Comfort Ye My People

Denise and Marcelline on our porch with David.

I would say that this week might be described as feeling fairly normal. We are definitely over jet lag, and we had no unusual weeklong events that absorbed most of our time. Settling into a rhythm of a daily routine again felt pretty good. We did not have any guests staying at the house this week either as Jodi has gone back up country. (She was here during the conference last week.)

So what is our daily routine? Since we share our job it is a bit different than our work in the States where I would go off to Vassar and Rebecca would watch Oren and then we would switch midway in the day. Now we all leave together and Rebecca and I pretty much spend the whole day together either in the office or at home. Here is a breakdown of the daily routine:

6:00 am—Paul gets up and starts coffee and reads the NY Times online
6:15 am Paul wakes up Oren and makes him breakfast and packs his snack for school
6:30 Rebecca wakes up and showers then feeds David
7:00 Breakfast for Rebecca and Paul then Paul dresses Oren and gets David in car seat.
7:30 Everyone gets in the car and we take Oren to school
8:00 Paul and Rebecca go to the office with David and work.
12:00 Paul and Rebecca and David go and pick up Oren from school on the way home for lunch.
12:30 lunch for all
1:00 Denise takes care of Oren until 5:00 (and David too if we are home.)
2:00 Rebecca has French (M and W)
3:00 Paul has Kirundi (M and W)
5:30 staff leaves (Marcelline leaves dinner on the stove)
6:00 dinner
Evenings vary, we usually have the evenings free though. This is just not a culture of evening meetings (probably because of the insecurity of the recently ended war.) We do have Bible study once a week on Tuesday’s but other nights we spend time as a family. That is quite a change for us. Without TV we are enjoying playing games together or reading stories.
8:00 Oren takes a bath and is in bed before 9:00.
Rebecca and I sometimes do a little more work on the computer after 9:00 especially right now while we have to do a lot of catching up and entering next year’s plans from our partners on our database. Rebecca and I usually do this together. I translate the plans into English and she enters them into the database.

This year we are definitely facing challenges as MCC is doing some belt-tightening in its International Programs due to the financial crisis. This makes assessing our plans a project of making hard choices about where to put our program’s resources. So many of them are doing such worthwhile work I feel like we are asking questions like, who shall we decrease? Widows or orphans? Prisoners or refugees? Peace work or AIDS awareness? (These are actually hypothetical examples, but it gives you an idea about what kinds of hard choices we are making.)
This Friday I attended a day long meeting on income-generating activities for organizations and communities. It was interesting to consider ways we might promote an entrepreneurial spirit among our communities.

I became aware of one of the great challenges of doing this while we were talking. For me, the essence of the entrepreneurial spirit is not only seeing an opportunity to sell something to make money and to market it, but also the willingness to put off a short term gain in order to reinvest in the project to expand it. Ex:

If I have a bicycle and I am bringing charcoal to Bujumbura from upcountry, I would have an eye on trying to augment my business by using some of my profit to say, buy another bicycle, perhaps to rent to someone else, to make more money. Then eventually reinvest and buy a truck, etc.

But I have not seen this to be the trend here, and for good reason. Putting off the benefit of a return requires some optimistic view of the future. If all of my experience tells me that I might not live to the end of the month, it is hard to project into the future for a large return on my investment. The trend I find here is that there is very little capital accumulation. Money earned is spent pretty much immediately, or shared in the community. To change a mindset from a subsistence mentality to one of capital accumulation is a challenge that I do not feel the seminar had a good response to. But perhaps, as people have more confidence in a present peace, they will develop confidence in a good future. I am hoping Burundi and the Great Lakes region is moving in this direction.

The conference was hosted by the Quaker Peace Network and organized to a great extent by Zachee’s wife Bridget. I have not taken the opportunity to write much about Bridget, but she has been doing peace and development work in the region for over 15 years. She is the peaceworker that really set the tone, I believe, for almost all the faith-based peace initiatives and trainings that are done in Burundi. (She had been working for MCC when she was doing this.) More than once she has put her life on the line to mediate between divided tutsi-hutu communities on the verge of war.

