The Shortcut and Home Alone

“The longest distance between two points is a shortcut.” --Corollary to Murphy's Law

Most of us have a shortcut story and this one deserves a good recounting: As you may know, Rebecca'a Mom has been here this week visiting. She is here to take Rebecca and Oren back to the USA ahead of me for the birth of our son. So our scene opens in a crowded Landcruiser on the way to a remote village called Burasera. The players are:
1)Grandma Jean (my Mother-in-law)
2)Rebecca (the pregnant wife)
3)Oren (the cantankerous 3 year old)
4)Jodi (the intrepid missionary ready to spend 3 years teaching in a remote village)
5)Our fearless (not) leader--(that's me)

The landcruiser is packed to the gills and roofrack with stuff for Jodi's new home in Burasera. It has just finished raining and we are heading into the mountains ready for adventure. It is exciting to be able to take Grandma Jean on this trip to see one of our projects and show her the beauty of the high country. Although I have only been to Burasera four times, I feel competent enough about the route to risk a shortcut that I noticed on the map and seemed to cut a considerable number of kilometers off of our trip. The road would not be paved but we trusted the Landcruiser could handle it. We turned off the main road near a genocide memorial in Kabimba and headed down a small rough road. It looked bad, but the map indicated that our destination was only a short 16K away. As we drove the road continued to get worse. Often it ran close to a drop off, other times it climbed at a grade that is made for burro travel, not cars, and some of the bumps were more akin to bouldering than driving.

When we came to a fork in the road we had to make a choice. We asked a passing bicyclist and he told us (in Kirundi) that both prongs went to Burasera. We asked which was shorter and he said the left one, BUT he volunteered that the right one was 'neza' (good). We weighed the options and decided on the shorter one.

Very quickly I realized this was going to be very difficult. The road quickly dwindled to little more than a footpath, and branched often to different villages making the main route difficult to discern. The road also dipped and rose with the terrain. In my mind, I had the idea that if it ever got to a point where I did not feel I could continue, I would turn around (or back up) and go back the other way. …

Scene 2: The Slippery Slope
There are different types of paths we take in life. Some you can try and then change your mind, reverse course and take a new way. But many, at a certain place have a 'point of no return.' beyond which a reversal of course is impossible. At about the 4 km mark we hit a 'slippery slope'. (Not a metaphor!) This was a downhill that looked fairly promising. The road seemed a bit wider and less bumpy. As soon as we started down I realized the problem. The road was mud. Soon our wheels were caked and the vehicle began sliding right no matter how I steered. To engage the 4wd you have to stop and get out of the vehicle to turn a lock on the hub of the front wheels. We did this (and got muddy feet). This helped us control the direction of our descent somewhat, but at the bottom of the hill the road arrived at what could best be described as a tdouble width foot bridge. I knew at this point, that we could not go back up the hill so our only hope was to cross. For the safety of all, everyone got out while I drove across. Here are some pictures of the bridge and Rebecca and Oren crossing after the landcruiser.

We only hoped we had seen the worst of the 16k shortcut, and by the grace of God, the other side of the valley was more rocky than muddy. We climbed out and within a short distance rejoined the wider road to Burasera.

I wanted to show my mother-in -law the intriguing aspects of our work, but it was more of an adventure than I had bargained for. The seminary at Burasera never looked better (see picture). It is quite a place, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where they generate their own electricity, and have orchards, a dairy, chickens and eggs, a vineyard, make their own furniture from their own trees that they replant as well. They also run a guest house. It is like a self contained little world, and the Diocesan Priests who work there are incredibly hospitable, and got a big kick out of Jean and Oren (who loves their pet monkey.)

The trip went very well and Jodi is now living there and began teaching school this past Monday. We returned to Bujumbura with minimal incidents except a race against time to beat the 5pm military roadblocks on the way down the mountain.

