Day 252 / 17

Date: 20 December 2022
Sleeping location: Unknown hotel/brothel, Gitaza, Burundi
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 44 / 15687 / 850
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 200 / 133800 / 15800
Nice people: 1
Day in three words: Village of doom

In the morning I had an almighty admin faff to get my transit visa extended for a mighty five days, of which I actually needed two or three. It took so long that at some points it seemed that the entire visa extension period might be taken up with extending the visa, and even after it was "done" it turned out there was a mistake and the original had to be "annulled" and a new one stamped in.* The whole thing took four hours, and all the while my sinuses were bunged up and I felt like my head was made of cloud. 

Back at the hotel I found that Suzanne from the previous night had hand delivered a hand written note saying hello again and asking why I hadn't messaged her. Am I that alluring? Pondering this, I managed to message her using the number now supplied on this note, although it was just a courtesy thing as I was about to leave Bujumbura, via a stop for an overpriced croque madame made with BROWN BREAD.

The road south out of Bujumbura was shite and I inched along, dodging potholes with the rest of the traffic. Every so often there would be huge queues leading up to petrol stations, which suggests they have some pretty big fuel shortages on top of the blackouts and bad internet. I poked my head in at the “Livingstone Stanley memorial” but they wanted £2 to see a rock and what appeared to be some badly rendered statues shaking hands, and in any case the statues actually met in Ujija in Tanzania, so I went on my way. Outside the city the views became lovely, Tanganyika away to the right with the mountains of the Congo rising steeply upwards behind it, shrouded in cloud, and to the left Burundi's own and still pretty big mountains. I stopped at a lovely lakeside bar for a nice quiet drink and a quick dip in the lake, which was delightful. Then I saw an industrial scale version of the mud brick manufacturing process that I first saw in Uganda, stack after stack of those kilns, which was interesting. So far, all good.

Things went downhill when I started looking for somewhere to stay. I pulled into a village where a hotel existed on google maps, but off the main drag, and as I came into the village proper I collected a group of, and this is no exaggeration, a hundred children chasing after me whilst I cycled around this village looking for a hotel that wasn't there. Children are cute, fine, and they didn't try to steal anything, but this was just too much for me at this point, by a long way, and despite my obvious distress almost no adult tried to help, to tell the children to back off or ask what I was looking for, they mostly just sat back and enjoyed the circus. When I asked someone directly where a hotel was they sent me back the way I’d come, and so I found a different “hotel” which was pumping loud music and looked a bit shit but I just wanted to be away from the children. A gate was closed on them but half of them stood outside watching, grabbing the bars like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead. 

The hotel manager tried to overcharge me by double the actual price, but thankfully someone else had already revealed this before he arrived, which was a blessing as it was rubbish and not even worth the $5 it cost me. I was immediately asked if I wanted a “girlfriend” for the night.** He then tried repeatedly to keep my passport “until the morning”, which is sketchy as hell so I demurred in the strongest possible terms and then went into his office to look for it and forced him to give him back. A random man then said he had helped me on the street and therefore he wanted a beer, so I told him to fuck off and went back to my room in a state of high stress. This is when I realised what I’d been processing since arriving in Burundi. I don't feel like a person here. I'm the butt of a joke, a provider of something, a point of interest, but to most people I’m nothing more. I’m an alien with money. Suddenly I just wanted to be out of this country as quickly as possible. 

I went out to get some supplies and dinner and have a look at the lake but was just constantly followed by about twenty children and a few adults. One teenager started speaking to me in English, then nominated himself as my tour guide and started following me around narrating everything I was doing: "Now we are at the avocado stall", "Now you will put the bananas in your bag" and so on. Of course he wanted some money, or apparently a job, as he seemed to think I lived in Bujumbura and was for some reason visiting this rubbish village. He disappeared as I tried to find some dinner, but the places I went in didn’t seem to be serving food and in one of them they literally laughed in my face when I tried to ask in halting French if I could eat there. I wandered up and down the main road with my caravan of kids feeling totally lost and getting nowhere. Eventually a man with good English saw me and led me to a small place down a dark alley serving rice and beans, which I would never have found on my own. He didn’t ask for anything in return and stayed until I’d finished to make sure everything was OK. He was the first person in this village, and one of the only ones in the entire country, who made me feel welcome. I bought some strange chewy kebab things from a street vendor and gave him one as thanks before he took the bus back to Bujumbura where he lived. I forgot to ask his name but I wish I had. 

*Thus robbing me of an extra half a page's worth of stamps before it gets full and I have to get a stupid blue one.

**I should have said I already had Suzanne back in Bujumbura