The Antestia bug From far off, the Burundian countryside is a vast expanse of green carpeted rolling hills. Each hill is a distinct geopolitical unit known as a ‘colline’ (‘hill’ in French). Get closer to a colline and a tapestry of patchwork farming appears: a square of banana trees, a patch of cassava, a large …
Rain is falling gently on the banana leaves outside my window. School kids are shouting and laughing. Motorbikes are whizzing past piled high with boxes, goats, people, bananas, grass, and even entire beds on their backs. This is normal life here, and in Burundi “normal” can be very very hard for many. Today is the International Day …
Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart. ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist It’s been a mad expedition. Sometimes, I daydream that our life resembles a lazy river. Currently it does not. It more closely resembles a bullet train traveling so fast that sides peel away, leaving …
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress. Charles Dickens Our coffee is slowly being moved from our drying tables and …
“How many of you have ever tasted coffee from your home hill?” I asked while requesting a show of hands. One person raised their hand. One person. Just one. Over 200 coffee farmers were circled around us at the community gathering point on Gaharo hill. It was hot and dusty. The morning light of Africa …
I woke up thinking about the way the equatorial morning light moves around the dense matter of humanity. Long shadows on the ground serve as evidence that there are spaces the light cannot fill. I feel like we have been living in those dark spaces for several weeks now, all the time fighting to get …
