It was Zaire then. As I sat along the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura, Burundi, I marveled at the moment. Baby hippos splashed playfully in the water as their adults looked carefully from across the way. The sun set with purples and yellows and pinks, in rays shooting up to the sky in sharp ascent. It mirrored the jagged mountain across the lake, sharp daggers in the sky, in what I mused as a dare and a warning.
Those peaks and sky and incredible horizon said “We are seducing you to a world that is none like you have seen before, and it is horrific. And there is nothing you can do about it.” It was Zaire mocking.
I thought I was already there. As one of the very few reporters to make it into Burundi during that nation’s bloodbath — then in December 1993, this very month, it was “Africa’s bloodiest war”– jagged and sharp were terms I was already became familiar with.
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