She is a great resource for us and works with a group called CAPP, a Norwegian Quaker peace group. We co-support several local partners in Rwanda and Burundi and it is great to have her insight into how to help build their capacity.

I think I will diverge here to talk about Oren’s school. This has been a very challenging set of transitions for Oren: moving back to Burundi, then beginning a school in another language that meets 5 days a week for 4 hours a day. This is definitely out of the ordinary for an American 3 year old.

In the US, his 3 year old nursery school was only loosely structured, alternating between play and stories, etc. It was 2 days per week for 2 hours. Here, in premier maternelle, play is limited. Instead they emphasize structured activity, sitting quietly, listening, and learning skills like holding a crayon correctly.

Needless to say, he does not like it and complains it is too long. The first 3 day he went without tears, but he cried when we dropped him off most of the days this week. (On Friday he seemed to be more resigned to it and did not complain.) He does like routine and he wants Rebecca to drop him off and me to pick him up. Every day after school he has a huge smile on his face and asks me “Am I done with French school now?” (meaning for good!) I tell him “No”.

I don’t mean for the teachers or the school to sound cruel. I think his teachers are very nice, but there is just a lot of emphasis on discipline, structure and teaching skills such as writing and drawing. Oren has been a bit resistant according to his teacher, preferring to do his own thing, but it is only his second week. I hope this will be good for him and not something that makes him miserable and fearful of school. The teachers at the school assure me that the children get used to the routine and end up really liking the school. I hope that is true.

The language barrier is definitely a factor in all of this. Not being able to understand has got be hard. (Actually his teachers do know English so they can understand him and talk to him in English if necessary) but instruction is in French. There is another boy in his class named Kirin who is in the same situation; he does not speak French either. I think Oren is finding a friend in him. I think that helped him go to school on Friday without tears.

David continues to do well. He is still in the fairly-immobile, easy-to-care-for phase. He seems to not have much of a problem going to work with us and sitting in his car seat in the office while we work. He is also getting used to Denise who helps out with his care when Rebecca and I are both in language lessons.

Next week we will all (Rebecca, Oren, David and I) be going up to Rwanda to meet with partners and make arrangements for a conference we are having there in March. We will be going up alone so keep us in prayer. (I am sure Oren will be happy to miss 2 days of school!)

That remind me of something worth mentioning about Bujumbura. It is really changing! I think people are beginning to really believe in the peace that is evident as one looks around. The last rebel party has agreed to the terms of the peace agreement, roads are being rebuilt, businesses are opening, I think we will even be getting some higher speed internet soon. I don’t want to be overly optimistic, but it appears that people are beginning to feel confidence in the future again here.

I might add, with the election of Barack Obama, there is a real optimism that he will bring some kinds of changes to the region as well. (Don’t ask me how!) But it is good to be an American overseas right now! People here seem to have a new respect for our nation for electing him. Many Burundians watched the inauguration this week!

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Bujumbura. Tell her that her warfare is accomplished and her iniquity is pardoned. Yes the Lord has punished her twice for all her sins.”

Isaiah 40:1-2

A living saint, and Oren at School

“Are you saying that the blood of tribalism runs deeper than the waters of Baptism?”

--a question asked by a cardinal visiting Rwanda after the genocide when he saw the extent to which Christians participated in it. The answer that came back to him from the local church leaders was “Yes.”

Identity, Community, and the Gospel of Reconciliation: Christian Resources in the face of Tribalism, was the title of the conference sponsored by the Duke Center for Peace and Reconciliation. This was the milieu we spent the past 5 days in. Yes, just two days after arriving back in Bujumbura we found ourselves attending—NAY, HOSTING --this auspicious gathering.

