Passing Strange

Awhile ago I rode my bike south along Lake Tanganyika.  Except for a short distance at the north end of town, there is no water-side promenade.  Instead, I wound through city neighborhoods, often sensing rather than seeing the lake.

Eventually the high-walled compounds of the city gave way to a maze of under-construction houses - proof that Bujumbura is expanding - and then to gardens and grassland.  And a view of the lake.

Though I am getting used to being in Burundi, on this ride I still found a multitude of strange things to make me think, "Wow, I'm in a new place."

There was the heady scent of palm oil, the smell of orange dust, of burning garbage, sniffs of the lake.

There were teenage vendors walking the street with their wares - sneakers, hair dye, belts, dandy-style hats - draped over arms and shoulders.  There was a line of twenty men digging a roadside ditch by hand.  There was the River Kanyosha with naked boys swimming in it, with workers laboring to extract sand and gravel from its sluggish course.

Even the other bicycles - perhaps especially the bicycles - presented their strange sights.  One carried, on its rear rack, a man (not really unusual) and a dog (definitely unusual).  Another had ten live chickens hanging from its handlebars.  A third supported stalks of bamboo twelve feet high.  Others bore huge bunches of bananas or two butchered pigs or a wooden rack from which hung round loaves of bread for sale.

Then there were, of course, the periodic shouts of "Mzungu!" - or, sometimes, just "White!" - from people I passed, marveling to see the shorts-wearing pale-skin ride by carrying that weird helmet on his head.  Who's the strange and new sight now?

But, on this ride, the strangest sight of all made me feel, somehow, less strange.

I saw a man pedaling a three-wheeled bicycle.  He wore a white motorcycle helmet, the clear visor pulled down over his face.  Between his two back wheels he carried a pile of luggage in teal and purple duffel bags.  Before him flew the flag of Burundi and behind the American stars and stripes.  Water bottles proliferated around him.  A blue fanny pack cinched up his blue sweatpants.  And, taped to the handlebars, staring perpetually into his eyes, a Santa Claus doll.

I confess, I gaped as I rode past.  Then I went back to talk.  Unfortunately we spoke no similar language.  But it was clear: he's just a guy touring the country on his decked-out tricycle.

If we had been able to talk, I would have bought him lunch, asked him a thousand questions, soaked in his story.  But as it was, I was holding him up on a busy and narrow roadside.  I snapped a few photos and let him go.

Bon voyage, fellow biker (well, tri-cycler).  And thanks for being a more outlandish sight than me.

The Gifts We Bring

I did laundry, recently, in the bathtub.  In my temporary house in Bujumbura, there was no working washing machine.  As the uncertainties of my still-newly-Burundian life were piling up, along with the laundry, I had to do something decisive and practical: so I washed clothes.

I had never done laundry in a bathtub before.  But it wasn't too bad.  It's just like using an automatic washer back in the States, really.  Only, you have to turn the faucet off and on to control the water inflow.  Well, you also have to agitate the clothes yourself.  And, actually, you have to wring them out with your hands, too, since there's no spin cycle.

Ok, so it's nothing like an automatic washer.

I daydream about the US sometimes, the things I'm missing: shopping malls, movie houses, grocery shelves that aren't half-empty, an over-abundance of modern appliances, crowds that speak my language.

But it's not so bad here, really.  There's a lake and a beach.  There's good restaurants to go to for a night out.  My house has a high wall, a big yard, flowering frangipani trees, and a guard to open the gate for me.  The water and the electricity supply have been pretty good.

And, now that I have a permanent house, I could easily hire someone to do my laundry for me.  No more bathtub washing.

After the hand-wringing, I hung the clothes out on a line strung between a lime tree and a window's security bars.  The next day, taking the dry clothes back inside, I glanced briefly at one of my wife's socks.  To my surprise, I saw two dry, dart-like seed pods embedded in the weave.  Obviously, my hand-agitating of the laundry hadn't been vigorous enough.

Absent-mindedly pulling them out, I recognized the pods as some that we had picked up during a long hike in California's Santa Barbara mountains eight weeks earlier.  Idly throwing the seeds on the leaf-strewn ground, I pondered the journey they had made, traveling thousands of miles with us from the California mountains to Burundi's lake-side hills.

I wondered if they would do what they were made to do and grow a California plant on Burundian soil.

I thought, too, about how, in the Santa Barbara mountains, we had been camping with only, what is for us in the US, the basics - no electricity, no running water, without comfortable beds - essentially depriving ourselves for fun.  And we took that long walk for fun, too.  Here in Burundi, many live the camping lifestyle, but all the time and not by choice.  They don't take long walks for fun, but because they have to get somewhere.

After years of war, Burundi needs help from outside to right itself.  But does it always need the gifts we bring?

Some things, like those seeds, sneak in with us unintended.  I'm waiting to see whether they produce a wildflower or a thorn.