Disaster Strikes--Burundi in the News

Funerals for those lost in the floods on Sunday night--most of them children.

Burundi has been in the news quite a bit in the past month.  Actually four times at last count which seems like more times than I remember in the past six years.  Usually when a country like Burundi is in the news, it is for a bad reason.  The last time was during the fire in the Central market. 

The most recent, and most tragic story is about the flooding.  I did not know when I fell asleep on Sunday listening to a steady downpour, that not 5 kilometers away on the other side of town, a number of mountain fed rivers running down the hills into the several popular quarters, including, Kamenge, Gasenyi and Butere, would explode into cascading landslides of mud, rock, trees, and a tsunami like deluge which ripped through neighborhoods demolishing houses in its path like a tornado.  Families were trapped in their houses with water rising with an impossible choice between running out into the current or waiting inside for the water to collapse the roof.  More than 70 people have been counted as dead from drowning and many are still missing.  Many hundreds are injured and hundreds of houses were swept away.  Most of the dead are children who could not wade through the current in trying to get to safety. 

road upcountry note huge culvert on side

The first clue Rebecca and I had that something this bad had happened was when she tried to head up country on Monday morning to bring a new service worker to Gitega.  The road we heard was closed because of landslides and she was forced to take a different much longer route to Gitega. 

Reports started filing in through the day, especially as friends who were reading the International news began calling to ask us how we were. 

Mama Sese's house across from Marceline's

MCC will be making a contribution toward disaster relief in a particularly hard hit area.  There is a church in the midst which is capable of doing some disaster management and is handling some immediate needs for shelter, food, clothing, and eventually reconstruction of some houses.

The International Red Cross is also on the scene and has set up several hundred tents as temporary shelters .  (Sadly they do not provide cooking supplies.)

Other news stories include Burundi’s involvement in peacekeeping in the Central African Republic.  Burundi has extensive experience in peacekeeping through its participation in peacekeeping with the Africa Union in Somalia.  Now several thousand Burundian troops are being deployed to the CAR.  Related to this story is the award of a large US Dept. of Defense contract to Burundi to set up a training base to train Burundian soldiers. 

Although I work for a pacifist organization I do not feel altogether bad about this.  The CAR is in serious need of stability as it is threatening to degenerate into an interfaith bloodbath.  Burundi’s army is well trained and professional,  they are also ethnically integrated by law, thanks to the Arusha accords, so they are not particularly partisan to a political party or ethnic group.

With elections getting closer, I think it is better for a country to have a downsized, professional, independent army that is not beholden to one political party rather than one that has its interest directly connected to one group.  For this reason, I am not opposed to its professionalization despite the slight dis-ease I feel about Burundi's chief export being Africa Union peacekeeping forces.

This brings us to the fourth piece of news.  In the latest machinations by the ruling party to get their President a third term the President fired one of his two vice-Presidents.  The problem was that the First Vice President, a member of the opposition party, was opposing the move by the ruling party to change the Constitution so the President could run again.  The President chose someone who was more favorable to him to take control of the opposition party (and be VP).  But then, the new VP suddenly resigned on his own accord as a protest.  Now the govt. is in a sort of institutional crisis.  And I am curious how the ruling party is going to pull off its Constitution change if this hardball technique does not work.

So that is the news from Burundi, where usually nothing very newsworthy happens on an international scale anyway.

In personal news, we have some exciting updates to share as well.  Probably the most significant is the much anticipated of our newest MCC arrival, Sata.  Sata comes to us from Florida.  We are thrilled she comes already fluent in French having spent some years in Paris growing up.  We have been wating for her for several months because of MCC orientation and she got here this past Saturday with some difficulty because of weather in the US.

Rebecca picked her up Saturday afternoon while I took the kids to the zoo.  (Note picture of leopard who lets me pet her).  We all had dinner together and Sata went to bed early.

On Sunday she accompanied us to church and then we went to the beach where we met Matt (the SALTer) and Jennifer.  They were very welcoming to her and we shared a nice lunch together while the kids played in the Tanganyika waves. 

Monday morning was the day scheduled to take Sata up to Gitega to meet Melody (her roommate) as well as the partner she will be seconded to (UCPD) and to go on a field visit. 

Felix and Rebecca went up with her while I stayed behind with the kids.  She was to be gone three days, and the first clue I had that something was amiss was when Marceline our cook did not come to work.  When I called her, I found out that she was at her house that had been flooded and an outer wall had been knocked down.  She told me later that many houses in her area had collapsed and that there were many stories from her friends of people being swept away or drowned.  The man down the street from her was a well to do butcher who lost  70 pigs and his two cars washed away into the raging stream behind his house.

Later that day I talked on the phone to Gaspard, our night guard who was upcountry visiting family.  He told me he could not get down to Bujumbura.  The last straw was Odifax’s wife getting sick leaving me with no staff to help in Rebecca’s absence. (I don’t want to sound like I need staff to take care of kids, but here where our system includes someone going to the market to shop and do othe preparation, it is difficult.)

peering into crocodile cage

So the kids and I were together Monday through Wednesday eating sandwiches and Ramen soup for most meals.  Despite this they were very cooperative and good sports about it.  Oren had to recite a poem for homework on Tuesday so we did a lot of work to help him learn it.

I did all of the normal activities on Monday like tennis and reading club, so it was not an altogether bad couple of days.

Rebecca came back Wednesday and told me that the trip went well despite the difficulty getting out of Bujumbura.  The rest of the country had not suffered the flooding that we had here.  She did introduce Sata to Melody and the partners and took her on a field visit to Bukirasazi, the commune where UCPD does most of its work.  They were able to meet three of the women’s collectives there and see some of the trade school activities that are supported there.

Rebecca left Sata for a two week stay with a Burundian host family which is part of the cultural experience we encourage people to have before beginning their assignment.

It was good to see Rebecca back on Wednesday morning and I was relieved that they did not have any driving issues during the 3 days.

Sata and Colleagues

When Rebecca returned, we took a trip up to Marceline’s house to see how she was.  We were able to see the damage around her house.  I took some pictures of broken down walls in the area.  Marceline had wisely invested in putting up some cement walls around her house.  Most of the brick houses in her neighborhood are made with mud rather than cement to hold the bricks together.  You can imagine what happens when they are hit but a rush of water.  The cement brick houses fared much better in my observation.

doing watercolors at Ijenda

One last reflection:  We have been in the process of trying to intentionally say goodbye to certain people and places.  It may seem like starting soon, but the end will be getting very crowded.  The kids had a school holiday last Wednesday so we went up to Ijenda on Tuesday night.  It was fun to stay there in the cold and sit by a fire roasting marshmallows.  On Wednesday we took a hike on the nearby hills.  Our friend Ben Carlson joined us with his two kids.  We had a great time hiking although it was a bit odd because the hills we hiked had just been cleared of a massive eucalyptus forest.  It was like the whole mountain had gotten a crew cut.  You could see a lot further, but we really missed the shade.  A bit of an odd way to remember the place for the last time.

Postscript:  For those of you who follow the blog regularly and remember my report on A's story in this post:  Ruthless Clarity in Bujumbura.  I saw A yesterday when he came by my office to tell me that his restaurant, which is beside the road where the flood hit, was completely wiped out.  The building is still there but all the chairs, tables, plates, silverware etc. were swept away.  The fridge was filled with 3 feet of water and ruined.  He is looking for capital again to restart.  Another chapter in his ongoing saga.