Christmas in Bujumbura

The traditional Christmas morning family photo taken of us by Jodi.




I feel like we passed an important landmark in our time here in Burundi. This was our first Christmas here! We have been here a year and a half now, but last year we spent Christmas in the US after the birth of David, and returned here just after New Years Day. So what is it like? --you may wonder.

That is a bit of a challenge to answer as there are some similarities, but I cannot say whether that adds to or subtracts from the strangeness of it all. Burundi is a Christian (mainly Catholic) country, so there is a recognition of the season--Advent preparations, etc. Burundi has also borrowed many European traditions including the arrival of St. Nicolas and Christmas trees in many homes in Bujumbura. In shops one can find a Christmas tree on display, and on the street corners men hawk decorated plastic Chinese Christmas trees that they carry around over their heads. (Real pine trees are illegal to cut in Burundi because of problems of over-harvesting them in past years.)

There is about all of these preparations though, the evidence of poverty. The scrawny artificial trees on the street are mainly decorated with pieces of colored foil, and the offerings in stores do not differ from any other time of year. Then there is the heat. I am realizing how so many of our Christmas carols (like The Holly and the Ivy, Deck the Halls, Jingle Bells, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, even Silent Night) imply a coldness about this time of year, and though I played carols frequently throughout the last week, it just felt anachronistic, like I was having Christmas in the middle of summer.

This is not to say we did not have a really nice Christmas, but it was certainly different in the way it felt. I have often lamented the extreme commercialism and ever lengthening shopping season that precedes it, but a completely non-consumerist Christmas left much to be desired as well.

One thing I will say, is that things did not slow down work-wise quite as much as I had anticipated. It seems that people were working most everyday right up until Christmas eve, and even Christmas Day from what I could see.

On Monday, we had planned to take a much needed day off and it began well enough when we took Oren to his swimming lesson and had a swim ourselves. I had to do some business in town with Nathan, then had language lessons in the afternoon. Tuesday was another work day as well primarily taken up by bill paying.

I will remind you all that paying a bill in Bujumbura involves going to each company and paying a cashier. There is no online banking, or even mailing a check with a statement. So withdrawing cash, then paying the electric bill, phone bill, garbage collection, post box bill will take most of the day. We also were making fairly regular trips to the Immigration office this week to get new visas for the SALTers before they left for a week’s vacation in Tanzania. This is always a stressful process and the complete disorder of the immigration office does not inspire confidence that passports will be processed on time, or even found at all, once they are surrendered to the immigration officials, who always seem extremely put-out by even the most normal requests and inquiries.

Wednesday was a bit better. There was less to do as far as work and I had the opportunity to do some Christmas shopping. This was really the first occasion, and since we were having an MCC staff Christmas party that evening where we had selected Secret Santas, I was not shopping a moment too soon.

The party was a really nice gathering that evening and was probably the most Christmas-y feeling event of the week. We had decorated the house with the meager supply of Christmas paraphernalia we had on hand. One item worthy of note was a gingerbread house made from a kit. This was brought out by my parents when they were here several weeks ago. It has become a tradition for Oren to build one and we had assembled it Tuesday night.

One thing I will say is that gingerbread houses are meant for a dry winter climate. After building it Tuesday night, we found, on Wednesday morning, that the carefully decorated candy-covered roof, had melted and poured down the sides of the house because of the humidity. After that we stored the house in the freezer until the dinner party on Wednesday. It made a very nice centerpiece for our dinning room table that night.

Oren is someone who loves to build a gingerbread house as well as eat it. It took a lot of convincing, to get him to save it for at least 24 hours. (He was ready to eat it after it was built Tuesday night, and then begged to have it for breakfast on Wednesday morning.) Normally I would have wanted it saved longer, but because of the melting problem we did take it apart and eat it for dessert on Wednesday during the party.

I think it was great for the SALTers, the Ressler-Horsts, and Jodi to have a team Christmas gathering. (Jodi had come down that day as well to spend Christmas break in Bujumbura.) It was the first opportunity for Nathan and Lara to meet her. We had a fun evening singing Christmas carols, eating, chatting, then opening our Secret Santa presents. The kids had a lot of fun playing together around the Christmas tree as well.

Thursday, Christmas eve day, began with a bit of work. I had to go over and meet a landlord to sign a contract for a house that the Nathan and Lara found to live in! We are all breathing a sigh of relief that they have a place to live now, although they will move in after the New Year.

Oren and Rebecca also worked on making some batches of cinnamon rolls to give away as gifts (another Sack family tradition.) Oren loves to cook, especially baked goods so really enjoyed helping mommy do this. Later that evening we our family went with Bridget, Zachee, Tim and Jodi to a ‘Lessons and Carols’ service at the Anglican Cathedral in town. We then had dinner together at Khana Kazana afterwards. Maybe this will become a family tradition here—Indian food on Christmas eve.

Friday morning, most everyone slept in because of the late night out on Thursday. Oren was excited when he did get up though and it was hard to convince him not to open all his gifts before Mommy and Jodi woke up. He was thrilled to find a stocking full of candy canes and chocolate on the wall. We had also set up his little wooden train set around the Christmas tree to his delight. (He does not consider any Christmas tree complete without a train going around it.)

He and David got some very nice gifts, coloring books, a push toy, and a large snake shaped pillow that he had admired when he saw one that was owned by Jal (Nathan and Lara’s son.) (This was a locally made handicraft that Rebecca was able to find on one of her shopping trips.) David did not really understand what was going on, but he did like to play with the various and sundry things that were opened, especially things that belonged to Oren.

We spent the rest of Christmas day relaxing around the house until about 4 in the afternoon. We had been invited to an American Christmas party hosted by one of our American friends who had a classmate in Oren’s school. There were about 30 of us gathered, many from the embassy. The family had rented a bouncy castle for the backyard and there were about 15 kids present. The kids enjoyed playing together while the adults chatted on the terrace. We remarked this was probably just about every American in Burundi. Someone observed that while many Europeans went home for Christmas, most American had stayed as it is considerably further to get back to the US from here for what is quite a short break as far as school and work.

The party was enjoyable, Astrid and Travis’ family was among the invited guests as well as the Ressler-Horsts. This was not, however, a gathering a missionaries in general. Among the offerings that evening was turkey and cranberry sauce provided through a service to the American embassy which had them shipped from South Africa.

We had another relaxing day on Saturday, although much of it was spent by me preparing calendars for our extended family featuring pictures of all of us over the year. This has become a tradition in our family for me to make this. Fortunately our parents had DHLed a dvd of photos of everyone else to us, because I did not have pictures of everyone here as we have seen each other much less this year. Rebecca was working on a sermon as she was invited to preach on Sunday at our church. We did go to the park in the afternoon for a bit of a break during the day, though.

It was really good to hear Rebecca preach on Sunday. This is the first invitation she has had to do so at our church. She gave a powerful speech about peace-making based on the text in Luke about the Angel coming to the Shepherds and announcing the birth. The passage was a reminder of God’s restraint in his choice to bring us ‘peace on earth’ through the birth of a baby, rather than enforcing it with his army of angels. She pointed out that it would seem that for God, the ‘means’ to peace are as important as the ‘ends’ itself, and that ‘peace through strength’ will never succeed in accomplishing its end. True peace-making requires us to follow the example of Christ, even to the cross. “Many people have willingly sacrificed themselves in a ‘just war’ but until we are willing to lay down our lives for a ‘just peace’ we will not experience God’s shalom.” (to paraphrase one of her points.) I will see if she can post a transcript of the sermon next week.

The sermon was very well received here, as there is really not much preaching that introduces Anabaptist peace theology here. In fact, most every sermon I hear ends at the gospel message, the evangelical call to accept Christ as our savior, but never seems to go beyond that. Consequently, I fear that many Christians here are not very spiritually mature. There is a great challenge here to provide teaching to Christians about what it means to follow Christ as a disciple, AFTER one has accepted the call.

