Life in Buja

So, it's been more than a month now. Time to send some news to the rest of the world.

Everything has been going great since I arrived. I live in a house in the city centre that I share with two house mates. One of them left us last week end will be replaced next Thursday. I met a lot of people, mostly French I must admit, and we go out a lot. Yesterday was one of those typical evenings : theatre show at the French institute of Buja and then we ate micupo, a speciality of Burundi that consists in grilled beef meat with onions, manioc and fried bananas. The food here is repetitive but delicious.

School is nice, my students are agreeable even though some of them are having a hard time learning. I am not that demanding as a teacher but they have not attended school in twenty years now so they lost the habit. It is uneasy but I still enjoy it. I get a lot of help from the school, I have an assistant and my colleagues are all really nice. I am going to miss one whole week of class soon because I have to take my exams at the French embassy.

I have not yet had much time to travel. My house mates did but I have a lot of work right now. I hope that I will soon leave Buja and explore the small country I live in. However, I am part of a walking group and we walk approximately four hours every Sunday morning. Most of the pictures I post are taken during those walks. The group is mainly Bazungu, white people, but we all come for different reasons and from different country so the atmosphere is still very interesting.

I am doing great and I can't believe time is running so fast.

Lost in translation

Since my friend Lisanne pointed out the fact that « no one speaks french », I'll try to write some English in there too. Here are the main pieces of information you missed if you cannot speak my beautiful language (which is a shame). I'll put all the articles written in English under one category so you can find it easily if you click on the link in the right column. Or you can just click here. I'll name it BBC for Burundi Broadcasting Corporation.

I am currently doing a master's degree to become a French teacher in foreign countries. I found an internship in Burundi and I will be teaching there for nine months from March to November. My students will be 20 to 25 years old future military officers from five different countries : Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. They want to study french for one year in order to attend the military academy.

Burundi is a very small country in the heart of Africa, next to Rwanda, Tanzania and Congo. It's been devastated by civil war but they are trying to build democracy again. The capital city is called Bujumbura and lies on the shore of the Tanganyika lake : that's where I'll be living. I'll be sharing a house in the city centre with two other volunteers, I don't know much about them, but there should a girl and a boy, both from France.

As a preparation, I've been studying swahili, which is not the national language but is very widespread in eastern Africa. The national language is kirundi but it is impossible to learn when in France. French happens to be the other official language of Burundi because the country was once a Belgian colony. Also I had to get vaccines against various illnesses such as yellow fever and meningitis. Then i got my visa and I was good to go. I left my home yesterday.

I should be in the plane right now but my flight has been delayed so I am waiting in Paris, I'll fly to Nairobi during the night and I should arrive to Bujumbura in the morning. I also should have started work on Monday but my students have not arrived yet and, being optimistic, classes could start on March 15^th. But as my future boss puts it : nothing can be done against african hazards...