We spent the week at the one big hotel: Club du Lac Tanganyika, in the company of several distinguished professors from Duke, notably Chris Rice and Father Emmanuel Katongole, who co-led it. Emmanuel is a Ugandan Catholic priest who led the Duke pilgrimage I wrote about in a blog last August. With us were about 90 other participants primarily from the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, and Congo. Most, I would describe as being on the front lines of peace and reconciliation work in the region, and the conference provided an opportunity to share stories, network, and pray and worship together. (There was a lot of talk about the need of trauma healing for the trauma healers.)

The event was quite inspiring and I want to share some highlights, but I will say a bit more about what it meant for Rebecca and I to host it. MCC was the primary sponsor of this gathering and so Rebecca and I were called upon to do a lot the banking, reimbursements, as well as numerous other errands. This proved to be quite a challenging assignment as travel reimbursements were done to individuals when they gave us receipts. Because of the different countries participating all of the refunds had to be in US$. We immediately cringed at the prospect of trying to track down a few thousand dollars in 20s, 10s, 5s and 1s. I can tell you no one uses dollars in denominations less than 100 here in Burundi. We divided the job, though, I went and got cash at the bank, then Zachee and I ran around town looking for forex cash exchangers who might be able to change our 100s into smaller bills. Rebecca, meanwhile, collected receipts and distributed money. Over the 4 days we did pretty well, but it was a challenge. The added complexity of needing to have new bills made the search even more difficult.

My duties also included leaving the conference midday to bring Oren home from school and after lunch together, leave him with Denise, his nanny --but I will come back to that later. Rebecca had the additional job of nursing David every 3 hours. He spent most of the three days listening quietly to the worship and talks from his mosquito-net-covered car seat. (He was quite a celebrity there.)

The days began with very inspiring worship led by an MCC worker from South Africa, two Kenyans, a Rwandan and a Congolese guitarist. We heard a message on the theme of the day. (There were 3: Day 1 was Lament, Day 2 was Learn, Day 3 was Live.) On each day small group workshops would focus on these themes. Each day ended with a closing worship and wrap-up session. There were some powerful speakers with inspired testimonies about their work, as well as bishops and church leaders from many Catholic and Protestant denominations.

On day 1 we wept for our culpability as Christians, for the failure of the church in the past to disrupt destructive identities that set peoples, even in the same churches, murderously against each other.

The quote from the top of the page came from the day of lament. The question by the Cardinal was deeply convicting to all of us who call ourselves Christians.

My own reflections found me revisiting a passage in the Bible (Matthew 10:37) which I found deeply disturbing in the past, but now had to consider with fresh eyes:
“Anyone who does love his father or mother more than me, is not worthy of being mine.” (I think in Luke it actually says “Anyone who does not hate his father and mother…”.)

I had not considered the extent to which we all, in our own tribal ways, inherit the best and worst of our family histories. I have no doubt that my past includes slave owning as well as other brutal behavior. I have inherited the racial hatred of my own past. I see Jesus’ call to abandon our malformed identities when we become his, as an important part of discipleship. For Burundians, one cannot be a Tutsi who is Christian, or a Hutu who is Christian, but must be first and foremost a Christian. A new creation, who must reject in no compromising terms, the loyalties and vendettas of the past, no matter how much they are an intimate part of ones own family identity. Divisive loyalty to clan must be sacrificed if the gospel is to have power to transform the world.

The paradox is that Christianity, more than any other faith seeks to welcome diversity, even as it demands such intense loyalty. We talked about the book of Acts where Peter is invited to eat unkosher food to symbolize the inclusion of gentiles into the faith. Christianity rejects the exclusive standard of The Law, invites people of all cultures and languages to interpret the Bible, yet, in this diversity seeks to maintain an identity as one family committed to love each other. So in a sense, the gospel at its best, I believe, redeems these very same marred identities, even as it undermines them-- loyalty does not mean conformity! Diversity is to be tolerated, even celebrated. No culture is privileged over another.

