Burundi’s largest city of 3 million people graphically illustrates the parlous state of this impoverished nation one of Africa’s poorest. This is a country where the average wage is around $1 per day. It is a country where long queues form outside of fenced off petrol stations because the country chronically experiences severe petrol shortages. The dusty potholed roads of the city are choked, with people notwith cars. Queues sometimes 100 people long line up for seats on the few minibuses that still run. The downtown area is dirty, run down and impoverished It is easily the worst African city I have seen. It reminds me of bigger versions of the dusty most rundown backwater towns I travelled through in places like Tanzania in 1986 as a backpacker.
Sadly the actual topographical setting should be idyllic. Beautiful Vedant mountains lush with vegetation cascade down to the shores of Lake Tanganyika which is like an inland sea. Buj is like a blight on the landscape. Our first stop today is the Stanley – Livingstone meeting place monument. Dr David Livingstone the Scottish doctor and missionary has always been a hero for me. In 1869 when news from Livingstone to the outside world dried up they sent Henry Morton Stanley’s to find him. Against the odds he found him and uttered the iconic phrase “Dr Livingstone I presume”. That happened at Ujiji in Tanzania in 1871. Stanley returned home but not before exploring and mapping the mighty Congo River and a substantial portion of what is now DRC. Stanley became a great explorer in his own right.
This monument commemorates their second meeting when a severely ill Livingstone stood before Stanley. Stanley returned to the west and Livingstone died shortly after around Zambia.
A quick detour to the monument celebrating Burundi’s independence in 1962 completes the tourist sites here.
Outside of Buj we drive 2 hours to our next destination. The road is a winding mountain road with green all around. Fields of bananas, tea plantations and redolent eucalypt forests are all around. The lushness of the vegetation is a revelation.
