Off the beaten path

"And to think I wasn't going to come here" I thought as the taxi swerved slowly, scaling the muddy road and revealing a picture-perfect vista from the passenger side. The Burundian mountains jut out proudly from the roadside foliage, their slopes covered in green vegetation with small brown patches of terraced farmland and quiet, rising mist from beyond the jagged horizon, shrouding the distant peaks in a mysterious white light...

* * * * * * * * *

I'm breathing an inner sigh of relief that our driver has grown cautious. No more up-and-down pitching of the car through the precarious mountain passes. No more blasting of the horn as the car blows full speed around a blind turn. No, we're going slowly now; even on the Tanzanian border good roads turn bad with a little rain. My right pant leg is splattered with mud from pushing the car from a ditch, but it's a fair trade when the taxi driver slows, especially in a taxi without a single usable seatbelt on some of the steepest, windiest roads I've ever seen...

* * * * * * * * *

The customs official tosses my passport across the table at me with a mixed aire of superiority and disgust. Apparently my 10 words of french are not enough to impress him. Ignace, my new friend and indispensable guide, is called into the customs room to 'discuss' the small speaker system he's brought through the border. I'm clipping my nails outside, waiting for him to return and silently communing with the rains in the hope they'll stay off long enough for us to reach Bujumbura. Schoolchildren are giggling as they pass, staring. I'm smiling and waving and they're doing the same. Ignace finally returns with a sour expression. "That guard, he told me to pay 200,000 francs for those speakers. [Roughly the same price he paid for them in Zambia] Can you imagine?! And I'm Burundian! We should have said it was yours. They wouldn't try to rob a m'zungu."

* * * * * * * * *

"Some things you never get used to," I'm thinking. Ignace has gone to look for a taxi and I'm staying behind so as not to allow my skin color to inflate the price. I'm guarding the luggage and attracting a large crowd of people by the streetside. This is a populous place, so I'm surprised how many there are. In some ways this is worse than it was in Zambia--at least there the people are more used to seeing white men. Such moments are less common there. But here, some kilometers from the capital, I have not just children, but fully grown men and women, STARING. Apparently years of travel warnings and updated conflict reports have scared everyone like me away from here; I'm a rare sight. I'm spinning in slow circles, greeting people and scouting for a novice anglophone. With every rotation I swear they're closing in, and multiplying. The iwes in Zambia practiced this juju, but here even the adults have managed to remaster the art...

* * * * * * * * *

Our last taxi of the evening is descending the slopes and following the snaking, winding tarmac around the cones of the mountains. It feels like we're flying and the beauty of the place is spellbinding. Each turn brings on a new height of visual stimuli. I can hardly believe that such beauty can remain hidden. The road along the lakeside should be considered one of the most beautiful drives in the world. But I suppose it's not because it's Burundi. The immense mountaintops trace the most artful, jagged lines. I'm thinking of the scottish highlands, thinking this land certainly rivals the beauty of that place. But this is Burundi, and it is at war. Or so the reports contend; Ignace and his friends tell me they have listened to radio reports on renewed fighting in the capital--while they themselves are sitting in the capital and hearing/seeing nothing. Rumors, they say, are the only fuel to these factual reports. I'm not sure what to believe, really. But what I see is peace and people free from fear, so it's foolish for me to act nervously. We're rounding a bend now and I'm trying to count the peaks, the peaks behind the peaks, and the peaks behind the furthest peaks. I can't manage it. I'm just transfixed by the green. The lush, tropical, indescribable green that Eden in deepest envy couldn't hope to compete with. We're climbing that large mountain now, and far out on the distance is the shining, shimmering surface of Lake Tanganyika, the ripples of its waves spreading out in countless succession in the fading sunlight far, far, far below these heavenly summits. And to think I was almost too afraid to come here...