Had a nice, relaxing dinner last night, where I tried a traditional East African staple dish and got gently drunk on locally-brewed draught in the soft, warm darkness set against a backdrop of African pop beats. Not a bad evening.

The dish that I had is called ubugari in Burundi, though it is apparently very common throughout the region, and likely has many names (for instance, I believe Ugandans Tanzanians simply call it gari ‘gali’). It is dirt simple, essentially just partially cooked dough made from wheat, maize, or cassava flour. I tried wheat and cassava, and the difference is quite distinctive. Like Ethiopian food, you eat ubugari with your hands, and it is very much about the experience - eating and sharing it with others. Grab a chunk from the communal mound of ubugari, squeeze a ball out the top of your fist (a trick to get more for yourself when you’re eating it with the family - if it’s in your fist, it’s not in the middle!), dip it in your spreads, and bite it off. To dip, we had a paste made with lenga lenga (similar to spinach), and a dish with tender beef in sauce. And of course, the ubiquitous African pili pili, by far the spiciest hot sauce I have ever eaten. A little goes a long way.

It’s very filling, and sits like a rock in your stomach, but is tasty, simple, and satisfying. And most importantly, different than anything else I’ve had before. Beats brochettes and frites all the time, that’s for sure.

So my co-worker has finally arrived in town, which has given me a little bit more to occupy my time with. Yesterday we drove up-country a little bit (not too far – still definitely within Bujumbura, but enough to get a better perspective of the city) and the scenery is just breathtaking. Lush hills, and plunging valleys to the east, and the city and Lake Tanganyika to the west. I was able to finagle my way into climbing up a soaring church bell-tower at the Kiriri university campus, so the view was absolutely stunning – I should be able to put together some amazing panaromas when I get home. I would upload a few of the snaps I’ve taken (they’re mostly just boring landscapes, but it’s still new to me, so at least I find them impressive), but the server software is a bit glitched out at the moment. They’ll be up at some point.

I met some friendly 30-something Kenyans in the hotel last night, and they paid for my night out with them (at Archipel, again) which was an unexpected treat. Their philosophy – which is pretty solid, as far as I’m concerned – seemed to be that they worked hard so that they could afford to go out and spend a bit to make new friends, relax, and make merry. Also, apparently, so that they can pay for the (ahem) company of women while on business trips in foreign countries. So it goes.

‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ is finished (and just as great as I remembered, rekindling my interest in philosophy) less than two weeks into my trip. Maybe I’ll try and see if Michel is willing to trade me something in his library for it. I’ll have to look up the sequel, ‘Lila’ when I get back to Canada.

A few days ago I realized that if I was going to have downtime, it might as well be productive (and take advantage of having an expensive room with internet, since I’m paying for it), so I decided to finish work on an online bicycle design competition that I hadn’t been able to finish while I was in Toronto. Good god, never in my life have I realized how much I take having a mouse (let alone my tablet PC!) for granted before now. I had to sketch out my design on the few pieces of paper that I had with me (hammering out my final design on the backs of receipts!), render them with the one marker that I brought, digitally photograph them, colour-correct, manipulate and compile them all into my layout using GIMP (like an open-source, but inferior, version of Photoshop that runs on Linux), on my tiny netbook using it’s tiny screen and tiny trackpad. Guh. But it is done, and I’m glad to have done it. I’ll post my design up on ye olde sister site in a little while.

One of the other advantages of having my co-worker in town is that he seems to know absolutely everyone in Bujumbura, and it looks like he may be able to hook me up with one of the big, new telecom companies in town to do some animated web adverts and earn some spare cash while I’m in town. If I’m sticking around here anyways, it would be nice to at least be able to pay off a few of these hotel bills, so here’s hoping. Unexpected twists abound, it seems.

Another day, lazier than the last. Lazier, but more fulfilling, perhaps because I’ve embraced the laziness. At least for today, I’ve gotten over the notion that I need to be cramming as much time “traveling,” as long as I’m enjoying myself. The afternoon has been downright placid. The electricity has been out all day, so I can’t waste time on the internet, and the weather is cooler than usual, so while it’s still sticky, it’s not uncomfortable to just sit outside, which is what I’ve been doing. Reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and getting through it far too quickly. My current philosophical bent is undoubtedly partly a product of the book, with its semi-abstract intellectualism and musings on Quality, and its utterly simple, yet somehow still compelling, narrative. It’s just the kind of book to curl up with in a chair (I double-stacked it with the cushions from the the other one, so I can slouch) on the balcony, occasionally staring at the rolling hills, east in the not-so-distant distance. They’re the kind of hills you could use to teach an art student the definition of “atmospheric perspective,” losing their detail and becoming lighter and bluer as far as the eye can see, until they’re barely discernible from the sky.

