KIGOMA

Seth Chase: former life guard, gymnast, and all-star of his junior high school diving time... beautifully swan dives off rocks in Kigoma into Lake Tanyanikya (photo credit to Brandon Thiessen).
This photo captures the essence of Kigoma. The absolute fun. The beauty. The moments of carefree and joyful bliss...

In Buj, most offices are closed for the week after Christmas. World Relief Burundi was too.
In our minds, an ideal opportunity for a mini-vacation.

December 26th: Seth, Sara, and I… along with a crew of our pals (Brando, Duncan, Dave, Sarah, Matt, and Rebecca) piled into the landcruiser and Matt’s suburu, and headed 7 hours south to Kigoma, Tanzania.

It was crazy beautiful. A different kind of beauty than Burundi… the road wound around big hills with grass at the top and scattered palm trees, red dirt roads and red brick houses, huge rocks, pineapples sold in abundance on roadsides. It was fun for Seth and I to get out and explore.

We stayed in a comfy little house above the lake with a 5-minute downhill walk to OUR own beach! And it was GORGEOUS. The beach was small with red sand, framed by boulders on either side and had several little grass huts for shade, two boats, and the water was calm, clear and a beautiful green/blue.

We spent the week in relax mode. Swimming, snorkeling (Lake Tanganyika is actually known for its’ great variety of fresh water tropical fish), rock jumping, exploring and bouldering, and we even got to sail on the lake with an MAF pilot one afternoon. Dinners of fish, rice, and pineapple were ate on a deck overlooking the lake and the sun setting behind the Congo mountains.

One day, we decided to go to nearby Gombe Park where the famous Jane Goodall spent years studying the chimps! It’s now a national park and continues to be a research institute. To get there, we took an adventurous 2-hour boat ride in a large fishing boat (with a very small motor), north along the lake shore of Lake T.

There, with a guide, we trekked through a beautiful rainforest and spent a couple hours tracking and communing with the chimps. It was pretty amazing!

New Year’s Eve celebration was low-key with just the 9 of us, but really fun. The fact that we had nothing planned or any expectations of the night (as is so often the case when people plan big parties or events to bring in the New Year), made it even more enjoyable, I think. We played poker and speed scrabble, went for a midnight swim, and concluded the evening with a mini-dance session to music on Matt’s i-pod.

New Year’s Day, we got up early and groggy after staying up late for New Year’s and hit the road. Unfortunately the roads in Tanzania can be horrendous when it rains. It had rained. You can see (as pictured below) that the trip home was a bit adventurous. Needless to say, we were soon glad to get across the border, back to our Burundi with the main roads being cement with potholes... and home.