This blog post is from Audra Warner, one of the 2018 Learning Trip participants. The Learning Trip provides an opportunity for friends of African Road from America to travel to East Africa to learn more about the context and the culture of The Changemakers.
Rather than simply look at Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania through stereotypical assumptions about Africa, the Learning Trip provides an opportunity to experience a little of everyday life, ask challenging questions about East Africa, our world and the power that we hold, as well as the chance to connect and form wonderful friendships.
Here Audra paints the picture of a visit to a Batwa village, just outside of Burundi.
It is crazy to think that just one month ago the African Road Learning Trip Team were listening to the stories of Changemakers in Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania. Many of us are still trying to process everything we saw and experienced on this amazing trip.
When people ask me about the most valuable experience in East Africa, I find it is almost impossible to choose which story to share with them, there were so many. But for me, a story that I always end up telling is about the time when we visited a Batwa village, and the love that was shared with us there.
We went to Evariste’s home village, Ruziba. Evariste is a Changemaker in Burundi who advocates for the rights of the Batwa, a group of indigenous people who make up 1% of the population. When we arrived at his village we were greeted by dancing and singing and soon enough we all joined in. After laughing at our dancing, they wrapped us in cloth, and we continued to dance.
We were then taken to a specific area and taught how to make pots. We each made our own, with tons of help from the patient pot makers. After we finished our pots we were shown where they fire their pots, we watched them pile the clay pots on top of each other, and then cover them with dried grass and set it on fire. It takes around 10 minutes to burn through all the grass, and it gets REALLY hot. Once all burnt, they remove the pots with sticks and hit the pots with water to cool them off. Throughout the whole process the women danced and sang to encourage those who were working on this makeshift kiln.
We then watched a ceremonial building of a traditional Batwa hut. Men came together to quickly build a small traditional hut. The women still continued to dance and sing, cheering on the men as they built the hut.
Before we left we got in one more dance and we left the village humming the tunes we heard. I left feeling humbled, because each person showed us kindness, love, and compassion, giving us what felt like so much even though they had so little.
