A View from the Other Side

A truck packed with people, one of the few vehicles we encountered on the escarpment between Bukavu and Uvira.

I am sneaking in a blog report despite the fact that we are up late and will be up late for several more nights trying to complete our reporting for the mid-year. This is a fairly stressful week as was last week as the Friday deadline looms and we need to report on about 25 plans and a dozen partnerships. I have found we are not at our best under stress, but fortunately it does end on Friday.

To make matters worse, we have been carless the last 10 days because the problem with the Fortuner has taken quite some time to repair. Apparently the gas we put in in Kigali was contaminated with something and completely messed up our entire fuel system. Many parts had to be replaced including the fuel pump and the entire system had to be flushed several times.

The unfortunate event did not prevent me from having a bit of an adventure though, and in light of the circumstances I decided to be open to being pushed out of my ever expanding comfort zone.

I had been planning a visit to Bukavu for several weeks to meet with a new MCC service worker who has been assigned by the MCC Congo program to work in Bukavu. Since Bukavu is only about 2 hours away from Bujumbura by car (and very far from Kinshasa even by plane) our program has agreed to be a secondary support system for him.

Since we also have some complementary programming related to the Great Lakes region in general we are actually quite excited to have someone from the DRC program so close. Tim Lind, the MCC country rep. For DRC was to be in Bukavu this past week installing Michael Sharp (the new volunteer) into his new home. (A Swedish Mission guesthouse for now.) He wanted to have one of us come up to meet them so we could talk about some coordinated programming that might be possible between our programs with Michael in place.

I was pleased to be able to go, although the car breakdown meant I would not be doing it in comfort. Not to be thwarted, I decided that on Thursday I would go up by matatu (mini taxi bus) to meet them in Bukavu. Up to that point in the week, Rebecca and I had been nearly reveling in the pleasure of our routine with the kids back in school for the first week and us back into a daily routine of swimming after dropping them off then work until noon. We did have many visitors drop by, but generally we got things done. We did rent a tiny Chinese made car to get us around town and to and from school more easily, not bad for a Burundian rental, all it lacks is side-view mirrors.

But Thursday was the last day of normal routine for me as I prepared for a 3^rd class road trip. (albeit short). I did get to swim prior to the scheduled 11:00 am departure. I took a cab to the bus station and waited for an hour and a half for us to leave, but at 12:30 we finally did get 15 of us packed in with a ton of cargo and started off. (These vehicles are the size of a mini-van in the US.) I will say we were squeezed tight. I did bring an ipod to make the trip more bearable but found that I was wedged so tightly in the seat that I could not even reach in my pocket to turn it on.

Despite the squeeze the trip was only about 3 hours with the border crossing and I was at the DRC border before 4pm. Tim and Michael met me on the other side in a car and took me over to the Swedish Mission Guesthouse. It is usually quite crowded and this was the case again, so much so tha the only bed available for me was in the living room of the small suite they had rented.

We had a great introductory meeting and it was fascinating to hear how Michael Sharpe ended up in the position. He had come fresh from several months of immersion French in Belgium, and has experiences in other languages as well and seemed quite up to speed in French. He has done quite a bit of peace work in the Israel Palestine situation and in Germany with wounded soldiers trying to get out of the army. He seems enthusiastic and up to the challenging environment of working in Bukavu.

We talked for several hours about various things related to the MCC Rwanda Burundi program and points of possible intersection, then went to dinner at a place called the CoCo Lounge. This is definitely a place expats visiting Bukavu should check out. The menu was excellent, but also, for $200 they run day trips out to see gorillas in the wild up close. (Yes gorillas, not guerillas) This is far cheaper than the prices one gets in Rwanda for the mountain gorilla tours. I would love to do it someday, but I think the kids have to be quite a bit older to do this. (Anyway, that is my one tourist plug for visiting Bukavu.)

We actually stayed up fairly late talking and trying to catch up on email. I was to return the next morning the way I came and they were going on to a town called Sange, about 3 hours south of Bukavu heading toward Uvira. (about half-way). When I heard they were doing this I considered that perhaps I could, rather than going back to Bujumbura the way I came (via Rwanda), I could go down with the and at Sange find a ride down to Uvira and cross there as it is right across the Ruzizi river from Bujumbura (about a 20 minute drive.)

My interest in doing this was partly driven by interest in continuing to talk with Tim and Michael and to see some of the work they were doing, but also because I knew that the route on the DRC side of the river went across the spectacularly high mountains one can see in Eastern Congo from Burundi and Rwanda. I really wanted to see what it was like looking down from them.

I proposed the idea to Tim the next morning and he was happy to have me join them. The only problem I had was the rising anxiety I felt as I woke and found it had been raining steadily much of the night. Rainy season her means treacherously muddy roads and I did not know what that would mean for our trip.

We had a brief meeting at 9 with a church partner then headed up country at about 10. The road proved be every bit as treacherous as I had feared and for the first 30 minutes we had the harrowing experience of riding up a mud covered road along the escarpment, rising higher and higher above the plain, slipping along like a snowmobile as the driver over-compensated to the right and left, risking going over the edge or careening into the side of the mountain. Fortunately there was little traffic coming the other way as this is not a well used route.  I admit there were several moments where I really regretted not taking the route back on the other side the way I had come.  But I did feel it was good to be in solidarity with Tim and Michael who do this trip more than once to visit partners in Sange.  I did find that one very helpful way to calm my nerves: I put on a very calming piece of music (Barber's Adagio for Strings) on the Ipod and listened to it repeatedly for the worst hour of the trip.

