Over the summer I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to work at an orphanage in Burundi for just over two weeks. I left the UK from Heathrow on July 25. The eight-hour flight took us to Kigali, in Rwanda, and then to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.

 

Although everyone told us about high temperatures when we arrived, I was surprised to find the temperature was actually quite cool and there was a breeze which we could feel even inside the airport because there were no walls, only a roof, held up by metal and plastic rods. It also rained while we were there.

 

During my time at the orphanage, I stayed with a family who live on the compound and act as house parents. There are only two couples who are house parents and they split the 44 children between them. The ages at the orphanage ranged from six to 21, although the oldest girl is finishing her A-levels in school in Uganda. The main language in Burundi is Kirundi, but the kids know English as their first language. Although this helped us, they cannot study higher education in Burundi because the colleges are French or Kirundi-speaking. Their summer holiday is 10 weeks long, and so, to ease the pressure on the house parents, we tried to entertain and play with the kids.

 

The founder of the orphanage has a swimming pool in her garden and so the kids used that three times a week and on the other two mornings they went to the beach, which is in fact Lake Tanganyika. We couldn’t swim in the lake, even though the locals did, because of the crocodiles and hippos. While I was there, I was struck by how little the kids had in comparison to us. The most fortunate ones only had a few posters on the walls of the rooms they shared with four to six other children.

 

One of the house parents took us to see the hospital and Aids clinic, which African Revival Ministries (the organisation that runs the orphanage and also a school) began several years earlier. The needs of the patients and the lack of funding were obvious and painful to watch. The patients were in crowded rooms with broken mosquito netting and vomit on the floor, the pharmacy was under stocked and there were blood samples lying all over the counters and tables.

 

My trip to Burundi really opened my eyes to a whole new world, one we are not exposed to in the west. It gave me an appreciation for the basics of life that we take for granted, but also showed me how much in the west we eat and use what we don’t really need. I found it to be challenging and humbling and certainly rewarding.

 

By courtesy of Gt Yarmouth Mercury dated Friday 21st September 2007