We went to the beach Sunday afternoon then had dinner with the Ressler-Horsts at the house where they are housesitting.

It is now Monday morning and we are getting ready for a ‘village live-in’. That is we are going up to Cassien’s village upcountry as a family to spend 3 days there. I will let you know how that goes next week. Wish us luck!

A Muddy Visite Sur Terraine and Reflections on Peacemaking

David is now a toddler, and also very keen on helping with the housework whenever possible.



I hope this will be the last entry for a week or so which begins by noting what a busy week it was and how difficult it is to begin writing. The truth is, I fell into bed, completely exhausted while putting David down about 8pm. But now it is 2AM and I am wide awake.

I am happy to say that Sunday was a good day of rest for us. We did go to our church in the morning where I was the worship facilitator, followed directly by a trip to the beach. The afternoon we went to the English fellowship and sung many Christmas carols during worship time. It still does not feel anything like Christmas in terms of weather, but I am beginning to get into the Christmas spirit.

The past week’s busyness was mainly due to the visit from our regional director Mark Sprunger. He arrived this past Sunday, (the same day we were returning from Rwanda) and stayed until Friday evening this week. We had a lot of opportunity to talk to him about our programming and the challenge of keeping continuity in another year of diminished giving at home which necessitates deeper cuts in our budget here. (MCC giving is off about 12% this year.) He did have some good advice and made some helpful suggestions about strategic planning in the year ahead.

The bigger part of his visit though, was spent meeting our partners. On Monday, I took him to meet Onesphore of Moisson Pour Christ, before my language lesson. Then we had a big MCC team gathering for dinner at our house for all of us located in Burundi. This included the SALTers the Ressler Horsts, Zachee and Tim (Bridget was in Sudan), and us. We had a nice evening and even drew names for a secret Santa party later this week.

Tuesday morning was the start of a 3 day roadtrip. Because of Oren’s school, we decided that I would take Mark around and Rebecca would stay home with the children. We began early in the morning by heading south. We went in a convoy of 2 cars led by Cassien and another person from Help Channel. Besides Mark and I, Nathan and his family were going as well. The plan was to see some tree nurseries in Makamba, near the border of Tanzania, then some other nurseries and plantation in Rutana. We would stay the night in Rutana.

Help Channel, many of you may remember, runs a Food for Work program in which beneficiaries plant trees as part of a reforestation project in exchange for maize and beans (about a kilo of each per day.)

The drive south began well enough as we headed toward Nyanza Lac, which is quite a scenic ride along the coast of Lak Tanganyika. We even saw a hippo basking in the Lake as well as many fishermen at work. When we got to Nyanza Lak we headed East off the paved road toward the Tanzanian border. At this point the weather took a turn for the worst. A large storm was brewing (as it is rainy season), and I was hoping it would not be a problem for our Landcruisers on a muddy road.

We got to the first nursery site, which was located near a very large UNHCR refugee camp set up for returning refugees from Tanzania who were awaiting repatriation. This is a huge problem in the south as many fled Burundi as early as the 1970s and their land has since been given away to others. The return has been a cause of much land conflict which can turn murderous without intervention from others to find a non-violent solution.

The nursery looked small but had about 50,000 tree saplings in it. Most were eucalyptus for planting in the govt. granted land for reforestation, but there were also other trees, like grevaria that are given to beneficiaries to plant in their gardens and farmland. It was interesting to hear about the struggles of maintaining a nursery. I was also quite surprised to hear Cassien complain that there were several unscrupulous partners of UNDP who were receiving huge grants for reforestation, who would bring UN monitors to this nursery and represent it as their own. One even offered to buy the nursery outright from Help Channel. I suggested to Cassien that he put a sign up.

This is one thing I do like about MCC programs. Because we are a relatively small mission, we, as country reps. are able to monitor our projects and make sure that the money given is being used in way it was granted, and much has a direct impact on the lives of beneficiaries. Sadly, a lot of relief money granted by large donors ends up in the pockets of just about anyone but the needy, vulnerable people who it was intended for.

When we finished our tour, we continued on our way to Makamba for lunch. By this time the storm hit and driving became quite difficult on the muddy roads. At one point we had to get and change the hub locks to 4 wheel drive on both vehicles. We did get to Makamba and had a nice lunch at a guesthouse run by Cassien’s sister.

From there we continued on to Rutana and stopped at another nursery where we had the chance to talk to many of the beneficiaries in the community about the nursery. Many students also proudly brandished their school books that they had received from Help Channel, thanks to a container sent by MCC, of school kits.

We got to our guest house by evening, which was very cozy. There was even a fireplace which we all huddled around as a rainy night up country can be quite chilly. We had a very good Burundian dinner then turned in for the night.

The next morning, after a cold shower, Mark and I parted ways from Cassien and the Ressler-Horsts. We were headed to Gitega and then on to Burasira to see Jodi and stay the night at the seminary. The drive seemed straightforward enough as we were back on the paved road to Gitega, although I had never been on this particular road myself. We arrived in Gitega mid-morning where we had a very full day of visiting. We started with our partner UCPD who does peace-making and community development in a nearby commune. Jean-Pierre, their representative described their work to this very under served community which is not really on the ‘beaten path’ as far as places where a lot NGOs are working. Mark really appreciated the fact that MCC is at its best when it can be supporting work in places where others really are not present.

After talking with UCPD for about 2 hours, we headed to MiPAREC, our large partner who has set up peace committees all over the country. We had lunch with Levy, the legal rep. who told us about their programs. We left them and went down the road a bit to UCEDD, the organization that runs the Hope School for the Batwa. We talked to Beatrice, who with her husband Innocent (both Batwa) founded and run the school. She talked to us about the successes and challenges of this project.

By about 4 pm, completely mentally saturated from meetings, we headed down the 2 hour dirt road to Burasira to see Jodi and the Hope School. Because of the heavy rain, though, the road was really bad, as slippery as I have ever seen it. We had to 4 wheel it the whole way, and even then had some struggles to keep from going off the road.

It was good to get to Burasira and see Jodi. We had dinner at her home and conversation was much easier than the official tone that we adoped at meetings with partners. Jodi also talked about the Hope School and the challenge of her role as capacity builder.

We went back to the seminary around 10 pm and turned in for the night. We were up early on Thursday, with another cold shower, then 6am prayer at the seminary. We had breakfast there then went with Jodi up the Hope School to meet the principals and see some of the classes. Most of the students were gone for break, but we did find two classes that were still in session. We went in and greeted them and they sung some songs for us as well.

We left Jodi mid-morning so we could drive back down to Bujumbura and get back before my ballet class at 3 pm. The drive was still bad down the dirt road, which I think gave Mark and appreciation of just how remote Jodi is in her work at that school. He really felt that this program was an example of MCC at its best.

We did back to Buj. on time to teach the last ballet class of the semester. It was also good to see Oren, David and Rebecca again. Apparently, while we were gone, David decided to walk. Rebecca described how, on Wednesday morning, he was on the porch, and stood up with a small rock in his hand. He threw the rock out in front of him, then walked over to get it. He picked it up and repeated this about 6 or 7 times. (A little walkers training program he devised for himself.) I was sorry I was not there for this event, but have enjoyed watching him perambulate about the house on his new toddler legs. He does not talk yet except a couple words. (The first official word was ‘duck’, Oren’s was ‘up’)

Friday was Mark’s last day in Burundi. We took him to the airport about noon, only to have him call about 3 to say the flight was delayed until 1 in the morning. Zachee went and got him, then I picked him up and took him to a conference I was going to, hosted by one of our partners. It was about the role and responsibility of Christians in the Political process. Invitees were people in government, for a dialogue and debate. Mark and I set next to the former vice-president of the country. I had a talk with him before the meeting and asked what he was doing now. He said nothing, jokingly, and asked if there might be a job for him in our organization. (Actually he is a pediatrician who work with children with AIDS). Also in attendance were leaders of rival political parties who happened to be Christians. It was interesting to hear them discuss the role of the Church in promoting a peaceful electoral process.

