A Field Visit in the Shadow of Volcanoes

Helene, a widow living in Rwanda near the Ugandan border who is a recipient of a goat from one of our partners' self-help projects.



If I were to try to report all the things that happened this week this entry would be quite long so I will try to synthesize a bit and hit the high and low points.  This week was a big one for us here because we were preparing for a visit from our Area Director Mark Sprunger.  He actually arrived last Sunday evening on schedule and we had an extensive week of field visits planned in both Rwanda and Burundi.  Rebecca had done a lot of prep. work scheduling visits to some remote projects in both countries and we had planned to start with conversation with partners and volunteers in Bujumbura on Monday, then head upcountry on Wednesday and continue into Rwanda to eventually leave him off at the Congolese border in Goma on Sunday morning and make our way back home the rest of the day.

It was a very ambitious schedule and one that was going to create a lot of challenges with regard to keeping the children well behaved as we planned to stay in different guest houses each night along the route.  But we were up for it and I even promised Rebecca that she could go to most of the actual sights with Mark while I watched the kids.

The early warning signs of our best laid plans going awry came on Monday morning when David woke up with fever and a lot of drooling.  It was obvious he could not go to pre school, (only his second week.)  We were disappointed as we had looked forward to maintaining our new routine of working together in the morning and then splitting child care in the afternoons.  Now we would have to go back to tag teaming.

We did do some work at home on Monday with Mark, had some meetings with him and brought volunteers over to meet with him.  On Tuesday David was no better and by now we had started on antibiotics at the recommendation of our pediatrician.   Rebecca watched David at home again while I took Mark to visit a project run by Help Channel.  MCC had donated some canned turkey meat and AIDS care kits (which included sheets and towels, rubber gloves, etc) to Help Channel and Help Channel in turn had distributed them to a nursing home in Bujumbura.

This was a bit of a novelty, in fact really unheard of.  Nursing homes really do no exist in Burundi as elderly people are normally cared for in their families.  But because of the war, this system has broken down some and, in fact, there are quite a number of 'abandonned' elderly people left to wander about on their own. 

The nursing home is run by a Catholic nun and Cassien, the director of Help Channel brought Mark and I over to meet them during the delivery of the goods MCC had donated.

To say the nursing home was modest by US standard is a huge understatement.  I worked as an emergency medical technician (ambulance driver) in the 80s and had seen my share of poorly maintained nursing homes, but this was far below anything we had in the US.  The home had about 60 residents who were kept in about 4 rooms.  Basically a line of beds in each room with a bathroom at the end of the hall.  The beds barely had spaces between them for a nurse to pass.  The elderly folks there possessed nothing really.  

When they were not in bed, there was a courtyard where they could sit around.  There were no games, books or other things for them to do.  They could pretty much just chat.  

The home was staffed almost entirely by volunteers and much of their work was spent doing laundry by hand.  This was a true mission of mercy as many of the elderly there were incontinent.  I saw the laundry area where women worked tirelessly before a mountain of soiled sheets and clothes.  

We were given a tour of the place, and greeted the elderly residents in the courtyard.  There was a small formal presentation of the boxes of goods we sent (the rubber gloves were particularly welcomed by the volunteers who did the laundry and cleaning).  There was generally a great appreciation of the items received and Mark and I were pleased to see the goods distributed to this nursing home.  

One of our concerns about giving sheets in the kits was that sheets have great commodity value here and we were concerned that they would simply be taken out and sold by a clinic (or the staff) for the money.  Hospitals rarely supply any kind of bedding for patients that have to stay the night.  It is expected that people bring their own stuff or do without.  But we felt very confident that the nuns who ran this home would use the sheets for the elderly in the facility.

By Tuesday afternoon, when we returned, we found that Oren had a fever as well.  We did not send him to school in the afternoon and I stayed at home with the kids while Rebecca took Mark on some errands. The bigger concern was what we would do about Wednesday if the kids were not better.  We did not think it would be wise to travel with sick kids (and Oren began vomiting as well by evening) but the idea of splitting up for 5 days seemed an equally difficult challenge.  

