In Bujumbura one has to walk
Over the last three years I have commented on the shortage of fuel in Burundi. The first time I came to Burundi, fuel deliveries at filling stations were infrequent and erratic. Mostly this affected petrol, diesel was a little bit easier to get. Last year even diesel was hard to get. This year matters seem to have got even worse. Most filling stations have given up. They have turned off their pumps, some have even put up barriers. There is, of course, some fuel in Burundi, sold “informally”, but it’s frighteningly expensive, illegal, and probably diluted with something potentially damaging to the vehicle’s engine. Fuel is so hard to get, and so expensive when it can be found, that the motor bike taxis often freewheel down the many hills around the outskirts of Bujumbura. A few near-death experiences caused by the silent arrival of a motor bike shaving the hairs of my arm has made me very wary when out walking.
Expensive fuel in short supply makes everything else more expensive. Prices in Burundian Franks are rising rapidly, making ordinary life more difficult by the day.
A good deal of what fuel is available probably came from D.R. Congo, so the price can only rise exponentially, and the shortages get worse as a result of the ongoing war in South and North Kivu and the fall of Bukavu only 100 km across the frontier.
Shortage of fuel also means that, for a city the size of Bujumbura, there is remarkably little traffic on the roads. Even buses and taxis are in short supply. There are huge crowds of people waiting for buses at the main bus terminal in the city centre and pretty much everywhere else that buses stop. There are also large numbers of people who have given up waiting and walk.
Pretty much every day I go out of the guest house where I am staying and take a walk to a coffee shop about a kilometre away. When I get there, I sit and drink a double espresso and walk back. Any kind of exercise is better than none. The route I take is always busy with people walking. Walking towards the city centre, walking to the local shops, walking to the local hospital: Bujumbura is a walking city.
That there is less traffic on the roads does not make this walking city any safer. What vehicles there are on the roads all seem to be driven with something like homicidal abandon and a total disregard of any speed limit. Nothing improves one’s skill in extemporary prayer like sitting in the front passenger seat of a Toyota pick-up hurtling through the streets of Bujumbura at barely sub-sonic speeds.
All this is part of the rich pattern of life in an African country. To be honest I seem to remember traffic in Kitwe and Lusaka being equally insane, only more so because there was more of it. It is part of the pattern of life which the students I have been teaching have to contend with every day, part of what will form the environment in which they will carry out their ministry. I am not quite sure that anything I can teach them will adequately prepare them for this environment. Perhaps none of us are ever truly prepared for what God calls us to, which is maybe the point. We rely on grace gifts of the Spirit and nothing else. It will be given to us what we are to say and do.
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