First week in Burundi!

I am sorry we have been so incommunicado in the past week. I was worried about getting this blog entry up. We have not had any chance to connect up to the internet at all since we have been here. We will have access at home when we move into our house, and at the office when we are there. But right now we are staying at a guest room at an orphanage so we cannot get internet access.

We have been extremely busy though. We have been setting up house staff for our house, meeting MCC partners, MCC staff here, being extensively debriefed about program focus from the current Reps. Doug and Deanna Hiebert, setting up childcare for Oren, meeting other people, and much more. I have to say we are pretty overloaded at this point and there is no end to this pace for at least a week which is all we have with the current country reps.

I am trying to think of how to communicate all of the immediate impressions I am having about the place. I will say that my first impression coming off the plane was very favorable! We came in on a Kenya Air Boeing 777 from Kigali Rwanda. Bujumbura's airport is one of those small open air low tech affairs. So we got to come down a staircase from the plane right by the engine and crossed the tarmac to immigration and customs. I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning :-) VERY OLD SCHOOL! I am also trying to notice more than the obvious differences. It does remind me very much of my childhood in Bangladesh. The sounds, smells, feeling like a bit of a curiosity when I am on the street or driving in a car-- but also the architecture of houses, the high walls around homesteads which look forbidding, but open into lush gardens, fragrant flora, the sounds of birds, and a house with open verandas and walls. Modest servant quarters in a small adjacent building, are found around back. Inside the floors are cool clean concrete, white walls, and we sleep under the gauzy haze of mosquito nets fluttering under the breeze of an electric fan.

The weather here is always in the 80s. Mangoes, bananas, papayas and pineapples are standard fare at every meal. Birds are striking, the crows all wear white feather vests and the starlings are brilliant blue. We had a small reception at a nearby guest house with a lovely view of Lake Tanganyika (where you can watch hippo come up in the evenings). Oren enjoyed following an enormous box turtle and 2 crowned cranes that strutted around the property while we sat out on a lawn drinking passion fruit juice.
But outside the walls of the compound where we will live the roads are partially paved at best, pot holes are the size of small bathtubs. We will be inheriting a Toyota Landcruiser and that should be helpful. The people are polite but reserved. Custom dictates that greeting with a handshake is very important and not to be ignored. The walled compounds, police with AK-47s, and the necessity for day and night security are reminders that this has been a country mired in conflict and that there is a wariness about violence erupting again.

I am getting reschooled in my college French in every conversation. Right now I am the translator for Rebecca and I in our conversations with our childcare worker Denise. She is a nice young woman with high school education. She does not, however, speak English, only french and kirundi. Rebecca is also beginning to pick it up. Fortunately there are those who speak English and in our meetings with several MCC partners we have had a chance to get to speak to some of them in English.

The MCC team in Rwanda/ Burundi will be comprised of Rebecca and I, two service workers and our program administrator Zachee. Brandon does reforestation work with a partner called Help Channel, and Jody will be working in school with the Batwa (pygmy people) in Burundi. We have had a few gatherings with them and it has been good to meet them. Zachee is a Godsend to MCC and us as new Country Reps. He has been here since the beginning and speaks English, French, and Kirundi well. He also knows this program like the back of his hand. He has a 3 yo named Timothy who I think will be a good friend of Oren.

I have also had the opportunity to meet several of our partners. I am becoming deeply appreciative of our mission as I meet some of these men and women. Several strike me as young Nelson Mandelas. Passionate visionaries with a heart to transform Burundi. They have staked out bold initiatives at doing reconciliation work in areas of tribal conflict, refugee camps, and Churches (a place of marked ethnic strife here.).

I am trying to get this up on Saturday morning so you can read it before Sunday. The good news is that once we are in our permanent residence we will have regular, decent speed, internet connectivity. Skype anyone?

Here is a picture of our new house in Bujumbura...NOT! Actually it is a traditional house at a culture museum we visited. It was next to a reptile museum where you can see crocodiles and poisonous snakes. For a dollar you can feed a guinea pig to one of them. (We passed on that.)