July 7 The Lost Safari Locks in on Bujumbura

We’re settled in to the Pacific Hotel, this Graham Greene set piece that could be in Vientienne, Singapore, Ououagaduogu, or Victorian Sydney. We walk to the Greek owned Kapa Boulangerie and have bread and butter and coffee before going on to our training session. This will be an advanced session of previously trained mediators, much like the course I did in Kigali. Only this time I’m over my jet lag.

Phillip , one of my favorite mediators of all time is there as well as Josiah who participated in the monumental case of rape and land inheritance three years ago. Terrence who mediates land disputes between returning refugees and the current tenants of their abandoned lands is here, as well as a few new faces who received training from other folks. The church which was under construction when I was last here in 2009 is now complete and large, though still needing decoration inside. It is bare concrete. The office space on the second floor is not yet complete , but it has a nice openness and ambiance that comes from some carefully thoughout design. Pastor Elie who was formerly a civil engineer building bridges in the countryside was instrumental in the design. He says an architect gave him some help along the way, but it is basically his baby.

Pastor Elie is number two Quaker in the chain of church officials in Burundi. He also sits on the organizing committee that is planning for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will be active here for two years in 2012 and 2013. The model will be a modification of the South African Truth and Reconcilliation Commission inspired by Desmond Tutu. It needs little reminder here that protracted violence since independence in the early 1960’s has cost the country over 500,000 lives and resulted in thousands of citizens fleeing the country for over thirty years, forced to live in refugee camps in Tanzania and the Congo. These refugees are being forced out by the Tanzanians and the country is faced with stuffing these people somewhere in one of the most densely populated areas of Africa. It seems that mediation will become one of the tools that will make resettlement a practical solution.

We quickly review the process of transformative mediation focusing on deep listening , looking for opportunities to promote recognition and empowerment between the parties and inscribing an agreement if one occurs. Then we look at the future and the challenges facing us and what we outsiders can do to help. I suggest that our presence is much less important than it may have been a few years ago, but that our financial support may be more important now. These Quakers have done some incredible work in reconciliation already and in monitoring elections in places where there had been significant violence in the past. They politely disagree that outside intervention is not needed, that we should still return occasionally to work with them. I take that as kindness and respect more than actual need. I still want to be there with them, and I feel a deep link to them and their work. I’m here for hours at a time. They are here for the rest of their lives, and some of their days are very risky and dangerous. We conclude our training at 1:00PM on the second day July 8. At the end, they asked Gabrielle if she would like to make a speech. She had helped pass out certificates to the participants and had sat through the two days of adult conversations. She handled herself very well and with a lot of self confidence telling them someday she wants to be like them. I think they were quite moved as was I.. .

Two of the three evenings in Buj. we have supper on the shores of Lake Tanganyika at a beachfront restaurant. A family of hippos entertained us and some fishermen impress the hell out of us walking into the water near the hippos to place their nets then retreating and splashing the water to drive fish toward their nets.

We’re finally able to send a few messages via the internet to Marie who has gone to Halifax with Dominique’s younger daughter Anne Frederique. Our concern is that Anne Fred. might miss her mama and big sister a lot and be crying all the time. It appears it is not the case from the email we receive from Grandmaman. Soon they will be returning to Montreal by train and then driving to Dayton.



July 8 Finishing in Bujumbura and Adventure Shopping

After finishing our training we head for a high end tourist market to buy a few geegaws for friends and family. We skirt around the Central Market which can be rather intimidating with its hustle and bustle and swarms of pick pockets and thieves, beggars, and occasional revenge seekers. In 2007 after going through the market I read a section of newspaper that was used as wrapping paper for one of my purchases. It recounted a story of someone tossing a hand grenade in that market a month earlier resulting is several deaths and maimings.

We find a few things at the tourist market but really want to buy some Congolese cloth at local prices, not that of the tourist stores in the area. In a small grocery store run by a Greek lady we bemoan our plight and she provides us with some useful info about how to do what we want to do. First she advises us to leave our cameras, wristwatches, surplus money and backpacks with her. “I’ll put them in my safe. Then you must go with my employee. He’ll take you to the right place in the market and help you negotiate. But you must hurry as the market closes in 30 minutes. Cyriaque will show you the way.”