The rest of the week is somewhat of a blur. We crammed in too much that all needed to be done before Rebecca left. We had many friends visit and wish us well. I did my best to have enough time with Oren (more for me than him). I did not succeed. I can only describe the experience of packing them up and putting them on a plane this morning as agonizing. I can say that this next month will be harder than any I have had here thus far, because I am here alone. I do not feel up to the task either--professionally or emotionally. Nonetheless, 3 hours after they left, I was on a plane to Rwanda, and I am currently writing this blog from an internet cafe in Kigali. (I am putting it up Thursday because I might be in a very remote place tomorrow to visit a project of one of our partners.) I will get back to Bujumbura Sunday, then I will be off to Ghana next Thursday. I am hoping that the travel will take my mind off the feeling of having my right hand and heart ripped out (emotionally).

Here is a picture from Grandma's Jean's repertoire of Oren and Pacifique our gardner. I think Pacifique will really miss Oren as Pacifique enjoyed hosing Oren down as he ran around in the yard almost as much as Oren enjoyed it.

I again leave you with a small character portrait. Before leaving, Rebecca asked our guard, Gaspar if he was going to go home to visit his family over the next 2 months. He said he probably would not, because travel is expensive and he was saving his money to buy his 4 children a mattress to sleep on. (I think he was working up the courage to ask for a loan to buy one.) When I heard this, I was truly convicted—living comfortably in the four bedroom house he guards, where most of the rooms are empty much of time. I went out and told him that when I get back we would go out and shop for mattresses for his children. I don't know if there was a more 'capacity building' way of helping him out, but his need was a harsh reminder of what the disparity between rich and poor looks like outside the USA.

Au Marche--Mw’Isoko--At the Market

For those of you who have been praying for the safe arrival of Gramma Jean’s suitcases, your prayers have been answered! They did arrive about two days after she did. Picking them up was an interesting experience. The lost luggage section in the Bujumbura airport customs warehouse is not a place that inspires confidence. When you walk in, it looks like a very likely place to lose a piece of luggage hopelessly. Nonetheless, we presented our lost luggage fiche to the douniare and after disappearing behind several hills of luggage, he emerged, to our amazement, with her bags--completely intact and unopened. It was quite a relief, and Oren was delighted to get the Cheerios and plastic animals that were stashed inside.

This has been a week of errands for us here. Today we head up country with Jodi and her luggage to install her in Burasira where she will spend the next 3 years. It is quite a challenge to get someone set up from scratch in a new household when you do not have a Walmart nearby. Nearly every item has to be bought at a separate place, and it is all so expensive (and must be negotiated vigorously). A can opener runs about $15. Rebecca braved the market with her mom and Jodi and a Burundian friend, Francine. They spent hours haggling over the price of pillows and sheets, and made several trips to different tailors to have pillowcases and couch covers made. (There is no Martha Stewart section of window dressings in the market either!) Here is a picture of Rebecca bargaining for some storage baskets.

There are other unusual shopping risks here. For example: Among the purchases we made was a large pressurized gas container for the stove we bought her. I was driving it home in the land cruiser (alone) on a particularly bumpy road in town. The gas bottle tipped over and hit the spigot. Within seconds the entire car was filled with gas. I stopped, jumped out of the car and ran around back to open the back end doors. Fortunately the spigot was not broken and I was able to shut the gas off and air the car out. None of this was accomplished without creating a considerable traffic jam and scene in the crowded street when I stopped in the middle of the road, and dove out of the car yelling “Il y’a du Gaz!!” The smell in the car was awful, and our night guard Gaspar had a lot of cleaning to do when I got home. It is better now. (Here is a picture of Gaspar with us out in our yard. He is a great help to us at home. Not just guarding the house at night, but doing our ironing, cleaning the car, feeding the dog, minding the front gate, and running various errands.)

Grandma Jean has been keeping herself very busy here as well. She has made some connections with the University Medical Library and even met with the Dean of the medical school to alert him to the availability of online medical publications, and suggest ways they might get access to some computers to be available in the library for faculty and students. She has also been teaching some new recipes to our cook Marcelline. Cinnamon rolls were an addition to her repertoire this week. Here is a picture of Oren getting in on the act during the lesson. I am putting in a picture of Marcelline as well. She has also been a big part of the marketing for items for Jodie to take up country this week. She is very good at driving a hard bargain, and always gets a better price than us bazungus.