I won’t go into this much more, but we, as westerners were challenged by our own conception of African peoples as being ‘tribal’, where we do not use that description of western identities. I considered the possibility of the type of tribalism we might see in our own cultural context. Are fundamentalists a tribe? Or maybe Christians and Muslims are our two most significant tribes. I think this becomes true when we see sharing the gospel as a type of team sport, where we compete for quantity. Who has more people? Who is growing faster? Are we competing for souls? If we see this as a some kind of competition, especially vis-à-vis Islam, than I think we do reduce Christianity to just another tribal group. The cautionary tales are written all over sub-Saharan Africa where Christianity was cast abroad, millions were converted, and yet there was no transformation that went below skin deep.

Indeed the blood of tribalism ran deeper than the waters of baptism in the 20th century here in Africa.

Two personal highlights:

1) I was invited to dance as part of the closing ceremony. Rebecca sang "It is Well With My Soul," and I choreographed and performed a dance to it. It was well received and I was honored to be invited to share it. I think it was more than a bit surprising that a development worker in Burundi would have such an extensive professional dance resume. I did feel that God gave me a nice outlet to use my gift in that way, something I had yet to do in Burundi until now.

2) I think I met a real living Saint. I know that we use that word to describe a really good and selfless person, but I am trying to be as Catholic as possible here. I believe this woman should be canonized. I have known many people of God, but I have never met anyone who actually seemed to be animated by something supernatural. She is called Maggy, she is Burundian, a nun, and runs an enormous orphanage/foster care center, (10s of thousands of children) called Maison Shalom in Ruigi Province in Burundi. I had not heard of her before this conference.

How can I describe Maggy? She describes herself as crazy, she is hypernanimated--bubbly, laughs infectiously, boundlessly energetic. She wears outrageously colorful Burundian fabrics and headdresses and looks a bit like Carmen Miranda in my opinion. She described an audience at the Vatican where the interviewing Cardinal asked her why she came instead of ‘Sister Maggy’. She said she was Maggie and he looked at her and said, “but you are just an ordinary woman!” (She said he was expecting a Mother Teresa type, in a habit looking beatific.)

Maggy’s story is heartwrenching. As a young woman she was growing up in the heart of ethnic struggles in the 70s and 90s. She flatly rejected her family’s own ethnic prejudices. (They were Tutsi) and when the first conflict broke out she adopted a young Hutu girl (and a Protestant!) to come live with her family. They were outraged. Maggy took in Hutu orphans during the first conflict and Tutsi orphans during the 90s. She found herself to be, ironically, the enemy of everyone. Tutsis, her family, rejected her and Hutus as well. Several times they tried to divide ethnically her growing family of children. She was threatened, fled for her life many times, but never gave up. In the 90s she had hundreds of orphans she was caring for virtually by herself. She was supported by a local bishop.

In the past several years she has received major support from UNDP, UNICEF, and others. There is a great documentary about her, and she has won several major humanitarian awards (Opus Prize) for her work. She laughs it all off though. She says she has no use for NGOs or the UN. She says “all the white people want plans!! They want to know what I will be doing in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years!! I don’t even know what will happen tomorrow, how can I know what will happen in 5 years?" She has a website at http://maisonshalom.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=29&Itemid=53 Or for Utube try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdv24_r-Okk

As a grantor, it was a challenging question. Everything in her life has taught her that she cannot trust the future, but she has trusted God all her life and HE has not failed her. How do we partner with that, when we are limited by our strategic thinking? I don’t have an answer to that question.

But I felt I was in the presence of Christ when she was at the conference. I wonder if he was loud, and colorfully dressed, and funny, as well as passionately devoted to obeying God’s will wherever it led him.


Life on the homefront continued to move through transitions. By about Thursday we all were sleeping through the night, officially ending our jet lag. Prior to that, our waking and sleeping hours were pretty random, and much of it is a blur.

