Loch Lomond

There is an old Scottish song called Loch Lomond.  It is said to be about two Scottish rebels imprisoned by the English.  One is to be freed and thus will take the high road home.  The other will be executed and take the low road of death.  In Scottish folklore the soul returns to the place of its greatest love, so his soul will reach Loch Lomond before the freed rebel. I like the song, but it took a different meaning this weekend. Gitega and Ngozi are map neighbors.  No more than 90 km from each other.  On Saturday we took the high road from Gitega to Ngozi.  This road takes the longway round and was a 2.5 hour drive on a newly constructed two lane highway.  We passed through a few villages and saw several large trucks moving goods. On Sunday, we took the low road, the shortcut, the direct route, back to Gitega. We passed through many more villages, much poorer villages. This road is a one lane dirt road that, because of erosion, is accessible only by 4x4s, motorbikes, bicycles, and walking.  This shortcut allowed us to reach Gitega in only 3 hours.  It was the scenic route, and it was the low road.  Goods produced in these villages are much more difficult to transport to markets in the larger city where they fetch higher prices, or even bringing in goods needed in the villages. One this road the primary method of moving goods is on the back of a bike, up to several hundred pounds, pushed up the mountains and and ridden down.  This work seems to be done primarily by boys who could not afford the fees for secondary education.  Each one we passed looked entirely worn out by their labor.  In Kirundi, there are three words for death, one meaning to sleep like a gentleman, one meaning to go home, and one meaning to collapse like an animal.  This last one is often used for the rural poor, and it did not take much imagination to see the exhaustion in these boys' eyes. Even the bike movers on the high road looked exhausted, but not to the same extent as those on the low road.  Imagine the difference that a good road connecting two major cities could make in the life of the transporters and the people along its route.