Vagabond

by Mogoatlhe, Lerato

  XX

  SMALL COUNTRY, BIG HEART

  September 2012

  MY HIGH AND PRIDE at being the only African journalist actively writing against homophobia in Uganda at the moment and being the official photographer at the historic Pride Uganda keep me going in Johannesburg. My sleep is still restless but I don’t have my dreams any more, even though my guilt has become my second skin.

  I decide to get back on the road in October, starting in Burundi. My fascination with the country turns into an obsession when a friend whose journeys around Africa fuel my wanderlust, Thapelo, beguiles Mahlatse and me with tales of his adventures in Bujumbura. I leave on a one-way ticket to Kigali.

  South Africa is one of the worst places in Africa to organise travel administration. Burundi doesn’t offer visas on arrival and the US$90 fee is only payable in American currency. It means going to the bank with paperwork I don’t have as I haven’t applied for a visa and I won’t book my flight without it. Exchanging currency in Kigali and many other places I have been to around Africa is as easy as walking into a Forex bureau; no questions, no paperwork, no hassles. My two days in Kigali are fun, and I even enjoy myself on a night out at Hotel Mille Collines, the setting of Hotel Rwanda. The South African embassy has put on an exhibition of women who fought in the struggle against apartheid. The live band put on renditions of Khadja Nin, Brenda Fassie, Lucky Dube and Mafikizolo; keeping me on my feet all night. I start warming to Kigali, even though I still find it sterile. I leave for Bujumbura a day after getting my visa.

  I know I’ll love Burundi at Kanyaza border, when I see a life-size cutout of a traditional drummer and his ngoma. Like the picture I find on Google, he’s wearing red and white robes. In my picture, a dancer’s body is curled high in the air in front of a semi-circle of drummers. It makes me want to feel the vibration of the beat that turns a man into a bird. I act like a child looking for approval, telling the uniforms and everyone within earshot how happy I am to be in their country. When a uniform asks if he can search my bags, I open them and ask him to get on with his job while I take pictures of the cutout of the drummer.

  A uniform at a roadblock smiles sweetly when I tell him that I’m too lazy to open my bags. ‘I don’t mean to disrespect you, but I really am not in the mood to unpack,’ I tell him. ‘Welcome to Burundi, sister,’ he says, ‘You are going to love it.’

  There is nothing not to love about Burundi. The seven-hour trip from the border to Bujumbura goes through villages and towns that are surrounded by mountains and hills that come in every shade of green. Banana trees lean into the road and when one of us buys fruit, grilled mealies or brochette, we get enough to share with people in the seats around us. It’s impossible to drive a few kilometres without seeing the national flag waving from poles made with sticks. When we stop to load and off-load people, young boys selling bunches of onions and carrots, beef kebabs and roasted corn stick their hands into the minibus.

  Rural Burundi bursts with colour; fields have autumn shades, people walk with umbrellas and all of them are red, green, blue and yellow; old women wrap their hips in pagne with neon red, green and orange prints. Long walls and the fronts of small shops are painted with the signature bright red of Leo mobile network. Leo is the Swahili word for today. Once in a while, we stop at road blocks where uniforms mostly start a short, laughter-filled conversation with our driver before circling the minibus and waving us off. When they do step inside the minibus, it’s to greet us and wish us ‘safari njema’. It’s always said with wide smiles, and they wave at us until they disappear from view.

  I’m the only foreigner in the minibus, and everyone wants to know what I’m doing in Burundi. When the driver sees me dancing in my seat when he plays Lucky Dube’s ‘Together as One’, he wants to know if it’s my favourite song. ‘I love all his songs,’ I say to high fives. The driver plays the Best of Lucky Dube CD. Someone else wants to know what we eat in South Africa and recommends local dishes to try. ‘Start with ndagala,’ someone says. ‘No, no, no,’ someone adds, ‘Try mukeke first.’ They also want my phone number. I don’t have a local SIM card yet. They write their numbers and home addresses in my note book. ‘You’re welcome to stay with my family,’ they all assure me. When we get close to Bujumbura, a girl who has been quiet since coming in asks me if I have a hotel, and insists that I come to her house until I tell her that I have friends I met at Couch Surfing and that a Kenyan friend I met on Twitter, Timothy, is expecting me. I outsource looking for accommodation to Timothy.

