And your tax money is spent on the following…..

August 4th 2005, 2135B


As you can probably guess, I wasn’t able to get this onto the net before I deployed out of Bujumbura, but I’ll just keep up with the plan of typing these things up in Word & posting them when I get the chance.

So let’s get started, shall we?

As a little background for those of you who missed me bitching & moaning about it, the army decided to ship me off to Burundi 6 weeks early, effectively turning a 6 months deployment into one that’s the best part of eight months long instead. I got here on 6th July, and am scheduled to rotate back to “the States” sometime in February next year. I had originally been supposed to arrive here in mid August, but someone decided that extra personnel were needed for the elections that have been going on here recently, so a few of us ended up shipping out over a month early.

Currently I’m deployed out of Bujumbura to a little place called Mwaro, about 70km south east of the capital. The camp is a little collection of ten or so 16x16 tents at the top of a hill, in the middle of a huge refugee camp & surrounded by razor wire. It’s actually quite pleasant here, & I far prefer it to Bujumbura. The weather is shit loads better for one. The capital is right on Lake Tanganyika, so the heat, humidity & the mosquitoes are pretty rough. Here we’re a good 2000m above sea level, so it’s much cooler & there’s no humidity at all. No mozzies either come to think of it, and that’s a huge point in its favour. Vampiric little bitches.
It’s also quite a pleasant area, scenery wise, & the sunrise down the valley from the camp is really pleasant some mornings, at least on those mornings I get up so early. Usually I sleep in till about 0700 here, & Ash’ll tell you that constitutes a late lie-in for me. That’s actually the best part of being here – the relaxed attitude. It’s only a platoon strength base, so the highest rank here is a Lieutenant, with a Sergeant as the next senior non-com after myself. The platoon isn’t busy with active operations either, having been placed here as security for the refugee camp, so it’s not that we’re doing much patrolling either. My day typically consists of getting up in time for morning coffee, pulling on shorts & a t-shirt, & then reading or taking a few photos – some of which I’ll post at some point - for the rest of the day. Every couple of days I’ll take my vehicle for a maintenance drive to make sure that the battery stays charged & that it’s in good working order. And that, ladies & gentlemen, is what your tax money is paying me to do lately.

I’ll be rotating back to the capital in a few weeks though, when the new contingent arrives, & things will change some then. It looks like the current planning is that I’ll be pulled from the UN mission to Burundi & switched over to the African Union contingent instead for the remainder of the deployment. That sucks a bit in that I’ll be pretty much permanently based in Bujumbura, & I can’t say that I’m fond of the town, but I’ll probably be a fair bit busier.
Bujumbura itself isn’t such a bad place, & I was pleasantly surprised at how clean the place is. I’d been expecting another Kinshasa with its filth, crowds, smog, & appalling traffic, but it’s actually quite different. There’s less litter than in many South African cities, & there are far fewer people crowding the city. The traffic still isn’t so hot, but it’s way better than Kinshasa. I refused point blank to drive in that city, but I’m happy enough behind the wheel here. Then again, when you’re driving an 18 ton armoured vehicle, you can afford not to worry about some dumb bastard trying to cut you off – you might feel the bang, but all you’ll have to do is rub off the paint his car leaves behind :P
I’m not too crazy about what working in Bujumbura was like for the two weeks I was there for though, and many of the people there are not people I’m interested in spending time with. Not that it really matters much I guess, as my job will be changing when I get back to the capital, & I’ll be exchanging the current crop of assholes for new assholes when the next contingent arrives. They’re not all assholes here though, & a few of the people I’ve met here are rather pleasant. Not that I really had chance to get to know them while I was in town, as I’ve not been in a very sociable frame of mind for the most part, and they’ll have rotated back to the States by the time I finish up here in the bush. Still, they were pleasant enough, & few of us went out for pizza the night before I left for Mwaro, which was quite fun. Especially the part where I ended up having to order for everyone, because I was the only one who knows even 3 words in French. That’s not as bad as one place I went to in the Congo though, a little café in Bunia – me as an English speaking patron, the Lingali speaking counter staff, and a Spanish speaking cashier. It took 10 minutes to order & pay for a cup of coffee, with milk & 2 sugars, so I laughed off the tuna and mayo roll as a lost cause.
One of the guys coming up at the end of the month, Tiaan, is a mate from the office in Durbs, & a few of the others I met on the mission readiness training seemed decent enough so at least I’ll have some friendly company for the next few months.
Anyway, it’s late & I’m off to bed, not that I’m sleeping too well lately. Bloody mefliam side effects…
Cheers for now ;)