We took Mark to Khanna Kazana for Indian food (he had done a stint in Bangladesh so he loves Indian food.). Then went home and watched an episode of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency before driving him back to the airport around midnight. This time he did get off.

Saturday was less work but not a day of rest as we had several social engagements. One was Timmy’s birthday party, held at the Rainbow Center, and the second was a Christmas pageant at our church. We dropped Oren off at the Birthday, where Zachee and Bridget and had rented a big air castle, then we went on to the Christmas pageant. Although it was all in Kirundi, it was great to see the familiar sight of children dressed as wise men, shepherds, angels, sheep, and the Holy Family, acting out the nativity scene.

As a final note I will mention a thought shared by the pastor at the English fellowship this week. He was talking about Christ as our peacemaker with God and quoted the beatitude to us: “Blessed Are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. “

He pointed out that it does not say Blessed are the peace lovers, or even blessed are peaceful people or peacekeepers. He reminded us that the word is peaceMAKERS, that is the activity of making peace, which is a far more challenging call then just avoiding conflict ourselves. He called on us to be peaceMAKERS not just peacekeepers, in our countries, our cities and our FAMILIES. May you all take the opportunity this season affords to be peacemakers in your workplaces, and homes. Remember HE is our peace. Merry Christmas.



Bonus Photo: One of the sights on our field trip. I am always trying to get a good photo of these women that balance 3 clay pots on their head. This one also had a baby on her back!

Preparing for Christmas and Business as Usual in Kigali

The fact that I am starting this blog entry at 10:30 pm this Sunday, is indicative of how busy we have been this past week. Today was a travel day, returning to Bujumbura from Kigali. It was a long trip because we made a stop by the genocide memorial at Nyamatta, AND then we met a bus at the border, which slowed our crossing, going through customs and immigration considerably.

There were 8 of us traveling in our jam-packed Land Cruiser. The three SALTers, Brandon, Robyn, and Yolanda, along with our family, and Travis Withrow (of Astrud and Travis) were all in the car. The SALTers were going to have a chance to see Kigali, and Travis tagged along to do some Christmas shopping for his 5 daughters.

Coming back we were loaded down with the roof-rack piled high with Christmas presents. The car probably bore some likeness to Santa’s sleigh in the book “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.

We arrived in Bujumbura at 4 pm, just in time for the beginning of the English fellowship and Oren’s Sunday school. The timing was particularly important because we were meeting our Area Director Mark Sprunger there. He had arrived earlier in the day and Zachee brought him to the fellowship. We are hosting Mark here this week so he can see what our program is doing in Burundi.

That was the culmination of what was a very busy week, and next week promises to be no easier. But it was not all work and no play. We have been getting ready for Christmas here, and unlike Halloween, we have been making a real effort to prepare the house in some ways for the event. There has also been reflected in complementary activities by Oren’s school, our church, and even some places where we shop, where Christmas trees are appearing,

None of this comes close to the feeling of the post-Thanksgiving Christmas season in the US, but it is nice to be able to experience some of the preparation that typifies my experience of this time of year. I think what is most conspicuously missing is cold weather and snow. I thought I would ever say I miss it, but I really do miss the change of the season, and decorating a pine tree feels a bit strange in warm weather.

Oren is getting excited about all of this and really loved decorating the Christmas tree. (I mentioned last week that I had found an artificial tree left by our predecessors that I had cleaned up.) I was glad to find that we had brought enough of a small collection of ornaments to decorate it, and I even got some lights from the Chinese import store here.

Last week St. Nicolas came to Oren’s school. (that should be read with a French accent.) St. Nicolas has a white beard but is considerably thinner than Santa, he wears a cardinals mitre hat, and travels with a companion wielding a large Bible. Oren also told me that he speaks only French. There was a large celebration at Oren’s school for his arrival, then St. Nicolas went and visited the classes of the preschoolers and gave out candy.

Apparently, from the description of one of the parents, the distribution was quite interesting. St. Nicolas had a big list of all the kids (naughty and nice) and called them up 1 by 1. He read the name from the list and the child would come up, then he would read something about the child’s behavior, like “You are very helpful with the teacher.” Or “You color well, but you fight to much with your classmates.” Everyone received candy, but apparently the naughty and nice stuff is taken pretty seriously by St. Nicolas.
Besides preparing for Christmas, we have been trying, without much success to find a good housing situation for the Ressler-Horsts, our new service workers. We spent some time looking on Monday through Wednesday but did not find anything good that would work for a permanent situation. We did find a house-sitting opportunity that looks promising for a month, and I think they will take it for the time being (beginning this Wednesday). The problem, I think, is that in the last 6 months there has been a large influx in the expatriate community that is renting houses and pushing up the cost of rental property considerably beyond our planned budget.

Nathan and Lara’s family were able to enjoy a bit of time to themselves this past week, though, because our family was out of town in Rwanda from Thursday through Sunday, as I mentioned earlier.

We had a car full going up because the SALTers asked to have an opportunity to go up and see Kigali, and Travis hitched a ride as well to do Christmas shopping for his 5 daughters. The trip up was smooth and uncomplicated none-the-less. We left at the end of Oren’s school and got up there by about 5 pm.

The SALTers stayed with Ruth and Krystan, Travis stayed with friends, and our family stayed at our favorite haunt, the Africa New Life guesthouse. The staff there is always happy to welcome and keep an eye on, Oren and David.

Our purpose for going up this time was to have a round table discussion with our partner, Friends Peace House, as well as other donors that support their programs. We are making an effort to coordinate our support more effectively. It was an interesting discussion and I hope, helpful for the way we do our funding next year. For us this is a particularly crucial issue because, with the Global Financial crisis, our funding has continued to drop and we need, once again, to be looking at way in which we can strategically pare down, rather than expand our programming. This prospect is not appealing, but it is a reality. We are hoping that things will change sometime after next year.

Our time in Kigali was generally pretty tightly scheduled. We had the meeting, banking, visiting partners, and spending some time supporting Ruth and Krystan. So it was not exactly a restful week. The one evening we had nothing scheduled in Kigali was Friday. We finished our day about 5:30 pm and were at the guest house deciding what we would like to do. We were considering our different dinner options while Oren and David played in the living room. We had about decided on pizza and getting the kids to bed early so we could have time to talk, when Oren, who was playing on the couch, suddenly fell forward onto the coffee table and let out a scream. I looked and saw he had struck his head on the edge. As I expected, when I picked him up, was that he was bleeding profusely out of a large gash in his forehead, something that would definitely need stitches.

Rebecca and I looked at each other and new immediately that the decision about our family outing that evening had been made. We would be spending it at the King Faisal hospital emergency room. We held a towel on Oren’s head and loaded him in the car. We were fairly calm because we knew the drill very well after the experience 8 months ago with his broken arm in Kigali. We drove to the hospital and took him into the emergency room. I saw that it was quite crowded so I carried him in making his blood covered face and hair obvious so he could be helped first. He did get right into a room.

The whole process from start to finish still took about 3 hours, and we returned home about 10pm. Oren had 3 stitches in his forehead under a dressing. I had had to hold him down for the stitches as the anesthetic was just something that was sprayed on, not injected. He could definitely feel the needle going in and out for each suture. He was very brave through it all though, and did get ice cream after we were done, so it was not all bad for him in his estimation. He also seemed excited about the chance to show off his big bandage to everyone he met, and to his friends at school this week. I was pleased that an ER visit in Kigali still runs about $12.

