush, green country can struggle to feed itself but only about 28% of the population is ‘food secure.’ That means that a full 75% of the population faces times throughout the year where they don’t have enough food. There are high levels of chronic malnutrition, especially in children, all over the country. When children don’t have enough to eat, or are missing basic nutrition, they are more susceptible to disease, they don’t develop properly and they have trouble concentrating and learning in school. People were displaced during the war, leaving their land untended. Infrastructure such as roads was destroyed making buying new seeds and equipment difficult and taking product to market challenging. The rain patterns are changing here because of climate change. All of this adds up to serious challenges in meeting this densely populated country’s food needs.

Burundi faces a lot of challenges. But it holds a great deal of promise as well. The people are resilient, friendly and creative. Burundians are multilingual with people in Bujumbura speaking Kirundi, Swahili, French and now more and more, English. There is a lot of potential for growth. This country is a tourists dream. But there is a lot of work to be done.

I am spending my days reading reports about my organizations work here in Burundi and it is encouraging. But I am also spending my days reading about, and meeting about, all the needs there are. There are so many things we want to do, that we are trying to do, but as much as WV is a huge organization world wide, we are very small in Burundi and we have a very small budget. There are limits to what we can do with it. So I am spending my days trying to figure out how we can better partner with other organizations here, and how we can win grants from donors to improve and expand our work. I spend my days reading these heartbreaking statistics while I am cocooned in the relative wealth in the capital city. I struggle with opening my heart to the poverty, suffering and challenges of the people here while at the same time guarding it so that I am not overwhelmed. It is an ongoing struggle, but one I welcome.

*the statistics I have used in this post come from internal organizational documents but are based on figures from various annual reports from the UNDP, as well as from the World Bank and the Government of Burundi. If you have questions about the exact sources please let me know and I will give you proper citations.