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!