It’s a long and winding road from a small landlocked country in eastern Africa to Auchencairn.
Yet Emmelence Higgins has no regrets about making the journey from her native Burundi to Galloway.
In fact, she reckons Scotland and her homeland have much in common - lush green landscapes, mountains and rushing rivers.
And while winter cold is absent, Burundi even boasts a coastline on a Loch Lomond-shaped lake, set deep in the Great Rift Valley.
Lake Tanganyika, however, dwarfs its distant Scottish cousin.
Almost 500 times bigger, the jewel of the African great lakes is the second largest body of fresh water in the world by depth and volume, next to Lake Baikal in Siberia.
Emmelence Irivuzimana grew up around 100 miles from Lake Tanganyika in Buhiga, a village in Karuzi Province in central Burundi.
One of five children, she and her family had enough land to live on what they grew, with meat featuring only rarely.
Crops included bananas, colocase – a root vegetable similar to potato – sweet corn, cassava – another starchy root – avocados, beans and other vegetables.
“It was very much a vegetarian-led life,” recalls Emmelence, 62, who manages Barlochan House Care Home in Palnackie.
“Meat was a luxury because not many people had a fridge and that meant it could only be bought on market days and cooked the same day.
“It was a very healthy diet, with bananas and beans the staples.
“Some bananas went to make banana beer, which was an acquired taste.
“The bananas were very ripe so the juice was sweeter than apple juice.
“You have to ferment it for four or five days before you can drink it.”
Emmelence attended the village school before enrolling in the local teaching college to become a teacher, a post she held for 11 years.
“I walked eight miles to school and back every day,” she explains.
“You did not have a choice – it was take it or leave it.”
Subjects taught in school were similar to those in Scotland, except for the exclusion of English.
“French was the main foreign language,” says Emmelence.
“Along with that I taught science, geography and Kirundi, the local language.”
Burundi, in African terms is a tiny country, less than a third the size of Scotland.
Its mountains are home to the most southerly source of the River Nile and the country has a monument claiming to be where Scottish explorer David Livingstone and American journalist Henry Stanley met.
The huge Democratic Republic of the Congo lies to the west, Tanzania to the east and south-east and Lake Tanganyika to the south west.
North lies Rwanda, a country torn apart in 1994 by a terrible slaughter when an estimated 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by machete-wielding Hutus in a gruesome genocide. An estimated 300,000 people died in Burundi in the same ethnic strife.
It is a painful subject for Emmelence, herself a Tutsi by ethnicity, not least because the roots of the horror lay partly in Burundi and its festering legacy of colonial exploitation.
The tiny country had been at peace under a Tutsi monarchy before the European colonial powers carved up Africa in late Victorian times.
Strife between the majority Hutus and their Tutsi countrymen and women was practically unknown, but colonial rule by Germany, and especially Belgium, which gained Burundi as a possession after Germany’s defeat in the Great War, was to scar Burundi and Rwanda for generations.
“Rwanda is our neighbouring country – we are something like brother and sister, similar to Scotland and Ireland,” Emmelence explains.
“My grandfather told me things weren’t so bad under the Germans.
“You would have to cultivate your own land and everybody was self-sufficient.
“But then the Belgians came in and started giving people ID cards according to your ethnic background, Tutsi or Hutu.
“Who was what had not been a big issue before but that caused division.
“A child with a Tutsi father and a Hutu mother, for example, would automatically become a Tutsi.
“When trouble came my grandfather, who was Tutsi, was spared.
“He had a lot of land and the Hutus respected him.
“Every night they would go to my grandfather’s and sit round a big fire.
“He was a village elder and they shared everything.
“My family was saved by the Hutus because they remembered what my grandfather did for them.
“They must have had a conversation about it.
“He was a lovely person.”
Emmelence graduated from teacher training college in 1977 and met husband-to-be Paddy while he was working on woodland regeneration projects across the country.
“I had no English when I met Paddy,” she says with a smile. “I spoke French so Paddy had to learn the language to get to know me.
“If you want to be here you will have to learn French, I told him!
“He was working as a forester for the charity Action Aid and was supporting local communities in growing trees from seed.
“In the 1980s he travelled all around the country to set up nurseries.”
Paddy, from Neilston in East Renfrewshire, lived in the same village as Emmelence and would sometimes bump into her at local markets and community meetings.
The west of Scotland charm soon paid off as romance blossomed between the woodsman and the young teacher.
“After a wee while we started talking to each other,” says Emmelence coyly.
“Then we began to meet up regularly and the rest, as they say, is history!
“We got married in Africa – everybody was invited and the whole village was there. I was quite teary because it was lovely to have so many cultures there.
