On the eve of Canada Day

Tomorrow is Canada day, it also happens to be Burundi's independence day!

No one is working tomorrow... Well, I think we will work half the day and just chill tomorrow afternoon. I'm pretty excited, we've stocked up the beer, got the food supplies to make pizza and invited some of the local burundi co workers to stop by tomorrow should they feel like taking part in some beer pong, flip cup, pizza Canada day fun.

The 5th of July, I head down to Bujumbura a 4 hour drive to catch a flight to South Africa at 1:25 AM the 6th. I can't wait.

I've gotten in contact with the Ulti club in Cape Town, seeing as how I'll be spending 3/4 of my time in Cape Town, I wanted to see if I could get into some Ulti.

I need to bid... I need to...

I'm really glad to be able to say, that the Ulti community stands strong internationally, kind, welcoming generous people in Canada and in South Africa. I'm invited to take part in beach pickup on Sunday and a Winter League game with "Chilli" later on that week with the option of even practicing with them. Overwhelmed with joy, excitement and filled with anticipation. They also offered my colleague and I a ride from the airport to our hostel should we need it.
Reminds me of going to MUCbowl in New Brunswick and staying at a teams house, a team only a few of us knew.

I love Ulti.

A picture of the 4 students + Copens, from left to right. Susan beside me, Christopher, Copens being silly and Ellen in the front.

Shotgun Firsts

Today in Burundi, I had a few firsts. I went to my first aerobic class in Muyinga, Burundi and I watched a lunar eclipse happen from the closest I've ever been to the equator...(2 degrees south) Something I would've missed had I been in North America... Seeing as how it's still daylight there. This brief taste of the earth's magnitude and cosmic presence has humbled and inspired me at the same time. Burundi has been nothing but great to me, the work has been challenging and I feel I've had great opportunities to learn so much about myself and geology (I wish I could say I embraced every opportunity but that would be an exaggeration)

I go to South Africa for my holiday in 3 weeks, so far the adventures to ensue with my colleague are already looking rather epic. We've got three days on safari in the north and a 24 h train ride down to Cape Town from Jo-burg... Time in a beautiful city, the opportunity to swim with penguins and have some delicious Stellenbosch wine.

I'm very, very, happy to be in Africa and I don't think any amount of blogging or lack of... Will ever truly explain how happy I am to be in Africa.

PS Aerobics is hard.

Coffee Plantation

This post is a little off the timeline, but I never got a chance to write the post until now. On May 27th, my colleagues and I got a chance to visit a coffee plantation in Masaka. It was on the way to one of the drilling sites we are exploring for mineral potential. We learnt about how the Burundi government used to have a system in place where all the beans were funneled into one lump bean stock and sold to roasters through the government. We were told that there were farmers who weren't happy with the system, because it meant mixing beans of various quality into one pile and sold for the same price. The Coffee Farmers who worked harder and cared for their beans more or had a better crop weren't being compensated adequately. Recently, the government has addressed this concern, changing the system to a three tier quality bean standard. The better beans being collected and sold for more and the lesser quality bean selling for less.

As far as I could tell, the Coffee plantation we were visiting was happy with the new system, likely because they were producing the "better" beans. Knowing what I've come know about the way politics tend to be in Burundi and having visited the plantation, I'm not sure the tier system is anything more than a cash grab for a few crooked politicians and farmers. We'd have to visit more plantations and actually compare the coffee beans side by side, for a proper assessment and I'm definitely not qualified to be making these allegations... But I just can't help but wonder.

We've been here a few weeks and I've come to realize this country is not poor, the country is rich in mineral resources and has lush vegetation. It is however deprived... Because of the civil war that just ended, the colonization or lack of infrastructure and over population... However you cut this cake, there's obvious reasons to why the country has almost no international presence outside Africa.

The people here are generally kind hearted and honest, that is true; keeping that in mind. There's also the aforementioned deprivation that acts on their behavior and I fear this tiered coffee bean system is a product of deprivation turned corruption.

Closing thought... I promise my rant will culminate on this thought. We saw a drowned rat get pulled from the first fermentation tank and no indication of any decontamination in the process of the beans that were in the tank. The rat was simply removed from the tank and tossed into the field. Is this really quality practice?

Ulti in Africa

This morning, some colleagues and I went to Muyinga for some local town exploring. We brought a ball and a disc, played 4 on 4 soccer and taught some children to throw the disc. I wish I had my camera when we were throwing the disc in a circle and 3 goats wandered in, to chomp on some greens or to take a picture of the cow heard on our soccer pitch.

I did get some pics of the kids throwing the disc and a video of the children throwing a bit.

After we finished playing, we walked back through the market, quite the sight to see all the different shops and the various goods for sale. The tight quarters and packed alleys filled with people were overwhelming at times but not unbearable.

Fantastic morning!


Check out the video of the children playing Ulti on Youtube

Models are fun to mess around with but don't marry one -Geology Proverb

A week ago today, we landed in Bujumbura, Burundi. We left Toronto not knowing who we'd be working with and none of us completely certain of what this summer was going to be like. After 24 hours of travel(including the time changes) we landed in Burundi. So far, we've been here at the field office in Muyinga for most of the time. We've visited some of the areas the company has mineral rights to (15% of the country)and learnt most of local geology... I say most because there's still a lot to discover and more that's being debated.

Recently, we were given different tasks and our first few assignments, were all working towards the same goal utilizing our different skills to ensure the project gets the best out of us. I have to commend our President for choosing us all so well.

Our team of student geologists get along well and compliment each other very nicely.
The others here at the field office include some South Africans, French, Tanzanian expats and 40 or so Burundians. We've got a lot of people here and everyone is very friendly, most people work 10 or so hours a day some of us are working more. The time we spend at work flies by so fast sometimes, we don't notice we nearly work sunrise to sunset. Burundi being so close to the equator gets 12 hours of dark and 12 hours of light, give or take 15 minutes; probably the toughest thing to get used to.

I'm so used to waking up and jogging or walking while the sun rises or having coffee watching the sun catch up with my morning routine and having a few hours of daylight after the work/school day is done to play some ulti or have a beer on a patio. The first few days, I recall saying: "I can't believe its dark already" only to hear one of my colleagues and fellow student geologists say: "I can't believe we are in Africa"... Really puts things in perspective and reminds us of the great opportunity we've all been given.

The food has been pretty great, we've got two chefs (Donacien and Boniface) who have been more than accommodating cooking us crepes, omelettes, pancakes, fried eggs and bacon, bolognese pasta, goat brochette bbq, fish filets and many other foods we've requested or they've planned for us. The coffee has been delicious and free flowing, coca-cola tastes better here and the local beer Primus isn't bad! They also brew Amstel locally which is very tasty. Hard to believe but true, the wine here is on par with prices in Canada but the selection trumps most of the liquor store selections I've ever seen in Canada...

The mornings are hot and dry, lunchtime tends to be hot and slightly more humid. Anywhere between 2 and 4 pm it gets very hot and humid, the sun seems to go into ultra heat mode and you could probably fry an egg on most of our foreheads.
That being said, we aren't dying of heat... Because we can hide in our shipping containers. They've got a fantastic team of welders and metal workers on site who have revamped shipping containers to have proper doors, desks, bunk beds, windows and fans. Painting them white and positioning them under aluminum roofs providing the right amount of shade allows them to not turn into saunas during the hot days.

Looking forward to the rest of the summer, glad I'm in Africa every morning and excited to mess around with some (Geological) models.