Oren finally started at the Ecole Autonome Belge. (premiere maternelle or preschool). His teacher is Madame Cecille. It was interesting watching him being brave. The morning before we took him the first day, he was sitting alone in his room looking at the ceiling. I could tell he was struggling with the idea of going. Yet he seemed to be making the decision not to cry. He was very brave the first 3 days and went in, albeit hesitantly, to his classroom. There were quite a few other students and here are some pictures of the grounds and classroom.

After school each day at noon (it is daily from 8am to 12noon), I met him to bring him home. He beamed enormously when he saw me. But when I asked him if he had a good day, he said emphatically: NO! The last two days he did cry when we dropped him off in the class. Mdme Cecille said it was normal and that we should not hang around as that only aggravates the situation. I do know Oren well and I suspected he would stop as soon as he left. He has not seemed to be really warped in any way from the first week. We will see how the second goes. I will say that I have not detected any knowledge of the French language up to this point.

Other good news: our LandCruiser is out of the shop. It is good to have our car back, although we have been blessed by the generosity of our partner Help Channel who lent us one of theirs for the week.

We had several Burundian friends over for dinner tonight along with Zachee and his wife Bridget (I still need to write a story on them) with Timmy. He and Oren played well together. We also had a visit today from Lizzie, Zack and Grace (Simon’s family.) Oren is starting to find some friends around here and that is good. He really misses his cousins Miriam and Gabriel who he got to play with frequently the past 3 months. He also found out that one of the families in our small group has a trampoline in their house! I think Oren will enjoy spending more time over there as well.

David, who I apologize for not writing much about, is doing fabulously. He is getting a reputation as a little sage as he seems to have great capacity to sit quietly for long stretches of time and take in the things around him, oh yes and he usually has a huge smile for anyone who looks him in the eyes.

GOOD MORNING BUJUMBURA!!

Kilimanjaro sticking out of the clouds enroute between Nairobi and Bujumbura.

I was going to title this entry ‘The Second Coming: Baptism by Fire” but I thought it might be a bit too irreverent although apropos.

It is Saturday morning here in Burundi. We got back to Bujumbura yesterday at about 9 am after 3 days of travel. One of the reasons we took that long is that we spent a full day in Nairobi before going on to Burundi. (We wanted to pick up some anti-malarials among other things.—In the US they cost about $12 per pill, but in Nairobi you can get the same medication made by the same company for about 50 cents apiece.—Yes America, you overpay for healthcare.)

But where was I… Oh yes, the journey:

It is easy to romanticize travel, especially long journey’s involving relocation. I think of Out of Africa, where the beautiful young ingénue arrives in Nairobi with about 20 steamer trunks and a dozen hat boxe, and met at the port by an entourage of coolies who transport her and her personal effects on their backs to her new home in the Rift Valley.

My favorite description of post colonial travel though is in Barbara Kinsolver;s The Poisonwood Bible. It is worth reading the book for the description of the ‘unauthorized’ missionary family heading off to Zaire. To avoid paying any baggage fees they wore all of their clothes in layers on their bodies and carried all their kitchen utensils in their pockets. The amount of stuff they carry on their bodies and in their meager baggage allowance is really quite humorous.

I would say that our particular departure was more like the latter. All counted we had 13 pieces of luggage and two children that had to be carried, in tow. The breakdown was as follows:

3 suitcases weighing 50 pounds each with our clothes, books for the baby, etc.
3 50 pound oversized duffle bags containing among other things:
-a pack and play
-a double set jogging stroller (chariot)
-an infant seat and base
2 max size carry on suitcases loaded with electronics and books (about 40 pounds each)
1 carry on for Oren with toys for the plane
1 child carrying backpack stuffed with diapers and snacks –and Oren when necessary.
2 computer bags with 3 computers and cameras inside.
1 baby changing backpack

We also had a front pack for David.