Went and changed some dollars into Francs this morning, and then had a grilled cheese, some pomme frites, and a Coke in a glass bottle. Wandering back, a couple of punk kids actually did manage to grab something from my pocket (have to remember those buttons), but it was just the cheap little wallet Michel gave me to hold all the SIM cards I would be accumulating over my trip. And when I made a bit of a scene of things, a few of the locals on the street got together and made him give it back to me. I hope there wasn’t any mob justice retribution against him beyond that – it was barely worth anything, and the only real reason to be upset would be that it reinforces my mzungu vulnerability to me a bit. Nothing worth dwelling on.

I’m not sure whether it’s the climate, the new environment, the chance to be alone with my thoughts all the time, or the fact that I’m getting a lot of sleep these days, but I’ve been having quite vivid dreams of late, and I like it. Who needs Lariam when you’ve got downtime?

I might see if I can try and find a travel agency to take me up-country for some sightseeing, but I’m not sure how my luck will be. And if there is any guiding to the tour, it would undoubtedly be in French, which doesn’t especially interest me – it’s mentally draining to have to be always “on” trying to decipher what people are saying and communicating in my atrocious, broken French. Without any sort of reference to help me out, I’ve reached a bit of a plateau in terms of speaking from what I remember. So it goes. The geography in Burundi is very similar to Rwanda, so I may wait until I start traveling in earnest to do the most tourist-y activities.

In other news, it’s only been a week, and I already miss both cooking and death metal.

If this morning is any indication, it seems that Burundians value their fitness quite highly. I managed to drag myself out of bed just after dawn this morning (probably the earliest I have ever done voluntarily), and there were hundreds of joggers around the city taking to the streets. It may have been a special event, since I walked down to the lake, and noticed that many of the joggers seemed to be ending up at a huge congregation in the port area, off in the distance. People were in the gutters washing their laundry, in the fields playing footpall, or on the courts playing basketball – all scarcely an hour after sun-up. (Maybe this happens in Toronto, too, I’m just never up early enough to notice it.) Interestingly, cycling looks to be almost purely a utilitarian phenomenon around here (which may make sense, since the heavy, single-speed WWI-era “Roadster” bikes don’t seem like they’d be especially fun to ride for recreation – though you’d definitely get fit). Suffice it to say, though, after my morning constitutional with nothing else really on the agenda for the day, I decided to do as the locals do and take a siesta to skip some of the mid-day heat.

On the flip-side of fitness, however, Africans (at least in Burundi), don’t seem to value vegetables very highly. I’m glad I brought along some multivitamins. The most common meal around here is a brochette (kebabs, either fish, beef, or goat – chickens are rarer, and thus quite a bit more expensive) and roasted or fried green bananas or plaintains. Pomme frites (often with mayo, a holdover from the Belgian days, no doubt) and rice are also options. You might get some bits of onion or the odd pepper if you are lucky. Nutritional deficiencies aside, it definitely makes for a cheap snack, if you stick to the more local joints (I think Lonely Planet recommendations tend to push prices up in short order). I had some (pretty terrible) fast food today, and a brochette with a roasted and salted banana and a few, slightly sour, cooked onions cost not much more than $1 USD. That was a few hours ago and no upset stomach yet, so here’s hoping.

I’m on my 3rd different hotel so far, working my way down the food chain as quickly as I can (this place, frustratingly, is still $40/night). I’m getting a little bit antsy in Buj, but my co-worker is supposed to be arriving on Tuesday, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some work done, and then be out of Burundi and into Rwanda in the not-too-distant future. Between the promise of more English, more attractions, and more hostel infrastructure for travellers, I’m looking forward to it.

Since the sun sets so early here and the streets are not too safe at night, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and start sleeping and waking up more with the rhythm of the sun. That will undoubtedly become even more pronounced later in my trip, when electricity and lights at guesthouses may not be so much of an assurance.