We are anticipating another busy week with Mark Sprunger here and I will probably be doing a lot of driving in rural Burundi between Tuesday and Thursday. I am looking forward to some time off during Christmas week.

Goodbye Grammy, Hello Ressler-Horsts

David welcomes his new friend Ella to Burundi and introduces her to some of his favorite activities.



I feel like I was just here composing last Sunday---probably because this was such a busy, event-filled week that the days seemed to fly by. This is also the second week where I feel so exhausted this Sunday evening that I am daunted by the prospect of finishing this entry tonight. I am really more of a morning person, although Oren tends to get at 5:30 am with me if I do get up then.

We had a very narrow gap this week, (one evening) between the departure of my mother on Tuesday, and the arrival of our new service workers, the Ressler-Horsts, on Wednesday.

I am happy to say that both of my parents got home safely. We took Grammy to the airport Tuesday morning after dropping Oren off at school. She emailed us to tell us she had a problem-free trip back and even did a bit of sightseeing on her stop-over in Nairobi (where they had lived in the 1980s).

We enjoyed our Tuesday evening as the one supper in the week where did not have any visitors.

On Wednesday work was interesting because I participated in a large conference organized by World Vision and World Relief which brought together leaders of all the major church denominations. I mentioned this last week, as part of an effort to have the Church in Burundi can be a voice of positive change in the country. Since the majority of the population in Burundi professes to be Christian, there is a real opportunity here. On the other hand, for the same reason, if the election process disintegrates into violence, the church would own some of the responsibility for failing to act. I feel that this is a time of testing for the church Burundi, and there are many here and abroad that are praying that it might rise as a strong, prophetic voice at this historic time in Burundi.

Wednesday evening was the real event for us though. I went to the airport to pick up the Ressler-Horsts, Nathan and Lara and their two children Jal (6) and Ella (1). When I arrived at the airport the plane was there already and people were exiting. Eventually I saw Lara and Jal come out to tell me they needed some more money for visas. (The price had gone up recently—fortunately I had it.) Then a security guard asked me to come in to help them.

When I got in I could see why. Between the for of them they had about 30 bags, including, strollers, child seats, etc. It was quite amazing! It did remind me a bit as well of our own family’s arrival a year and a half ago. With the help of 4 porters we loaded up the car, including the roofrack. (I was thankful it was not raining.)

It was not until we got home that it was discovered that three of the carry-ons, that had been stowed in Dulles had not arrived in Bujumbura. But it was after 10pm when we got home and we decided to deal with that the next day.

Fortunately our house is big enough to temporarily accommodate two families and life here the past few days has not been too difficult. Jal and Oren enjoy playing together, as do David and Ella.

Beginning Thursday, we continued our house-hunting, which despite much effort to find something before they arrived, has not been fruitful. I think the biggest problem is that Bujumbura is changing. Many more foreigners are arriving and the housing market is rising. We could not find anything comparable to what Rebecca and I have (or had before our move) for the same price. We did know that we got our house at steal, but now we have a better idea of just how good a price this is. We will be continuing the search this week.

We are also orienting them this week in other ways. We have taken them on sightseeing trips of the city, they met Cassien at Help Channel, where they will be seconded. Help Channel has very generously made a vehicle available to them, so they do have their own car. They have also paid a visit to the Ecole Belge where Jal will very likely go to school. Oren has had several friends over this week whom Jal has met, most notably Timmy.

On Friday evening we had a team gathering for all of our workers, SALTERS, and Zachee for dinner to greet and welcome them. It was a nice evening and everyone seemed excited to have them here.

The SALTERS seem to be doing very well, and were back again on Saturday morning as I have been offering to teach a yoga-stretch class on Saturday morning on our front porch. Nathan joined us as well, despite jetlag. I enjoy doing this and I have heard from several other individuals who want to be part of this. We will see if this activity grows in the future. It has been a good team-building activity in my opinion.

Saturday afternoon, we, in true Burundian style, went out and visited quite a few friends and introduced the Ressler-Horsts around. We had an afternoon gathering of our regular group of Saturday missionary families at the house of Thomas and Naya. It was a very nice time and gave Jal a chance to meet some more kids at the Ecole Belge.

Sunday we went to church in the morning, then took the new family to the beach at Club du Lac Tanganyika. Despite the rain, and the fact that they have introduced a small beach using fee, it was a nice afternoon and we all ate pizza and fish briochettes under a large umbrella by the pool in the rain.

We went to the English fellowship in the afternoon where I led Sunday school that day. We were also able to get some leads there for housing for them. Among our options now is a temporary housesitting situation which would take some pressure off of finding housing in the next 2-3 days.

Hopefully things will continue to go well. We have a very busy week coming up involving a trip to Rwanda, and a visit from our area director Mark Sprunger. He will be coming from Nigeria.

Bonus photo: Oren has been really into drawing. We found at the end of Kung-Fu Panda video a little tutorial on how to draw the characters. Oren was enthralled and spent a lot of time drawing ‘Monkey” step by step. I was quite surprised how well he did as a 4 year old!

A Mad Tea Party and an Enormous Family

.…Lundi…Mardi…Mercredi…Jeudi…Vendredi…Samedi…Dimanche. As I was walking down the hall past Oren’s room I heard the sound of someone reciting the days of the week in French. I knew the voice to be Oren's, only what I heard was not the accent of an American child reciting the words, it was the sound of a French or Belgian child with a perfect French accent saying the days of the week. It is an interesting breakthrough for 2 reasons. First, it is a series of words that I have never practiced with him in French, and second, it is a capacity he has in French that he does not yet have in English. That is, he cannot recite the days of the week in English at this point, to my knowledge. Apparently he learned it at school as part of a chasing game not unlike duck, duck, goose.

Oren has made more than one thing this week worthy of note in this blog, but I will save that for later.
(The photo is of him at his swimming lesson. He and some friends are doing that this month.)

It was a very full week with both Grandparents here, Thanksgiving, and a lot of networking with partners and other NGOs around election preparations.

But I have to also say that several of my work days were spent in a kind of fruitless effort to get our DSL (high speed internet connection) working. There is a book by Franz Kafka called “The Castle” that captures the experience perfectly, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know what a French-colonized African bureaucracy is like. In the book, a young man of some status is charged to deliver a letter to the occupant of a castle in a neighboring town. When he tries to do so, he finds it is not a straightforward matter. Despite his relative lack of interest in the task, he becomes more and more intrigued by the complexity of steps, and small successes and setbacks he experiences along the way. He eventually finds himself obsessed with succeeding in the task against a seemingly obdurate and infinitely complex bureaucracy.

My experience with the phone company has been quite similar to this, especially in the way that small steps forward tend to reveal even more steps that always seem to draw me nearer but never to my goal. Three weeks ago, after 6 months of waiting, we were permitted to pay for our DSL service. We celebrated this major victory of patience. Once I did pay, I went back and proudly presented my receipt to the customer service agent which we had 'befriended' because of our many prior visits. She told me that ‘activation’ would happen in the next 2 days. We waited the normal 2 weeks before I returned to find out what was wrong. Instead of going to our normal ‘friend’ though, I sought out someone in the internet department deep in the bowels of the building. There, in a tiny office, I met a very friendly man who told me that for activation, all I needed was a ‘dsl router’. I could go out and buy one, then bring it to him and he would configure it and I could take it home to use.