I am trying to include a story of the power of faith in the life of remarkable individuals we have met here. What is amazing is that it seems that no one in Burundi is untouched by the crisis of violence and civil war that ripped this country apart the past 15 years. This past Wednesday, in our prayer and share group, our pastor Immanuel Ndikoumana was talking about having a confidence in God’s love and purposes that even transcends our natural fear of death. (We were reading Romans 8 for those of you are Biblically inclined .) In his own case this was tested many times, but once when he was sitting in a car at the market and a militia surrounded him with the intention of killing him. He recounted to us how he had been meditating right at that time on Romans 8:18 where it says: “I consider that our present suffering are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” He described a sense of profound serenity that came over him as the men approached, and when they looked in the car he smiled at them and began to laugh. The leader was incredulous and demanded to know why he was so happy. Immanuel told him and the leader of the gang said: “We cannot kill this man.” And let him go.

What is particularly disturbing to me, an American who has been quite well protected from danger in my life, is that stories like this are not atypical in the Burundian context. Learning to deal with fear and the threat of violence is a part of the lives of most people here. I am becoming aware of the dire choices that individuals and communities must make in response to this experience. Either they will succumb to fear, and continue the cycle of retribution in the name of security and survival, or they must be able to transcend it, forgive, and look with HOPE at the ‘current sufferings’ as something that can be overcome. This hope is only possible through a radical love, that reconciles us to our most feared enemies. The encouragement I have is that I am meeting a cadre of courageous individuals who are willing to risk standing up in their communities, against the tide of fear and ignorance, and say that--despite all they have suffered--there is the hope of a good future, that is worth living and dying for. I have found that such courage comes from their commitment to emulate the example of the Lord they serve.

“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.”
Romans 8:24

This is a picture of our Bible study group. Immanuel is in the back in the middle. His wife Azele is in the front. The others are Val and Charles from Scotland, Fidel from Chicago, and Suzie from Timonium, MD.

Grandma Jean!

I am beginning this entry a bit late today because we just came back from the airport. We picked up 'Grandma Jean' or 'Mama Rebecca' as she is known in Kirundi. Oren was thrilled, although sadly, all of her baggage is currently at large—apparently disappearing in Nairobi. We are less than optimistically awaiting news about it.

This has been a 'capacity building' week for me as I spent several days upcountry, where I had akazi-kenshi (many things to do). As I mentioned in a previous entry, we are setting up our service worker Jodie to teach at a Batwa school in Burasira. It is quite remote. I drove her up then came back alone. This is the first time I have driven in rural Burundi alone. Several hours of the trip were on very rough dirt roads. I did stay a night at the Catholic seminary again. I felt a real sense of accomplishment about not getting lost and beat a torrential downpour on my way down the mountain by about 5 minutes. ALSO I am able to ask for directions in simple Kirundi now. (Although I did not need to.) This is a trip I will be making monthly so it is good to feel competent.

On the way up, we stopped in Gitega where we have several partners I needed to meet. As part of the work I had to conduct a two hour interview with three of them in french by myself, then translate and write up a report. It was exhausting but I did manage to do fairly well.

Among the other highlights of the week was a conversation with Delphine, a partner of ours who directs the World Outreach Initiative, a local NGO. Again, what is striking about her story is the personal commitment to the development, peace and reconciliation work they do. The work with displaced people during the time of the 'crisis' (app. 1994-2004) along the border in Tanzania cost her husband his life. He was shot in the process of a reconciliation project. For her, her faith has sustained her as she continues their work. She does not consider the mission of development, peace and reconciliation to be separable from evangelism. One cannot evangelize without providing care for immediate needs, but one cannot change deeply marred values and generational hatred without grace, and a love that offers reconciliation to God and neighbor. Without a transformation at the personal and societal level, development is simply not possible. The sad tragedy of Burundi is the number of years it has spent in limbo, entrenched in a civil war which goes back 40 years, but has stagnated the country for the past 15.

BUT in the people I meet, I do have hope that a 'righteous generation' is emerging. Many young people do not want to perpetuate the mistakes of the generations before them. Delphine is just one of several of our visionary young partners who inspires hope for the future and affirms my faith as well.