  Winding down the hills, boys on bicycles hitch rides on trucks by holding onto their bumpers. With the thick, grey rain clouds, green forests and mountains that wrap themselves around the horizon Bujumbura is breathtaking. The city is covered in mist and smoke, and all I can see is its flat zinc roofs, a grey Lake Tanganyika and the mountains beyond it, in the DRC. Bujumbura has indigo hills with jagged tops that are shrouded by tumbling grey clouds.

  As a destination, Buja, as its people call it, almost doesn’t stand a chance of getting attention, bordered as it is by Tanzania which has the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater and Mount Kilimanjaro among a long list of other destinations; Rwanda and DRC which have the Virunga mountain and its populations of the only mountain gorillas in the world, which are also found in Uganda. The only thing Burundi has at the moment is a travel advisory, warning tourists to stay away or visit at own risk.

  When we get to the bus station that connects Bujumbura to the rest of the country, as well as Uganda, Rwanda, DRC and Tanzania, the driver asks me to stick around. He doesn’t want the taxi drivers that are already waiting outside the door to overcharge me for the trip to the city centre.

  ‘We love visitors, but cab drivers will always try to rip you off if you don’t know the city,’ he says. I expect him to find me a cab. Instead, he takes me to a room at the corner of the compound, where passengers register their names and passport numbers to confirm our safe arrival. He gives me a lift to Club Havana, where he waits with me until Timothy and his friend Anthony show up. They’ve taken the afternoon off work to help me settle in. This only happens eight hours after my arrival. We walk across Boulevard de l’Uprona, into a shopping complex with a supermarket, a restaurant that turns into a club at night and a pharmacy. Every third shop in Buja is a pharmacy.

  We go into a salon and barbershop for me to meet Veronica and Martin and ask them to look after my bags. Timothy hasn’t found a hotel yet. ‘It’s not like finding one will be difficult in Burundi,’ he assures me. We spend the afternoon out on a Primus beer-drenched lunch of brochette and chips at a run-down local joint with a one-room restaurant crammed with three tables and and a fridge. We sit on plastic chairs in the courtyard they share with a mechanic. We go on a joyride around the city afterwards.

  The magic of travelling Africa is always on cue. On my first night, it happens when the driver plays ‘Mapenzi’ by Kidum and ‘Sambolera Mayi Son’ by Khadja Nin; one of my favourite love songs and a song that I used to sing along to wholeheartedly when I was kid, not knowing that Africa was putting itself in my heart in ways that will make me want to know my continent like the back of my hand. Kidum lives in Nairobi and Khadja Nin in Belgium. Their music is my first encounter with their homeland.

  There’s interrupted development and then there’s Bujumbura. My first three days in town are a test of endurance. The incessant rain turns me into a prisoner in my hotel room. It has thin walls that let in conversations from other rooms and the sound of grinding steel from the welders next door. Our street, Kanyosha Road, runs over with mud, turning walking into a balancing act of avoiding slipping while walking in such a way that water doesn’t get into my shoes. The power cuts drive me nuts. We have five on my first day, three on day two, and six that last between thirty minutes to an hour on day three. There are multiple power cuts every day in the two months I spend in the country. When the power is on long enough for me to work, the internet connection is slow, Skyping is impossible and phone calls have stati
c.

  There is also the money situation, with only two ATMs that are on the Visa and Mastercard network. They don’t work on the first few times I go there. Luckily, in a rare display of being organised, I have dollars and francs to tide me over for a week. My arrival coincides with the Tabaski, which celebrates the sacrifice Ibrahim offers to Allah when he obeys the instruction to offer his only son Ismail’s life as the ultimate sacrifice. Their generosity and hospitality is a Burundian trait that endears me to their country.

  Timothy and Anthony’s colleague, Hassan, has invited them over for lunch. I tag along to his house on a street that’s getting electric poles. Furrows have been dug out, and the soil has turned into thick slush that keeps tugging at our shoes when we walk. The dark grey clouds are still pouring rain.

  When we get to the house, our host offers me water to wash the mud off my feet and shoes. Hassan and his wife Fareeda have slaughtered two sheep for friends and neighbours who visit in trickles throughout the afternoon. We eat the lamb with spicy white rice. The rain makes our visit long, and I start feeling cold. Fareeda tells me to move to their bedroom when I fall asleep on the couch.