By Wednesday morning it was obvious that neither child was going to school.  I stayed home with them in the morning while Rebecca took Mark to meet another partner.  We had planned to head upcountry around noon.  When Rebecca got back home close to lunch it was obvious that we would have to make a quick decision to completely change our plan.  She would stay home with the sick children and I would take Mark upcountry and to Rwanda.  But before leaving, we would find her a car so she could get around, especially in an emergency.  Luckily Help Channel had a car for her to borrow.

We left about 2pm, 2 hours behind schedule.  Mark, Felix (our new program assistant) and I headed off up into the hills while Rebecca and the kids stayed back.  Unfortunately all of this put us a bit behind schedule so by the time we did leave I had to cut a visit to Gitega off the schedule to see partners there because we would not have been able to stop there and arrive at our second stop Burasira (the remote village where Jodi works) by dark.  

We got to Burasira in the evening and had a nice visit with Jodi as well as Yolanda who was up there for language immersion lessons.  We talked a lot about farming because Jodi had bought a small plot of land there and was cultivating it.  One thing that came up was the changing face of MCC missionaries.  Historically MCCers were young people who grew up on farms and came to do a few years of service overseas.  They were often placed in rural assignments and probably felt empowered to contribute there because of their own experience as farmers.  Nowadays, many young MCCers are College grads who have never set foot on a farm and may have some theoretical development or other 'expertise' but have little by way of practical agricultural experience.  (That includes me.)  

We lamented a bit this trend, but also realized that it is reflective of the general move away from the family farm model of American agriculture toward agribusiness. I know from personal experience that my grandparents were farmers and my mother had been raised on a farm, as well as many of my cousins, but I do not think any of my generation own a farm at this time.  (Cousins reading this, please correct me if I am wrong.)  But I would also wonder if going and doing mission work would appeal to rural folk in the US as much as it did in the past.  It seems that those who are drawn to do overseas mission work are of a more liberal/intellectual bent rather than a rural/'salt of the earth' type.  I would say that if there are any farmers out there reading this, please consider sharing some of your experience in an overseas assignment, we could use your experience out here.

We left Burasira early Thursday morning and headed to Rwanda.  The drive was not too long as Burasira is about half way there.  We arrived around lunch and met Ruth and Krystan and their new daughter Micha at our guesthouse.   It was good to see them and this was their first opportunity to meet Mark as well as Felix.  We went to visit our partner Friends Peace House in the afternoon and had a long afternoon of meetings with them and a visit to their new Peace Library as well as Mwana Nshuti, the job training program they run for street kids in Kigali.  We did some shopping with Ruth and Krystan in the late afternoon then joined the FPH people for dinner in the evening.  (Sharing food is an extremely important ritual in Burundi and Rwanda, especially when an honored guest arrives.)  There was another long exchange of formal expressions of gratitude, new requests, and responses from us followed by the presentation of gifts.  (I admit that I am not one to stand on ceremony and often find these kinds of events a bit trying.  I was relieved that the kids were not with us at that moment as they would have been very antsy.  Occasionally I have used them as excuses to get out of such ceremonies.)

Friday we planned to head up north to see some projects FPH and some other partners were doing close to the Ugandan border.  It is actually quite a spectacular part of the country (and world) as it is the near the home of the mountain gorillas as well as a long row of active volcanoes that extend along the Ugandan and Congolese border.  We got there in the late afternoon and settled into our guest house for the night.  There are several nice hotels in the area for tourists on safari, but generally as missionaries we stay in the more modest church run guest houses during field visits.   This one actually had running water (but no toilet seats.)  There were several of us in tow by now as we brought some of our partners up to show us around (2 of them).

On Saturday morning we got up late as it was community service time in the morning and no one is really allowed to travel around except to do work.  But by 11am we went to visit some sights.  Our partner called CAPR had some impressive self-help projects.  This group receives virtually no money from us, but by charging small monthly dues to its members, it is able to make loans and collect back interest in the community.  At this point they have raised enough money to buy all the members in the organization a goat which they use for fertilizer.  They also raise the goats to be able to give goats to others.  They had several high producing milk cows as well and even ran an informal feeding program for very vulnerable children in the commune by providing them milk twice per week.