Need to hit up a bank and get a cash advance tomorrow, and give Michel’s wife and her friend a bit of a lesson in Illustrator and Photoshop (I would say something about how technology is inescapable, even here, but really, I bring it on myself).

Having some downtime in Bujumbura right now. There is not a whole lot of tourist-y stuff to do for a lone, white English-speaking dude in Buj, so with the exception of wandering, somewhat aimlessly, around the city (which I am becoming much more comfortable with), there is not an awful lot to do. The language barrier is becoming quite a frustration – not so much for the basics (getting a room, buying food and things), but it is quite isolating not to be able to have anything more than the most rudimentary conversation with most people. I expect things will improve a bit in Rwanda, and significantly in the rest of East Africa.

The expensive accommodation is burning through my cash much quicker than I’d anticipated and hoped. Unfortunately, I don’t think the situation is going to get much better when I move out of my current hotel tomorrow – I might be able to find a place for $25-40/night, but budget infrastructure for travelers is pretty much non-existent here, given the minuscule tourism industry. I have enough USD to last until the banks open during the week, but my Franc situation is looking mighty slim. After dinner tonight (not cheap, but pretty tasty at what I presume is something of an ex-pat restaurant/bar just down the street from my hotel), meals tomorrow will be modest, methinks.

Went out drinking and dancing at l’Archipel last night; it’s a happenin’ place to be on a Friday. Part of the reason the French factor is so frustrating is that people seem so friendly, otherwise – I met a football coach (there is a FIFA gig in town this week, one of the reasons that places are all booked up) from Kinshasa that spoke some English, and caught a lift from the hotel to Archipel with him and his friends. They even paid my cover. The end of the evening was slightly more anticlimactic, since my hotel neglected to inform me that they had a curfew and no security on staff at night, so I was locked out for a while until we were able to call someone inside. There was a security guard from up the street who dropped by after a few minutes, so it wasn’t tense so much as annoying.

Today was very lazy, so I’m planning an early night so that I can (hopefully) will myself to wake up before 6:00 tomorrow and take some pictures in the morning light. I imagine Sundays are probably pretty slow in Burundi, somehow, which suits the mood.

So I did my first real bit of business to earn my keep today, and had a brief breakfast with a local air transport operator to get a better sense of the realities of the business climate in these parts. It was pretty interesting, even if nothing was much of a revelation. He operates a pair of Douglas DC-3s (yes, you read that right), though with things getting hot in DRC these days (his primary market, I believe), he says that he may have to move them to Namibia or South Africa. Av gas is pricey here - almost $4/L, so you can imagine what the cost of air freight must be like. His eyes lit up a bit when I showed him the operating assumptions we’d been hammering out for our solar airship - yet again, re-affirming the idea that if we build it, they will come. It’s easy to get impatient about funding when you can see the potential is so strong. He seemed like an affable guy, and was pleased to hear that I would be in town for a while longer so that we could chat at greater length, and maybe do some sightseeing further down Lake Tanganyika.

Moved into a new (slightly cheaper) hotel today this afternoon. It was raining, so I had a bit of time to chill out here, but the showers here pass quickly, and I wanted to get out and look around a bit. Wandering around Bujumbura for the first time by myself was a bit overwhelming. While the streets are wide and a fuel shortage (artificially created by the gas companies, apparently to combat the government’s desire to reduce prices for the people) means that traffic is apparently much more sparse than usual, it is still crowded and cars, taxis, motorcycles and bikes zoom about (though not nearly as densely or haphazardly as during my stay in China). It was nearing the end of the day, and I didn’t want to be caught out at night, so I mostly just hoped to try and get my bearings in the city – orientation is easy, since Lake Tanganyika and the misty hills of Congo on the other side are to the west, but while the streets apparently have names, you wouldn’t know so from the lack of signage on the intersections.

