IF YOU ARE GOING TO KILL EACH OTHER, START WITH US!”

The rainy season began in Burundi at about 6:37 pm this past Tuesday. It came in the form of a torrential downpour and high winds. We woke to find all the gutters around our house and along the roads full, but no break from the heat. (We did mark our first power failure.) That was OK though, because we headed for the high country Wednesday, on the road to Kigali, Rwanda. This promised to be an adventure, my first time driving the 8 hours, crossing the border, and with 2 kids (Timmy, our program officer Zachee’s 3yo son, and Oren.) They are becoming good friends and it was nice to have them together. Zachee, Rebecca and I were the other 3 passengers.

The road to Kigali would certainly fall in the category of treacherous by any measure. Not so much in terms of security, (although detachments of armed soldiers every 2 or 3 miles takes some getting used to), but the road is narrow, winds along the contours of steep hills, and is frequented by large fuel trucks making a journey south from a port in Dar-Es-Salem. They take up a lot of the road and are hard to pass. They also provide a thrill for Burundian taxi drivers who seem to love to take their chances passing around blind corners. The trucks also usually have in tow 4 or 5 bicyclists who would otherwise have to pedal up the hills on their own power. Here is a picture of a truck with bicyclists hanging on. They like to swing out for a look around the corners.

But it is nice to go to Kigali. The development in Rwanda is a striking contrast to Burundi, and evident as soon as one crosses the border. The roads are better, cleaner, speed limit monitored, etc. The whole trip takes about 6 hours of driving time and anywhere from 30 mins to 3 hours at the border. We got to Kigali a bit after dark and found our way to the missionary guest house where we were staying. It was a nice place, although a group of 25 students from the University of Oregon were there for 10 days doing mission work, so it was a bit loud (Brought back fond memories of youth ministry for Rebecca). The couple running it had picked up their lives to do mission work after raising a family in Idaho. They really did seem to take to life in Kigali and offered a nice place to stay. They did have pet rabbits in the yard which were a big hit with Timmy and Oren.

One reason we were there was to do some strategic planning with some of our partners from the Evangelical Friends Church. They have a peace and reconciliation ministry here called Friends Peace House. They do quite a few projects related to peace and development. The planning we did involved a meeting where we interviewed them using an ‘affirmative inquiry’ approach to evaluating our relationship. It has been really amazing to hear some of the stories of the people who lead the organizations we partner with. I cannot tell you how courageous they are, and all have a story of overcoming fear that has led them to a life of sacrificial service, and commitment to a Christian witness. As an example, I would mention ‘Onesphore’. (Actually he is a partner here in Burundi.. We interviewed his as well last week). We asked him to share how his work in his organization was connected to his core values. He said it began with a faith commitment that he had had since birth. In his first weeks of life he was dying of fever and about to be abandoned by his parents who were fleeing their home during the war. They decided to keep him one more day, and he lived. When he was told about the miracle as a young boy, he felt his life was not his own, and gave it then to Christ.

The real test came in Secondary School. In 1994 during a time of upheaval, there was great fear among hutu students of violence against them. (Their fears were well founded.) Onusphore, saw their concern and challenged his fellow Christian students to refuse to become involved in the ethnic tensions and in fact to stand in solidarity with the victimized students. He said that as Christians they were neither Tutsi, nor Hutu, but a new ethnicity in Christ. When the tensions were rising to the point of a murderous confrontation he stood before fellow students and said, “IF YOU ARE GOING TO KILL EACH OTHER, START WITH US!” His Christian fellowship group refused to be ethnically divided and committed to stand by anyone who was under threat, regardless of what tribe they were from. Their courage and commitment to solidarity changed the entire mindset of the campus, and they resisted ethnic division in that school through the time of crisis.

One thing that I have learned as Rebecca and I have been supporting local partners in doing development work, is the real impact a Christian witness can have, and the opportunity to heal a marred identity where a secular approach would fail. Here where tribal loyalty has created such division, the call to unity and love of one’s brother as a tenet of Christian faith is a powerful critique of the social norms. I am also particularly appreciative of the Anabaptist, commitment to pacifism espoused by MCC. It is such important work in places like Rwanda and Burundi where ethnic hatred has had such a crippling effect on the nation, and traumatic effect on so many individuals. One thing we found in interviewing our dedicated partners--not one of them was left untouched by the war. All lost loved ones, usually spouses and children. Yet there desire to bring a message of grace, and an example of forgiveness, modeled after Christ, is unwavering.

