New Sports Bar in Bujumbura: a Sign of Peace and Progress?

The other morning I was delighted to see an article with a date line Bujumbura in Le Devoir. Not much news comes out of the African Great Lakes except the occasional horror story, so it was a pleasure to read this account of a modest success.

A Québécois of a certain age Jean-Claude Gosselin, has opened a sports bar in Buju with some associates. Not only does La Cervoise de gaulois feature tablecloths and pennants with hockey logos, the team has started growing vegetables to serve in the restaurant and plans on raising rabbits and chickens for the same end.

The story doesn't say exactly where it's located, and I've been struck by how much the interior looked like a place I visited when I was there in 2001, the Cercle nautique. According to notes on Wikipedia this venerable restaurant/bar/inn on the shores of the lake was closed last summer, so it's possible it's undergone a transformation.

That is, of course, one of the things that make travel interesting, not only initially but later as one follows what has happened in the places visited. According to the US State Department the neighborhood where the Cercle nautique was located is dangerous after dark, but overall it seems that the city and surrounding territory is considerably safer than it was when I was there. It was just as the long peace process between Hutus and Tutsis was beginning, and I was there to do research for my novel The Violets of Usambara which takes place in large part in Buju in 1997.

The photos are ones I took then: of the Club Tanganyika (which may have become part of the Hotel Lac du Tanganyika but I can't be sure) and the cattle of some friends which had been brought down from the hillls for safety.