Hi from Bujumbura!

I've returned to the capital of Burundi after two weeks in the rural areas of Burundi and Tanzania. The remainder of my time will be spent at the LWFoffice in Bujumbura, writing their country strategy and whatever other documents they throw my way :) So far, I've been sorting through a lot of UN statistics (as you facebook junkies may have learned from my facebook status update!) on how Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the region, despite being surrounded by several of the most conflict and poverty-stricken countries in the world, like Rwanda, DR Congo, Uganda and Kenya, and one of the poorest in the world (169 out of 177 countries measured, according to the research). Upon our return to Bujumbura, I rode through neighborhoods I hadn't seen before, where stark reminders of the conflict still remain: crumbling government buildings and bombed-out houses nearly covered with weeds. Throughout the country, you see young military and police officers (some wearing secondhand American high school letter jackets), stopping traffic with Kalashnikovs strapped to their backs.

Still, there are signs of hope on an individual level:
villages who are welcoming returning refugees, secondary students who returned from Tanzania and are helping their Burundian classmates with schoolwork, formerly non-literate basket-weavers writing receipts as they sell their their handicrafts, women accessing water from wells instead of walking long distances to rivers and streams, primary students attending classes for the first time, packed churches (I attended a 7 am mass with over a thousand people, packed onto tiny benches for nearly 2 hours)...