Hippos!

This weekend we went to a Rusizi national park, which is only 15min out of the city.

And we saw hippos!

The park was a different world from the streets of Bujumbura, it was very lush and there were colorful birds singing in the treetops. I am a little disappointed because these photos hardly do it justice, but maybe they will give you some idea of what it was like.

Burundi doesn’t have a large selection of wild animals to boast about, it really only has hippos and crocodiles. We did see two monkeys in town a few weeks back, but I think that is rare. It is sad because Burundi used to have many animals, even elephants, but they have all been driven out by the war or eaten by hungry people.

So, we went to see the last of the Burundian wildlife, and very dangerous wildlife I might add.

We didn’t plan on seeing any crocodiles, and I wasn’t disappointed that we didn’t see any because we were traveling through the park on foot.

We did see lots of hippos though. We saw at least 15 swimming at different spots along the river. It was pretty exciting to be standing on the river bank watching these huge animals and knowing that the only thing that stands between me and them is the distance.

It was great being out in nature and getting a glimpse of how the world looked many years ago.

The hippos were a little far away so I couldn’t capture them well with my camera.

The two spots in the river are hippo heads, and Bujumbura sits at the base of those mountains.

Work update: not much to report on. I spent a lot of time last week just experimenting with some music software. We don’t really have people banging down the door to come record with us, so things have been a little slow. Hopefully, our next project will be to create an advertisement for our studio. We will then play the ad on the radio to, hopefully, attract people who would like to record.

I am very excited because on Thursday we are heading up to Kigali, Rwanda for the weekend.