  Before coming to Burundi, I ask friends who’ve been here to connect me to their networks in the city. Lupi, who has been keeping up with my travels on his radio show and off air, introduces me to his friend Christine, a Burundian who lives in Joburg. She hasn’t lived in Bujumbura for years, but she knows people in her circle who have moved back home. One of them is Martin. We meet at Aroma café, where the crowd is a mix of middle-class locals, expats and aid workers. Everyone sits behind their laptops in the morning to enjoy the only source I know of an internet connection that doesn’t take fifteen minutes and three attempts to attach a Word document.

  When I tell Martin that I’m looking for a house on the beach, he says it doesn’t matter where in the city I stay, I will not be more than fifteen minutes away from the shores of Lake Tanganyika. I leave Aroma with Mike’s number, and meet him at my hotel the following afternoon when he comes to take me to my new home. There’s just one problem: I still haven’t figured out how to get money without involving Western Union’s downright criminal transfer costs. He says rent will come when it does, and takes me to a lovely corner house next door to the Egyptian embassy on Nzero Avenue, where the gate is opened by one of two guards who are posted here day and night.

  The front yard has a gazebo at the corner. The backyard has a guards’ room and weeds that grow faster than anyone can pull them out. It’s been raining once or twice a day in drizzles or downpours. The three-bedroom house belongs to Mike’s friend and his aid worker girlfriend who is home in Europe to give birth. They share the house with Christian, a student from Kinshasa. His brother and cousin also live in the city. The sink in the kitchen has piles of dirty dishes and pots that someone has to wash because, looking at the dark wooden table that seats six in the dining room, Christian, his family, Tim and Anthony are going to be my lunch guests when I cook the seven-colour lunch I have been missing. Christian smiles when I tell him to save a date. Little does he know that nine out of ten times, my cooking belongs in the trash can. The watchmen are Joseph and Jean.

  Joseph catches me near tears three days after moving in.

  I haven’t seen a laundromat and, unlike at the hotel, where I had the guard on laundry duty as well, I feel bad asking Joseph to wash my clothes. They are security, not domestic staff. Well, Joseph finds me cursing as I sort through my clothes, trying to figure out which ones will be clean after a dip in the water.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ he asks. ‘Wallahi, Joseph. I swear to Allah that He didn’t make these hands for hard labour,’ I moan. He offers to do my laundry.

  ‘Mashallah,’ I declare, before adding, ‘The dishes are dirty as well. Actually, do you mind taking care of the house and my laundry? I’ll pay you.’

  Add Mike and Christian, and his brother as my occasional chauffeurs, and life is somewhat colonial.

  On afternoons when I’m home instead of at the swimming pool, or out of the city, I sit on the porch in the backyard, listening to chirping birds as they settle back in their nests. A cup of tea in hand, I close my eyes and shut out the sound of traffic until I find the sound of drums beating across the neighbourhood.

  My wake up call is the call to prayer; I feel at home in Buja.

  Mike’s a hot dude about town. He’s tall and lean with a complexion that looks like brown milk chocolate. He likes running his beautiful, long hands through his thick shoulder-length locks. His smile makes girls swoon over him when we walk into clubs. His swag makes dudes buy us beers as a passport to hang out, and be cool by association. Barmen make our doubles stronger and offer tequila shots on the house.

  My Friday evenings in Bujumbura start with a boda boda ride to Bora Bora beach and Saga Plage. It’s the rainy season and, even though the sun comes out, the weather is mostly overcast and sunsets are never bright and fiery, so the lake looks as blue as the mountains. It adds an air of mysticism that keeps me coming back to the lake’s shore.

  In these moments, the soccer games and laughter from the restaurants quieten – or maybe I block them out – and being here feels like a spiritual encounter. I now understand people who are drawn to mountains.

  I’m walking along the beach when a man I don’t know runs towards me with arms stretched out for an embrace we fall into, and hold onto for a long time. I have been here long enough to know that affection is the people’s life blood. His name is Dudu. He’s here with his girlfriend, Linda, and his best buddy Jimmy. It comes up in getting to know each other that Jimmy is travelling to Ngozi in the northern part of the country in two days. He wants me to come along.

