Anchorage and Bujumbura. Sister Cities?

If you had told me two weeks ago that the first place that would come to mind when I landed in Bujumbura was Anchorage, Alaska, I would have thought you were crazy. And, I have to admit, that Anchorage actually wasn't the very first thing that came to mind.

The first thing was Star Wars. The Bujumbura airport has to be one of the most bizarre I have ever seen. It consists of three big, white, conical buildings. Imagine giant mushrooms with big picture windows on the front and you're half-way there. Who knew George Lucas and Oscar Neimeyer had collaborated? After two back to back red eyes, and a bleary day in London in between, it really did feel like I'd flown to another planet. Sorry I can't show you a picture of the airport buildings, but those guys in fatigues with AK-47s really discourage snapshots.

Bujumbura is located by a large lake, Lake Tanganyika (the second deepest lake in the world after Lake Baikal in Russia), and on the other side of the lake are huge mountains that are in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Most of the city lies on a flat plain between more mountains along the edge of town. The business center is down on the plain not far from the lake while some of the wealthier residents live in gated compounds on the hillside with in houses with lake and mountain views. For those of you who have never been to Anchorage it is similarly situated on the shores of Cook Inlet with mountains across the inlet and more mountains bordering the city to the East. Anchorage and Bujumbura both have around 300,000 residents.

Both cities are, shall we say, slightly challenged in the architecture department and it's kind of a haul to get to both places. You really don't pass through Bujumbura or Anchorage on your way to anywhere. Bujumbura's location (between Rwanda, Tanzania, and the DRC) and thirteen years of civil war definitely give it a rough and ready, Last Frontier feeling. While Anchorage has it's beluga whales and bears, Bujumbura has hippos and crocs. You even see high school running teams training on the roads that go up into the mountains here, just like in Anchorage.

One thing that is very different, however, is the crushing poverty here. While Anchorage may not have the prettiest buildings you have ever seen and some people still live on dirt roads, it is fabulously wealthy and well-cared for compared to Bujumbura.

Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world. The only real income generators are the coffee and tea trade and government. While there are wealthy residents here, there are also many poor neighborhoods in the city where wooden shacks with tin and mud dwellings with thatch stretch out along the shores of the lake and onto the hillsides. Running water and electricity are not available in much of the town and lots of residents use community public phones. It is not uncommon to see people carrying recently killed chickens by their feet walking through downtown. Many residents eek out a living selling shoes and fruits and vegetables on the sidewalk outside the main market. The war halted most progress, of course, and some areas, like all UN facilities and the European Union offices, remain heavily bunkered.

One of the saddest physical remnants of the war is the University of Burundi building. A beautiful facility on the mountainside with a sweeping view, an Olympic-sized pool, soccer fields, and tall, modernist chapel that stands shuttered, paint peeling off, and windows shattered. The place has a perfect view of the city and was, also, the perfect place to launch mortars into town. It has just been to costly for the government to reopen it now that peace has returned. While the physical and emotional injuries from the war seem to be much greater than the structural ones, it's hard not to believe that the gleaming white walls of the abandoned university building, visible from almost everywhere in Bujumbura, aren't a daily reminder to the residents of the debilitating effect of war.