after a few quick days showing my mom around bujumbura, we were off to uganda and for a 4 day safari. we traveled to the west, visiting two national parks and seeing all types of animals, my favorite of which is the hippo. i still think i am a bit more intrigued by local people rather than animals, but we were guided to incredible landscapes and families of zebra and elephants along the way.
if you know me, you know i’m not one for the resort lifestyle and tour guides, but it was a good trip and we arrived back in kampala yesterday. my mom and i were both happy to not have to wake up before 7am (mornings and evenings being prime animal viewing time on safari) and i dutifully spent the morning lounging around, enjoying having no agenda and the beautiful views of kampala and lake victoria from our hotel here.
it’s nice to share some time with my mom as well. i don’t know too many other people (or moms) that would voluntarily go chimpanzee trekking through the rain forest while fighting off tsetse flies for two hours… so she makes a good travel companion. we’ll be taking off for kigali tonight with only a few more days left in africa and i’m trying to soak in the rest of my stay before i have to return home and figure out what to do next.
my mom comes today and i’m really excited. i’ve been working really hard at the MSF clinic watching women give birth for the last two days. it was my first time in surgery and i wasn’t sure how it would go but i was really facinated by everything around me. i kind of surprised myself. it’s fun to work in this environment. mostly because people don’t pay any attention to me and i can photog whatever i want.
i’m trying to finish up all my work so i can just take some time to relax and go to the beach. though i’ve been reading the history about Gustave, a worldwide legendary crocodile from Burundi, and i’ve almost convinced myself it’s not worth it to go swimming in the lake again, no matter how nice the water is. I haven’t seen that many expats take the plunge off the beautiful sandy beaches here. now i think i understand why…
Yesterday I started my first day of work with MSF Belgium and their two missions here in Burundi. The Kabezi Clinic just opened a day or two ago. The clinic is an emergency birthing center that takes on women from all over the country. They are brought by ambulance. Their first patient needed a cesarian and here’s a photo of the first baby ever born in the clinic. She’s tiny!
the clinic is situated south of bujumbura and one side overlooks the lake and the other overlooks the mountains. it’s absolutely stunning. on monday i’m planning on riding along in an ambulance and hopefully get some good shots of doctors at work.
this is as dangerous as it looks. during my travels i’ve seen kids jump and bikers latch onto these trucks so they can catch a free ride up the mountains. breathing back there must be difficult. this was taken on our way back from gitega. people were fascinated by the muzungu traveling via taxi instead of the usual nice cars provided by all the NGOs here.
during one stop i decided to entertain the kids staring at me by taking their pictures and showing it to them. you can imagine the crowd that gathered after i showed them the first image. here is my last and favorite picture i took of this group of onlookers before we continued on…
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the kids found this one just as entertaining as i did. i was laughing as i took this, it was hilarious…
this is jojo, the son of my boss. he’s a handful and also way too adorable.
on saturday night i attended my first burundi wedding which was quite an experience. it commenced with a band of drummers and dancers as the bride and groom walked to their altar-type place where they were seated on a couch. they didn’t sit close to eachother either, there was an entire cushion between them actually. most of the time the bride looked annoyed/bored. it made me understand a wedding photo i had seen before in the house of the hotel manager we visited where the wife looked really pissed and the husband was next to her just looking at the camera. that photo was framed and proudly hanging on their wall. it was one of my favorite pictures ever, just so funny to me, but i guess that’s all weddings around here…
the best part was the drummers and their dancing which was energetic and amazing.
the bridesmaids came to serve drinks like coke and fanta and beer to the attendees. i was sipping on my room temperature amstel (thanking cody and his boat life for teaching me to appreciate warm beer) thinking how great this was. bridesmaids serving beer during the ceremony, not something you are likely to see in the states….
the father of the bride is the big boss at APRODH and he gave a customary (30-40 minute) speech. everyone applauded him twice thinking it was the end and he just kept going… he seemed like a very proud dad.
there was about a 45 minute break and then i think they were going to do some kind of other ceremony but Jean Baptiste, my boss (and second in command at APRODH) opted to take me home because we’d been there a while. i met up with my friend amelie who told me i’ll get to shoot for 1 day at the MSF clinic (so exciting they already have plans with what to do for the photos). hopefully i’ll meet with the bosses next week to discuss the conditions.
