Bujumbura was absolutely beautiful. The capital of Burundi, it lies nestled betwen Lake Tanganyika to the West, and verdant rolling hills to the East. I hadn't expected it to be so hot -- when I first arrived, I felt like I was on the Kenyan coast, where the air is thick and heavy with moisture. Like Rwanda, Burundi is a former Belgian colony, and has also had its fair share of ethnic strife. Instead of descending into outright genocide, the conflicts in Burundi were characterized as civil war. I'm not sure that there is such a straightforward line between the two, really. Though I asked a few people delicately about the war, no one went into much detail about it. Clearly, it was a subject that they wanted to avoid -- perhaps simply to focus on peace. Around the town, there were signs bearing the image of a dove, and my hotel was called "Amahoro", meaning peace in Kirundi. The peace treaty was signed in 2005, but there is still a fair bit of tension, which discourages tourists from visiting this beautiful country. I can definitely understand that concern. When I asked locals whether certain areas were safe for me to walk by myself, I would invariably get a response along the lines of "yes, it's fine, there aren't too many bandits there", or "it's very safe, just keep an eye on your purse." Not exactly reassuring words, so I was extra-careful when walking in town by myself.

Despite the need to be watchful, Bujumbura was a pretty laid-back city, with a real beach town feel. It's slow, relaxed and people are friendly (though compared to Nairobi, pretty much anywhere would seem slow). People speak mostly French and Kirundi, with a bit of Kiswahili thrown in here and there. On the first day, I walked down to the beach, accompanied by one of the hotel security guards who was actually called Sainte-Jean-Baptiste. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the beach was filled with young people hanging around, drinking and smoking and enjoying the spectacular view. On the other side of the lake is the Democratic Republic of Congo, and all you can see are rows of mountains shrouded in mist. Gorgeous. I wish I could have gotten a photo, but of course after all the "reassurances" of safety I didn't take my camera with me. The view was somewhat marred by the fact that the lake itself was completely filthy. Near the shore, the sandy beach turned into muddy grass, which then disintegrated into piles of garbage that had been disgorged by the lake. It was a bit unpleasant to walk around in sandals, having to avoid plastic bottles and bags and partly-decomposed bits of god knows what, while attempting to take in the view. It's really too bad, since it's such a nice spot. It turns out that I was very lucky to have a clear day, since it's the rainy season in Burundi. After that first day, it was extremely wet. At one point, it was raining so hard that we couldn't even hear each other speak.

The French-speaking African indigenous peoples are at a bit of a disadvantage, as they have even fewer resources at their disposal than the English-speakers, and as a result are a bit less organized. When it comes to international agreements like the Convention on Biological Diversity, the major texts are translated but the accompanying explanatory material is not. Or, more likely, it is translated but inaccessible to grassroots organizers in small African countries. So when it's possible, people are brought in to do translation work. At least now I know that all the translation I did was actually useful. The participants in this workshop came from Burundi, Rwanda, DRC, Cameroon and Gabon, plus Lucy coming from Kenya. I had met Odombo, the gentleman from Gabon, two years ago at a conference of the Indigenous Poeples of Africa Coordinating Committee in Malindi, on the coast. We recognized each other right away (as we are both quite distinctive-looking around these parts). It was nice to have someone I knew around. He's quite the charmer -- the only problem is that I can only understand half of what he says, he speaks so quickly and with such a strange accent.

I believe that all of the participants were from Pygmy groups. Pygmies are a related family of hunter-gatherer families that have traditionally lived in forests (and Central Africa certainly has enough forests). While "Pygmy" is a term that has been at times used in a derogatory sense, it seems to still be in common use. Like those from Uganda, the Pygmy group from Burundi are the Batwa, or Twa. Through Unissions-Nous pour le Promotion des Batwa, they have actually managed to gain recognition as indigenous peoples from the government, which is more than most African indigenous groups can claim. It may help that there are only a few ethnic groups in Burundi (the Hutu, Tutsi and Batwa are the only ones that I'm aware of, but there may be some other minority groups as well). That way, even with the recognition of the Batwa, the government doesn't feel overwhelmed by addressing the needs of so many different groups. Pygmies are typically somewhat short, and we did indeed have some pretty small participants, which resulted in a lot of good-natured jokes and made me feel right at home.

I did enjoy speaking French a bit, even though I didn't always understand peoples' responses because of the different accents. But when it came to the presentation I was to make in Lucy's place, I lucked out. Benon, one of the participants from Rwanda, had fled to Uganda when he was quite young. Since he grew up speaking English and never properly learned French, there was a translator in attendance for his benefit. The translator was from Burundi, a young man called Louis who spoke something like six languages. So I made use of his skills and the presentation wasn't that bad after all. I think I was so relieved about not having to speak at length in French that I forgot to be nervous, it was a miracle!

A really interesting aspect of the workshop was that although we discussed many of the same issues as the Nairobi conference, there was much more of a focus on internal issues. That is, there was much discussion about the problems of African indigenous organization themselves, particularly in Central Africa, and less on indigenous peoples versus states. I gather that there are a lot of issues funds reserved for indigenous peoples not getting to the people who really need it. Applicants for this money are often people who run an organization that doesn't actually do anything on the ground ("briefcase NGOs"), or who don't have an organization at all, or who are not indigenous. Since funding organizations are often unaware of the situation on the ground, they don't know whether the organization they are giving money to is genuine. Coordination between groups, particularly identifying who works on which issues and delegating tasks accordingly, has not happened for one reason or another. There have also been problems with delegates from Africa taking advantage of international conventions and meetings to go shopping, or to disappear somewhere in Europe. This causes extreme embarrassment for the sponsoring organization, and may prevent others from that same organization from participating in later conferences. It's difficult to strike a balance between sending people that you know are there to work, and giving new people a chance to participate. IIN is attempting to create a database of people active in indigenous advocacy in East Africa in order to help with the coordination of organizations, selection of participants for conferences, and so on. After this workshop, we decided that it would be a good idea to start one for Central Africa as well.

Aside from the great networking, one of the greatest pleasures of Burundi for me was the food. Bless that Belgian culinary influence, that has brought lovely little pastries, wonderful sauces and a decent variety of vegetables. On the first night, I ordered fish provencale and almost cried with joy when it arrived. I was presented with a beautiful boneless piece of fish topped with onion, tomato, zucchini, carrots and actual healthy-looking green beans. While it is possible to find these vegetables in Kenya, you will not see them at any but the most specialized of restaurants. While I try to cook with as many vegetables as I can, cooking has fallen by the wayside lately since our water has been off. Ah, vegetables, how I've missed you! The only downside was that the tea was completely horrible. Guess you can't have it all.

I was sorry not to have the chance to explore Burundi more (I was hardly even able to see Bujumbura since my stay was so short), but I have a standing invitation to return, as well as invitations to visit DRC, Cameroon and of course Gabon. My friend Odambo was telling me about a documentary he was making about the cultural preservation efforts of Pygmies in Gabon that sounded fascinating. I would love to meet some of the people that he collaborated with. So much travel to be done, so little time and money!