  We’re in Ngozi to witness the biggest dream of Jimmy’s life coming true. Along with several childhood friends, he is turning an old house into Hope Restaurant. More than getting a slice of the booming hospitality industry in President Pierre Nkurunziza’s home town, Hope has moral significance. Between the effects of HIV and a civil war that raged for twelve years, Burundi is home to thousands of orphaned children who Jimmy believes he needs to account for by giving them a shot at a future that’s brighter than their current poverty and helplessness. The way Jimmy sees it, after turning them into chefs and equipping them with business skills they learn in the afternoon, the children will be able to use cooking to get more than jobs.

  ‘They can work anywhere in the world.’

  He is speaking from experience. When he was looking for a new start in Europe to escape the war at home, he became a cook. It’s given him a house in Bujumbura and his dream car. For now, the restaurant is an idea that’s taking shape.

  Jimmy normally walks like a tortoise. He’s restless on our morning visit to the house that’s becoming Hope Restaurant. He moves between the six rooms, issuing instructions to builders and engineers. He goes to the backyard with the architect, Emile, and draws invisible lines to show him where he wants the ‘modern kitchen’ to go.

  ‘We are going to offer world-class service,’ he tells Emile.

  A group of old women in fading pagne dresses sit under a tree. Put them on a street corner, and they’ll pass for the old women who beg around Buja. They’re here to remove weeds and turn the space into vegetable gardens. The restaurant will buy their produce from them. There’s a lot of land in the yard, and there will be more produce than Hope can use in a day. The rest of it will be sold at the market and other restaurants. Jimmy is making sure than no one is left behind.

  He chooses Ngozi because he spent his school days here at his grandmother’s house and it’s also a stop-over for trucks that move fuel and other goods between Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. In the Kigarama quarter, where the dream is taking shape, there are hotels from the top of the main street to the market, about four kilometres away. The hotels have names like Jambo, Belvedere, Just, Come Again, Star and La Residence. Jimmy isn’t worried about competition.

  ‘People in the hospitality industry don�
�t understand service,’ he says impatiently over lunch at Star Hotel’s restaurant. The rice is undercooked, the meat in the stew is tough, and overcooked vegetables turn into mush when my fork touches them.

  ‘Burundians are hospitable but we don’t know how to apply it professionally. Our restaurant is going to change it all.’

  At the house that afternoon, the lounge is filled with plastic chairs and teenagers armed with yellow notebooks. Their eyes are glued to Jean Baptista Ciza as he plasters the wall with notes on cooking spaghetti bolognaise; the dish features on many menus in Burundi. There are notes on seasoning, working with and taking care of kitchen equipment, cooking plain rice and pillau, how to cook vegetables properly. The set up is informal but everyone is giving their full attention to the chef.

  Like it is for Jimmy, cooking is Jean Baptista’s passport. He trained in Doula, Cameroon, where he received his chef’s certificate in 2000 before working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Gabon and Tanzania. He gets paid a ‘modest salary’, but there’s nothing he’d rather do.

  ‘I get my satisfaction from doing something good. I want to be able to help them with skills that give them a better future. It’s a noble dream but it will come true. These young people are getting skills they can sell in their communities and around East and Central Africa. This is going to change their lives forever,’ he tells me.

  Training to work in the hospitality industry is one aspect of the project. Jimmy’s team includes a social psychologist called Cynthia Ndayisaba and her assistant counsellor, Nadine Niyonizigiye, who also runs the two houses where the students live.

  There’s also Eddy Ndingani, who teaches professional skills like writing business letters, proposals and winning professional CVs. Eddy’s role is to make sure that, once graduated, the students will be able to look for work anywhere they want to because their free training and accommodation comes with no strings attached. Jimmy and his associates spread the word about the project at churches, mosques and by word of mouth in Ngozi and surrounding areas to find trainees. They’re between fifteen and twenty years old. They all have one thing in common: The trauma of seeing their parents die from AIDS or in the civil war, and the violence of their poverty. This is why the programme includes group therapy, individual counselling and life skills classes. They don’t want to dictate terms to the trainees, but they hope that some, if not all of them, will go back to school. If they want to, they will be funded, just like graduates who want to open businesses instead of becoming employees.