“Karri Bathes with Beautifully Bare Burundian Babies and Women in Natural Hot Spring”

*pictures coming soon*

How’s that for an attention grabber? So, here is my premiere entry into OUR blog. I get to tell you all about our amazing weekend in RUTANA, a southern province of Burundi.

We packed seven people into one large vehicle (Jim, myself, a Belgian, a Brit, an Italian, and two French expats) and headed out Saturday morning. Ten minutes into the trip the winding uphill curves compounded by the side facing seats got the best of me and nausea set in. Luckily, our new friends were very gracious and gave me the front seat for more than half the trip.

The passing scenery was beautiful – lush green mountainsides geometrically configured with plots of tea plants, banana trees, coffee plants, and other unidentifiable veggies. After about 2 ½ hours we found our sign – “The source of the Nile” – and headed down a dirt road into rural unblemished Burundi hillside. (More about the Nile later…) We reached a makeshift roadblock to the “natural reserve” guarded by two gentlemen, one which agreed to serve as our guide. A guide is an essential element in not only leading you but also keeping the swarms of Burundi children from overtaking you. While the beautiful curious faces aren’t daunting, the constant demands for cash are quite exhausting. He hoped in the car and directed us where to park – facing a breathtaking view of two 90 degree angled cliffs leaving enough of a gap to overlook the lower elevations and mountain ranges of Burundi all the way to Tanzania. After relieving myself near a tree (which is tricky when Burundian youth hover transfixed on you from a distance) we ate our picnic and then trailed off after our guide.

He first took us down the mountainside a ways (I must admit, I was a little nervous he intended to take us all the way down what looked like the Grand Canyon with no trails) and then stopped to let us marvel at the beauty, swaying over the edge of the cliff, taking a few camera shots that could never tell the full story of the glory we were surrounded by. We then agreed to his offer for a 30 minute walk to another site.

This led us a down a dirt road and through villages – homes built of unfired bricks or mud or cement, surrounded by intricately woven fences. Jim and I discussed what we perceived as the difference between poverty and rural living. While we are only outsiders looking in and cannot yet understand what life really looks like for Burundians in various areas, here we felt a peace and tranquility. It seemed the people knew and delighted in the beauty they were surrounded by, at peace with a lifestyle of subsistence farming and slow days. Perhaps it is still poverty and much development is needed in terms of education and infrastructure, but it is not the choking poverty of an urban shanty town. And then we were there.

Suddenly before us, as we stood on top of this mountain, we faced a 270 degree view of Burundi and Tanzania, low flat lands and mountain ranges melting into the horizon, our toes on the edge of a small canyon. When we called out to one another our echoes reached us multiple times, reflected by both the surrounding cliff walls and the pack of children perched on a nearby cliff chanting our shouts back to us. I breathed deeply, feeling every detail of life melt away. I am continually amazed when I encounter new wonders of the world, to think about God creating Burundi, a place I had never seen in full until this weekend. I somehow forget God’s creation extends far beyond what I have seen, what I have known. Its like believing you are a true connoisseur and lover of Picasso’s work and then discovering he his “blue period” and being blown away all over again.

We sat and wandered, enchanted, until the light was slipping and we knew he had to return to find a hotel (you don’t want to be driving long distances in the dark – security and road safety) in the nearby town. We arrived in a small town with a power outage but nice, simple accommodations. (Bed net and all!) After settling our stuff we scavenged for a ‘restaurant’ for dinner. We found a guest house that technically served dinners, but after a rousing conversation in French, bits of Kirundi, and Swahili it was clear customer service was not high on their list of priorities, so we moved on. After ordering six chicken dishes (which came with a complimentary chicken heart) from a different place, we ventured to the town’s center to have a drink and wait. While we were there the power returned to the town amidst applause.

The dinner was good – hot and filling. Jim and I enjoyed sitting around a table listening to our French speaking friends converse, slipping from French to English with ease. Alas, we pray that will be us very soon. We spent the remaining hours of the evening reclining in a circle at our guest house, listening to Jim and Adam strum away on the guitar while Italian - French speaking Martina crooned away to classic French and English tunes.

We awoke to a light rain and very cool weather. It was incredible to snuggle under 2 blankets while sleeping! There is no sleeping under the covers in the Buj as it stays fairly warm even into the night. (Jim really enjoyed not sweating this weekend!) After a good omelet and Nescafe (not so good) we packed up and trekked out to a new adventure - to find the “Southern most source of the Nile” – a claim to fame in Burundi. We arrived, were met by a “guide” (I’ve realized ‘guide’ simply means any man arriving on the scene from the area who will show you what you ask and be paid a small fee in return.) and ventured 20 feet down a hillside and… there it was. A small vertical cement slab with a plastic pipe jutting from its face leaking a trickle of water. Hmmm. That’s right – not only do they claim this little stream of water is the source of the Nile (actually just a stream that may source Lake Victoria in Uganda, which is the actual source of the Nile) but they found it necessary to cement it up and filter it through a crude looking pipe. (We decided it would be more impressive if they at least created a statue of a Sphinx whose mouth could trickle out the water.) After ‘marveling’ at this natural wonder (wink) we hiked up a short peak ontop of which was a miniature monument of a pyramid in “honor” of the source of the Nile and its “significance” to Egypt. The view was beautiful, as were the children who scrambled up the pyramid in their bare feet, laughing at the Americans who attempted to climb its “summit.” A young child with a herd of little goats wandered by. Ahhh. I took another deep breath.

Finally, we took off to our final destination – a natural hot spring. After “triangulating” the directions we received from various Burundians to ensure the info’s validity, we arrived at the hot spring. There were two pools set down off the road, the larger of which was designated for men and the smaller one (less than 1/3 the size of the men’s) was allotted for women and their many children. They were used by the community for bathing. The two other girls and I ventured down a rocky path and stepped up to the edge of the pool. There 3 women (of three generations) in the pool, along with a baby, all bathing themselves and one another. We stripped down to our bathings suits, which I’m sure they found equally as humorous as three “muzungos” arriving on the scene, and stepped into deliciously warm water. We made quick friends with the women, smiling a lot and communicating with hand gestures and broken Kirundi, while playing with the baby who was transfixed by Martina’s white fingers. We soon learned that the middle-aged woman was the mother of both the younger girl and the baby (her mother was also in the pool with us) and had a total of 10 children. At that moment they all suddenly appeared, stripped, and got into our little hot spring. Again, lots of smiling and giggling. It was an incredible moment of female bonding mixed with intrigue and curiosity. I must say, I never dreamed I’d bathe with bare-naked Burundian women IN a natural hot spring in my first month here.

After the relaxing dip, we all pilled back into the truck, which was, by now, swarmed by onlooking Burundians, and pulled away. Ah, it was an amazing weekend.