I was excited about the prospect of being in control of finishing this and after a 2 day search of every computer store in town, I found such a router. I was excite to go back to get this finished and virtually ran to the building and back to the office where I met this man. When I got there, I was surprised that I had a very hard time refinding the internet office. When I did, I went in and there were two different men in there. (They seemed to know nothing about my ‘helpful friend’ who was there 2 days ago.) I showed them the router and told them what I wanted. They looked at me utterly perplexed, then went into a large account book to look up something. They asked for my name and phone number. After about 10 minutes of looking they told me that our account did not exist according to their records and that not only did they not have any evidence that we had a dsl account, but that we did not even have a phone, according to them! They could do nothing for me and said I needed to start again.

I was sent back to my friend at customer service. She spent about 30 minutes on the phone talking to various technicians, then told me that there was a ‘technical problem’ with our line and that it would be resolved Monday and we could proceed with our activation. That is where we are now, I will let you know if this actually ever completes. At this point we have paid our original installment a month ago and now we are receiving a bill for the second month of our still unactivated DSL service. I don’t want to pay, but I know that if I don’t they will a good reason not to continue to make steps toward completion.


That was a long aside, but I am a big fan of Franz Kafka. But that was not the only surreal encounter we had this week of an early 20th century ‘modernist’ variety. The second one involved my parents this past Monday.

There is an eccentric elderly woman who lives here, she is a Russian pediatrician who used to have a clinic in town, which was closed (because of corruption) many years ago and its equipment sold by a govt. official who seized it. Why she remains, is unclear. She seems to be hoping for some sort of justice to eventually emerge. (Apparently she is waiting for a judgment at an ongoing trial—10 years—to get some money back. Just to keep in the theme of Kafka.)

She invited my parents and our family to ‘tea’ Monday evening. We got there around 5 to find that ‘tea’ was a 4 course meal, but not one like I have ever seen before. The food was odd, old mangoes and bananas, popcorn, something that resembled a stack of pancakes, all cooked on charcoal by her. She had no housestaff, no furniture except a table and chairs, no gardener, no electricity, no running water, and lived in the very large house that had once been the clinic.

We stayed for several hours and as the sun went down the house became pitch black and we gathered around a single candle. Conversation was awkward and difficult as she spoke no English and limited French, and my parent spoke no French. Rebecca and I translate as best we could. Nonetheless the doctor remained charming and gracious throughout, saying with her hospitality that she was a person of limited means, but with a great heart.

Still, it was all a bit creepy and I was looking forward to the end of the encounter, but Oren and David were not complaining so we stayed a bit longer. Then the doctor asked us if we liked to tango? She took an old lantern flashlight that had a small cassette player in it and turned it on. The sound of WWII cabaret sounding tango music wafted out of a tiny speaker and she invited Rebecca to dance with her. She got us all up to dance to this winsome, eerie, music for about half an hour. We swayed slowly in couples, kind of like waltzing, in total darkness in an empty house that had not been dusted for years, I felt as if we were in a WWII movie, making the best of life during a blackout in an air raid. It was a scene that could not have been directed better by Francis Ford Coppola. Eventually Oren started to complain and we made our excuses and went home, not before inviting her to our house for Thanksgiving the following Thursday. It was an evening I will not soon forget, and I don’t think my parents will either. I am aware the line between eccentricity and madness is fine, and I am not sure which side of it we were that evening.

Tuesday was an important work day as we gathered together all of our Burundian partners to discuss strategic planning next year around the elections. I have mentioned before that next year is a critical year for the country as the elections are happening. As most of our partners are involved in peace and reconciliation work, planning for interventions and conflict prevention even at this stage is crucial. We are trying to mobilize some of them to be election monitors, and do some training in educating their communities on the electoral process. It was a good meeting, facilitated by Zachee and our partners were all planning to be part of many activities related to keeping peace during the elections. We ended with lunch for everyone at our house, for which Marcelline, with Enoch’s help, prepared an enormous African meal that was very tasty.

As part of this as well, Rebecca and I have been networking with other Christian NGOs including the American Friends Service Committee and World Relief. It is good to connect with them. Often it seems like everyone is out here doing their own thing.

I was very impressed with World Relief’s efforts in that they, in collaboration with World Vision, have gathered all the leaders of every denomination in the country to meet together and discuss the role of the church in maintaining peace during the campaign. They have formed a committee of leaders from these churches who have agreed to cooperate.

Among the things they have counseled is the necessity of all pastors of all churches to be politically neutral!! That is, a pastor is not to bring his personal political preferences for a particular candidate into the church. (He should still vote confidentially of course.) This seems like good advice for our country as well, but here, where differences of opinion have often led to murder and massacres, it is essential. Your party and candidate are not worth killing for, or stirring up old ethnic rivalries, suspicion, and paranoia to win.

The other work related activity we did was to look for a house for our new service workers that are arriving this week! Our search has not been terribly fruitful, although we have seen a lot of interesting houses here--most out of the range of our budget. Prayers for this search would be helpful.


The week was not all work and no play though. We had several major social events. The biggest one was Thanksgiving dinner. Although we did not have a turkey, we did buy some rotisserie chickens, garnished with stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and other ‘fixins’ (cranberry sauce conspicuously absent) and did our best to create an American Thanksgiving meal. We invited Onesphore and his kids over, and Zenon (another partner in charge of Intervarsity in Burundi) with his wife and kids, as well as Zachee and Tim (Bridget was out of town) and the Russian doctor of course.

It was a nice event to share and we told the story of the American Thanksgiving tradition, complete with pilgrims and Indians. They enjoyed hearing about it and said they would find us a turkey for next year.

Friday, my mom and dad, and Rebecca and David and I picked up Oren from school, ate lunch, and headed up to Ijenda. I have written about this place before. It is where we had our team retreat and has the feel of being in Switzerland. We wanted my parents to see some parts of Burundi other than Bujumbura. It was raining when we arrived and quite cold. I was glad we had counseled them to bring warm clothes. We did have some good fellowship together and sat around a very nice fire in the dinning area to tell stories of Christmas when my parents were young to Oren.

Oren said one interesting thing that evening: Rebecca asked him if he enjoyed being up here with his whole family? He answered, “This isn’t my whole family, where is Timmy, and papa and mama Tim, and Robyn and Yolanda and Brandon and Ruth and Krystan and Jodi? I want to come here with my ENORMOUS FAMILY!

Saturday morning was gorgeous and we did a nice hike in the hills. Oren did quite well and actually walked the whole way! For most of the hike we were alone and only picked up a few curious children in the last 15 minutes. We headed back to Buj around noon, stopping for tea at another lodge on a colonial tea plantation. We finished just as it began to pour again and made our way back down the mountain in a torrential downpour. (We were glad to be dry in the car though.)

We got back to Buj and spent the rest of Saturday resting at home until evening. Since it was my Dad’s last night, we took them out to Khana Kazana, the Indian restaurant. We had a fabulous meal. I always marvel at the fact that we can get such good Indian food here.

Sunday morning we went to church then took Dad directly to the airport. He should be in Baltimore soon. I think that David got the most out of his visit as grandpa and him spent a lot of time together playing and watching Baby Einstein videos while Rebecca and I were at work. The time really seemed to go too fast though and we miss him already.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the English fellowship where Rebecca preached on a rainy afternoon, to a small group. She is leading off the advent series. It is hard believe we are getting close to Christmas, especially since we do not have any change of season here.

I did find an old Christmas tree in our garage and hosed it off yesterday. It needs some work, but I think we will get it to be able to stand up today and decorate before Grammy leaves tomorrow.

Personal note: Happy belated Birthday Jonathan, we thought of you while we ate at Khanna Kazana on Saturday. We would have called but don’t have your Nashville # memorized.

Grandpa Henry's Arrival

David enjoying a precious box of Cheerios he found in Grandpa’s suitcase. Also note that he received his first haircut this week!