The market is a large building somewhat open air with very high ceilings and just crowded with people selling all sorts of goods from food sold by women sitting on the ground with baskets and neat stacks of produce that a pedestrian must be careful not to step on. Getting pushed by other shoppers can make walking in that area precarious. We followed Cyriaque in a tight file and weave our way through more affluent merchants with stalls stacked fifteen feet high with hardware, tools, pots, all the while stepping over beggars and crippled children placed on the ground in the most congested of areas where other children or adults watch over the money that might be dropped on the ground beside one of these diseased and wounded individuals. In the past I saw a man there with both hands cut off and when the skin healed it had retracted leaving several inches of bone exposed. He was not there on this day, but a hydrocephalic child was lying on a blanket on the ground motionless with a bowl beside it. Most of the time we were already beyond one of these poor souls before we even realized what we had just seen. We had no idea if there was any form of social services to look after them or whether this was an industry of exploitation such as portrayed in “Slumdog Millionaire”.

Without Cyriaque leading the way, we would have been swimming in a shark tank. Dominique found what she was hoping to find at a good price. Walking out of the market we came to a place where all the wet refuse and rotting produce was piled and being shoveled into a western style garbage truck. Gabrielle later said she stopped breathing at that point. We got back to the Greek lady’s store and she got our things out of a huge walk in safe and wished us a safe journey. From there we walked a few hundred yards more down the street which with the humanity around us seemed like several miles before we took a taxi down to the lakeside restaurant where we had eaten the previous night. I think we all took a deep breath when we got there realizing that only a few scraps of paper with numbers printed on them were the difference between living on a level of barely surviving to the one of luxury that we are privileged to enjoy.


July 9 Bujumbura The Lost Safari Encounters the Saturday Morning Cleanup

We bought bus tickets for 11:00AM and hire a taxi to take us to the terminus at 10:00. We learn that you can’t get a taxi before 10:30, because every Saturday Burundi citizens are expected to clean up their neighborhoods, so almost nothing is allowed to open before 10:30. Only the Kapa Boulangerie has a dispensation to open in the morning, and they have to close at noon. So not wanting to miss our bus we find a taxi parked in a gas station and hire him to take us to the terminal. It’s 10:15, and he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get there which makes for some nervosity on our part. He explains to us that there will be a roadblock soon that will require that he pull over and park until 10:30 when the roadblock will then be lifted. The bus departures are all scheduled to allow everyone around the city to make their departure time after the green flag drops. We get to our bus with a few minutes to spare, but so does everyone else. We must also present our passports to an internal security office before being allowed on the bus. All this because of the threat of al-Shabab in Somalia.

Our driver has a wreck in the first two hundred meters of the trip. This on the most exclusive bus service available, Belvedere. He tries to make a third lane of traffic where there is only room for two and ends up scraping another vehicle. This retards our departure for 30 minutes while matters are discussed and settled. I don’t feel like mediating with this idiot being one of the participants. Our opinion of him and his driving will deteriorate as the day goes by. He drives with reckless abandon through the mountains not slowing through villages where there are large numbers of children and pedestrians. Finally he is slowed by the Rwandans when we cross the border and it turns out he can’t produce an insurance card. That gets sorted out but when we drive through Rwanda to Kigali, he drives with extreme caution and the rules are probably much more aggressively enforced in Rwanda. We finally arrive safely in Kigali and head to the Quaker church in Kicukiro where we spend the night.

July 10
The Lost Safari Member Celebrates his 41st Anniversary Sans Spouse

We attend the Quaker service in English and learn that three people are celebrating wedding anniversaries and Dominique reminds me that this is my 41st. We are scheduled to meet Fr. Pascal Tuyisenge who is participating in Project Congo which I belong to in Dayton. I trained him in mediation two years ago in Kidaho up on the Ugandan border. He also visited Dayton this past year and we spent some time together at my workplace. This time I will train some of his parish leaders in mediation as he has found the process quite useful in his work. His parish has 11,500 members and is about an hour outside of Kigali in a village called Muhondo. It’s 11 KM off the main road and necessitates going down into a steep narrow valley and up another hill to get to the church. We travel there in the evening and don’t see the scenery very clearly but the grade of the road and the switchbacks tell us we are going down one steep long hill. We are greeted by anther priest Fr. Gandiose and three seminarians, one of whom only arrived the day before us. Also present is Jean Marie Uwitonze who works at Famly of Peace in Butare, the university town. Evelyn accompanies us from Kigali as well. She is a recent agronomy graduate and supervises some of the ag projects that Project Congo and HIP (High Impact Projects) are funding. Before getting to Muhondo we stop for beer and brochettes of goat meat which are very tasty and which Gabrielle seems to enjoy. We also have a late supper on top of the brochettes.


