| Central
Africa: Beyond Bujumbura
 Author:
Lee Ridley - 1993
Posted: October 14, 2002
The idea was to stay
in Bujumbura for as little time as possible and catch the MV Liembe
heading south along the lake at the soonest opportunity. The MV
Liembe is a large ferryboat that serves the route along the eastern
shore between Bujumbura and Mbala in Zambia. We knew the boat ran
a regular service but didn't have any information whatsoever on
where the dock was or where to book a place on board, so we split
up and scoured the area of the city around where we believed the
ferry's agents to be.
Eventually a couple of
us found the office and were disappointed to discover that the MV
Liembe wasn't running from Bujumbura anymore. It was, instead, running
a shorter service between Kigoma in Tanzania, and Mbala. We found
the others and passed on the news before heading back to our basic
accommodation in downtown Bujumbura for the rest of the afternoon.
The hostel we were staying
in was lost in a maze of dirt tracks on the edge of the city, and
was relatively calm considering the havoc going on up in the hills.
The buildings were all very low built and were decrepit to say the
least. Outside the front gate of our hostel were a gang of young
kids happily playing. The boys were using a tractor tyre as a springboard
and performing some pretty spectacular somersaults, while the girls
gathered round chanting and clapping their hands in a curious and
impressively fast rhythmic style.
 I
decided to take a short walk a couple of blocks down to the local
store, where I bought a bottle of beer and a bag of Mandazi (local
name for a kind of small doughnut). On the way back, my path was
blocked by a rather scruffy local. My guess is he was a Watutsi,
as he was about 7 feet tall! In one hand he clutched a half eaten
bread roll, while with the other hand he gestured that I swap my
bottle of beer for the aforementioned mouldy bread. When I declined
he got quite aggressive, so I met him half way and prepared myself
for a brawl. He realised he wasn't going to get very far so he just
gave up and walked away. By the state of his eyes, I'd say he was
stoned out of his brain anyway.
The next day we had to get our passports processed at the government
HQ over on the other side of town. There were nine of us in total
and so that morning nine passports were handed over. When we returned
at 4 p.m. we were only given back 8 passports. Tracey's was the
missing one. Bearing in mind the mayhem going on across Rwanda and
Burundi, this passport office was somewhat besieged, and the chances
of us finding the missing passport, or indeed somebody that was
remotely interested in helping us find it, were slim. On top of
this, the minibus driver that we had arranged to take us to the
Nyanza Lac border crossing to the south was getting very impatient
to leave. He explained that as this particular date was the first
anniversary of the assassination of their president, there was more
than the usual amount of killing and butchery going on. For this
reason he wanted to be in Nyanza Lac and off the streets before
nightfall. Not an entirely unreasonable request, but we were quite
certain, for the same reasons that we didn't want to be in Bujumbura
that night either.
The hunt for the missing
passport continued unsuccessfully and to prevent our driver from
leaving without us, one of our travelling party took and hid the
minibus keys. This didn't go down too well, as can be expected and
things started getting a little heated.
 Eventually,
Tracey marched into some fat General's office and demanded that
precedence be given to finding her passport. On his desk was a pile
of 100 or so, and in that pile Tracey spotted a small red one of
the British design. She pulled it from the pile to explain to the
guy that this was the kind we were looking for, only to find she
had inadvertently found the elusive passport.
Five minutes later and
we were on our way, travelling at breakneck speed along the eastern
shore of Lake Tanganyika. But the day still had another surprise
in store.
As the light was beginning to fade, our driver seemed to be going
ever faster, and it was with some degree of skill that he kept the
minibus from flipping over when the tyre blew. Although it only
took about five minutes to put the spare on, it was with some trepidation,
as everybody circled the minibus, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone
coming out of the bushes.
We finally arrived at
Nyanza Lac after dark, our nerves a little shredded but following
an otherwise uneventful journey. We were supposed to spend the night
sleeping at a hostel but nobody had the keys to unlock the rooms,
so we strung out the mosquito nets on the front porch instead and
slept there, with armed guards to keep us all company. In the morning
we walked a mile or so along a track to the local passport office
where we had to wake the poor chap up so he could give us our exit
stamps. It's not that often you get your passports checked and stamped
by a fat African, wearing pyjamas!
 The
last stage of our exit from Bujumbura was every bit as unique. A
truck with a large cage on the back arrived. The driver was about
eight years old and his mate only a year or two older. The van only
had one gear and absolutely no breaks whatsoever. Because the road
was quite hilly, every time we stopped, the driver's mate had to
leap from the cab and race to get a block of wood under the wheels!
45 minutes later we piled out of the cage and were directed down
a narrow mud track, where the final obstacle was a shallow river
that we had to wade across before officially being out of Burundi
and into Tanzania.
Author: Lee Ridley
Contact: editor@fourcornersexplorer.co.uk
http://www.fourcornersexplorer.co.uk
|