What I like about the work of this group is that it is not really donor driven and makes good use of the assets in a community to help people help themselves. Often donor money is not used nearly as effectively, and even microfinance loans are rarely repaid as effectively as when people are borrowing and repaying money from their own community.

We shared food with the governing committee of the organization as well as 'fantas' again part of the ritual of being in solidarity with people.

I will pause for an aside here to say that eating on these trips is a bit of a challenge.   Generally food on these visits up county consists of goat briochettes (shish kabobs) and french fries with a coke.  Add the fact that despite the short walk to a sight, most of our time is spent sitting on our butts in a car, or in a meeting room.  

I have found that mission work can be very unhealthy from a physical/dietary standpoint.  The fact that vegetables are rarely an option and declining a meal is seen as an insult, I quite look forward to the 2 days of fasting each week at home as the only dietary corrective to these forays.  

We actually had field visits with FPH the same day so we were obliged to repeat the whole ritual again.  We were mercifully saved though by the fact that we were way behind schedule and needed to get to Gasenyi, the town at the Congolese border before dark.  (We did not have a reservation at a place to stay and I had not been there before and had no guides going with us.)

We bid our partners good bye and headed to the West near the Ugandan border to Lake Kivu.  We found Gasenyi and the border crossing in Congo at the city of Goma.  We could see the large active volcano above Goma that had rained lava down on and destroyed much of the city less than a decade ago.  But the area around Lake Kivu is very beautiful and there were quite a few big hotels on the Rwanda side.

We found a small Catholic Maison de Passage to stay the night.  ($8 per person).  We spent the night there then left Mark at the border at 8am Sunday morning to start the 10 hour trip across Rwanda and Burundi back to Bujumbura.  Mark was to meet the MCC Congo rep in Goma that day.

Felix and I spent most of the drive in silence.  Both of us completely worn out.  He had had a real baptism by fire as he did a lot of translating for us from kinyarwanda into French.  

I was anxious to get home because of the kids.  I had called Rebecca about 3 times a day to check on them (luckily my Burundi cell worked everywhere in Rwanda).  I don't know all the details but I do know that Rebecca took the kids to the doctor on Wednesday where they were both diagnosed with strep.  The pediatrician started them both on injectable antibiotics.  I know how painful these are as I had to get 5 in my buttocks.  I could not imagine Rebecca trying to take Oren and David for these daily alone.

She did tell me that on day 2 for Oren she, the doctor, and a waiting patient had to pin Oren down so he could get his shot.  They were both out of school all week.  Luckily Yolanda came back to Buj on Thursday and was able to help out  a bit but it was a rough week for her.

As hard as it is to travel and do field visits with the kids, it is harder when we are apart because of the very disparate experience Rebecca and I have.  She is worn out from being home bound and stuck with constant childcare, and I am worn out from work and travel and am missing the kids terribly.  Getting back in sych is hard.  

It was good to get home Sunday evening although all of us fell into bed exhausted around 9 pm.  We are hoping the kids will be well enough to go to school this morning.  I am really looking forward to a swim!

Rebecca's Missions of Mercy

Jal and Oren at Ubuntu (a restaurant by the lake) following the resident tortoise around.


I am finding that this blog actually has some utility and is not just a chronicle of our time here in Burundi.  This past week I was contacted by someone who arrived in town recently with her family.  Her husband has a 2 year assignment here.  She wanted to get information about how to connect with other families and what to do with young children here.  She had done some research on the internet on Burundi and this blog popped up.  Rebecca and I were very happy to give her and her children a brief orientation to Burundi and introduce her to some of our friends.  She and her kids even went to church with us this morning.

I know I have been admonished by friends about making this post a public forum, and the potential dangers of making it searchable on the internet.  But I think if we spend too much time trying to prevent bad things from happening, we may also prevent any good things from happening.