I am aware that while I began doing this blog for personal reasons, and committed to doing it weekly as a spiritual discipline (of sorts), I have now found that there are many who are awaiting to hear the news of this next installment, especially because they know this is a particularly interesting week.

Well you need not be in suspense any longer. Grandpa Henry arrived today safe and sound after spending a week at a conference in neighboring Uganda. We went to the airport at 8:30 am, and our timing was such that he was walking out the door of the terminal as we pulled up. This was just as well, as security remains extremely tight and the closest we are allowed to be to the terminal building is by our car in the parking lot.

Dad was very, very tired, having not slept the entire night before. We were on our way to church so we took him with us, but only stayed for about half of the service before returning home to let him sleep. (He was introduced and brought greetings from Valley Baptist Church to our church.) Many remembered him from his previous visit here in March.

Oren and David were very happy to see him and were thrilled about all of the ‘goodies” he brought. (Many have been stashed away by us for Christmas.)


This was the culmination of quite a busy week though, and I want to try to note some of the highlights. Apologies for the brevity of each day as I recount, but again, I am waiting until late Sunday evening which means I want to finish it quickly.

On Monday, we began our weekly routine well with both Rebecca and I going swimming before work while Grammy watched David. Work went fairly routinely--we are very focused on helping our partners think strategically about ways they might be involved in sensitizing people for a non-violent election.

After school, however, four of Oren’s friends came home with him to play at his house. (Two sisters and a brother as well as Timmy.) I was in charge of refereeing the group until my Kirundi lesson at 3:30. It was not too bad, but it was a challenge keeping all five engaged at the same time.

Speaking of Kirundi, I have reached new levels of frustration with trying to remember all of the vocabulary. One problem is that often they have many words for relationships that we express in a single word. For example: the word father is ‘Data’, if it is my father, ‘So’ if it is your father, and ‘Se’ if it is his father. The same is true for mother, but the words are Mata, Nyoko, and Nyina. The word is different based on whether the subject is 1st 2nd or 3rd person.

There is really no single word for brother or sister. But there is a word for a boy’s older brother, or a girl’s older sister: ‘mukuru’ and the younger sibling of the same sex is ‘murumu. A boy’s sister or a girl’s brother is a completely different word though. Birth order seems to be much more important than gender.

I suspected that the different ways of expressing these relationships that we use the same word for in English was due to the role played by older siblings in relationship to younger. When I asked Zachee, he confirmed by suspicion and told me that there is an expectation that older siblings play a parental role (especially with regard to financial responsibility) for younger ones.

I would have had, for example, as the oldest brother, some or all the responsibility of paying for schooling (or college ) of my two younger brothers if I was Burundian.

As a westerner, it is really hard to get a good grasp on the economy of an extended family structure. I admit that I like the idea of the nuclear family, in which parents are the primary providers of financial support for children, and older children are not expected to have parental roles over younger ones (especially financial). I am trying to imagine, as a young Burundian, trying to get married and start my own family, how challenging it would be to realize that I already had 4-6 children (in terms of younger siblings), that I am expected to take care of. This does not include, of course, financial obligations to my parents either.

I suppose it is a cultural bias, but the idea of a family system in which a child is not normally financially responsible for his/her parents and siblings sounds quite liberating.

Enough about Kirundi---but as I have said before, knowing the language can tell one a lot about social relations in a culture. I only wish I was getting better at using it conversationally.

Tuesday I spent preparing for Wednesday. I was invited to do a lecture on transformational leadership as part of a conference organized by one of our partners, Harvest for Christ. Fortunately my Dad sent me some material to draw together a lecture, especially some things from the book “The Fifth Discipline” by P.M. Senge.

I felt I did a good talk tailored to the Burundian context and I hope it might have been inspiring to the young leaders who were there. Most of them were heading one of their own NGOs. I was worried that I would have trouble filling an hour and a half, but in fact I went over to almost 2 hours. This was not so great for Yolanda (SALTer) who was also presenting right after me on how to do strategic planning.

From what I saw she was a really good teacher and kept their interest even though some of the material is a bit dry and even hard to translate cross-culturally.

Thursday I taught ballet as usual in the evening, and I am realizing more and more the necessity of having a teachers assistant. I don’t know if I am losing my touch, or if I am forgetting how unruly a group of 25 little girls can be.

I did miss out on a fun outing/play date for Oren, Rebecca, Grandmother, and his friend Zack Johnson. They went to Cercle Hippique. I have talked about this place before, but it is one of these vestiges of the colonial era. An old European style riding club. While it is very run down, it still has very impressive majestic old stables and riding grounds as well as a nice restaurant where you can get something to drink.

Oren, Rebecca, and Grammy met Zack his brother Micah and Mother Joy there. They enjoyed playing and David was positively fascinated with the horses, which he had seen on a Baby Einstein video, but never in real life.

Oren admired the horses then went up to one of the groomsmen and told him that he wanted to ride one. Later, as Rebecca and the kids were about to leave, two of the men led a saddled horse up to Oren and asked if he wanted to mount. He accepted without hesitation and apparently had an expression of immense pride swelling up when they put him on the horse and gave him a very smart-looking helmet to wear!

He looked like a diminutive heir-apparent of the British Monarchy with his shy grin and two accompanying horse groomsmen.

Friday was a busy workday, divided between multiple meetings and visiting potential houses for new workers that are coming to join in a couple weeks. We have not found what we are looking for at this point.

We treated ourselves to an episode of “The #1 Ladies Detective Agency” that night as my mom had brought it with her from the US. (Gift from Grandma Jean). Since we do not have television here it is nice to watch. (Not to confuse anyone, there is TV here, cable and satellite with anything you could want, but we choose not to have it.)

Saturday was a great day! It was our turn to host the bi-weekly potluck that we do with our Greman, Danish, and American missionary friends. We had decided to have a folk dance as part of it. (…in the tradition of the former tenants of the house, Val and Charles Carr.)

We moved all the furniture out of the living room and put it on the verandah. This turns the spacious living room into a veritable ballroom. Rebecca and I rehearsed some dances to teach. We had invited about 30 people over, 15 adults and 15 kids. It was a very big event.

I am happy to say it went really well, and we are hoping to do it again. We had quite a mix of age groups from young children to young adults (SALTers) and several families, including Astrud and Travis, Thomas and Naja, and Zachee and Bridget. There were some other from the women’s Bible study that Rebecca attends as well.

Between the trampoline, dvds, folk dancing, etc. I think we managed to have something for everyone. People really did like the dancing and we made dancing the “Virginia Reel” a prerequisite for anyone wanting to eat dinner.

That is about all I can say right now. I will mention that electricity has been better now that the rainy season has refilled some of the rivers and we are getting more hydro-electric. Many say that our power problems are over. But, the electricity just went off again here about 10 minutes ago, so I am glad we have our solar battery well charged.

Next week…DSL, we hope…

Grammy is Here

I mentioned last week that we were anticipating the eminent arrival of Grammy and my mom arrived on time last Monday morning. We went to pick her up at the airport and were a bit surprised to find that the airport itself is currently not open to the public. You have to wait for arriving passengers in the parking lot outside the airport.

This is because of, of all things, a recent terrorist alert for Burundi that is being taken very seriously. For those who do not know, the Burundian army is active as Africa Union peace keepers in Somalia and is trained by the US for this work. There has been heavy fighting between African Union troops and al Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group in Somalia.

About a week ago, al Shabaab issued a warning against Uganda and Burundi that a terrorist attack was eminent. This is disturbing, especially since this is the last thing that a country coming out of 14 years of civil war needs. It is so impoverished, so underdeveloped, so traumatized by violence. In fact, I am not sure what kind of psychological impact such a threat can really make here. It seems like most people are just numb and life is going on pretty much as usual.