We drove back to Kigali today (Saturday). It was quicker coming back. I will say the air is cooler in Kigali, and it is really a clean city. We also enjoyed a quick fix of high speed internet to Skype Grammy. She enjoyed seeing Oren. Here is a picture of Oren and Timmy at Club T last Saturday.

Rebecca is definitely looking pregnant and we agreed that she would not be making that trip by road again before the baby is born. It was good to travel as a family though, and I will miss them when she goes back ahead of me to Baltimore to deliver. In true Mennonite fashion, she does not complain about the obvious discomfort she must have experienced bouncing the 300 miles to Kigali we journeyed this week. Keep her health in your prayers in these last 2 crucial months.

Life in Burundi Part 2: Food, Work, Play

I am noticing that we are beginning to find a rhythm to life here and I thought I would share some of the ordinary routines that we have established. It is Saturday morning, and I have chosen this time to write and post my weekly blog entry. The timing is good because Bujumbura has a sort of community service curfew on Saturday from 7am to 10am. No one is allowed to go out or drive around during this time. Everyone is to be involved in community service projects, like cleaning the neighborhood.

This week I am happy to say that I have returned to my morning running routine I have not had the chance to restart this since I left the USA and it is good to get back into it. (Burundians run for exercise but seeing a Mzungu—white man, run is definitely a curiosity.) Generally our weekly routine looks like this:

Oren and I usually get up around 6 am. I make coffee for Rebecca and I, and peanut butter (nutella) toast for Oren. He watches a video (on my computer) while I read the Bible, at 6:30 am I go for a run and Rebecca gets up and bathes ( I am happy to say we have running hot water in tub, but not in the sinks). When I get back we make breakfast for ourselves, (usually fruit—mango, papaya, banana), and eggs or oatmeal. (Kellogs Cornflakes are available here for about $15 per box, so we do not have cereal.) Our cook Marcelline arrives around 8:30 am and does the breakfast dishes, if we haven’t managed to do them. At the beginning of the week, Rebecca makes a week’s schedule of meals for her to prepare. So, Marcelline often has come from the market with food for a few days. The marketing part of cooking is complicated and expensive (for a white person) and so getting food for the household is an important part of the cook’s duties.

Food here is really in raw form. The selection is also quite limited. We can generally get the following: UHT (long-life) milk, sugar, eggs, cheese (one kind only), tomatoes, beef (ground), potatoes, red beans, rice, cassava, onion, garlic, flour, and some baked bread. Fruit includes bananas, mangoes, papaya, passion fruit, avocado, and Japanese plums (little egg shaped purple fruits – you remove the top and squeeze out seeds and sweet & sour purple juice to add to fruit salad). Vegetables include carrots, green beans, cucumbers, peas and spinach. We can also get local coffee and tea. Burundian coffee is grown here and quite good. Other food that is available is quite expensive, especially anything prepackaged. (APPLES ARE NONEXISTANT.) So, if we want anything, like spaghetti sauce or tortillas, we have to make it from scratch. That is why a cook is so essential. There are literally hours of work to do in the kitchen everyday. We generally eat simply. We have fruit and toast for breakfast (sometimes an egg or oatmeal), rice and beans for lunch, and usually a salad and something with ground beef and potatoes, or rice, or tortillas for dinner. A side dish of green beans and carrots or peas is pretty standard. Variety is really a luxury here so we don’t change our menu much.

Our house has a garden around it, inside a high wall, with a wide variety of trees and flowers. It’s a nice place for Oren to play – he loves to run around the house, following the concrete drainage ditch. Apparently, this will be a real asset in the rainy season, keeping our house from flooding. At the moment, it’s the dry season, so the plants need to be watered daily. We have a gardener/day guard who comes three times a week. Honestly, there’s not so much for him to do, so we have him clean up a little kiddie pool for Oren to splash in (left by the previous family). We also have a nightguard who stays up much of the night, keeping an eye out for bandits. He is assisted in his work by Bella, a golden retriever (also left by the previous family). She’s leashed during the day, but is very good at discerning when to bark – only when there is a knock on our gate.

You might wonder why we have so many workers at our house. One perspective is this: in a country when so many people are impoverished or underemployed, it is considered selfish not to have house workers. If you can afford it, you are expected to have at least three people working for you. And this also means you assume responsibility for their health care and for helping them out in family emergencies. It’s actually a lot of work to manage so many people, so there’s definitely a trade-off between the help you receive and the effort you put into keeping all the people busy…That’s mostly Rebecca’s job.

