The Bridge Went Down-Holy Traffic!!

Traffic in Bujumbura is never easy to navigate. This is a city of 3 million people without a single traffic light and only a few stop signs, which people totally ignore. There are no police directing traffic and intersections have just one rule "Bonne Chance!" which means good luck!

We live across the river from the center of town in a little quieter place. To get there you cross a bridge and there is less traffic when you get to our quarter.

But recently this is what we found on the way home.

A heavy storm had caused the bridge to collapse and the road to crack. So, we were left with only one way to get into the city. For a month or more the road was closed. We didn't know if it would ever be opened again. The traffic going into and out of the city was horrible. We spent hours every day just waiting in line to get anyplace. Cars would be lined up as far as you could see.

A few times they opened a lane of the road for an hour or two, but it was pretty scary. I wasn't sure that waiting in the longer lines on a safe road wasn't a better idea.

Brent even became determined to find a new way home. He went down a dirt road looking for a way across the river. Some young men motioned that he could cross the river if he followed them. So off we went down a steep embankment and onto the river bed. They told him that we could cross upstream, but when we went that way, we didn't see any opening on the other side of the river to get out of the river bed.

.

.

After much begging on my part, we turned around and headed back. With the help of our four-wheel-drive truck we finally were able to get ourselves out of the river bed. Luckily, on the way home we found an ice cream bike and for $5 Brent bought his way out of the doghouse.

....

Then one day they started working on the bridge and the road. All the work was done by hand, but slowly things progressed. Many workers cleared out the fallen rock. Then they moving one giant rock at a time up the hill. They smashed them to the ground, breaking them and building a new road and retaining wall with the pieces.

In two weeks they finished the job and gave us our road back to town. The terrible traffic snarls are now back to just "normal craziness" and all is well in Bujumbura.