On the homefront: Grandma Jean's arrival means that Rebecca and Oren are two short weeks away from leaving the country for their soujourn in Maryland. They will be leaving me here for another month, before I join them for the birth of our child at the end of October. I am not looking forward to the month alone here, but there is much to do in our work. Here is a photo of a us with a quilt we were given from our church in New York. We just put it up in preparation for Grandma's arrival.

This week has been hard in several ways: One of our colleagues continues to have an ongoing battle with malaria, and our night guard has amoebic dysentery. Rebecca and our cook were also both sick last week. Illness seems to be a fairly regular part of life here.

A few words from Rebecca: Much of this week has involved acquiring household items for Jodi's new house up-country. On Monday, we took a trip to the main market with a young Burundian woman who is great at bargaining. Under one big roof, you can buy anything from second hand clothes to liquor to mangoes to plastic washbasins -- but you need to bargain with each of a thousand vendors separately for each item. There are no shopping carts. Instead, as you go, you employ a young person to carry your purchases while you keep shopping. And you have to make sure you don't step on a mother and child begging on the floor of the narrow aisles.

I have been used to buying everyday items cheaply in other underdeveloped countries, but the situation is different here. Sometimes you can get items at prices comparable to the US. But most things are very, very expensive because they are shipped from other places and the price of transport is so high right now. When you consider that a drinking glass or a kilo of beans costs $1 and that most people make $50 or less in a month, you can see why people struggle so terribly with poverty.

Another challenge of this week was to learn more about public transportation while our Jeep was in the garage. Our cook Marcelline graciously indoctrinated me into the world of riding in the minibus taxis one afternoon. Every one of these vehicles carries up to 20 people and, I swear, has a smashed front windscreen, rickety seats and a sliding door that must be manually reattached every time it's opened. Marcelline even paid my fare (25 cents for a trip to the center of town). Good thing because I had to do it again by myself yesterday while Paul was upcountry! People definitely stare when a white woman gets into one of those vehicles. And I don't know much Kirundi but there is one phrase that I'm really getting the sense of, a shouted exclamation something like, "Look, a pregnant white woman!!" I guess that very few foreigners choose to stay here to deliver babies.

I am sending some pictures of some local sights. This shot was taken from an outdoor restaurant club near Lake Tanganyika. The birds are crested cranes. There is also a giant turtle that roams the grounds. Oren loves that.

Innocente, Jodie, and the Batwa

Amahoro. Urakomeye? Sinzi ikirundi neza. Ariko, ndagerageza!

En Français, ce la veut dire: Paix. Comment ça va? Je ne connais pas bien le Kirundi, mais j'essais!

In English: Peace. How are you? I don?t know Kirundi well, but I am trying!

The rainy season has brought out some new features of the Burundian landscape. On the macro-level, we can see that there is a huge mountain range right across Lake Tanganyika, in Congo, which until now, we have not been able to see due to haze. This really means that Bujumbura is surrounded by mountains on all sides, a bit like Seattle Washington. On the micro-level, our house has been a millipede sanctuary. They are all over the floor and hard to avoid when walking about in the dark. They particularly fancy an afternoon siesta under any dirty clothes left carelessly on the floor.

This has been a busy week for us and the jobs have involved a steep, but interesting learning curve. On Sunday we picked up one of our new 'service workers' Jodie, from the airport (returning from a visit to Kenya). She is Canadian, but has come from Massachusetts where she taught at Wellesley. She will be stationed in Bugasera, a remote town in central Burundi where she will teach at a Batwa (pygmy) school. She will be living next to a Catholic seminary that is up there. The Batwa are a very marginalized people in Burundi and generally looked down upon by other ethnic groups in the country. Setting up a home for a missionary is challenging. Finding a suitable, secure homestead, getting furniture, appliances, cooking utensils, access to water, curtains, etc. all needs to be considered. We were fortunate that the Abbey at the seminary was able to help us quite a bit. Oren, Rebecca, Jodie and I drove upcountry on Tuesday and stayed the night at the seminary. It was a very rough ride (several hours on dirt roads), but the dorms at the seminary were comfortable. Oren was delighted to find that the priests kept a pet monkey there. We ordered furniture and made other arrangements for her 3 year stay, then returned to Bujumbura with her on Wednesday. We will go up again next week to finish the preparations and leave her there.