I am home in Bujumbura safely.The Muyinga Case was moved from a military court to civilian court so nothing exciting happened. As I understand it, this ping-pong thing has been going on a while and it’s frustrating people who are looking for justice to be served.
Earlier this morning we visited the prison in Muyinga. it was built for about 300 people and currently houses just under 700… it is much worse that Mpimba. i was excited about trying to get into these prisons like the Human Rights Watch rep Neala and her translator Lionel that I was accompanying. They are also trying to assess the situation with prisoners and if they are being held/treated fairly (Burundi also has no public defense lawyer system so people often stay in prison way too long). Who knows if i could actually get the access to photograph in there.
Catherine, a lady working for the red cross, was pretty much speechless today after finding out what little i have to work with and my language impairment. she asked me how my progress was and i’ve been thinking i wish i had more time because it’s a very slow evolving thing with all the obstacles against me.
She suggested i take up some language classes at a local center for french culture that i may check out. i’m running out of cash though and there are no ATMs around here, so figuring that out may be my mission for tomorrow.
All things aside, I’m safe and the Interior was great. We stayed with a UNHCR guy named Eric. He’s an American who grew his own food and we had some fabulous pesto for dinner and proceeded to stalk the news for updates on the primaries.
We did however manage to have the breaks on the car temporarily quit working and broke down for a bit on a very long dirt road (in the middle of nowhere near the Tanzania border) trying to find a certain UN compound.
Besides, it wouldn’t have been very African if we hadn’t experienced some kind of car trouble during our little road trip…
reviewed and revisited, i present my first collaboration of work inside the largest central prison in bujumbura. working with APRODH, I was there to observe a survey done on all juveniles in the prison. the young children in these photographs are commonly products of prison rape and spend most of their childhood in prison. There are somewhere around 20 of these kids living in Mpimba right now. It’s very heartbreaking.
I just found out I’ll be leaving for Muyinga province Sunday for the first hearings of the Muyinga Massacre, which happened in 2006. I’m not totally sure on the background, but I believe they are summoning some government officials who executed around 50 people suspected of being FNL (the rebel group still present today in Burundi). I’ll be going with the head of APRODH and also with a Human Rights Watch woman around my age situated here in Bujo. She sounded American and when I asked her where she was from, she gave that familiar face I usually give people when they ask me. I told her I understood and was in the same boat. It’s nice to meet someone like myself for a change….
I’m excited for the travel, we’ll be headed northeast, towards Rwanda.
I’ve relocated back to the guesthouse owned by Burundi/Belgian Jean Luc and started my first day of work today. I immediately became a warm welcomed foreigner to those who haven’t met me during training. Â One girl, Alicia, immediately became my best friend and offered to help me sort out my questions. I exchanged some euros and payed way too much for a bike to get me to and from work. you don’t really have a choice with price here as a white person amongst very poor people. only later did i realized whilest flying down the hill outside my house that the front wheel is a little loose. figures! oh well, with the potholes here (actually more like giant craters), i’m destined to beat this thing up anyway.
It’s all very overwhelming still. I found myself distraught tonight reading my book as the thunderclouds rolled in and the clouds began to cry with me. I watched a lizard climb across my green wall and thought of how I haven’t heard from Ben in days yet still dream of him every night. I think I’m in need of a hug or something. I guess I’ll keep on with my ambitious plans of learning to bike in a city with no real rules of the road, and pushing people to give me access to photograph abused prisoners… you know…
I wish I could put my dreams to use and start learning french while I sleep (and some kirundi beyond the strangely long word for key -urufurungunzo). If anyone has any suggestions on how to make that happen, send it my way.