“There were no boundaries, no barriers and it was democratic – everybody was the same.
“You also get to understand how the other partner’s family lives and all about their culture too.
“Scotland and Burundi is to be commended as a good union.
“It has been such a great experience.”
The couple’s eldest two girls, Mireille and Fiona, were born in Gitaramuka Hospital, which was run by German catholic nuns, while youngest daughter Marita was born in Irvine Central.
“There won’t be many women who can say they had two girls born in Burundi and the other in Ayrshire!” laughs Emmelence.
“I had been teaching for 11 years when we moved to Scotland in 1987 after Paddy decided to return home.
“We lived in Fairlie in Ayrshire for six years then Paddy got a job with Scottish Woodlands in the Castle Douglas office and we moved down to Galloway.
“When I arrived I found it very, very rural after the hustle and bustle of nearby Largs.
“All my friends were in Fairlie and I thought what am I going to do with myself when the kids grow up?
“I didn’t want to sit at home for the rest of my life then saw a job advertised for a carer at Munches Park in Dalbeattie.
“My youngest daughter was still only four or five so I got flexi hours so I could take the girls home from school.
“I was there from 1994 to 2007 and after starting as a carer became a senior and then a manager.
“Then the job I was looking for found me in Palnackie and I have been at Barlochan ever since.”
Although Emmelence is in charge of the home, her passion remains hands-on help for those in need.
“I enjoy my job but the thing I like most is having one-to-one time with residents and giving direct care,” she explains.
“Sitting down with them, holding their hands, listening to their stories, hearing about their skills and hobbies, being compassionate – that’s most important to me. I never see myself as a manager, but as a carer – that’s what I get my kick
from.
“I always say to staff you can read all the books you want but you have to have hands-on knowledge and empathy, because you can’t fake it.”
Barlochan has managed to keep the coronavirus out through the entire pandemic, with neither staff nor residents contracting the disease, but Emmelence is not complacent.
“It has been a really hard time for everybody but nobody in our care home has had Covid,” she says.
“No staff, no residents – everybody has managed to stay safe.
“We have such a dedicated staff who are very understanding and supportive of families and residents and that has seen us through the difficult times.
“Barlochan is so fortunate to have come through unscathed.”
Emmelence is unsure whether an inquiry into the impact of Covid in care homes will bear fruit.
“In the end we are never going to really know what happened,” she says.
“We are never going to be fully sure.
“I just feel lucky, very lucky.”
Emmelence also has great pride in her girls, who attended Auchencairn Primary School and Kirkcudbright Academy before going on to university in Glasgow, where all three now live.
Their life path is testament to the importance their parents place on good education – and on annual visits to Burundi the couple always include school visits to help with school essentials and to give advice and encouragement to pupils and staff.
“We are very much interested in what happens in Buhiga,” says Emmelence.
“Education is so important because if you don’t have that you won’t have a future.
“Paddy and I are very much involved and will be as long as we are alive.
“Creating unity is important – you don’t want people thinking they are better off than others.
“You can create jobs by treating everybody the same and making sure that nobody is excluded.”
Emmelence has another good reason for returning regularly – she still has her mum, two brothers and their families in Buhiga.
“It’s wonderful when we see them all again and to talk about what needs to be done with the land,” she says.
“I still have an interest in what happens in the village and like to support the villagers in their work.
“Burundi still has a big place in my heart. It’s in my blood and Paddy’s too because he loves Africa.”
In 2018, Emmelence notched up another milestone in her life when she was awarded the BEM from the Queen for services to the elderly in Dumfries and Galloway.
“I couldn’t believe it – I didn’t think these things could happen,” says Emmelence modestly.
“It was so wonderful to be recognised for doing the job that I loved doing anyway.”
Outside work, Emmelence’s grow you own veg philosophy has continued from her life in Africa.
“I love working in the garden and if I have had a difficult day I can destress for half an hour,” she laughs.
“I love cooking too but sometimes I don’t have enough hours in the day.”
As regards retirement, Emmelence says “it’s not too far away” – but will find it a huge wrench to leave.
“My staff do not want me to make a decision about that,” she says.
“One member even said she would stop smoking if I gave her another five years!
“I have been at Barlochan a very long time and it’s been nothing but a pleasure.
“I have no regrets whatsoever.
“The day I walk up in the morning and wish I wasn’t going there will be when I say to myself it’s time to stop.
“But right now I love my work, the residents and the staff.
“It’s honestly the best job to be in.
“I’m definitely a cup half full kind of person – in fact it’s probably completely full a lot of the time.”