We were taken to Dulles by our parents and between 5 of us, were able to get it all to the check-in agent in one trip.

Our plan was to get all this stuff to Burundi without paying any extra baggage fees. We did so all the way to Nairobi, but Kenya Airways hit us up for $100 for excess size and weight. All in all though, not bad.

The bigger problem was trying to move all this stuff and two kids from taxi to check in and then to gate with all of this in tow. All I can say is that it was extremely hard!! I may have ruined my back for life. We did get help from sympathetic custom agents, check in agents, and cabbies when they saw the absurdity of our situation.

We were the archetype missionary family and most people could tell we were going somewhere for a long time.


The baggage situation would have been bad enough but the journey had other complications most worrying being Oren’s health. Oren had had a stomach virus the previous week and had vomited several times in the night the week prior… Now I know every parent has a throw-up story, and probably the worthiness of repeating it has to do with the inconvenience and challenge of the situation. An overnight intercontinental flight is a great opening for such a story. The fact that there was turbulence for most of it which confined us to our seats for much of the time can only augment the climax.

I was sitting next to Oren, with Rebecca and David across the aisle. Oren complained of feeling sick, but I was not thinking he was about to vomit. During a brief respite of smooth air I picked him up to take him to the bathroom in the back of the plane. On the way there he suddenly barfed copiously on my shirt and his. When I got to the bathroom and locked us in, I was then stuck with trying to figure out what to do. I did not really have a change of shirt available to me. I cleaned us up as best I could and we returned to our seat where we stayed looking and smelling pretty bad for the next several hours. (He did vomit several more times after that, but I was able to catch most of that in something before it made too big of a mess.

In the airport in Zurich Oren continued to feel bad. We switched to Swiss Air (a marked improvement over United!) and as soon as we got into the plane Oren fell into a deep sleep. It was then that Rebecca and I noticed that he had a severe rash on his neck. (He had this once before from an allergic reaction to passion fruit juice, but he had not had any of that on the trip.) We were worried, and the head steward came by to check on us just before we took off. His exact words were:

“You are the parents, you need to let us know if you think it is OK for the plane to take off, or if we should wait.” ---Wow, I was relieved they were so considerate, but having the responsibility of holding up an A300 full of passengers bound for Nairobi was not a position we wanted to be in.

Oren seemed to be sleeping soundly and was not having trouble breathing so we told them they could leave. We laid hands on him and prayed for him as we took off. Fortunately he improved markedly on the flight and did well all the way to Nairobi.

We arrived in Nairobi in the late evening and planned to stay at the Mennonite Guest House there for an entire day before hopping over to Bujumbura. The place was truly idyllic. Nairobi has perfect weather and they had beautiful grounds with a large garden and children’s play equipment. Oren really liked the lion swing! We also visited with the MCC Country Reps for Kenya, Ron and Martha Ratzlaff while we were there. If you want to stay in a really nice quiet place on a visit to Nairobi, I can recommend it highly. The only unpleasant aspect of our stay there was Oren falling into the jungle gym and nearly breaking his nose (quite bloody). Fortunately it only needed some first aid and no ER visit.

We had to leave for the airport at about 4:45 in the morning, though and the last leg (an hour and a half) was as hard as any of the longer legs. Handling our copious amount of baggage, Kenya security, and finally Oren having a complete meltdown at the gate made for a very challenging morning...

I diverge here to observe something about traveling by plane. It is my experience that despite globalization and the maturity of the information age, there does not seem to be a single central database for any airline, much less between them. What I mean is, No matter how often you call to talk to a friendly travel agent or even directly to the airline, no matter how specifically you plan, confirm, reconfirm, print documentation, reservation and confirmation #s etc, there just seems to be a total disconnect between all of that advance planning and what happens at the check-in counter. I honestly do not know what happens with all the stuff that seems to be meticulously noted by reservation agents, but it goes into some kind of information black hole, I am guessing, and virtually irretrievable. I will say that we reconfirmed our Swiss Air flight4 times, and each time we were told our ticket was cancelled and had to be reinstated. In Kenya we were told they had no record of David Henry eventhough we held a ticket in hand! The good news is, it usually all works out after a couple hours.

