Ngozi

This weekend I had the opportunity to travel again up country but this time to a town called Ngozi. It took us about 3 hours by bus, but it was nice seeing more of the countryside. Ngozi is the 3rd largest town in Burundi, but it was still very small. Burundi has many people but they are spread out in hundreds of smaller towns. I went to Ngozi because Emmanuel was giving a talk to some university students at the local college. The talk was in French so I only caught a few ideas, but it was good for me to have practice listening to French. It has been difficult for me to practice my French because many people want to practice their English with me.

The next morning we attended a local church. It was a small congregation but they were very strong singers, we could hear them all the way down the street. The church building consisted of a tin roof and the walls of the neighboring buildings. Emmanuel asked me to share a little with the congregation about why I was in Burundi, so I gave a short talk. I am usually a little intimidated by public speaking, but having a translator made it easy because I always had time to think about what I would say between sentences.

This is the yahoo bus that we took to Ngozi. I think they borrowed the name from somewhere

We are starting to make real progress at the studio, which I am very excited about. We have been working out a lot of kinks, and we will continue to do so, but on Friday we made a huge step and started the recording process! A young man came in to be our test subject. He had recorded some music on his keyboard so we played that back and recorded him singing, and I think that the results were very positive. We still have to mix the song, but I am very excited about the progress we are making.