Two quickies:

I don’t care, I’m counting it. Yesterday Prosper took us to the border of Congo. We came up to the border crossing. There were policemen and customs agents there, they dropped the “barrier” – a string no bigger than a thick twine – and let us into the border area. Prosper looked around for friends of his, and sure enough he found a customs guard who he knew, and a border policeman.

I don’t know why, I was pretty nervous. Congo, man, that’s the real deal. I’ve read so much about trouble in Congo that it just sounded intimidating. People seemed to be pretty easily going back and forth. Plenty of people were crossing the border with the ever-present overloaded bicycle loaded with goods to sell. There’s a bridge that is no-man’s land, this side Burundi and a little past the far side, Congo. Prosper’s friend the border guard led us past a real barrier, a steel gate, to where we could look the Rusizi river into Congo. We looked across at the flag, we looked at the “Welcome to Congo” sign over the bridge, but Prosper’s friend said we couldn’t cross. We asked if we could take pictures, and he said, “I’ll show you a spot where you can photograph from”. We went there, and gave Prosper all of our cameras to take pictures of us standing together by the Congo border. I don’t think you can see the sign, you can probably see a bit of the flag.

We didn’t cross the border, we certainly weren’t there long .. but I’m counting it. Damned right. It goes on the list.

Countries in Africa that I’ve visited now include Burundi, Ethiopia, and Congo. I’m counting it.

More music.

Prosper had another treat in store for us this afternoon. After a (too brief) rest at the hotel he took us back to his office where the music group that I hauled all that gear for was to put on a special show just for us. I neglected to mention, when talking about Church, how oppressive the humidity had gotten. All during church the air was thick enough to drink through a straw, and I sweated so much I thought I was melting. While we were driving to Prosper’s office it broke in a storm.

So picture it, we’re sitting in a yellow stucco room with a red cement floor. There are maybe twenty people sitting around the perimeter of the room, there isn’t room for any more people. To our left are singers, 3 young men and 5 young women, plus a few who aren’t quite ready for the group yet. To our right are the keyboard player and a guitar, and the pastor and a guy who I think was an assistant pastor. At the far end, a drum kit, a bass player, and another guitar. Along our side, Bob, me, Leduc, Wes, Prosper. And outside it’s pissing down a tropical rain, when the music is silent you can hear the rain pound on the roof.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Blogs, Burundi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.