Into Burundi

Most of the upper management from our clinic came to pick Joey and I up from our bus in Bujumbura. Everyone was super excited to see Joey back and to meet another muzungu (white person) from Seattle. The Northwest representation is now rollin’ two deep in Burundi; I’ll feel like we’ve left our mark once I dish out the Seattle t-shirts and hats I brought for the medical staff and villagers in Kigutu.

Peter, Honare, Molino, Jotham, Elvis, and Everest hopped out of the Land Rover VHW ambulance with big smiles on their faces. It was a trip to meet these guys after hearing about them from Joey all year long. Let the language barriers begin. I did the best I could to show them how excited and honored I was to be joining them. Some of them speak English pretty well; I caught up with their accents on the drive to Kigutu.

Wow, Burundi is very different than Rwanda! This place makes Rwanda look like Club Med. The housing is more shotty, the clothes are more worn, the Western-influenced saleable goods and advertisements are few and far between, English is virtually nonexistent. But the people are beautiful! I swear, 99% of the general public down here could make good careers as supermodels in The States if they were well nourished and wearing different clothes. Art in human form. Everyone has a gigantic smile in them; sometimes offered immediately, sometimes upon acknowledgement.

I can’t imagine the stories these people could tell. If you have never learned about the history of this country, Chretien, by Jean-Pierre, is apparently the most thorough and truthful source. It was written in 1984; you can apply what you’ve heard about the Rwandan genocide to Burundi’s history since then (less the media coverage). Without going into the sickening atrocities most of these people have endured in their lives…the quality of life they are living today is beyond anything I can imagine experiencing myself. Picture the lowest quality of life you’ve seen in the news or in a documentary film. Think of the indigenous people, rich in genuine culture, shown in National Geographic. Then imagine them after multiple slash and burn, genocidal wars fought between neighbors with Machetes and AK-47s. Imagine the survivors in torn, mud-stained, Chinese-manufactured clothes they have been wearing for months. Mothers average seven children. Most eat one meal a day. How does a family of eight fit in that eighty square-foot mud hut when they sleep at night?

My bed in my room on Bainbridge Island is well over half that size. I’m wearing a Patagucci shirt that cost half a year’s pay to one of these people. I don’t know anything about poverty.

It’s overwhelming to think about how many people there are in the world who live in poverty. Driving through Burundi, it’s easy to recognize the fact that there are more people than I can help. I sleep better (in my big bed) knowing I try to help some. I don’t know which should outweigh the other: Serenity in knowing I do try, or the helplessness in knowing all I can do is try.

I think I'm a little bit in shock.

More later.