Hippos and Other Road Hazards

Zachee with David at dinner last Sunday

If this blog entry is short this week, it is not because there is a lack of things to write about, but rather that this is the busiest week of work of the entire year. That is because we must turn in all of our strategic plans for the coming year as well as the annual reports for the last year. In short, we are translating tons of partnership plans and reports and putting them into the database. It is a lot of work but it will not need to be done for another year once we are finished.

The week was quite full of activities. Last weekend we went out and visited a local ‘game park’, it comprised a small area of land next to a river bed feeds into Lake Tanganyika and it is full of hippos. It is not really like going to Busch Gardens. Burundi has little left in the way of wildlife as pretty much everything has been eaten by people, but Lake Tanganyika still has hippos and crocs. We stopped at the entrance where we picked up a guide and an armed guard, paid a fee of about $5, then headed down to the river edge. The first place we stopped, the hippos were quite active, and making a lot of noise. I felt like we were very close to them, and could hear some others in nearby reeds that we could not see. I was hoping one would not come crashing through and surprise us. We also saw many migratory birds, but no crocodiles. Since then I have seen quite a few hippos out in the Lake right down the road from our house and by a restaurant we like to go to. One of our friends told us they were eating there one evening and a hippo came out of the lake and was grazing about 5 feet from their car when they left. I don’t know if it is because this is the rainy season, but hippo sightings have been very frequent in the last week, most recently on the way to church this morning.

I would be lying if I were to say this has not been a hard week for other reasons besides work. The culprit? Illness. All of us have been sick to varying degrees and have needed medical attention. We are all currently suffering from what I would describe as the flu.

The worst health crisis we had though, involved David last Monday. That is the day we all take our antimalarial medication. When Rebecca gave David his dose, (1/8th of a tablet) he began wretching and gagging and salivating profusely. It seemed like he was going to choke to death on his own mucous and saliva. It was about 9:30pm but we called an Egyptian doctor we knew was a pediatrician and asked him to meet us immediately at the Rainbow Center. I was doing my best not to panic and to keep David’s airway clear (I am thankful I had been trained and worked as an EMT years ago). Rebecca was definitely more in panic mode.

We got Oren (who was having a very bad evening in terms of tantrums), and loaded him in the car and we all headed over to Rainbow Center clinic—David wretching, Rebecca praying, Oren sobbing, and me driving down the unlit dirt roads of our neighborhood to the clinic. By the time we arrived, David’s condition was improved somewhat. He was not choking anymore. We explained what had happened and the doctor listened to his lungs and told us they were clear and the reaction had been in his mouth and perhaps sinuses.

On the way home we, concluded that David probably had reacted to the extremely bitter taste that may not have been dissolved in the milk. We are not sure, however, whether we want to risk getting the same reaction again and are considering taking him off antimalarials altogether. This of course, increases his risk significantly of contracting malaria. Not an easy choice to make. Please keep him and our decisions in prayer.

The next morning (Wednesday) we were not given much time to recover. After school, we all got in the car and headed up-country to Gitega to meet with partners, then Mutaho to see Jodi and the Hope School for the Batwa. (I should note that getting permission to take Oren out of nursery school for 2 days in a row was a major ordeal and Oren’s teacher chastened us severely about her concern for his development. He is apparently behind in coloring in the lines, and proper holding of a crayon. But we took our chances :-)

The drive up was not bad. I am definitely getting good at the treacherous drive up along the narrow winding roads frequented by large double trailer tanker trucks coming from Dar Es Salaam.

We stopped in Gitega and met with some partners, (Oren was quite patient) then headed on the unpaved very rough road to Mutaho. Two hours later we met Jodi at her house by the seminary. It is quite nice and we opted to sleep there rather than the seminary where we usually stay. We did stop in there and have dinner with the priests though and they were delighted to see us with our new baby. Oren, of course, was thrilled to see the monkey again.

Staying at Jodi’s was a nice idea in theory, but in practice there were problems. The main problem was that there were fleas in the guest bed and tons of mosquitos and no nets. I stayed in one guest bed with Oren, and Rebecca stayed in another. I cannot explain this but the next morning Oren was covered from head to toe with flea and mosquito bites and I did not have one…and we had slept in the same bed! The poor little guy has been itching them like crazy and looks like he has small pox.

