28 September 2005

I realized I was delinquent in posting when I got an e-mail from my Dad asking where I was and if I was okay.

I’m back in Kigali and have been running around like a crazy person since returning from Bujumbura, Burundi last Saturday.

Bujumbura is hot and dusty, poorer than Kigali and far less organized. It does seem to have a little bit more life in it than Kigali does, though. (When I said that to some UN security and peacekeeping people I met one night at a hotel bar overlooking Lake Tanganyika, they said that was impossible.) It is a city that is coming out of more than a decade of war (as you will see when my Dallas Morning News story comes out. I’ll keep you posted).

Burundi is essentially the same country as Rwanda. In fact, they were one colony under the Belgians. But even before that, Burundi was the sort of lower provinces of the Rwandan kingdom prior to the European arrival. The languages (Kinyarwanda and Kirundi) are essentially the same, the demographics are essentially the same (84 percent Hutu, 14 percent Tutsi and 2 percent Twa, or pygmies) and the bloodstained history is essentially the same, but in reverse. In Burundi, the Tutsis have controlled the government and army since independence, and as such committed most of the worst atrocities. Between 1.5 and 2 million people died in Burundi’s various civil wars and genocides since independence in 1962, the latest war starting in 1993 taking around 300,000. In Rwanda, the Hutus committed the genocide.

I was there to report on the hopes of the population for the new Hutu-led democratic government that took power at the end of August, and you’ll be able to read my report soon I hope.

I arrived in Bujumbura, at long last, Thursday morning and was greeted by Joelle, a friend of a cousin of a friend who is a journalism student. She set up my appointments, arranged for a hotel, car and driver (her cousin Fabrice who has a fraught relationship with his alarm clock). Joelle spent most of the time I was there taking exams and spending time with her 1-month old daughter, so I didn’t see her much.

I met dozens of people in the two and a half days I spent in Bujumbura, including the Harvard-educated director of an independent radio station, Alexis Sinduhije, that many say is responsible for the Hutu political party that now governs the country becoming a political party, not simply a guerilla movement.

One of Alexis’ reporters took me to the airport to attend President Pierre Nkurunziza, who was returning from Washington and New York. I had an uncomfortable interview with the country’s information minister there, but not for the reason you may think. The man looked just like Don Cheadle. Seriously, I was in “Airport Burundi.” I caught myself almost pulling a Barbara Walters, “So Don Cheadle, if you were a tree what kind of a tree would you be?” kind of question.

Do these newspapers know just who they’re dealing with?

The president’s press conference was for the most part in Kirundi, so I just stood around. I’m looking at my notes and they’re all about a man in the most amazing velvet or sharkskin suit I ever saw. Here’s a sample:

“Is it purple? Sharkskin? Velvet? Is his chain real gold? It’s too thick. It’s like he stole it from Mr. T. Would that little number look good on me?” Yup, this is my job.

I also got to meet Western Diplomat. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you who Western Diplomat is, but every foreign correspondent has met him or her. Nine times out of ten Western Diplomat is from the same country. One really isn’t a foreign correspondent until having quoted Western Diplomat.

Another bit of discomfort came when Fabrice, a frustrated demolition derby driver, kept honking at the military trucks studded with machine guns and demanding that they get out of his way as we left the airport. Despite my pleas to relax, Fabrice would have none of the waiting and not only tailgated a transport truck filled with troops but kept flashing his brights at them. The radio reporter, Serge, sat in the front passenger seat while I discretely tried to lay out across the floor of the car.

The following day was the final of the four elections marking the end of the transitional government period. Few people went to vote, but only because it was the equivalent of voting for city council. After having approved a new constitution, regional councils and parliament, who rushes to vote for the city council?

My flight back Saturday was interesting. I managed to fly standby again. But instead of freaking out, I was calm. And they managed to find me a seat. I was the 19th passenger on an 18-seat plane. When I got on, the co-pilot wasn’t there yet. So I asked the pilot if I could sit next to him and help fly the plane, because the seat looked far more comfortable than the jump seat I was set to sit in looked. He just stared at me. And it wasn’t a language thing. Burundian French is far better than Rwandan. He was just stupefied.

So I spent the whole 30-minute flight staring at the door, and hoping that the ground crew guys had closed it tight enough. I started to sweat with every click I heard, sure that I was going to be sucked out. But I made it. And I’ve been running around trying to get all of my stories done, as well as work on some other assignments, ever since. This is what I thought things would be like here.