July 11 Muhondo on the Half Shell

We are up by 7:00. Fr. Pascal had already said mass at 6:15. I make preparations to start the three day training at 8:00 knowing full well we won’t begin before 9:00. Eugene Twizerimana is suppose to co facilitate with me. We’ve been friends from the first day I was here in 2007. Back then Eugene met me and took me by bus to Gisenyi where he facilitated a Quaker Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshop. He was so competent in that work and is also that way with mediation training. If there is a Rwandan who understands the process it is Eugene. Together we co-mediated an epic 7 hour mediation between two Methodist pastors in Byumba where there had been some serious squabbling resulting in a church splitting in two.

We know and like each other’s style. He arrives by bus from Kigali. I will teach in French and Eugene teaches in Kinyarwanda. Everyone is interested in this granddaughter of mine, Gabrielle, and call her Gabby. They find it unusual that a grandpa, daughter and granddaughter are travelling together.

We begin our class and are quickly joined by a schizophrenic woman who stirs up the class, but we stay calm and the participants redirect her although she comes back into the classroom many times in the next three days. She is part of the village and therefore accepted. Gabrielle stays calm in the face of this as the lady does get very disruptive. I’m constantly proud of her. Dominique really participates very actively in the class and helps translate some phrases into English for me when I’m confused. We finish at 3:30 including an hour pause for a huge lunch. Pascal has plans and take us and the other guests to the parish of Rwakuba about 45 minutes distant from here. I chat with some of the secondary students finding a few who speak English quite well. The best English speaker is named Mediatrice, and she wants to be a nurse. Wish we had more time to talk with her but we’re called to drink beer with the Fathers and the children must get into their study hour. Dominique is very funny with a bit of beer in her. Eventually the host father politely suggests that it might be time for us to begin our journey back to Muhondo and she says in French, “Oh, you’re sending us out the door. “ Alors vous nous mettez a la porte”.

July 12 Tuesday
Same routine on the second day and the crazy woman is in and out of our class, we make progress with our students and they begin doing practice mediations in front of the class using varying situations in a Rwandan setting. We put out subtle messages that maybe some of the braver students might want try to do a real case on the third day. After the class, Fr. Pascal drives us to another parish, Rulindo, the oldest around here founded in 1909 by German White Fathers in 1909 when the area was under German colonial administration. This mission at the top of a small hill overlooking a valley is quite beautiful and extensive. The cathedral can hold several thousand people. They have three business enterprises, one a dairy where milk is marketed and butter and cheese are produced and sold. The second is an apiary which produces and bottles honey. A side order product is alcohol fermented from honey which Father Honesphore proudly shares with us. It is strong, sweet and quite drinkable. After our tour, we drive back down the hill to the third enterprise, the Rulindo Centenary Bar. It was built as part of their 100th anniversary in 2009. Bottles of varying types of drink are served including Waragi a gin from Uganda which Fr. Honesphere is quite fond of. Soon very good brochettes of goat and tasty grilled potatoes in thick slices appear.

This is more than filling, but we know when we drive back to Muhondo there will be another big meal for us , served with some type of stewed meat, sauce, beans, pasta, cooked bananas, and perhaps rice along with plenty of beer and Fanta. The presence of alcohol in Catholic lives is one of the major differences between the evangelicals and the catholics The fondness for two big evening meals is also somewhat common but less so with the evangelicals as they are not in the habit of drinking when the sun goes down at 6:00PM. It’s amazing we are able to sleep after all that eating although we seem to eat more moderately than do our hosts. I also know that the average family will not eat like this. We are living in privilege while here.