The next morning we got up for the main event and the reason why we had decided to come up to see Jodi this week. There was a graduation ceremony for 8 sixth graders at the Hope School. (Just a reminder, this is the school for Twa children who are very marginalized in Burundi. This was the first matriculating class of 6th graders who had come up in the school since kindergarten. (The school is 6 years old.) These students will be able to go on to the secondary school that just opened there last year.

It was a huge event and many VIPS (like our family) other sponsors, local govt. officials, priests from the seminary, were all invited to give speeches. Interspersed between the speeches the children did an extensive program of singing, poetry and dance. (I am putting up some video of one of the dances.) I was not able to find out much about the dance, though it intrigued me. I am not sure if it was traditional Burundian or perhaps Batwa traditional dance. It was great to watch the kids to it though.

Another amusing part of the program was a skit showing the value of staying in school. What I found intriguing was the way the ‘bad influence’ kids dressed,--sunglasses upside down, red bandanas, low slung pants, and other markers of hip-hop gangsta’ culture. I mused that in a remote village, in a remote country in Afica, they still have some exposure to mainstream about pop culture.

The program, like all such programs here was exceedingly long and required all of Oren’s patience. (We mzungus were put front and center to watch it all even though it was mostly in Kirundi.) It lasted about 3 ½ hours. Oren and David did surprisingly well and I was amazed at his developing patience. Oren did tell me later that it was too long for him. Several times he took a break and ran around with the batwa school kids, but I know he was very happy to return to Jodi’s house.

We left Mutaho on Friday morning, taking on one extra passenger, Jodi’s housekeeper who had a sick child in Bujumbura that she wanted to see. The trip was uneventful and it was good to be home.

I was glad we had returned on time Friday for me to go to the weekly capoeira class at Oren’s school. It was a good way to get exercise although my knees were exceedingly sore after last week. The trip home however was most unforgettable: When I pulled out onto the main road at 7:30 pm I saw that traffic was not moving. I decided to cut through some neighborhoods to an alternate route. The roads were not paved but passable in the land cruiser, and there was no one on them. I crossed an intersection when what I took to be an insane old woman ran out in front of me and started screaming and pounding on the car. I really did think she was crazy and considered speeding up to try and get by her. But I did, for some reason, decide to step out and see what was going on. To my horror I discovered that on the other side of the intersection I was crossing they had excavated the road and left an enormous hole directly in my path where the road should have been. (About 12 feet deep and 10 feet wide and 20 feet long. I would have crashed into it and probably died or been seriously injured. There was absolutely no marker anywhere or barrier. The road I was on continued around to the left of the hole, but required a serious jag around the obstacle—something you would only do if you knew about it in advance.

I can tell you that it took a while to realize how shaken I was. On the one hand the drive home was completely uneventful, nothing bad happened. On the other hand, I was about 2 feet from being hurt badly or killed. And what stood between me and that was an old woman whom I thought was crazy and almost ignored. (I’m sure she was thinking the same thing about me.)

I’m not sure there is a moral here, but what I would say in regards to the hazards of living in a third world country: Most people in the US who expressed concerned about our safety, were thinking in terms of security. They seemed to have in the back of their minds, vague anxieties about turbaned terrorists speaking Arabic and carrying automatic weapons. The reality is that the real hazards we face are a result of the assumptions we make. The entitlement we as Americans have about public safety for instance. We generally operate under the assumption that our food and water is not contaminated, that the products we use are safe, that our wires won’t electrocute us, that we can walk on sidewalks and cross streets without being run over, that a stairway of a 2 story building will not collapse, that our children’s medicine is not made with antifreeze, or that a giant excavation in the middle of a dark road will be marked in some way. The entitlements of public safety simply do not exist here, those who live here never believed they did and are appropriately skeptical. But those of us coming from places where we are protected are in for some rude surprises. The only chance we have is to heed the old women shaking their fists at us and screaming.

Batwa Children's Dance