The other good thing about this week was it was one that did not involve any travel for us.  This is probably the last week before November that will not involve travel and it was good to enjoy what we pretend is our routine--take both kids to school at 8am, swim, work until noon, pick the kids up and have lunch.  Having David in school has been a real novelty for us and a very necessary change in routine.  For the last year and a half we have not really had any time to be in the office together.  We are always tag teaming to get the work done.  But now we can spend the morning together in the office, which means we do not have to work so late at night in order to have time to make decisions together. We have also enjoyed going to the swimming pool at the same time in the morning and doing our laps together.

We have been orienting our new program assistant Felix, who we are very happy with.  Zachee, fortunately, has been able to help him with this as much of his work, particularly generating the monthly financial reports, is not well understood by us.

Rebecca piping in here: Perhaps Paul mentioned that our cook Marcelline was sick last week, probably with typhoid, and her brother was also hospitalized with something serious. On Monday, she still was very weak, so I went to visit her. I found her taking care of her brother at the clinic at her church. She was in so much pain that she couldn't even stand up straight. We sat outside the room on the floor talking for a while, looking out into the courtyard around which these hospital rooms are built. Thinking about other things seemed to help her feel better. She's been attending night courses to try and finish her secondary school degree and she had good news about that: she finished this year 4th in a class of 60 people. This is a very interesting school We didn't know when we sent her there, but apparently her classmates include the mayor of Bujumbura and one of the top people in the national tax office. It's phenomenal that many of the nation's leaders are people who never finished high school -- probably because the war interrupted their possibilities for pursuing education. Marcelline has another year to go before getting her diploma.


I drove Marcelline home to pick up some things, and was stunned once again by the stark contrast between where she lives and where she works (our house). She shares the small 4 room house her father built with at least 6 siblings, 1 niece and 3 other children she's picked up along the way. It's very dark in the house, and very noisy in the neighborhood. It seemed to be a place where it would be hard to rest and become healthy again if one became sick. And yet, the family is made of up well-educated people. While I waited, they offered me a plate of rice with fried bananas and little dried salted fish in tomato sauce. I had such a dilemma, because I was fasting that day (and I knew people in the household had had typhoid...) but I felt like it was impossible to refuse this hospitality. Marcelline's sister had cooked the food and also insisted that I try a piece of lake fish fillet, hot and fried -- it was delicious! 


Marcelline is under thirty and unmarried, but her parents have died and she's the oldest child, and that makes her responsible for everyone in her family. What's remarkable is that she has a twin sister, who just happened to pop out a few minutes after her, but Marcelline is still the absolute responsible one. It's amazing, because you can even see it in their builds. Marcelline is a healthy weight and her twin sister is terribly thin and slight. Even though Marcelline was still sick and in lots of pain, she needed to be the one to return to the clinic in order to be the one to advocate for her little brother when the doctor came by. Now on the weekend, her brother is back home, but not walking yet. Marcelline did come to work on Friday.


Paul has mentioned quite a few dilemmas that face us as we are asked to help with people's urgent needs. Here's a new one: a man we are in relationship with asked us if we would help him send his young wife back to secondary school to try to finish her diploma. That is a request that we would like to take seriously and honor. We really believe that an educated woman and mother can make a huge difference in the life of her family. But here's the problem. This young lady of 18 is already a mother, and her child is only three months old.  There's a real danger that this infant will end up being weaned far too early, something that does not bode well for her long term health--even her survival. (Actually the request was for school fees and money to buy milk to give the child so she can be fed while the mother is at school.) So many young children get seriously ill here already and nursing for a full year or more is the best protection a parent can offer.  On the other hand, a better educated mother could be a very good thing for the longterm health of the child and future children.  


So what to do?  Do we tell our friend that we'll help with his wife's education next year when the child is a year old and after it is weaned? And what are the chances that the young lady won't have a second child on the way by that time? Maybe the mother would never get to finish her education if she waited.  This may be the only time.  In retrospect, a little family planning advice before the wedding might have been the best gift we could have given their future family, but it's too late for that now, and there is so much pressure here in Burundi for couples to have children immediately after marriage that it probably would have fallen on deaf ears.  