It is probably worth saying something about our local partner who runs the Batwa school up there. The group is called UCEDD, but the founders are a couple, named Innocente and Beatrice. Innocente and Beatrice are batwa themselves, and Innocente related to us his harrowing tale of fleeing from Mbutu's Congo (Zaire) when he (Mbutu) was sending the soldiers to round up and capture the 'forest people' to be conscripted into the army. Innocente was separated from his family and fled to Burundi. He had the opportunity to get an education, and then, years later did an extensive search for his parents. He eventually found them in Congo after not seeing them for years. While in Burundi, however, he saw how terribly and shamefully his own people were treated, and in fact, did not even tell his hosts that he was Batwa because of his own shame about their wretched existence. From what I understand though, he eventually did feel convicted, as one who had the opportunity for education during his exile, to champion the cause of his people.

He and his wife founded UCEDD and have done amazing work in helping the Batwa in development and education projects. The school is one of the centerpieces of their work. It is supported by MCC but the Batwa themselves pay a small tuition fee to send their children, which gives them a real sense of ownership and investment in education. It is great to support them in this. Placing Jodie, an MCCer there, affords great opportunity to help build their capacity. She can teach English and French, as well as help develop curriculum and teaching methodologies with the local staff. We are also hoping she will be able to help build the capacity of UCEDD as well through assisting with grant writing, strategic planning, etc.

We are aware of the great challenges this will put on Jodie. She is moving from an academic career in an Ivy League School, to live as the only 'mzungu' (white person) in a remote village in the heart of central Africa. The sacrifice and cultural challenges are daunting, but she feels called by her faith to this work. Rebecca and I, as team leaders will have responsibility for making sure that she feels supported in this role, and I imagine we will be making trips, at least monthly, to Bugasera to visit. (The consolation, is that Oren seems to like the seminary and monkey.)
Right now, however, the rough roads up there are hard on Rebecca as she enters her seventh month of pregnancy. She has been doing quite well, in general, although today she is sick with a stomach flu that our cook had this past week. Please pray for her speedy recovery, as we need to make another trip up country next week.

Oren is doing extremely well. It is interesting to me to see him adapting to a new diet. He really does like food and does not seem to mind shifting from ice cream, cookies, cheerios, chicken, apples, and other American food, to a diet of rice and beans. He does like rice and beans, and we have it for lunch every day, so that is good. Yesterday we had fish for dinner and he ate almost half a kilo by himself. Although there is much I miss, I am also refreshed by the more utilitarian place food has taken in our lives. I have often felt that we have too many choices at home. It is a good proscriptive to see alternative lifestyles where less is more.

I am trying to send an interesting picture with each entry, so here is a photo of Rebecca (looking very pregnant) and Oren, in our 3rd world office. The windows are permanently open as there is no AC anywhere, and the technology is minimal, although we do have our computers and a printer. Photocopying is done at a nearby store, one page at a time, at about 30 cents per copy. What is hard to see is all the dust which collects daily. The floor is concrete. The walls are yellow, the closest shade to white available, and the furniture is all cushionless. The bamboo couch and chairs on the left is our conference room.

You might be interested in hearing the type of work we do in the office. Sometimes the work is game like in the challenges we are presented with. Here is an example. I need to travel, with 3 of our partners to Ghana, in Oct. for a 3 day meeting. I am American, 2 partners are Burundian, and one is Rwandan. We all live quite far from each other (a day trip). Ghana requires Visas for travel. There are no Ghanaian consulates in Burundi. For visas, Ghana requires our passports, and quadruplicate copies of an application, our plane tickets, our health cards, and 4 photos of each of us. So Rebecca and I have to get everyone?s passport, health cards, and photos, buy plane tickets for everyone, fill out all the applications, send them to Kenya (the nearest consulate), get them back and redistribute them to everyone. Needless to say, it is a complicated process and can take a long time. Consider also the fact that virtually nothing can be done on the internet, and never with a credit card.

I have really enjoyed the many comments you all have been writing. Shout out to the Vassar crew who started the semester this week. I did feel a real pang of sadness as I thought of the beginning of a new semester that I will miss for the first time in 8 years.