Nyanza-Lac

Nyanza-Lac is the last town of any size on the Burundian shore of Lake Tanganyika before the Tanzanian border, hot and low on a sedimentary plain behind a palm backed beach. It lives on fish and palm oil, and the sardine fleet goes out at dusk with lamps that stand offshore all night. The war emptied the town and the returns after it filled it again, which is why so much of it looks new. Travellers come for the sand and because the road south ends here, though the crossing itself is another forty five kilometres inland at Mugina.