I suspect it will take me a little while to cultivate my street senses. Between trying to take in the scenery, mind my directions, and move purposefully through the crowd (while avoiding errant traffic), my mind was going a million miles an hour. At one point, I think a kid clumsily tried to pick my pocket – he wasn’t very subtle about it, so I knew right away, but I still panicked for a second before I realized that he hadn’t got anything (I made sure to button my pockets after that). While the market is sprawling and bustling enough that I’m not so special as to be the center of attention, I definitely catch all eyes walking down side streets – 15 years of conflict have made tourism decidedly rare in Burundi, so whitey is a rare sight, especially someone my age. Most people don’t bother to do more than stare, but some of the kids (one of whom was painfully scrawny) are bolder and beg in French – it’s horrible to say, but a life of dealing with homeless people in Toronto has made ignoring them awfully easy.

On the topic of conflict, I cannot imagine how frustrating it must be for worldly Burundians, such as my host Michel. Africa is a continent of proud people, and Burundi is certainly no exception, so to see the decade of progress that its neighbours have made (especially Rwanda!) spent on war and ruin must be heartbreaking. While I’m not sure it will ever be possible for me to truly empathize (as I sit typing on my laptop, connected to wireless internet, from my air conditioned hotel room - feh!) it makes me wonder about how the people in Iran, or Iraq, or Afghanistan (or dozens of other wartorn nations) must feel – to see their countries fall so far and to stagnate, without even cause for the hope of a better future. To borrow a line from Propagandhi, “in every war waged, only kings emerge unscathed,” and it’s true – the only people with power to end the fighting are the only ones who stand to benefit from it. We might cynically acknowledge those motivations when it comes to US hegemony, but in when it comes to the crooked politics in Africa, the corruption is so obvious that even the government barely bothers to pretend. How long does one need to live in hell before you become oblivious to the sight of child soldiers, or the people in the market without legs or hands?

Anyway, on that cheerful note, that’s it for today.

It’s a little after 10:00 in Bujumbura, and I’m a bit exhausted (despite managing to sleep fairly well on my flights). Flights and connections all went smoothly, despite a little bit of a delay coming out of Rome that I was worried about. Even so, it’s weird to spend 24 hours in transit limbo - it’s like a day of my life has just vanished into thin air. And four straight airline meals is about as much as I can take (vegetarian preference presumably means “do not include protein.”)

The visa into Burundi was sorted out with no trouble, though my boss Jay’s friend Michel who met me at the airport certainly helped to smooth out the entire process, since navigating through the officials with my shoddy grasp of French might have been a bit more of a hassle.

We drove back to his (quite beautiful) place where I met his wife and sister, and we found a hotel for me to stay at. Apparently the constellations aligned in unfortunate fashion and I got into town at the one time when several events are happening in Bujum, so lots of places are all booked up. The place I’m at now is extraordinarily nice (and costs $80/night to reflect it, though that includes breakfast) - it’s splurging, but for a day or two while I’m getting acclimatized, a nice place with internet isn’t a terrible waste, I guess.

Spent the day driving around the city with Michel getting a vague sense of the place (as well as changing some money and getting a new SIM card for my brother’s old Africa phone) and chatting. He’s a really nice, interesting guy - I couldn’t imagine a better first contact on the continent.

The climate reminds me a lot of Cuba, and my first impression of the general vibe is similar as well (though that perception may change as I explore a bit). A few things definitely stand out in contrast to what I’m used to - it’s the rainy season in Burundi right now, and so when someone came to the gate at Michel’s house, the gatekeeper jogged over to answer it with an umbrella in one hand…and a machete in the other. Not quite Kansas, anymore. We also passed by the sight of a motorcycle/car collision (not bad looking - i.e. no mess), but the car was just abandoned in the middle of the road; Michel says that in order to get the police to look at something, you pretty much need to go physically get them yourself, since they may or may not have vehicles to go with themselves (which I imagine makes enforcing the minor aspects of everyday rule-of-law a little bit tricky).

Saw the beach on one shore of Lake Tanganyika which divides Burundi and the Congo (it’s apparently the 2nd deepest lake in the world). The hills and the mist were absolutely beautiful.

Had a few drinks and dinner with Michel at his restaurant/bar, l’Archipel. I’ve fallen off the vegetarian bandwagon for this trip, since one look at any menu made me realize that getting decent food and nutrition without meat would be terribly frustrating; and I’d like to be able to try the local flavours, many of which will likely involve meat. Had a really delicious meal including fish brochettes (kabobs) and plantains/bananas prepared a couple different ways.

That essentially brings us up to date, so I am going to crash. I imagine tomorrow will also be busy (in a laidback sort of way, as was today).