…We did get to Bujumbura by 8:40 am though and were met by Zachee and Bridget (newly married). It was great to see them.

Sadly they were not driving our landcruiser as it had recently been in an accident and is out of commission. (We were blessed to find that one of our partners had an extra landcruiser they could loan us, so we are able to get around for the time being. Hopefully the parts for our car will come in soon.) That story will have to be told at a later date.

Despite being utterly exhausted, we knew that there would be a lot of people to greet when we got back. Sure enough, all of our house staff were there: Marcelline, Denise, Pacifique, and Gaspar. They all wanted to see the baby. Isaac our housesitter was there and he had bought food for us and made sure we had a good supply of cooking gas, etc.
(He had tried his best to get the hot water heater fix and had had about 6 visits with technicians over the past month. They even replaced it a few weeks ago. Sadly, as of this writing we have not enjoyed a shower with hot water yet. Looks like I will have to call the landlord again.)

Oren was ecstatic to see his au pair Denise. He really loved her and immediately dragged her into his room to play trains.

Other friends, Simon and Lizzie dropped by with food as well, and we really did feel welcomed and cared for when we got here.

At about noon I crashed until almost 5 pm. We then bid our staff a good weekend, distributed Christmas gifts to them, then began the task of unpacking.

I have to say, despite a difficult journey, it was good to be back here. Our house here does feel like home and I am looking forward to settling back into a routine. I even enjoyed having rice and beans once again for lunch! We have a busy week ahead though, there is a huge peace conference that we are part of, as well as Oren starting school (in French) on Monday. We really need prayers that this will all work out well.

I hope this all does not sound too grim, here is a spot of hope--I just went to the store today and discovered that since we were gone they have added two new items to their inventory-- honey nut cherios (for only $11 per box) and diet coke in cans! Move over Rwanda, Burundi is coming back.

Shout out to all you PUMCers reading this, we really miss you and hope to see a mission trip coming our way sometime, keep in touch!

Last Night in America--Counting the Cost:

Picture of Charter Hall where we spent New Years

The next entry you read on this blog, will be from Bujumbura. It is a surreal thought for me. I knew this day would arrive, in fact I had said earlier how anxious I was to get back, but now I feel like I am looking over the edge of a cliff I am about to hang glide off of. We have been packing and sorting like mad, hence the late blog. The biggest issue right now is whether to bring a two-kid jogging stroller and try to pass it through security and gatecheck it. It is the size of a small tank even folded. We will let you know how that goes!

This week has been crammed with quite a bit of activity. Many people have been trying to see us once more so I have had the family of both my brothers’ here in town the past week. Jonathan and his wife and son live in Cleveland, and my brother Mark and clan hail from North Carolina. We had some post Christmas time together, but at this point it is starting to feel a bit muddled. Oren enjoyed his cousin's though. Here are Fletcher and him making gingerbread houses.

New Years we observed a tradition that has been going on since Rebecca and I were married, which is to join her brother Paul and his family, as well as other friends of theirs at a retreat center on an estuary of the Chesapeake Bay called Charter Hall. In the summer there is great canoeing. In the winter, though, it is beautiful but quite cold outside. We mainly visit a lot indoors, do puzzles and play games (this year’s big hit was ‘Carcisonne’-get it if you like board games.) I also got some knitting needles and yarn as a gag gift and got lessons in knitting while I was there. (Ilearned how to cast on and do a basic stitch) After several hours of work I had to come to terms with the fact that my scarf had not gotten that long. I would say it ended up looking more like a pot holder for a Barbie doll. I will try again, I hope. We had a good time together, although I probably gained a pound in two days of eating there. (two words: chocolate fondue)

Church has been interesting as well our last two Sundays in the US. Last Sunday Rebecca preached at Long Green Church of the Brethren. The passage was from Matthew 2:13-23, Herod killing the innocents in an attempt to kill Jesus. One of the observations she made which is sadly true is that while it is tempting to imagine that kind of barbarism as belonging to the distant past, the truth is it is worse now. Powerful men, mired in fear are no strangers to the kind of atrocity committed by Herod. Just two weeks ago the Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda slaughtered a village of men and young boys in an Eastern Congo village he feared would oppose him in the future.

