Bikes, Bananas, and Goats - Oh My!

Last Friday, riding my bicycle, I drafted off a goat.  Yes, a goat.

It was only a few seconds, but I had a chance to study the black fuzz on its head, the resigned look in its eyes.

Drafting, for the reader not biking-inclined, is riding behind a fellow cyclist so close you enter their slipstream, or "draft."  This makes pedaling much easier as you are sucked along behind the leader.  Tucking yourself behind another biker in this way is like taking a quick snooze, resting up for hard riding ahead.

The goat was tied down to the back rack of a black, single-speed bicycle.  Together with a brown-fuzzy-headed twin, it nestled in a large, round, woven basket, moving down the road at approximately 15 miles per hour.

I'm guessing that goat had never gone so fast before in it's life.  The draft it created was restful, though smelly.

I was coming down the mountain from Bugarama, a town about 35 kilometers (22 miles) from Bujumbura city.  After leaving my house in the foothills on the edge of the city, I had climbed on a good, paved road for exactly three hours to reach my destination.

For most of those hours, I marveled less at the mountain scenery and more at the pedal-driven transport industry everywhere in evidence.  Undaunted by the mountainous terrain, young men careened down the steep road on loaded bicycles, taking products from the hills to markets in town.

A sample of goods speeding down: large bunches of bananas, huge sacks of homemade charcoal, crates of empty beer bottles, clumps of live chickens hanging from handlebars, an occasional wooden door strapped upright on the rear rack, and of course those goats.

Video: Racin' the bananas downhill to market.

While bicycles going down were fully loaded, those going up were mostly empty, and mostly being pushed instead of pedaled - not surprising given the steepness of the hill and the local cycle's lack of gears.

The lucky bikers, however, or perhaps simply those who were comfortable defying death, sped easily uphill by grabbing rides on the back of passing trucks.

Apparently, the road to Bugarama is like an amusement park for bicyclists.  Or, perhaps the Burundian version of mountain biking, extreme style!

Bugarama itself, when I got there, was socked in with clouds and full of street vendors selling fistfuls of kumquats - like little yellow cherry tomatoes - in clear plastic bags.  I got a bag, just for kicks, then bought three wooden monkeys from the row of carved-crafts shops at the edge of town.  The wooden drums and walking sticks tempted me, too, but I decided to wait on those till I have a real vehicle in which to stow them.  No Burundi-style extreme(ly loaded) mountain biking for me!

By the time it was my turn to descend, a light rain had begun to fall.  The moisture kept the bicycle transport guys from braving the road, so I didn't get to race any of them down, trying to match their 40-mile-per-hour speeds on the corners.

But I did get to draft that goat.

Video: Bunches of bananas careen downhill while climbing bikers get a fast ride up the steep road.

My Soggy Soul Bursts Forth

Today it rained.  And hard.

It's been a dry month, two months, three months.

Is that right?  Yes, it hasn't really rained since I got here, and that was three months ago.  I've watched the hills become half-brown.

But today, water for my soul, a downpour, lightning, my hair on end, the thunder, my mind alight, body sliding into ease and slurping up the moisture.  I feel like I can grow again.

Now the grass will grow, too.  I've really got to hire that gardener.

Since this was the first rain in my new (for me) Burundian house, I ran around like a madman looking out windows to see where all that water was going after it drenched onto my roof, my patio, my hillside backyard.  No one has gutters and downspouts here, you must understand, so it's all waterfalls of rain cascading off of roofs, splattering onto concrete, churning away in dirt or cement channels.

And thankfully: no big pools of water, no roof seepage, no sudden stream splashing in beneath the back door.  Whew.

Sat on the porch, then, to feel the windy spray; gave a small shiver of delight.

With a freshly soggy soul - praise for downpour-ous thunderstorms! - I've been thinking about the blessings of Burundi.  A small (and by no means comprehensive) list:

Bite-size USB sticks from U-Com that get me, most of the time (well, half of the time), internet anywhere I have cell phone reception.

Motorcycle taxis that whisk me around town for cents, hair blowing in the wind.

Local cheese from Boucherie Charcuterie Nouvelle, Bujumbura's meats-and-lots-more food-ery.

Strawberries piled for sale on little round rattan mats outside Dmitri's, pineapples from the central market, avocados from street-side vendors, mangos getting ripe on the tree in my backyard.

A made-to-order desk I put together using a hand-made door laid on top of four tall hand-made stools; it's been over six months, you understand, since this writer has had a desk on which to spread out his papers and prop up his feet (imagine big smile here).

Standardized electrical outlets.

A foot-and-a-half tall, blue-and-white statue of the Virgin Mary that sits on the corner of aforesaid desk (at the business/craft fair where I bought it, my friend was holding the statue for me, and a guy came up to her and said, "I see you have a Mary, would you like to buy a Jesus as well?").

The scent of palm oil and roasting peanuts on the mountainside air.

Passionfruit juice, locally made and packed into little brown bottles of sweet goodness.

Inviting stretches of beach beside the now blue, now green, now gray and wind-whipped lake.

The view of said lake from my newly-outfitted home 'office.'

And, of course, orange dirt roads running through green hills, just waiting for me to pedal them whenever I wish.

Oh, right, they'll be naught but mud-paths now...  Hmm, perhaps time to forsake the desk and get my now-soggy soul dirty, too.