Three days a week we have a babysitter for Oren so Rebecca and I can both go to the office. Her name is Denise and Oren seems to like her. She speaks only French and Kirundi so Oren is getting a crash course. He is resistant to learning it at this point, but does say Bonjour, Ca va? Rebecca and I study language on Mon, Wed, and Fri. afternoon. She does French and I do Kirundi. She seems to be progressing more rapidly than me, but in all fairness, Kirundi is really structurally different than English.

On workdays (M-F) we are at the office where we answer a lot of email from Akron headquarters and other regional offices, and we make a lot of phone calls on our cell phones. Cell phones are the primary means of communication here and text messaging is used far more commonly than email. We are getting good at it now. Much of our work is arranging payments to our partners or planning for travel to visit their projects. We also have to keep meticulous track of every penny we spend and every dollar we change and record it, so that takes some time as well.

One thing that takes getting used to is using cash for EVERYTHING. We have yet to find an establishment in Burundi that takes credit cards (forget about debit cards!). All salaries, grants, rent, shopping, etc. are done in cash. That is a big change from the USA and means we make frequent trips to the bank and money changers.

On the weekend, as I said, we rest at home on Sat. morning and try to do things as a family on Saturday and/or Sunday. We go to a church on Sunday that is presented in French and English, although many of the songs are in Kirundi as well. We have also started a Bible study on Wednesday evening at our house. For entertainment we like to go to Club du Lac Tangayika, a large hotel next to Lake Tanganyika with a swimming pool for adults and kids, as well as some other attractions. It is on the beach so we can go there as well. There is a limited playground there that would never pass American safety standards, but Oren likes it and digs in the sand as well. Here are Oren and I at the beach near Club T. The water is Lake Tanganyika.

I did want to say something about Burundian local cuisine as well: It is quite tasty, and there is some variety. To Oren’s joy, one of the favorite dishes is deep fried potatoes, ie: French fries! They love French fries as a staple. Cooked peas and cooked red beans are the other staple. Usually a salad with tomatoes, avocadoes and raw onions is common at Burundian meals as well. Beef or goat in chops or a broth are common too. If you are wealthy you might have rice instead of potatoes. Most food is sautéed with onion in palm oil. There is a local hot sauce called pili-pili that is very hot, but is a nice addition to the food. There are 3 non-alcoholic cold things to drink here besides water: Coke (only regular in bottles), Fanta (like sprite), and passionfruit juice (sold in a concentrate and diluted with water—Oren is allergic to it). Milk is expensive. We can also get coffee and tea which we put powdered milk and sugar into.

Here is a picture of Burundian fare at a restaurant we were at recently upcountry. It is probably hard to tell what things are. Keep in touch, we will be in Kigali Rwanda next week so will have access to Skype. My Skype name is pamosley. If you have it, find out when we are online and we will talk to you.

The Duke Pilgrimage

One thing I have learned this week is that if someone invites you to go on a pilgrimage, don’t imagine you can go as a tourist! The opportunity was presented by a Ugandan priest named Emmanuel Katongole, who chairs the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation. He has been leading pilgrimages and peace initiatives in this region for several years. This year he came to Burundi. Among the invitees were 3 bishops from Uganda and Burundi, as well as several other pastors from local churches and representatives from NGOs who work around here, as well as other interested individuals. It was quite an auspicious group.

I wanted to make connections in my role as MCC rep. and agreed to join. It meant leaving Rebecca and Oren for 2 days and an overnight to travel up-country to visit several memorials of genocide, as well as some peace and reconciliation efforts that were happening at various places. Emmanuel prepared us to go by giving us a meditation on Moses at the burning bush. He said that when Moses approached the bush out of curiosity he was commanded to remove his shoes because he was standing on holy ground. Like Moses, Emmanuel described the pilgrimage as an opportunity to ‘take off our shoes and feel the heat.’

As we journeyed, I became aware of the truth of that in several experiences: First, as we visited several memorials to those who died in the genocide effort, I was profoundly aware of the politics of monuments. Who is memorialized is very much a political decision. We visited an official memorial at Kibimba. Here a huge number of Tutsi students were rounded up and burned alive in a gas station. There, however, no one was willing to give an exact number and even an inquiry into the details remains highly suspect. Who wants to know and why? Retribution remains a vague anxiety. We also visited an ‘unsanctioned’ Hutu memorial where many Hutus on a hillside were killed by the army. This is not a government-recognized memorial.