It also reminds me of a shocking story I heard on NPR. For anyone who thought that slavery was primarily a pre 20th century phenomenon, you might be surprised to know that there are more slaves today (primarily sexual, but also forced labor) than there ever were in the height of the 19th century slave trade.

All this to say, that there is nothing that convinces me that things are getting better as we become more ‘modern’. We are truly more in need of a redeemer than ever. I don’t know what difference the work that Rebecca and I do will make in all of this, but I hope we are able to be able to share a vision of God’s love and justice with those who have been victims of human evil!

This Sunday, David Henry was dedicated at North Baltimore Mennonite Church. With so much to do, it was good to have an opportunity to do this before we left. It was a nice service with an original song composed by our friend Paul Schlitz who set a poem by Christina Rosetti to music. It was entitled, What Are Heavy:

What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow:
What are brief? today and tomorrow:
What are frail? spring blossoms and youth:
What are deep? the ocean and truth.

A small group of us sung it. I was part of that group, but the song still sounded beautiful!

The other thing I have been doing this week is putting all of my old choreography videos onto DVD. Since I will be away for 5 years, I feel my video archive will not do too well in storage. Since I have to do all the recordings in real time, it has been interesting to look back on all the works I have done. It is a bit odd at this point, like watching someone else, especially the younger days. Oren came in and watched on a few and I told him it was me. He was not convinced, although in one solo called The Man Who Never Loses His Balance, he actually began to cry when I told him it was about a very lonely person. This piece was based on a poem as well which I am including. The picture from my dance days is not of that piece.

The Man Who Never Loses Balance

He walks the high wire in his sleep.
The tent is blue, it is perpetual
afternoon. He is walking between
the open legs of his mother
and the grave. Always. The audience
is fathers whose kites are lost, children
who want to be terrified into joy.
He is so high above them, so capable
(with a single, calculated move)
of making them care for him
that he's sick of the risks
he never really takes.
Every performance, deep down,
he tries one real plunge
off to the side, where the net ends.
The tent is blue. Outside is a world
that is blue. Inside him
a blueness that could crack
like china if he ever hit bottom

--Stephen Dunn

When I was younger I was pretty sure I understood this poem, now I am not so sure. (The dance, by the way was actually choreographd by Tymberly Canale)

I have written to Burundi to let our friends know we are returning and they are excited to have us back. I am so grateful that we have a community to return to there. Please stay in touch with us and keep us in prayer. If you have skype, keep in on when you are online. We are not online very regularly, but we would love to be able to keep in touch.

My last thought is on ‘counting the cost’. We had a time of prayer with our parents altogether this evening. We read the passage in Luke 15 about counting the cost of being a disciple. Rebecca and I have certainly done that. One cost that is hard to measure though, is the cost exacted on those left behind. I felt a great sense of sadness about the loss of time our parents will have with our children. For both the grandparents and the children. We had an opportunity to acknowledge our grief for the time that will be lost. What is interesting about it was that while our parents were sad, they all had spent many years with their families overseas away from their families as well. I don’t know if this is foreshadowing events in my own future as well, but it would not surprise me. I am wondering how much what we are doing now, will influence the life choices of David and Oren

We will leave from Dulles on Tuesday evening and fly to Zurich and then Nairobi where we will spend two nights. We will arrive in Bujumbura on the 9th.

It is hard to believe the weather will be in the 90s there!