May 16: Morning Walks and Starving Children

Morning is the best time to go out to walk around a city. People are focusing on their own lives then, and do not seem to mind if you walk along with them for a while observing what they do. It also is a time when those most likely to prey on outsiders are least likely to be around.

I would go out, map in hand, as soon as it was fully light, and head in a new direction. Often the streets I took were full of people on their way to market carrying packages and baskets on their heads. Other streets which climbed the hills took me past houses protected by walls and hedges of spiny bushes, or by the multi-story structures built by banks and foreign governments.

Later in the day if I went out, a group of children attached themselves to me as soon as I stepped out of the hotel grounds. “Faim, faim” they said, pointing to their mouths. They did look famished too, but I steeled myself to ignore them and after a few steps they gave up.

On my last day there I stopped by the internet café to to e-mail home the news that I was leaving that afternoon to fly to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. As I came out, I quickly counted the handful of small Burundais currency, all that I had left of the money I’d changed. When I looked up I saw that five boys were squatting at the curb. I had five bills, one for each. Perfect, I thought.

But no sooner had I handed out the money than a half dozen other children appeared from the shade where they must have been resting. “Madame, Madame,” they cried. “Faim, faim.” I started to run, and they ran after me. It was only when one of the men who had been lounging outside the café stepped forward, shouting something at them in Kirundi that they stopped. How foolish of me. How kind of him.