The most significant memorial we visited though was one in which 40 young students (high school) were murdered at a catholic school. What was profound about this memorial however was that it happened in the only school in the country in 1997 where Tutsis and Hutus were being educated together, not segregated. When they were attacked, 40 students in the dorm were asked to separate. In this case, Hutu rebels were attacking. It was typical to demand that a group separate by ethnicity and then to kill all of those from one group. To the amazement of all, the students refused to separate! They were all martyred, Tutsis and Hutus together. But their courageous decision to stand together remains a tribute to a better future. The rector who was there at the time told us the testimony of one of the dying students. His face was beatific as he said, “Victory, we have won! They asked us to separate and we refused.”

Besides visiting memorials, we did meet some individuals involved in peace and reconciliation. Among the testimonies, we heard of a family in which a man killed the husband and sons of a Tutsi woman. After being reconciled many years later, her granddaughter married the guilty man’s son. We visited them on our journey as they had just been married the week before.

We heard many such stories of forgiveness and reconciliation as well as the courageous work of several foreigners, especially a young female, MCCer, who brought enemy groups face to face to negotiate peace with each other. Often she acted almost purely as a human shield and witness to prevent violence from breaking out between these groups. It is an amazing testimony to the power of a peace witness in this place. I have come to really appreciate the power of the Anabaptist pacifist theology MCC espouses.

The real trial of the journey was the driving. I can’t describe how uncomfortable it is to drive through the Burundian hill country on barely passable unpaved roads in a crowded Landcruiser for 12 hours at a time. We also had some uncomfortable encounters with military road blocks and driving later than we had planned in complete darkness through areas that had only recently agreed to a cease fire. Ambushes by FLN rebels and bandits remain a concern at night. But we did make it back on the second evening and I was very happy to back in Bujumbura with Rebecca and Oren.

One thing that gave me great hope in the midst of seeing unspeakable evil was also seeing the incredible courage of many individuals committed to counter it. There is a prophetic voice for peace that I am hearing at the grass roots level, as well as in the church and even in the government now.

It was interesting going on this trip with many church leaders. It was a time to take ownership of both the power of the gospel to transform minds and bring unity, as we saw in the Catholic school I mentioned above in Buta. But we also heard appalling stories about families who worshipped in the same church on Sunday, murdering each other later in the week. It gave me a new perspective on the great failure of churches that build a congregation of ‘nominal Christians’--those whose lives have not been transformed by the love and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. I say this as a warning to all of us in our churches in the west as well. The church can be the agent of change and the bulwark of peace and transforming love…OR it can simply maintain the status quo, and be complicit in the evil that is perpetrated by fear and prejudice. The contradictions are not as dire in our churches at home…YET. But the tribulation will come, on us or our children, and I worry that we may not be preparing their hearts and minds for it.

Here is a picture of the memorial to the 40 Tutsi and Hutu students who refused to separate at the Catholic school in Buta we visited. The man standing in the picture, who recounted the story, was a Benedictine monk who lives there. He knew it well because he was the teacher of these students and had educated them in the importance of unity in Christ and insisted on keeping the school open to both ethnic groups. At the time of the massacre, he was barricaded in his room unable to get out, but he heard it as it was happening. Among the last words the dying student who had told him about their ‘victory’ said, was that the students who were killed had prayed “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.”

Life in Burundi part 1: Getting settled, worms in the skin, and Where There Is No Doctor

This has been a landmark week but as I write this on Friday evening, I am sitting on my bed in the house that Rebecca and I will occupy for the next 5 years. I can’t tell you all what a relief it is to finally be able to have one’s clothes in a closet rather than a suitcase. It is also a relief to know that our house in Poughkeepsie closed last week as well.

Our official moving-in day was Thursday. A day I will not soon forget. I feel our grist was tested then. The day before we watched the former country reps., Doug and Dianna Hiebert leave with great fanfare. They were accompanied by over a dozen well wishers. They had taken us earlier in the week to Kitega, a town where we have several partners doing reconciliation work between tribes with deep seated enmity over a range of land use issues. It is good to hear about the necessity of this work and its impact on the communities where they work.