The low point of the week hit on Thursday. Though it was far less serious than the illnesses of the people I'd been to see Monday, both Paul and I felt really sick and weak by the afternoon. Unfortunately (!) both of our kids were energetic and needed lots of attention, we had not had a cook for a week to do food shopping, and even our day cleaner had needed to spend the day doing government paperwork, so the house was a mess. There should be a law preventing both parents from getting sick at the same time! Somehow we made it through, convincing the kids that 7 pm was a good time to go to bed. 


Today, I taught Sunday School again (3rd week) and it was an interesting group of English-speakers, including 5 Ethiopian kids, 3 Burundians,  2 Americans, and 1 Kenyan. We considered the story of how Jesus stooped to wash his disciples' feet. As an Anabaptist, I've heard and thought about the story countless times, but it's amazing and wonderful to tell it to children, who may be hearing it for the first time. I asked the kids who they thought Jesus was like: the president or their house cleaner? Obviously, everyone felt that Jesus was much more like the president! But who could imagine the president washing any of our feet? This is what I love about Jesus: servant leadership was not just a theory to him. He physically, actually stooped down and loved his friends to the uttermost. Here in a country where we do have servants do the dirty work, it's good to constantly be challenged not to take privilege for granted, to look out for the ways we're called to serve, not just in theory, but in reality. 

Paul back again:  I am awake again at 3am now.  Unfortunately it is because the week of illness has not really ended.  By the time Rebecca and I got over our stomach flu, David began to get sick with a respiratory and sinus infection.  He has fever for the second night in a row and is sleeping fitfully.  I have been up with him for the last hour now.  We are keeping a weary eye out for malaria or typhoid symptoms, but it seems to be more of a flu virus at this time.  He did just start school this past week so we are anticipating a month or two of such illnesses that will be shared between his classmates.

Mark Sprunger, our Area Director and the Horsts at Ubuntu.

The week was not all bad, despite the illness.  We did gather with our missionary friends on Saturday and had a very nice potluck, and on Friday we paid a visit to Cercle Hippique to see the horses.

Sunday afternoon was really the beginning of the adventures of the coming week as we picked up Mark Sprunger, our area director for Central West Africa.  We will be taking him on a whirlwind tour of Burundi and northern Rwanda before leaving him off in Goma, Congo.  So we will be on the road from Wednesday through Sunday this week.  Pray for good health, no breakdowns and well-behaved children on field visits in remote places where they may have to tolerate being 'the center of attention' for large groups of gaping adults and children.

A Mzungu's Dilemma

David, Oren and Daddy playing in the surf at Lake Tanganyika.

I will take a break from discussing the ongoing construction outside our house (or lack thereof) and get right to the week. Actually I can't resist mentioning that most of the people doing the heavy labor of ditchdigging are women.  Women generally do the heavy manual labor around here and probably use the money they receive for working more wisely than their male counterparts.  But that is for another blog.

This was to be a very important week that began with interviews on Monday for someone to replace Zachee.  Anyone who hires staff knows the great challenge of trying to find the right person.  This is only magnified cross-culturally, especially when we only have one national staff person working with MCC.  Besides qualifications there are numerous other considerations including gender, ethnicity, etc. all of which WILL be factors in the way this person is perceived and will be able to relate to other Burundians.  

The question of language is also important.  How much English should we insist upon?  

We interviewed about 5 individuals from the applications we recieved.  The choice was very difficult as all were qualified and brought different strengths, but we did finally pick one of them who I will be writing more about in future posts.  (We will sign a contract tomorrow.)

We felt under a lot of pressure to complete all the interviews by Tuesday because I had plans to go upcountry with Yolanda on Wednesday to spend a couple days there to help find her a place to live, and then take her up to Burasira to stay with Jodi for a couple weeks in Kirundi language intensive.  All of this was complicated by the fact that our cook Marcelline who does some babysitting when we need it, was sick with typhoid all last week and unavailable to help us out with David.

