Musée vivant Bujumbura

The Living Museum figures among the first tourist places to visit in Bujumbura 🇧🇮. I don’t know who chose the name but I love it. I find it both promising and fascinating. I keep imagining what people might imagine this place to be like: full of life and action. Well, once in Bujumbura we were not going to miss a visit to the “Musée Vivant”.

After paying the entrance fee, a guide offered to show us around! I usually prefer to visit without a guide. This gives me the comfort to discover the place at my own pace. But I didn’t have the time to refuse him as the children were already following him.
Just near the entrance, it said “Aquarium”! Being not far from Lake Tanganyika, I kept thinking about how interesting and impressive this aquarium must be. The splendor and grandeur of this aquarium remained in the imagination because it was not functioning.

About 10 meters away, you could see a big cage and sometimes monkeys jumping from everywhere in the trees. Jessica and Vanessa were rushing to see the monkeys and suddenly they saw a leopard in the big cage. Jango was very quiet in her corner, she looked bored, even sad. Alone in the cage, waiting to be fed who knows what and when she lay on a board. Not far from Jango are several compartments for crocodiles, some older and bigger than the others! You hardly notice they are there because they rarely move.
Ironically, there was nothing alive in the museum until we heard laughter from the chimpanzee side. From a distance, we could see people playing with little chimpanzees. To get there, we passed Joy and Kita who looked at us with indifference. The two chimpanzees live together in a small cage attached to a wall. Five meters away from them were the little chimpanzees with whom the visitors were having fun throwing objects into their cages for a bit of entertainment at the expense of the poor creatures’ agitation.

Although the situation was a bit embarrassing, someone was marked by the experience ☺️. William’s enthusiasm made us laugh despite our desolation for these animals. The feeling of excitement continues almost 10 months after the visit, as he continues to tell us that he saw crocodiles in Burundi 🇧🇮.
We ended our visit by going through the small shops selling handicrafts. We left the place to go for lunch at Stefan’s favorite restaurant when he was in Burundi “Le Baobab”. However, we missed the cabbage with peanut sauce as it was only served on odd or even days, I can’t remember!