 By the time we reached the higher altitudes the road was dry and the day improved markedly. The views were spectacular but the road remained narrow, with a 1000 foot cliff along one side and was unpaved and extremely windy and bumpy. So much so that one of our Congolese partners was massively carsick the whole way and we had to make about 6 stops for him to get out and throw-up. This did allow us to look around at some of the great views. There are several pictures in this blog showing the mountains and the switchback road we were on as well as the Rusizi river thousands of feet below, that separates DRC from Rwanda and Burundi.

The constant stopping did cause me some concern about our schedule. I knew once we reached Sange I still had to get to Uvira which meant finding a cab and then continuing on to the border (something I had never done before so I had no sense of how much time this would take.) Threre was a looming deadline as I needed to be home by 5pm since there was a parent teacher conference at 6 I needed to attend.

We did get to Sange by about 1:30 pm. Tim and Michael went to visit a school where they sponsor some Mennonite orphans. The story behind these orphans is sad but interesting as it was in the news last year. Sange was the town where a large tanker truck full of gas overturned by the road. As gas leaked out, hundreds of people came with small containers to collect it. This went on into the night and at one point a woman came out with a lit torch to look for her son. The torch set the gas on fire and caused an enormous explosion that killed about 600 people who were around the truck collecting the gas.

It turns out that there was a Mennonite Church in the town who lost many members and found themselves supporting many orphaned children. These childern are the beneficiaries of MCC scholarship money. I found a taxi parked across the street from the remains of the tanker truck. It is still lying there on its side.

The cabee wanted $40 for a 1 hour drive to Uvira. It was steep but he did not have anyone else in the car, so I did not feel it was really unfair. I agreed and we started off. At this point I was feeling less anxious as it was not even 3 and we seemed to be making good time. Then as we approached Uvira we hit an impasse. It was a police roadblock and the officer working there had no intention of letting the driver through, it turned out, without an enormous bribe. I surmised this from the heated discussion the driver was having with him behind the car. The driver was obliged to pull off the road for no apprent reason. I guess the cop figured I would eventually give in and pay something (I am sure this happened because he saw a mzungu in the car.) I asked the driver what to do. I honestly felt a bit like a hostage. I had heard many horror stories of people in this situation forced to simply sit for hours on end, maybe days before being allowed to proceed or pay through the nose to leave earlier.

When I asked the driver he handed me 1000 francs and told me to get out of the car and grab the next taxi-moto (motorcycle taxi) that went by and take it to the border. Just as I opened my door one came by and I jumped on it and took off. The police officer looked a bit flummoxed but what could he do? It was the cab he was preventing from going not me. I drove off feeling like I had just broken out of jail. It was an exhilarating ride to the border where I crossed easily and took a cab back to our house in Bujumbura. I was home by 4pm no worse for the wear but I can categorically not recommend taking the road that goes through DRC from Bukavu to Uvira over the mountains unless you are into extreme thrills (like skydiving off cliffs).

The harrowing journey was not the end of the day as we did have a parent teacher meeting scheduled at 6. Rebecca also had a church elders meeting so we split up leaving the kids with Jennifer and Yolanda who were over at our house that evening. The teachers meeting for the first week of school is now quite familiar to me, and it was good not to feel like a newcomer. We met the directors of the school then proceeded to our children's classrooms where the teachers briefed us on the curriculum for the year. I think Oren's teacher Mdm. Marie, and David's Mdm. Magdalie seem very competent and nice. So far the kids have a very good impression of them as well.

The weekend felt like a real break and we actually did virtually nothing Saturday after yoga. This is what Oren likes best. We did not leave the house, but stayed home all day watching movies, jumping on the trampoline, and playing games together. We actually played a family game of Carcisone!! Even David helped me. Oren actually almost won as well! It is amazing how fast they grow. One correction: We did not all do nothing. Rebecca spent much of the day preparing the Sunday school curriculum for the entire semester. It was a lot of work, but doing it all at once actually will save time in the long run.

Sunday was a busy morning. Rebecca got the Sunday school rooms set up and after worship I decided to accompany the kids down since Rebecca was teaching the older kids and our kids were in the younger group. I had head that David was not very good in class the week before. I am glad I went because Lizzie and Simon Guillebaud who were in charge of the younger group that week had about 30 kids and really needed 'all hands on deck'. The lesson was well prepared but getting all the little kids through the games and activities took a lot of adult supervision. David, was, in fact, one of the trouble makers in the group.

One nice bonus for Sunday morning was seeing Naja and Thomas Spanner (our Danish friends) with their kids Elias and Aviaja. Oren was happy to reconnect as well. After church we went to the beach with them and had lunch there and swam in the pool. We returned home about 3, in time for our first small group meeting since we left in July.

It was good to be back in the small group although several of us were not there because they had not returned yet, but Tim and Jeanette, our friends form South Africa did make it as well as JJ and Courtney who are new to Burundi. He is working with World Relief and they seem like they will be a great addition to the group as cell group ministry is part of their own church background in the US.

We had a nice 2 hour discussion about the sermon (that JJ synopsized) and prayer time. It is another pattern that I am glad we have reestablished, part of what keeps us sane here.

After they left we had supper with the kids and I fell asleep with the reading stories. Rebecca stayed up later to cover Oren's book. (parental homework assignment)

This week began with orientation of a new worker. Saffy will be with us for 3 months as a short term worker helping us with our partner organization who runs the Hope School. She has been in Burundi the last year and was part of my adult ballet class so we knew her pretty well. She was working with the Quaker Peace and Social Witness at an AIDS clinic for women. We are very happy to have her joining our team for the next several months. (Sorry no picture but will post one next week.)

A bit of travel expected in the week ahead, but also looking forward to our first social dance of the season this Saturday!