It's a Wild World

In Burundi, I’ve been given CD-ROM program on how to deal with insecure situations – something that, surprisingly, I never once did while working in Congo. I suppose that detail somehow fell through the cracks. I actually enjoyed testing my common sense and base knowledge of radio communication, though the program itself was pretty cheesy. Like an American after-school special on drugs.

I’m given situations like the following:

The carjackers drive you 30 minutes off the main road. Diego managed to grab his backpack. Now you and Diego on your own in an unknown location. What do you do next?

The scenario sounds pretty serious, until a box appears with a cartoon of two men, in a jungle setting that looks like a children’s book. I half expected Dora the Explorer to run by with the carjackers. Simple! We ask our talking map where to go.

However, we have a liter of water, two chocolate energy bars, a Swiss Army knife in the backpack. Our next task is to figure out where North is using a stick.

Crap – as though I know how to use the shadow of a stick to find North. What, did I stumble into the Girlscout’s version of humanitarian assistance? (once we manage to get back to safety we can plan critical assistance while calculating the global volume of income from Thin Mints this year).

All I can say is that Diego is darn lucky to have me, because I end up saving us. My choice to not follow the path, shown in a photograph, was only based on the instinct that the security program was trying to trick me. Then it congratulates me for noticing a pair of sticks making an “X” at the beginning of the trail, indicating the presence of a mine. Um…..right….that’s precisely why I didn’t go down it.

Overall, I actually enjoyed the course, which reminded me that security is basically common sense, and that even cartoons with vehicles exploding when they hit a mines make sure to have ethnically diverse characters.

Ironically, my security risks have been of another kind. My shower head, as I learned quite quickly, drops out of its holder when the water is turned off, and the first time this happened I narrowly missed getting whacked in the head. Also, some men came to install internet at the hotel and ended up working on the tile roof above my porch. As I sat underneath it. A small chunk of clay tile fell to the concrete floor and smashed. I gingerly picked up my laptop and went inside.

Yesterday we drove outside of Bujumbura, accompanied by armed guards. Diego was nowhere in sight.