By Christopher Vourlias
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 24, 2010; F01

Coming down the hill, we make like a runaway train. Perilous, it seems, is the only speed in Burundi. The bus is crowded, luggage and bodies toppling as we hug each turn in the road. Outside, the hills are like waves; the sky is tumbling with clouds; the brave boys on their wobbly bikes, steering sacks of potatoes and charcoal toward distant villages, veer out of our path. In a small hilltop town, we stop at a checkpoint; a rumpled policeman sitting on a folding chair tugs a rope across the road. Circling the bus are boys selling peanuts and hard-boiled eggs. They also sell rabbits, small skittish creatures with twitching noses that they hold aloft by the ears.

It is my third trip of the year to Burundi, a tiny, picturesque, often war-torn country in central Africa's troubled heart. A decade ago, when rebel groups preyed upon the roads, this same trip might have lured only the brave or the foolhardy. Now, instead, it's the bus driver I'm worried about. Boarding the bus in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, I thought he looked competent enough: a short, stout man in blue jeans and work boots, a father, perhaps, who valued his life (and mine). But for the next six hours I watched wide-eyed and white-knuckled as he laid his foot on the pedal and blasted the horn, schoolchildren scattering before us like marbles.

When Bujumbura, the capital, finally comes into view, I breathe a sigh of relief. (A pastor onboard, going me one better, takes out a leather-bound Bible and leads the passengers in prayer.) The descent from the upcountry highlands to the flood plain around Bujumbura is like falling into a frying pan. A blanket of haze covers the city. Sunlight flashes silver on tin roofs. From a distance, the city is gray; only when you get closer do the colors erupt: women like tropical birds, storefronts the color of blueberries, lemons, persimmons. The city is hot, chaotic -- a whirling crush of motorbikes and minibuses, the energetic hustle of traders doing brisk business on the side of the road.

Bujumbura is at peace but never at rest. Before "la crise" -- "the crisis," as locals euphemistically refer to Burundi's disastrous 15-year civil war -- this freewheeling, free-spirited city on the shores of Lake Tanganyika was known for its joie de vivre. Far from the isolated, impoverished life of the collines, Burundi's small hilltop communities, Bujumbura was a cosmopolitan city of colorful art deco buildings, palm-shaded avenues and magnificent cuisine inspired by the Belgian colonists. Despite its small size -- the population was just 200,000 before the war -- the city was brimming with confidence and sophistication. "In Buja," a Rwandan friend told me, "you would see people in restaurants doing this." He held an imaginary glass of wine to the light, sniffed it with a discerning nose and brought it to his lips.

But the city also revealed this country's deeper divides. Most of Bujumbura's neighborhoods were carved along ethnic lines, a divide that became entrenched during the crisis, when battles between majority Hutu militias and the Tutsi-dominated army razed whole suburbs. The elites sipping Veuve Clicquot at Chez André or dining at the stiff-linened Restaurant Le Tanganyika were invariably drawn from the educated class of Tutsis. The Hutus were excluded from the universities and the civil service. Even when peace reigned, it was tempered by resentment and suspicion.

Burundi's ethnic division, in which Hutus outnumbered Tutsis by roughly 6 to 1, mirrored the divide in neighboring Rwanda, and events in the two countries have long been intertwined. But since the region's poisonous ethnic politics reached a grim apotheosis in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the fates of these twin countries have diverged. While the bloodletting in Rwanda passed in 100 brutal days, and the country then began on the road to a remarkable recovery, Burundi's violence waxed and waned for nearly a decade and a half.

Now, finally, after a long and winding road, international observers are guardedly optimistic about Burundi's future. The United Nations has praised the peace process ahead of this year's presidential election, confidently declaring that it has "entered a new phase," while South African peacekeepers have wrapped up their work, patted themselves on the back and retreated to the vineyards of Stellenbosch. Former rebel fighters are being reintegrated into civil society, while the most recalcitrant of the rebel groups has finally laid down arms and gone the very Burundian route of joining the government. (The current president, Pierre Nkurunziza, is a former rebel.)

The optimism around Bujumbura is cautious but tangible. "The Burundian people are not ready for more war," a pastor tells me. Everywhere you see signs of a new normalcy creeping in: the cellphone shops stocked with the latest imports from Dubai; the arrivistes lingering over cappuccinos at a sidewalk cafe. At the posh Havana Club, a woman describes the modest hopes her countrymen share for the future as she sinks into a plush leather sofa.

"What people want is peace," she says. "To be able to walk in the city, to go to the hospital, to have their children in school." After the many long years of war, the allure of a more normal life glistens like a polished gemstone.

Even peace, though, has its limits. Burundi remains one of the world's poorest countries, largely buoyed by foreign aid. Outside the walled compounds of Bujumbura's ritzy suburbs, joblessness is rampant. What little prosperity has come with the postwar stability has rarely trickled down to the masses. Plum jobs and political appointments are reserved for the president's cadre. Even the lowest civil servant, or the headmaster of a village school, must prove his allegiance to the ruling CNDD-FDD party.

