Lloyd Dobler: I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

From the classic 80's Say Anything, Lloyd Dobler was revered by shy school boys everywhere.  He braves an impossible phonecall and gets the un-get-able Diane Court and in doing so, becomes hero to his nerdy classmates.  His fight for love, standing outside Diane's window, donned in his ubiquitous trenchcoat, boom box overhead pumping out Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes, is now a fixture of our pop culture.

When meeting Diane's father for the first time, he asks Lloyd about his aspirations for the future.  Lloyd spouts this now-iconic mini-monologue.

While Lloyd Dobler was standing in opposition to the mundane, the expected, the generic (he wants to be a kickboxer, of course), this idealism of shunning opportunities seems a trite sentiment here.  The opportunity to buy, sell, produce, or repair things bought, sold, or produced is an opportunity for most in Burundi that would not be easily passed up.

Village Health Works is providing just this type of opportunity for local residents in its catchment area through community cooperatives.  It’s a multi-layered approach to creating community, building capacity, and augmenting a people to better an entire nation. 

On Friday, I traveled with the Director of Economic Development and the Accountant, who is also involved in the cooperatives program, to the neighboring town of Mugara.  We pile in the Land-Rover-turned-ambulance and head down the steep hill.  We arrive at the base of the roadway to Mugara to see the entire community out in the roadway (yes, the whole community), spreading dirt from piles, in an effort to improve the road.  We cannot drive up this road-in-progress.  Groaning and chatter in Kirundi ensue, and the conclusion is “Ok, we walk.”  Ok, I guess we walk.  Uphill.  In the dirt.  Cluster by cluster, the whole town stops their raking and hoeing to watch the mzungo walk up their hill.

banana bread tins; freshly baked bread in the background

Our destination is a bakery, where a few women have formed a baking co-op.  Dziwe, one of the VHW co-founders, urged me not to miss their banana bread.  Upon arrival, I recognize the loaves of bread on the table on the porch as those that my colleague Gerard sometimes has at breakfast. 

When we arrive, giant dried palm branches are in the workspace – these are the fuel to fire their oven, and they request that I refrain from taking photos until they tidy up. 

To kill time, Arnuad, Claire, and I walk up toward the market area, where small kiosks sell a random mix of things from palm kernels to fabric to avocados to laundry soap and lots of things in between.  People are sitting out on chairs, chatting, hoping we will buy something – there are no other customers on this weekday.  We pass a hair salon that is marked “saloon” as many are.  

salon doubling as a saloon

Around the corner under makeshift awnings is Mugara's answer to the Union Square green market – seven or eight women sitting behind tables of neatly organized goods for sale.  The Burundians are very tidy – everything is in lovely piles, and you buy the pile for a set price.  Tomatoes, Japanese eggplant, dried mukeke – the local fish from Lake Tanganyika (they look scary) – and tiny dried fish, ndagara, thick with giddy flies.

You see these tiny fish being dried in the sun in their tidy piles at many roadside markets between Kigutu and Bujumbura.  (I asked my colleage Gerard what these tiny fish are called, and his initial response was “so … (with a pause) fish?” in his kind African accent.) 

mukeke from Lake Tanganyika, dried for sale

After buying tomatoes (Burundian tomatoes are the best I've tasted) and avocados (five avocdos for 1000 Burundian francs (BIF) or about 63 cents) – the negotiations for the best five of the bunch were intense – we walk back down to the bakery, passing grazing goats along the way.

Mise en place.

palm kernel oil, made in a nearby processing plant

The bakery area has been tidied and the oven is fired up and smoking heartily.  



The bananas, eggs, flour, and sugar are sitting ready – mise en place.  The palm kernel oil is made at a roadside processing plant (hut?) up the road, and is packaged in repurposed water bottles; these are sold at markets all over.  

A woman comes running in from being up at the market – four loose eggs in one hand, some orange-flavored biscuits for her girlfriends in the other.

The tools around are rudimentary – an axe, a broom made from straw fibers tied at the base, a baby crawls in the dusty earth not eight inches from a machete.

As we are now to wait for the bread to be made, we move to the porch and indulge in the avocados we’ve just purchased, spreading their beautiful bright deliciousness onto some of the bakery’s bread, topping with a pinch of coarse salt – perfect.  The woman in charge looks like a tough cookie, and offers to bring us tea, which we accept – it tastes like drinking dessert.  

Claire and I enjoying our sweet tea

We enjoy this relaxed makeshift mezze in the shade of the porch as children creep over to stare in awe and giggle at the mzungo. 

Claire and Arnaud

Our ride arrives and we must go before our fabled banana bread is baked, but never fear - it will be delivered to Kigutu later in the day.  How these things happen, I do not know – at a 2 ½ mile uphill walk, it’s no quick errand, but sure enough, muffins will arrive in time for lunch and be delivered to me at the lunch table.  I ask if I can take photos of these admirable women, but they decline, as they are wearing work clothes and don’t want to be photographed in such a state.  I smile - I know how you feel.  The tough cookie in charge blesses me as I leave and I feel ashamed I cannot remember how to say God Bless You in Kirundi.

The following day, as we set out for a hike, one of these same women has a table set up outside of our compound - she has walked up the 2 ½ mile hill with a baby on her back, goods in her hand, and I have no idea where the table has come from - selling the banana bread and muffins.  The other American in our group buys a loaf for our journey – 1800 BIF, less than $1.25.  The bread is heavenly.

The mindblowing prices (to our American economy) notwithstanding, these women have taken a small oven in their community and turned it into a business that increases their income and their abilities to provide for their families, helping to move them into a better position, all while building community.  Communities that are cohesive work together for the greater good and see much more progressive change as neighbors help neighbors.  Many of these women are survivors of gender-based violence, and opportunities like these give them the chance to move from oppressed to prosperous.  VHW supports these co-ops they have seeded by offering business training, creating legal entities of the cooperatives, and providing guidance and resources.  As co-ops demonstrate harmony among members and success, they are then on the radar for additional resources, including grant funding and training as those opportunities arise. 

I will write more about these co-ops in the coming days as I am so impressed with how VHW has created this program from communities in which many are illiterate and have had no skills training.  They are so foundational to the work that VHW is doing in building capacity and facilitating healing and restoration to those who have endured so much darkness, and to returning refugees being repatriated.  

There is an expression in Kirundi - buke buke (say "bookay bookay"), which means "slowly slowly."  As I learn more about VHW and see what it's accomplishing, and meet the inspiring and beautiful people who are executing this work, I do feel filled with hope ... change will come.  
There is long (uphill, dusty, muddy) road, but change will come.  
Buke buke.