Tuesday June 11th - Travel To Ruyigi Meet Donatien and Community

Travelling To Ruiyigi, Visit Donatien School and meet his parents

Another lovely morning in Bujumbura. It's just after seven so I'm grabbing some breakfast before we travel to the east of the country to Butaganzwa in the Province of Ruyigi.

An Incredible Day

The drive up to Ruyigi was spectacular. You start off with an hours climb up the mountains. Locals hurtle down the hill coming towards you on bikes, heavily laden with goods to sell in Bujumbura. I was just asking the guys how the cyclist get back home as the hills were far too steep to cycle, when my question was answered, they basically hold onto the back of the lorries crawling slowly up the hills. As soon as you are out of town, the banana plantations begin and they're all over the place. With agriculture being the main source of income for the majority of the country, Burundians efficiently farm every square inch they can.

An amazing thing about the 3 hour journey was that the roads were lined with locals walking or cycling for the entire journey, I can't remember a stretch of road without anyone on! The journey out to Ruyigi was really interesting. The landscape changes the further East you go. You start off on the plain where Bujumbura sits and the you climb quite steeply into the mountains. As you continue down the road mountains become more rolling hills with the valleys opening out giving way to more rice fields.

We arrived at the ActionAid offices and quickly organised the gifts I had bought between what was going to Donatien and his family and what was going to the school. The whole point of ActionAid is helping the entire community, so even by  sponsoring a single child, your money that you give goes to the entire community in the form of projects managed by ActionAid, not to the single child. That would cause all sorts of resentment and conflicts within the community.

We headed off to Mpame Primary School where we were given a warm welcome by the children when we turned up.

Arriving at Mpame Primary school

 I was introduced to the headmaster, who told me all about the school and it's recent achievements, one of which being named the best school in the province. He then went and got Donatien, the lad I sponsor. And what a wonderful little lad he was. Naturally very shy and apprehensive about all of this he came over and we were formally introduced. Lovely little lad, soon had a smile on his face.

 Meeting Donatien for the first time

I'd brought with gifts for Donatien and his family as well as some gifts for his schoolmates, little things, rulers pens, pencils, notebooks and as many sweets as my 43kg allowace on Kenya Airways allowed and I'm so glad I did. Every child in the school (300) got a sweet and I handed over the gifts to the headmaster and his teachers to distribute as we went from class to class.

Donatien

Me, the AA team and Teachers

distributing gifts at the school.

When we were finished we jumped back into the ActionAid truck this time taking Donatien with us to head into his village (a few miles away, which he walks every day). This is where the villagers response to my visit took me back to the point where I am still amazed at one of the most incredible days of my life.

We were greeted by 30 or 40 villages who I was informed by Josias had just planted new Banana plants in a gesture to welcome me. That was touching enough but as we approached the village the crowd got bigger. Locals had come from the surrounding village to welcome me, to the tune of about 300 people! Yes 300 people.  I'm a sponsor from ActionAid, no more no less but was given a welcome like I've never seen before. What an amazing people the Burundians are. This was truly an incredible day.

Neighbours gathering to welcome me at

Donatien's house.

Sharing a traditionally made drink with Donatien

 An area had been cleared next to Donatiens house with tables and chairs laid out under a constructed shade. I had the pleasure of meeting the area leader and other key figures within the community. We then all sat down to a beautiful lunch of beans (the Burundi staple), roasted green bananas, rice and peas, all fresh and one of the nicest meals I've had in a long time.

After we ate, I was officially welcomed to Mpame village and after a few speeches were made by the village officials and the ActionAid guys, I handed over my gifts to Donatien which seemed to be very well received.

I was invited into Donatien's house. It's a simple red clay brick structure with a reed / bamboo tiled roof. There is no electricity and the house is separated into two main rooms by a dark passageway. The room on the left as you walked in contained a fire with an area for preparing food, with the main living quarters on the right with neat bowls of food laid out from the preparation of our meal. The clay bricks and the dirt floor meant the temperature inside was very cool compared to the outside.

 Inside Donatien's house

I'm no writer as you can tell so I don't know how to describe the impact that that welcome had on me, from the work that had gone into erecting the cloth sun shades, preparing what was a lovely meal, to the warm and welcoming speeches made especially from Donatien's father who like me was completely out of his comfort zone. What really amazes me is the ability of these people to keep smiling even when life and the challenges which are thrown at them are so difficult. They really are amazing.

 Women and children gathering in the home of 
Donatien  to welcome me

One thing which was mentioned a number of times during my visit to Mpame village was water. Or rather the fact that they have to walk up to 2 miles to collect it. 2 miles with a jerican of water is no easy task. So this got me thinking. Putting a water supply into Mpame would improve the lives of hundreds of people. I need to research this but this could be the project I was looking for out here. Aparently the cost would be around £20,000. Another ActionAid sponsor asked them to look into this and they put the project together and priced it up but nothing came of it. I need to research this carefully to make sure that that doesn't happen again.

Another thing that has become apparent is the injustice done to Burundi by the Foreign Office website which basically states… 'Danger, do not travel there.' This doesn't reflect the country that I have seen. There is a good police presence in Bujumbura and the surrounding towns and you are able to walk freely without danger even as an umuzungu (white man). I'm sure there are bad pennies in any bunch but every last one of the Burundian people I have met have been jolly, polite people. That said,  I guess caution and common sense should be applied when travelling to any foreign country, but I would also say the same thing about London or any other city in Europe.

I've been told that I am the very first ActionAid sponsor to visit Burundi. Given the foreign office website and the fact that the majority of the ActionAid sponsors are from the UK that is not too surprising but I think that needs to change. The experience I have had has been absolutely incredible and extremely rewarding. I've been talking with Josias of ways we can set up a Facebook page or even a dedicated website to provide information for some of the other ActionAid sponsors, on how to go about this.

I'm updating this blog from a Internet Café in Ruyigi, so as a sponsor if you are thinking of coming there are facilities, however, within 45 mintutes drive of Ruyigi, in the villages we have visited, it is quite a different story.