Au Bureau de Poste and the Hope School

Picture of Hope School at Burasera with Seminary in the background.

I am doing my best not to count the hours until I get to see Rebecca and Oren again. Fortunately life here is presenting me with enough challenges and urgent tasks that it would be impossible to pine. I have about 8 days left here. In that time I need to move our office, go to Rwanda, and make a myriad of financial arrangements to see that our service workers, partners, housestaff, and bills are paid during the two months that we are out of town.

I did get to take a weekend off after my Ghana trip. I feel like I have not had one for a while. I had sprained my back in Ghana as I mentioned last week and spent several hours laying on a large frozen fillet of fish from our freezer as we had run out of ice. I also took a real swim (1.5 miles) on Saturday at the Club du Lac T. (Truthfully I would rather have been in the kiddy pool with Oren.). On Sunday I was back in my church again after having absent for 3 weeks due to various trips every weekend. It was good to be there again.

Monday and Tuesday were a bit frustrating because it was hard to get a lot done. Zachee’s son Timmy had malaria and had to go to the doctor on Monday, while I spent half the day at the bank making arrangements for Zachee to have signing power on our accounts. I spent the other half of the day at the post office picking up parcels that had arrived for us. Thank you all so much who heard about Oren missing Cheerios and the high cost of cheerios here. He will appreciate the gift when he comes back, I have not doubt. The downside is that the customs officer at the post office charged me $80 worth of duty on the parcels, so counting postage I estimate the cereal we received ended up costing about $60 per box. I noticed on my receipt that the import tariff was 5% of postage—($2), but a whopping $70 ‘transactional tax’ was also assessed--which I am guessing was the custom agent’s cut! I asked about it and he simply showed me that all his receipts in the book included a ‘transactional tax.’ The fact is, corruption is so institutionalized here that it is not really possible to challenge it. The agent even put the charge down on my copy of the receipt and stamped it and the parcel officiously on every side. (For more about the institutionalization of corruption here read the book Africa Works. --The premise is basically that since all the largesse from collection of ‘fees’ is redistributed rather than kept by an individual, it is legitimized and in the interest of the elite in power and their supporters/clients to perpetuate it, not fight it.)

Tuesday was a jour conge (holiday). We have a holiday almost every week in Burundi in October. Sadly they are mostly memorial days for assassinated presidents. There is a cynical joke here about the danger of being president of Burundi during the month of October. It is indeed tragic though that several of the visionary founders of Burundian independence and democracy who resisted ethnic divisions were killed in the past 20 years.

On Wednesday I went up country to Burasera, where Jodi teaches at the Hope School for the Batwa. I had mail, money, and supplies to bring her (24 rolls of toilet paper among other things.) As I have mentioned before, the trip is treacherous and punishing on the vehicle (as well as my still sore back.). To be precise, it is more dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists than motorists. I witnessed, on the way up, the remains of a recent truck wreck--It had slammed into the embankment on the way down the mountain. Tragically 2 bicyclists who hang on the back for a ride on the hills were killed when it hit. I was driving up with Gaspar to take his mattresses to his village, and we drove in awkward silence for quite a time after passing it.

I arrived in Burasera in the afternoon, on time to see Jodi giving private English tutorials to a group of students. Here are some pictures of her in the class. I think the students are fascinated by her and she loves it there. She has encouraged some of the adults in the area to share their history in class for the students, as there just does not exist much by the way of written history about the batwa. This is because many of the batwa settled here are severely dislocated communities who were at one time in Congo before they fled being kidnapped in the forest and forced into Mbutu’s army or slavery. (When I say slavery, I am talking about the 1990’s and later, not the nineteenth century!) Jodi related several stories to me about people in the area who shared stories of being captured and sold into slavery in Uganda, and then many years later, had miraculous reunions with family. The stories emphasize the triumph of the batwa spirit over the forces of oppression.

Jodi has been very resourceful in developing a curriculum suited to the rustic conditions they have at the school. (They have virtually no supplies, running water, electricity, meals, etc.) In the morning though, she took the students on a field trip to a nearby hydroelectric generator that makes power for the seminary with a water wheel in a small river. She had the electrician from the seminary explain to the children how water can be used to create electricity. I am trying to imagine how that must have sounded to the children of what was essentially, a generation back, a hunter/gatherer culture. She has big ideas for capacity building in the school including completing a water tank for hand washing (as a mission project), creating a health care voucher system at a nearby hospital for illness, AND eventually even a laptop for every student through the laptop project. If anyone is interested in participating in one of these projects let me know!

I spent the night in the seminary guest house and had dinner with the priests who love to have visitors join them at their table. When I passed by the monkey on the way to dinner I was filled with a longing for Oren to be there, who really liked to come up and see it. I am including a picture here taken on an earlier trip with Rebecca, Oren and I, looking at the monkey.

I returned to Bujumbura on Friday and had my last Kirundi lesson until January. I am sorry to be ending my lessons as I am finally beginning to be able to have some rudimentary conversations. (It is a very complex language.) I am amazed what one can learn about a culture from the language. I can only say that every culture divides up reality and concepts in some unique ways. It is interesting to see what words in English do not have exact equivalents in Kirundi (ex: to make or to do is almost always translated--to work) and vice versa. In Kirundi, for example, ‘to want to know’ is a single word/concept that is completely different than ‘to know’. There are also about 9 ‘classes’ of nouns. (There are no masculine and feminine classes like french, but two of the divisions are people and animals). All have entirely different ways of agreeing with their corresponding adjectives and direct objects. For example a good child: umwana neza, is different than a good cow: inka nziza. The beginning of the word good, changes for each class of noun, and you have to learn all the classes to know which one to use. To make it worse it changes again in plural--four good children are abana beza bane and good cows are inks nziza zine!

Taking Kirundi has also helped my French a well, as my teacher speaks mainly French and Kirundi, so instruction is primarily in French.

One more thing worth reporting: I now have 2 housemates, Isaac and David (see picture) who are going to be staying here in the house while Rebecca and I are away. They are both ‘3rd culture kids’—spent their childhood overseas with missionary parents. They just finished college and are working with a Christian NGO called World Relief. Isaac will be working on AIDS awareness and David will work with a microfinance project. It is inspiring to see these young men who are so enthusiastic about being here and working compassionately to make life better for others. Actually David was a last minute arrival. He was supposed to be placed in Eastern Congo (across the border which is only a few miles away), but the security conditions have deteriorated so much there in the past few months that his NGO decided not to send him there for the time being.

I talk to Rebecca and Oren when I can, but Skype is very disappointing in trying to communicate feelings and to share emotional support. They are doing well and Oren is surrounded by loving, doting grandparents. It is strange to hear Oren talk to me on the phone and to realize how much he is growing and changing there. He speaks quite clearly in grammatically correct sentences. I will be very glad to be back with them again and not miss all the exciting development stages he his passing through.