Iddi Mulengwa: This is Africa, mate.

If you have been following, you may have noted that I have not used names in my previous posts.  I have used terms like “my colleague,” “my companion,” and have referred to people by their roles in our organization or others, or by their country of origin.  I am doing this out of respect, lest someone should not want his or her name included in my stories.  However, when I quote someone, I want to use his name, so Iddi Mulengwa is being featured today by name, little does he know.

In my previous post, I wrote about a Congolese-born Brit – this is Iddi.  He’s an attractive dark African of small stature, with a bright and slightly mischievous smile, and twinkling eyes.   He was born in Goma – a border town crossing into Rwanda, a hotspot of conflict today.  He grew up and was educated in England; his accent reminds me of Jazzie B from Soul II Soul.  He speaks upwards of 12 languages – even though Kirundi is not one of them, everywhere we go, he can speak to the parking attendant, the military guards, people on the street to ask directions – it doesn’t matter where they’re from … in this part of the world, he can speak to them all.  I feel super cool hanging out with him. 

He has this laid-back demeanor, and always manages to artfully dodge a question that he doesn’t fancy answering (What do you do?  Where do you live?  Whose car is this?).  He watches my American temperament begin to percolate with the frustrations of a developing country, and with a growing smile reminds me:  “This is Africa, mate.”

It is indeed.  I noted in a previous post that Deo has said that any vehicle anywhere in world, that doesn’t run, ends up in Burundi.  There is other evidence that Burundi and countries like it are the dumping ground of the world’s castoffs.  The cars here are right-hand drive, but so are the roads.  Why?  Because right-hand drive cars are cheaper; safety appears not to be a concern.  The mobile phone system is so convoluted that most people carry multiple phones, and each of these phones has multiple sim cards – one for each carrier.  Iddi has six phone numbers.   My new mobile phone charger has a UK plug; the convention here is that of Europe, so this conundrum requires an adapter, which doesn’t come with the phone.  I think this is funny and point it out to my Burundian colleagues – they see nothing odd about this.  They have seen appliances with mismatched plugs their whole lives – AC adapters have always been a fact of life for things bought in their own country.

I take a ride downtown yesterday with our procurement officer; our first stop is the bank.  The signs on the window say No Smoking and No Guns.  Hmmm.   Inside, he fills out a deposit slip for a wad of cash he has (the money he saved the organization with his deft negotiating skills), and gets in line – he is the fifth person.  The wait is interminable.  My colleague seems unfazed.  After an eternity, he reaches the window.  It takes so long at the window that I literally fall asleep.  I fell asleep in a chair at a bank in downtown Bujumbura.  That’s how long it took.  It’s. a. deposit.  I again have to ask, what the hell.

At long last, my colleague comes over to where I’m sitting but he sits too.  “He will call me when he’s finished” he reports.  I am aghast.  The window agent was apparently in training, but the training program seems to lack some efficiency.  My colleague, with his sweet demeanor, is unconcerned – he just smiles.

We continue on to the next stop – to get me a new phone.  My first phone was reportedly new, but wouldn’t hold a charge.  This apparently is not uncommon.  So I have to question how “new” these phones are.  

The store is huge – there is space in the middle where what I assume to be technicians are seated, and a bar around them is crowded with people holding out their phones, explaining their plights in bewilderment, all at once – chaos.  Have they not taken numbers?  Is there not a sign-in list like at the Apple store?  A queue?  There are two makeshift tables by the door with employees behind them.  There are phones are sitting on a broken office chair behind them, with the prices scrawled on the corresponding open box.  Two phones look the same but have a 15,000BIF price variance, so I ask about the difference.  “Ils sont presque les memes choses.”  “They are almost the same.”  Excellent, that fully answers my question.  After several more rounds of this, I get the answer.  I select my phone.  But no, these are just samples – we have to go to a salesperson.   We pass the bar of chaos and are escorted by a guard through a two-way mirrored door into a back office area, to a salesperson.  My colleague indicates which phone I’m interested in.  The look on the guy’s face is like “Huhn.  A phone?   Hmmm.  This never occurred to me.  Let me see what I can do.”  I am perplexed.  We go back out to the front area and wait.  This guy comes in from the outside (how’d he get out?) and hands the phone to the helpful woman from earlier.  We are called over and I’m asked for my passport – my colleague says this is standard practice and that he’s had to go back and get his in the past.  