We crammed every last minute question into Tuesday, which was more than 1 day could hold. By Wednesday evening they were gone. We felt very much alone on Thursday and had planned to lay low, run only a few errands, and move in at leisurely pace, until…

We looked at Oren after breakfast and noticed that he had suddenly become all red and covered with hives. We worried about a severe allergic reaction to something, or poisoning perhaps and began to seek medical help in earnest. We realized quickly that there were few good options and we did not really know where anything was. Deanna told us she swore by the book Where There is No Doctor and left us a copy at the house. Honestly it was of little comfort at first for us who are used to having expert advice a phone call or 5 minute drive away. We did assess that he was not having trouble breathing and had no fever, vomiting or diarrheia. He was lethargic though. We drove to several places in town where pediatricians worked but like the book says, they were all places where there was no doctor during that time of day. (I should mention, that in true French style, everyone in the city goes home for lunch from 12-3 so you can’t do any business then.) While we waited, Oren got better and we concluded that the incident was probably heat related although we are going to keep some benadryl suppositories on hand for future outbreaks. (We also were happy to see the former country reps left 2 epi pins with us at the house, for anaphylactic shock.)

In the end though we did feel that being forced to find where hospitals and pediatricians were and how to get to them was worth the effort of driving all over town. We also had to do some shopping for supplies—to wit: a coffee maker!

Our house is much bigger than our house in Poughkeepsie. This house has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and serves as a guest house for MCC visitors when they are here. We also have 4 staff that are working for us. Marcelline is our cook and cleaner. She is being trained right now, but made some pretty good quesadillas last night. Pacifique is our gardener and day guard, Denise watches Oren on M,W,F and also does laundry, and Gaspar is our night watchman. We also have a watchdog named Bella. Marcelline also goes to the market for food. With all of this help you would think we had nothing to do, but everything here is a lot more work. Laundry is done virtually by hand, lawn mowing is done with a machete. Vacuuming does not exist, but the floors are mostly concrete and easy to sweep and mop. There is no electric dishwasher or garbage disposal. There is no trash service whatsoever! What we cannot compost we burn in the backyard. Our house is surrounded by an 8 foot wall but there is a nice yard and garden inside.
One thing we did notice was the great Burundian fondness for ironed clothes. Normally Denise does our laundry during Oren’s nap, then hangs it on a line to dry. Gaspar takes it down at night and irons and folds every thing during the night--including all socks, sheets, towels and underwear. (He usually washes and cleans out the Landcruiser as well.) One would think this was excessive, but then we found out what the real reason for this obsession. When you hang your clothes out on the line to dry by day, mango flies will lay eggs on them. When you wear the clothes the eggs hatch and the worms burrow into your skin and grow until they mature and burst back out of a sore on your skin. (Like a miniature version of the infamous scene from the movie Alien, from what I understand.) Apparently the former reps found one on the dog that was the size of a small peanut when they squeezed it out. All that to say, we always leave the house with well pressed clothes right down to the underwear and a clean car to boot.

Last night we had our hosted our first dinner party for 3 friends, a real test for our new cook. The invitees were Bridget a former MCCer and Zachee our right hand man and his son Timmy, who is the same age as Oren. Timmy and Oren played very well although Timmy speaks only French and Oren speaks only English. To complicate matters further, there are no railroads in Burundi so Timmy has no idea what a train is! (Oren, if you don’t know, compulsively lines up everything he finds to make “the Polar Express” and expects all to join in on the project.) They do yell at the top at of their lungs and have pillow fights in the same language though so they had a lot of fun.
I am going to post this now, but here is a picture of Oren on his Burundian tricycle. It is very old school, solid steel construction and weighs about 50 pounds, but he learned to ride a tricycle here in Burundi this last week, something he did not master in Poughkeepsie.
Wish us luck on languages next week, I begin Kirundi lessons and Rebecca starts on French!

Trip to Rwanda

Well, another week has flown by and this has been a particularly challenging and interesting one. We spent the past 4 days traveling to and visiting Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. One travels between Rwanda and Burundi in several ways: the easiest is flying, but there are several routes over road. The road, however, is quite challenging as it winds through the highlands of Burundi and is somewhat treacherous, especially with trucks, loaded with shipping containers from Port Cities like Dar Es Salaam, roaring down the narrow passes. The other major hazard are cyclists, racing down the curving mountain roads, heavily-laden with huge sacks of charcoal to sell in the capital. And here's the trick: how do the cyclists get back up to their mountain village homes? When you follow one of the tractor trailers up the mountains, they are usually trailing about 3 or 4 bicyclists who hang on the back end of the truck with one hand and swing out around the corners for a peek. We were driven by current country rep. Doug in our Landcruiser. I will need to learn to drive this route and do it monthly, as several of our partners are in Rwanda.