We did wait for my mom and, despite the heightened security, were able to talk the police into letting us go in the building to use the restroom, and even to go in and meet my mom when we were sure the flight actually arrived. (Carrying a baby helps.)

Mom looked really great, not like she had been traveling for 2 days at all! Oren was in school when she arrived, but we had David with us at the airport. David seemed happy to have another person to carry him around.

Oren was also thrilled to see her and she gave him connect-the-dot and color-by-number books, which are his two favorite activities these days. She also had cheerios for both of the boys, a huge treat here!

She was loaded down as well with other items we asked her to bring, as well as some things for our volunteers (who had family send stuff to our house to take out here.) That is truthfully one of the great things about having visitors come from other places. They can bring things we cannot get here.

The rest of the week has been fairly routine. We had our friend Simon as well as Onesphore and his kids over for dinner on Monday. It was good to be able to support Onesphore, whose wife Innocente just left for a two-year residency in France to complete her medical training. It is hard, but really the only way for a person to get a medical degree here. We are going to try to help him set up Skype so he can call her, and so her two young kids can see her.

We had the SALTers over for dinner Wednesday, and my mom enjoyed meeting them, having been in contact with several of their parents. And on Friday evening, we had a great visit with Zachee, Bridget and Tim.

Saturday we had a meeting with our advisory board, or at least attempted to have one. One of our Burundi advisors was unable to attend, and our advisor from Rwanda, who was flying in that day was prevented from arriving because of a plane crash at the Rwanda airport the day before. Nonetheless we did discuss the changing Burundi context with those were present, especially concerning the up-coming elections in 2010. We are planning to have our partners try to do some collaborative work around election sensitization in the coming year.

We did take mom to church this Sunday and to the beach in the afternoon. She has enjoyed doing these things and has busied herself with taking care of David in the mornings the whole week so Rebecca and I could do some extra work.

One of the big ways she is helping in this is to get David to eat more. We took him for vaccinations last Tuesday and the pediatrician said he was underweight for his age (5th %). So he needs to gain some weight. Mom has been good about getting him to eat more mashed up food and more protein. Granted, he does not look unhealthy and is very energetic, but we are trying to fatten him up a bit.

This is a short entry, but it is late. We are enjoying the lights provided by our now well-working solar-charged battery (hooray!!), but I am falling asleep and Rebecca wants to try to give me a haircut before bed.

A Soujourn in "Switzerland"

MCC Team on retreat in Igenda in the Burundian Interior. David is in the backpack on Zachee. (If you click on the photos they will enlarge.)


I am beginning to realize that while the best things in life may not be free, they are definitely paid for through federal, state, and municipal taxes. Anyone who does not believe me should live here, where there are no taxes, but we do enjoy irregular water and electricity, no road repair, no garbage collection, no sewage system, no well trained police force, no street lights, no park land, no good schools, no libraries, museums, etc. Also, forced community labor every week to do public service projects (like laying pipe or cleaning the public beach) is not my idea of fun.

You might gather from this that we are still having problems with our utilities. I won’t go too much into detail, but suffice it to say we continue to struggle with shortages of electricity and water to mention a few of the problems.

On the good side, our mango trees are giving us about 8-9 mangoes a day. David can happily eat a whole one himself, as can Oren.

This has been a really interesting week. I wish I did not feel so completely exhausted, so I fear I will need to proof this tomorrow and repost it to be sure I have not left anything out.

The week started in Rwanda where I posted the blog last week. We had a brief but good visit with Ruth and Krystan and several of our partners. We also picked up Ruth and Krystan as well as Misha, a friend of theirs who was visiting from Canada, and took them with us back to Bujumbura. There we joined Jodi at our house (we had brought her down the Friday before from Burasira). We were all gathering so we could head up-country to a small town called Ijenda for our annual team retreat.

Oren was off from school for mid-term break, so on Wednesday afternoon, we loaded 2 landcruisers with our supplies and our team including the 3 SALTers and headed up the mountains (the southern route) to Ijenda which is about an hour away. Zachee drove his car with Bridget and Timmy in it, and things went well for the first 10 minutes of the ascent, but then Zachee’s car overheated. We filled the radiator with water and continued on, only to have it overheat again after another 10 minutes. We tried to make the best plan possible and decided to send Zachee back down the mountain alone in his car to get it repaired while the rest of us piled into the remaining two cars.

We got to our guest house, which is actually above the town, and waited to hear from Zachee. He eventually phoned, close to dusk, to see if someone could come down and drive him up, but with the problem of roads closing after 6, we did not think it was possible to get down and back in time. Fortunately he was able to take a local bus and got to us in time for dinner.

I need to try to describe the area around Ijenda to you. In a word, I would say “Switzerland”. Honestly this is a route we rarely take, and have not spent a lot of time in this area, but it is unbelievably beautiful—and cold! We had to have a large fire in the fireplace each night while we ate dinner, and we wore warm underwear and blankets to sleep at night. It is hard to believe it is so close to Bujumbura in terms of driving distance.

We began the retreat with worship Wednesday night after dinner. On Thursday we began with worship then did some discussion with the group about MCC team values. In the afternoon we took a hike.

This is the first time I have gone on a hike in Burundi. The deterrent in the past has been a wariness about going on such an outing with the family and dragging several hundred curious children in our train as we walk along. This has been my experience with walking in the past, and Burundi is so densely populated that I have never seen any part of the country that does not have people all over the place.

But this was different. We hiked up several high ridges that overlooked miles of beautiful farmland and rolling hills. We hiked as a team for several hours, and only met one shy shepherd and one woman who greeted us politely and went on her way. It was really amazing and I am hoping it is something we can come up and do again sometime. I tried to photograph the view, but it is hard to capture.

I think the hike was one of the highpoints of the retreat, but we all contributed to it. Brandon played music, as well as Rebecca, all of us took a turn leading a devotional, I led a yoga-stretch class after the hike, as well as a prayer meditation based on a Kairos prison ministry team-building spiritual exercise I learned. (It involved stones, for those who are reading this from Kairos.) Yolanda and Robyn led a prayer devotional, as did Zachee. Ruth, Krystan and Micha prepared some games and a book-binding workshop! This was very cool and many of us left with a very nice hard back, fabric covered journal to keep notes in. Oren and Timmy were very excited about doing bookbinding and I have a picture of them here gluing the fabric on the covers. (The hard part of the process is sewing the pages into the covers. That part of the project may happen some other month. For four-year olds, they did really well.)

On Friday we had worship time and continued with our values discussion and made a plan for some activities to help us on our weaknesses next year. We had lunch at a nearby tea plantation before returning to the hotel. That night we had the opportunity for some group affirmation, then we packed up and went back to Bujumbura Saturday morning.

All in all the retreat was very good, and I felt we made a really good connection as a team. It seems amazing to me that we were a group of 14 including spouses and children. We are really getting to be a big group. Add to that the fact that we will be getting another family of 4 joining us in December to work at Help Channel.

Rebecca and I are feeling good about the growth of the team at this time. It really seems that human resources are far more effective in helping our partners than the financial support we provide.



We were actually in a bit of rush to get back to Bujumbura because most of us were going to a wedding that day. Yes, the wedding day of our good friends Jean Claude and Francine had arrived. All of us have become friends of theirs, even the SALTers who are fairly new here. Francine is even Brandon and Robyn’s French teacher right now.

The wedding was definitely the place ‘to be seen’ that day, as there were many people I knew from the NGO and missionary community. Among the surprise guests were SIMON Guillebaud, and DOUG Hiebert. If you have read past blogs you should know who Simon “Crocodile Dundee” Guillebaud is. His wife Lizzie had their new baby in the UK recently (a boy, Josiah) and he was here for a short visit to promote a video series he did based on his book, among other things. I will be posting a web link in a future week to this video series, but the book is called For What It’s Worth. I think it will be an excellent series to do in a Sunday School class. Simon will be spending several years with his family in South Carolina before returning to Burundi. (If you hear someone with a British accent in SC, it is probably him.)

