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…