"Justice does not know about Burundi," a jobless man named Felicien tells me. "When I ask my uncle for the job, he says, 'What about your party? What about CNDD?' I say my party is freedom."

Unfortunately, freedom doesn't pay the bills. One afternoon, meeting me on the street, Felicien cautiously gauges my interest in gold and diamonds that a cousin has smuggled in from Congo.

It is an open secret that much of the money pouring into Bujumbura is of the ill-gotten variety. (A recently released U.N. report implicated Burundi in the complex, illicit mineral trade in Congo.) But the government is hoping to shore up its gains through the more reputable flow of tourist dollars. Carmen Nibigira, director general of the tour company Eos Visions Burundi, tells me that developing the nascent tourism sector has finally become a priority for this country's economic revival. Much of her company's work focuses on cultural tours that visit women's groups and community-based development projects to see how this impoverished country is trying to rebuild at the grass-roots level.

And, of course, there are the beaches. Burundi's long shoreline, skirting the northeastern tip of Lake Tanganyika, is seeing a small boom in new resorts. Brave the bumpy roads to Saga Resha or Nyanza Lac, and you'll be surprised how comfy a beach bum can be in the heart of central Africa. Bujumbura, too, boasts some fine beaches, the choicest of which, Saga Plage, attracts Congolese weekenders, Rwandan stag parties and harried aid workers from across the region.

On a typically hot and humid Buja morning, I hop on the back of a motorbike taxi and head toward the beach. Past the dilapidated art deco buildings dotting the center of town, we come to the massive Brarudi brewery -- the engine of the Burundian economy, so vital that it was guarded by government soldiers throughout the long civil war. A great ancient tree, called the lovers' tree, spreads over the city's main roundabout. On the weekends, wedding groups pose for pictures under its heavy boughs; on this day, dozens of soldiers are sprawled on the grass, caressing their rifles like young paramours. Farther along the road to Congo we sweep past a string of U.N. compounds, the walls crowned with great coils of concertina wire, the gates blocked by concrete-filled oil drums and sandbags. The road is rough. We dodge potholes and men on bicycles and boys leading cows and goats along the road's grassy shoulder.

The beach is set back from the main road and stretches as far as I can see. Just a couple of years ago, a young student tells me, the rebels controlled the area. Now there are beach bars, an upmarket hotel and men poling dugout canoes across the shallow waters, offering rides to tourists. On Sunday afternoon, after the churches have emptied, you'll see hundreds of Burundians gathering in sport coats and dress slacks, in broad-brimmed hats and high heels. Les Tambourinaires -- the country's famous drummers -- perform for wedding parties and drunkenly swaying crowds. Everyone kicks off his shoes and digs his toes into the coarse, scratchy sand. (In land-locked Africa, you take what you can get.)

Walking along the beach, I meet a man called Short. He is, true to his name, about as tall as a mailbox. Our introductions are long, gracious, punctuated with inquiries about the health of one's family and one's allegiance to a particular soccer team. Short takes my hand warmly in his, clearly pleased at this meeting.

"Christophe," he says, giving my name a French lilt. "Mr. Christophe Columbus. The boy who discovered the world."

We sit beneath a shade tree drinking lukewarm bottles of Coke. Broad-browed and pensive, Short takes in Tanganyika with an expansive view. The water is flat, glassy, full of morning bathers; across from us, the mountains of Congo are covered by a thick scrawl of clouds.

"The lake is 32,000 kilometers square," Short says, as if reciting from a schoolbook. "Burundi is 28,074 kilometers square. You can squeeze Burundi into our lake."

During the war, Short fled his home in the north of the country, settling in one of the dense, poorer suburbs of the capital. He has been living there for more than a decade, solitary, marginally employed, trawling for prospects with the same diligent optimism as the fishermen we watch rowing out from shore, casting their empty nets. He tells me it is just the second time he's seen the lake in the 27 years of his life. The bus ride from the suburbs -- 500 Burundian francs, or about 40 cents -- is more than he can usually afford. He's grateful that he chose this day to come and clear his head. Our meeting seems providential.

"What did he do, Mr. Amerigo Vespucci?" Short asks, staring at the waves.

"He made a map, I think," I say. "He gave his name to a country."

Short nods, considering this. "In America," he says, "the tradition is to have a big house, a nice car, money." In a way, I find it hard to disagree. He says he would like to see America someday, and asks if that would be possible. I tell him I hope it would be.

A prop plane passes overhead, swooping toward the water. Short sits there in silence, knitting his hands in his lap, his head full of big houses and foreign lands. Maybe he is thinking of the Columbuses and Vespuccis of the Old World, steering their ships on uncertain courses toward distant shores. They had their rough charts and compasses and the ancient light of the stars to guide them. But while Burundi sets itself on a new course, there are no maps for what lies ahead.

For this moment at least, the country is at peace. No one knows what awaits on the far shore.

Vourlias is living out of a suitcase in Africa and working on his first book.

Details: Bujumbura, Burundi