Doug Hiebert was the former MCC Rep here (with his wife Deanna). He was actually on a trip to Congo related to work and was in Eastern Congo this week. He took a bus down to Buja just in time for the wedding. It was very interesting to see him, although his schedule was so tight we did not get much of a chance to talk. Now that I have been in this job for a year, I would love to have an opportunity to talk with him again. We did talk briefly at the wedding and he told me, as I imagined, that the whole experience was a bit surreal. This Sunday at church Doug led worship and Simon preached. It was a great service to be at.

I enjoyed being at the wedding, and it was a beautiful ceremony followed by a well-attended reception that featured traditional Burundian drummers. The group of a dozen young men pounded on the huge drums, just two feet away from us, while others took turns leaping, waggling their heads, posturing and dancing before Claude and Francine, before spinning back into the drum circle. It was LOUD and powerful. Oren and David lasted as long as they could, then I took them home with Rebecca and returned to the dinner. I was home at about 10:30 pm.

Among the traditions I find unusual connected to a Burundian wedding (at least one in the Christian context), is the practice of announcing the wedding weekly during church for several weeks prior to the ceremony. Each week they announce the date and time of the event as well the rejoinder that “if anyone knows any reason why these two should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.” In our country, if that question is asked at all, it is very briefly at the ceremony. Here they take the inquest seriously and I have no doubt that weddings have been stopped based on the information obtained from such an inquiry. It does grate a bit, as a westerner, but with the rate of divorce so high in our own country, even among Christians, I wonder if this process might save a lot of heartache down the road, despite its intimidating affect.

It is late, and we have a big day tomorrow. Grammy is coming in the morning. Rebecca and I are already heaving a sigh of relief at the prospect of having some help with the kids for a month. And it will be so special to share our life here with her!

Bonus photo: A frog we caught on our hike in the mountains.

A Fall Birthday in the Land of Perpetual Summer

Photos this week are from David's 1st Birthday Party. Here he is enjoying his cake.


I am writing this blog from the Africa New Life Guesthouse in Kigali. We drove here right after church and arrived about 5pm. It is a quick visit, just 2 days, but necessary as it is the only opportunity we will have to come the entire month of November. One thing I am really noticing is the toll that these trips are taking on my back. I was never one to complain about back pain, but the driving requirements here in a truck-like vehicle on rough roads is really changing that. Nonetheless we got here without incident.

We had dinner with Ruth and Krystan who updated on the what is happening here with our partner, as well as their own encounter with Don (the ‘unexpected visitor’ who came to do photography work with Jodi and the kids at the Batwa school in Burundi.) Don then came to Kigali and Jodi had given him Ruth and Krystan’s number. He had not yet called them, but had gone into a coffeeshop. He was having trouble using his phone in Rwanda and went up to another mzungu and asked him if he knew what numbers needed to be entered to use and international phone in the country. The mzungu (who happened to be Krystan) looked at the number Don wanted to call and saw that it was his number! So that is how Don connected with them. They had an interesting visit before Don headed off to Tanzania,

Back to our own week. I will say that probably one reason my back is so sore is that this is my second trip upcountry in one week. On Wednesday I drove up to check in on the final day of the Great Lakes Peace Initiative (GLPS). I made this trip alone as Oren was in school this week. The conference was interesting and I learned a lot even in the few hours I was there. Bridget (Zachee’s wife) was facilitating and was doing a unit on conflict analysis. At one point in the lecture, the question came up whether or not poverty was an instigating cause of conflict. After much debate the conclusion was no. Poverty in itself is not a direct source of conflict, although other conditions that may cause poverty may also create conflict.

I have been reading a book by the author of the term ‘conflict transformation’ and I took the opportunity to finish it while in Gitega. Lederach (the author) argues that in his experience, the root cause of conflict is almost always ‘identity’. I was quite surprised by this, but he made a good case for this and showed how the ‘flashpoint’ of a conflict may not reveal this and may need to be ‘resolved’, but real transformation requires some capacity to address this root issue, or other similar types of conflict continue to erupt periodically.

This could certainly be said to be true of Burundi, and the Great Lakes Region where identity is a huge issue. I have been especially keen on the extent to which displacement is a big factor in this. This region has millions of displaced people, and the problem is that such people (refugees) do not have, often, any hope of going back, and no hope of being accepted and assimilated in the place they are. This was demonstrated poignantly to me when I talked ot a young ‘Rwandese’ woman there. She was ‘banyamulenge’ a group of Rwandese that fledthe country in the 19th century and have been living for over 100 years in Congo. But even though her grandfather was born in Congo and every generation since then, she is not considered Congolese. She is seen as Congolese as Rwandese and since there is tension between those countries, she has been persecuted in Congo, many of her family killed and forced to flee back to Rwanda….Of course in Rwanda, though the banyamulenge were accepted back, they are not considered to be real Rwandese and do not have status of citizens.

This is just one group, but a real problem. People who have no sense of place, home, are vulnerable, and often dangerous. Unlike the USA almost no country around here considers birth in a place to be a valid reason for citizenship. Many displaced people raise families in places where their children will never be citizens, but the children can never go home and feel like they belong in their ancestral homeland as they never grew up there. The woman I talked to (Lucie) told me that she considers herself and her children to be Congolese as they lived their whole lives there for 3 generations, but she will never be accepted as that.

The visit was good, and I felt it was important to show our support of this program by going and being a part of it for a day. I have to say, it is very inspiring to see so many individuals from Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, coming together who have such a passion for bringing peace to the region. Not surprisingly, all of them have a deep wound that has attracted them to this work. Also, seeing Bridget facilitate is great, she is such an intelligent, experienced peace worker in the region, who has become a very good teacher as well.

I got back on Thursday on time to teach my ballet class that afternoon. I brought Jodi back with me from Gitega as she needed to come down to Bujumbura for the weekend. It felt like a long day. Rebecca did well with the kids, although she was quite sick on Monday and Tuesday with the same illness I had that required the course of injectable antibiotics. It seems this is quite contagious as both kids and several of the SALTers got it as well.

I should also mention that we did get our solar power installed this week and it finally all works! I feel like we have this incredible luxury of power 24 hours per day now. Granted it takes a manual switch-over when the power goes off, but it still works well. Now all we need is a decent internet connection and we will be living the dream!

Friday was a particularly memorable day as it was David’s 1st birthday! We had Enoch teach Marcelline how to make a cake. Rebecca and Oren frosted it though. It was a great cake. We invited Zachee, Bridget and Tim, as well as the Brandon, Yolanda, and Robyn (the SALTers) and Jodi to his birthday party. It was a very nice evening or David and the Burundi MCC team. Timmy and Oren really enjoy playing together and I think Oren considers him to be his best friend at school.

Saturday was eerie only in the fact that Halloween is not celebrated in Burundi in any way whatsoever. No costume parties, trick or treat, pumpkin carving, etc. I never thought of myself as particularly fond of that day, but the absence of it makes me realize something is missing, and that thing is Autumn.

I aware of the perpetual summer in which I live when I swim in the morning. Swimming was something I used to do in Poughkeepsie, but there I was keenly aware of the change in season as I waited in the early morning hours of fall and winter for the door to be opened. Here there is no change, no bitter cold. I go to an outdoor pool and I swim, then take a cold shower, put on a short sleeved shirt, and never feel a bit cold. I can’t explain why, except that I have some kind of biological clock, but it jusr feels a bit weird.

We are making the best of it though, and we spent our Saturday at the pool with Jodi and the kids. Oren is loving the pool, and David loves to do anything Oren is doing.