Kabobs and hungry hippos

So now continues my trip in Burundi, with only six days to go. We’ve now reached the 25th of February. It was a Sunday so went to a nice long service in Kirundi. It was translated into French for Bridget and I, English for Gunhild, Erik and Johannes which was nice but tiring because you have to be constantly concentrating and you lose something in the translation I think. Being Bujumbura it was also really hot and the guy translating would kind of lean in to be heard while trying not to talk to loudly which just made the heat worse. Being close to too many people is the last thing you want when its that hot out.

Anyway, we left church to eat and check out of our hotel before being picked up and taken 2 hours east into the hills to Gitega where we would be staying for the rest of the trip. One of the main purposes of the trip was the ‘Strategic Peacebuilding Seminar’ we were having in Gitega for our main country partners, Rwanda, Burundi, and North and South Kivu in DR Congo. We had Erik Cleven come from Norway to facilitate the three day seminar. We were being hosted by MiParec (Ministry and Reconciliation under the Cross?) one of our two partners in Burundi. They started around 1998 out of a group that had formed a peace committee in a nearby community. During the height of the crisis in 1995, MCC had a peace presence team in that community and out of it formed a peace committee that eventually became MiParec. On Monday we went to Mutaho to visit this first peace committee to hear more about what they’ve been doing and because Erik works in the post-conflict situations in the Balkans and was interested in how things were progressing in Burundi. They’ve actually become quite a model of peacebuilding in the country. With their success in mediating and reconciling different segments of the population in Burundi, demobilized, internally displaced, refugees, returnees and ex-prisoners, people in neighboring communities are now coming to them for help with their own issues. After meeting with members of the peace committee we got some lunch in the village, if you look closely at the picture you can take a guess at what we ate!

Tuesday was the start of the seminar and that’s basically what we did for the next 3 days. It was basically on how to develop a strategic plan for your vision and within the mandate you’ve chosen and then how to measure your success. Nothing too exciting happened other than near torrential rains a couple of the days which puts things on hold when you’ve got corrugated aluminium (I think) roofs and it becomes so loud you can’t hear the person talking next to you. It was also the first time I’ve felt cold since leaving home…I know that isn’t saying much and none of you feel the least bit sorry for me…to the point where I was wearing pants and a sweater most of the day.

The only thing notable about Friday, the day we left Burundi was the speed at which we got from Gitega to Bujumbura. The number of people travelling with us grew to the point where the vehicle we were supposed to use wasn’t big enough and in organizing for a second vehicle we were a little late leaving. Not late for our flight but late for Dieudonne who had to catch the bus to Kigali from a town half way between Gitega and Burundi. I won’t say how fast we were going, only that for that first hour I played a ridiculous game on my phone and sent a couple text messages to distract myself. The second hour was much more relaxed and we all made it safely.

After a 45 minute stop over in Kigali we got to Nairobi late in the afternoon. After two weeks of travelling it felt good to be back home, my African home that is. But my feeling of home only lasted for the night and by 8:00 the next morning I was in the back of a safari van headed to Lake Nakuru National Park with Erik and his son Johannes (14 years old…sorry for those of you who may have had other ideas) for the weekend. About two hours from Nairobi it’s one of a few salt water lakes in the country, formed (I think) when an earthquake millions of years ago tried to rip Africa in two and created the Rift Valley, part of the scar you can see running from Ethiopia to Mozambique. It was a nice and relaxing day and a half. We went on a game drive in the afternoon/evening and again the next morning before starting to head back. On the way we stopped at Lake Naivasha, a fresh water lake, where we took a one hour boat ‘safari’ to see some hippos. There’s also a small island with a bunch of animals that they used to film part of the movie ‘Out of Africa’. Being at eye level with the animals is quite the experience, especially when you get between a hippo and the open water he’d like to swim in. You’d think hippos are slow given how huge they are, but believe me they can move!

We got back to Nairobi in time to eat dinner at Carnivore with Bridget and her roommate Tina who organized the safari for us before Erik and Johannes had to catch their plane. Mmmm ostrich meatballs!

Here ends the excitement, now I need to sleep.