I have arrived in Congo! We left Burundi about 12:00pm Friday and spent 4 hot, sweaty hours driving through Burundi, into Rwanda briefly and then arrived Bukavu,DRC. The drive was indeed hot and it was amazing. I saw true Africa today. Here are some of the notes I took on my phone of all that I saw:
Women with huge loads of everything on their heads - water, stalks, vegetables. Sometimes walking with their daughters who are still learning to carry this way and have to hold the parcels with one hand.
Men on bikes with 4-5 HUGE bundles of empty plastic water bottles.
Lots and lots of young men hanging out along the road in Burundi
Shanties and a prison
Nissan dealership?
Groups of kids all working together repairing their bikes
Small roadside stands selling root vegetables a few other things
Brick making "factories" - hand-made bricks coming from a hand-made brick oven
Got further and further away from the city of Bujumbura...more remote...people everywhere farming in the fields...for as far as the eye can see. Where do they live?
Later come across Burundian "tract housing". I have a video to show you. Hand-made brick house with a roof and window openings. Off the grid completely. Most are empty.
As we get closer to Rwanda the road gets much better, there is a gas station, bank, church.
Fun story: our convoy stopped to buy fruit from some women selling along the road that Christine supports often. I really had to pee. My driver asked a local woman. She lead me deep into their living compound to the pit toilet. A brick closet with a tin door. On the floor a piece of corrugated tin with a hole in it. She even brought me a bottle of water for cleaning up (as there is no toilet paper). She couldn't speak any french. The small children were terrified of me...running away crying. The women loved it...waving to and smiling at me. Men singing while working. Baby goats with umbilical cord still hanging, pigs, baby chicks,
Long wait at the Rwandan border. Hot and sweaty. Non-threatening...just waiting b/c one of group had a prob with his visa. Then up up into the Rwandan mountains. So incredibly lush. Beautiful roads, prosperous farms, obvious higher quality of life here. The US and other western countries have poured incredible amounts of money into Rwanda since the genocide to assuage their guilt for not intervening during the genocide. The infrastructure here is astounding. Power lines, gas stations, banks...
Lovely rain as we head higher and higher. It cools off nicely. At the top is the Congo border. Many Congolese come into Rwanda every day to buy vegetables b/c they are all displaced and no longer have land of their own to grow their food. Many live along the roads in Congo. The border crossing is again a bit slow due to another visa problem but non-threatening.
The difference btw Rwanda and Congo is almost to much to believe. The roads are barely passable. People everywhere in the roads - women hauling incredibly heavy loads on their heads and backs, people with disabilities in hand-made wheeled carts that you "pedal" with your hands. Huge houses abandoned on the hillsides never finished...people with money who either ran out of money or who fled during the war.
The settting of Bukavu is absolutely stunning. It looks like northern Italy if you're just looking out at the mountains over the lake. Hard to rectify it with everything else around me. I have seen very little of Bukavu so far. I know I am in store for witnessing a great deal of suffering and raw humanity. 800,000 people used to live here. There area now over 2.5 million with no infrastructure and no where to go.
Tomorrow is a down day. We are going to a nearby wild area to trek for gorillas. Christine's (director of COJ) was hugely involved with conservation and the gorillas before he died. Her husband has carried on that role. Monday we go to City of Joy. Can't wait to meet and dance with the women and give them the bowls.!
I will work on posting some photos tomorrow. I am very, very tired at the moment. Sleep time for me.
lots of love, ME
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