Once one gets to the high point on the road and enters the "up-country" part of Burundi, the land is not so vertically extreme. It's a country-side of high hills, with tiny villages every few miles. People plant tea, cassava, bananas and coffee on the hillsides (apparently this is an excellent setting for high quality coffee, but the industry needs to be developed). In the valleys, women cultivate a variety of vegetables and even rice in some areas. The soil is very red, a deep contrast with the green vegetation. It is really quite beautiful, though there is almost no indigenous forest left here. Most of the trees are eucalyptus, which are regularly harvested for firewood and charcoal-making. Burundi is heavily populated and conflict over land-resources will continue to be a big problem here.

On the way north to Rwanda, we stopped at one of our partners' projects in a place called Nyangugu (sp?). We help to support a school which particularly seeks to educate the minority Batwa (pygmy) children. They had a huge welcoming reception for us that included speeches, poems, gifts and a meal of grilled goat, and various local dishes. Not bad food really! The kids who were attending the festivities were fascinated by Oren who ran around the yard dragging an entourage of curious followers in his train. He had fun though and I have a picture of him surrounded by his new friends.

On the way to Kigali we crossed the border, which is a somewhat complex process. The thought of doing it regularly both ways is a bit daunting. But we did get through. The difference in the development of the two countries is immediately apparent and striking. The width and condition of the roads changes immediately. Rwanda has been experiencing a lot of growth and improvement in the 14 years since the genocide. Burundi's development has been stymied by a civil war that has dragged on until recently.

Before reaching Kigali we stopped in Nyamata at one genocide memorial site. It was a Catholic Church where, from what I understand, about 5,000 Tutsis were massacred. They had gone into the church to try to escape. The sanctuary was left as a memorial with all the clothes of the victims on the benches. A survivor-cum-guide showed us the place he hid as a 9 year old and many other horrors, including a wall where infants' heads were dashed. It was unimaginably horrible. Beneath the church were several crypts containing thousands of skulls. Honestly, the genocide still makes no sense to me at all. Rebecca and I got a book that has some testimony from the perpetrators. Perhaps it will shed some light, but I doubt it.

In Kigali we stayed in a modest guest house and spent several days visiting various partners. Among the more interesting meetings was a chance to witness one of the reconcilliation programs at Friends Peace House. It is a workshop in which prisoners convicted of genocide are reintegrated back into their communities (They have served 14 years). The released prisoners spend several days learning together with an equal number of genocide survivors, talking about ways of making amends. The process of reconciliation includes self-evaluation, imagining a good future (a real problem -- most do not have the ability to imagine this in their current state), helping others and respecting others. At the end of the four-day workshop, they identify the two most vulnerable individuals and build a house for them together. It is an interesting development and peace-making project. I listened in (through translation) to several hours of back and forth between prisoners and victims. We also had a round table discussion with several other donor organizations and leaders from Friends Peace House and the Evangelical Friends Church. We talked about how to communicate better. It was a real opportunity to see how challenging both language and culture can be to communicating well. The meeting was 8 hours long with only a short lunch break!! I never want to hear another complaint about long church committee meetings again! (Apparently long meetings are the norm here. It is a very relational culture.)

In the evenings, we experienced contrasts that were quite surreal. We drove into downtown Kigali, which has become a very modern city. We went out for pizza one night (we chose it over Mexican) and then Indian the second night. In the early evening, we sipped cappuccino at a coffeehouse that would put Starbucks to shame, purchasing the right to access their very high speed wireless internet. I was able to Skype Grammy, Grandma Jean, and Jonathan with video. It was like they were right there. Honestly, as much as I enjoyed that communication, I find I like the challenges of living in the less developed Bujumbura right now.

We returned on Friday and are back in our guest house in Bujumbura for a more relaxing day. We continue to stay at an orphanage/guesthouse, which Oren calls the "House with the babies." They have a little playground which Oren enjoys. And in this setting, he has finally learned how to ride a tricycle! It's fun to watch him pedaling circles around the outdoor room which is also the guesthouse dining room. We do have to go upcountry again on Monday: another opportunity to explore the winding mountain roads. That is all for now, except--by the way, we got an email from our realtor saying our house in Poughkeepsie closed. I checked our mortgage statement on the web and it said PAID IN FULL. I love that expression!

Prayer Needs: Doug and Deanna leave Wednesday and Rebecca and I are 'on our own' then. We are nervous about that. We still need help with language, we need help solidifying our house staff situation, and we lost a friend in New York to death recently. It is hard not to have a community established here to process all of this.