What?!?  Ok, whatever.  The guy fills out a sheet in a large green book and tears off a pink souche – a copy for me.  I notice on exit that there are boxes upon boxes of these green books haphazardly thrown behind the helpful staff – this is the garbage.

My colleague and I continue on to meet his fiancée, as they were scheduled to do some wedding preparation at one of the local shops.  The shop is closed. 

Sub-saharan Africa is riddled with these annoyances, which are just a way of life to those who live here.   They simply move on to the next without a thought.  We are downtown after dark and walk past a ‘locals’ bar; we had earlier been talking about the difference between mzungo places and local places and my colleague had assured me the local places have no wifi, so I wouldn’t like them.  They are just to “sit and drink and talk.”  This particular bar we are passing has loads of tables outside and people are drinking and smoking and there is lively conversation – the scene might look like something out of the meat packing district.  Except it’s pitch. dark.  Like, pitch dark!  There are no street lights in Bujumbura, so all the light at night comes from any shops or restaurants that happen to be open at that hour (and no one knows when that will be, as noted earlier).  A storm is brewing, so the moon is hidden.  This particular bar has no lights on outside or in.  And nary a candle in sight.  I think about the deep color of their skin, and wonder how they manage in the dark.  My colleague tells me there is a Kirundi expression:   vuga, humva amatwi.  Loosely translated, it means keep talking … I can hear you, I don’t need to see you.  Ha!  “But why no candles??!?” I persist.  Just a little tealight?  No?  He has no answer to this question. 

Living at our house in Buja, I am surrounded by this.  The power goes out every day.  Every.  Day.  For hours. There is no way to know when it will go.   If it shuts off late, it will be out all night.  There is one candle in the house.  The housekeeper lit it last night, poured a little wax onto the bottom of an overturned plastic bowl from 1972, and secured the candle upright.  Half of it burned last night, so now we have half a candle.

The door to our room squeaks like someone is being tortured, and we’re all coming and going at late and early hours when others are trying to sleep.  I’ve asked if maybe it can be oiled?  It won’t be.  Why are there are no hooks in a bathroom shared by four people?  There just aren’t.  There is one dull steak knife.  If you can find it, you can cut your tomato or mango.  I have showered for four days with a hand towel.  Everyone thinks there are towels, but no one knows where they might be.  These are things I simply don’t understand. 

I suppose I don’t need to understand them.  This is the way it is and probably always has been here.  Life is slower, things either happen or they don’t.   When we make plans, they are apparently suggestions – times don’t mean anything.  If someone says he’ll be there, maybe he will, maybe he won’t.   I feel I want to fix this, explain how our way is better, make converts of people to our wise western schedule-keeping, but I don’t.  I can’t.  I am the outsider, the visitor, the guest.  And in fact, I’m not entirely sure our way is better.  Their way seems to work just fine for them.

I do wonder, however, if this nonchalance has trickled down from the country’s leadership, and how contributory this attitude is to the state of their economy and infrastructure.  I have in fact seen evidence of this in working with the embassies both here and in the States, and our organization has experienced maddening bureaucracy getting shipments released from customs.  This is a country of no urgency, for better or for worse.  I don’t think I’m in a position to speculate about the efficiency of the government of a country I barely know, but the parallels seem easy to draw.

That said, in the day-to-day, I could learn something from my new friends.  What if I chilled out a bit and just let things roll?  Whoa, what?  In fact, I’ve had to.  I’m the newbie, following the crowd here, going with the flow.  Yes, I have indeed had to just roll with whatever comes – after all, this is Africa, mate.