Marcelline is feeling better at this writing, and after this week David will be less of an issue as Tuesday he begins preschool at a Montessori school here.   He will be at school the same times as Oren, which means that Rebecca and I will have mornings to work together in the near future.

So despite all of the setbacks, we did manage to finish our interviews and I was off with Yolanda on Wednesday morning after a couple hours of frantic errands to try and pick up some things for Jodi.

We got to Gitega in the afternoon and met the leaders of the partner organization Yolanda will be working with. The first day of hunting was quite fruitless.  They had not done much prep. work so they did not really know of any houses available.  The second more difficult problem, though was a cultural gap between what they believed a mzungu would be willing to live in, and what Yolanda was wanting.

Yolanda is fairly 'hard core' culturally.  She had just spent a year living with a Burundian family in SALT and felt she could live in a small house (2 bedroom) somewhere in the 'popular quarter', which is also a Swahili (Islamic) area where many of the average Burundian urban dwellers live.  Our partner's perception is that a  mzungu lives in a large 4 bedroom house with a garden in the neighborhood where UN folks live.  

On Thursday we continued the search and she rejected several of the latter, large, UN style houses we were shown.  Whenever she suggested looking in the popular quarter they would litterally laugh at the idea.  Feeling a bit frustrated by the impasse, I asked the 3 of them to show us their own houses where they live.  

I have to say, it was quite sobering to see the kind of dwellings these folks live in.   Fidelle (a single woman) lived in a tiny room that was part of a larger enclosure of such rooms,  There was a dirt courtyard in the middle, tons of kids, an outdoor charcoal grill for a kitchen and a latrine for a bathroom.

Jean Pierre, lived in a tiny 4 room house with no wall around it with his wife and 5 kids.  When we arrived, the living room had a couch and some chairs with naked wooden slats and no cushions.  They quickly ran to the backroom to bring us some cushions to sit on, they had about 6 but were missing about 10.  They told us that bandits came in and stole them at one time.  There was very little else in the place to steal, frankly.  There were no pictures or anything else on the walls, and again no kitchen or bathroom in the house.

Willy also showed us the house of his brother who is a baker.  It was again very tiny, but walled with a courtyard in the middle about the size of a small living room, his 5 children were running around in it.  He did, to our surprise, have a small set of rooms for rent within the enclosure and wanted about $70 per month.  It had no electricity, or interior bathroom or indoor kitchen, but the idea intrigued Yolanda of renting it.

We were also shown another possibility by a nun who had a place for rent.  We had met her when we stayed the night at a Catholic guesthouse that was very nice.  The first house she showed us was way too big, but we noticed there was a smaller attached house on the back of it, actually 4 rooms and a small separate outside kitchen in a small house (like a small brick tool shed.)  It had a separate entrance and was very private (not in the popular quarter).  It was roughly the same size as Willy's brothers' house.  Rent was about $150 per month.

We now felt we had two choices that she could consider.  They represented 2 radically different experiences.  One was really living 'with the people' the other was almost like living in a private cloister.

We left town Thursday afternoon not having made a decision, and we talked about it on the way to Burasira.  Although, I think she would have liked to make the 'popular' choice, the big problem that concerned her was not the lack of ammenities, but what would become a complete lack of privacy.

The sad truth is that our Burundian friends who laughed at the very idea of a mzungu in the popular quarter were wrong about their premises, but right about the consequences.  (in the words of sociologist Max Weber "That which is perceived to be true, is true in its consequences.)  That is:  Burundians believe that a mzungu could not live in that area because mzungus are rich and live in huge houses and drive in big cars so they could not live in poor conditions.  --this is true of some but not all of us who come here.

BUT because of this perception, seeing a mzungu living in the quarter would cause such astoundment that we realized she would be endlessly surrounded by people who would come to stare, gawk, and pursue her for money and other types of assistance.  It would probably be impossible to be out of the gaze of the many children even in the back recesses of her small rooms.  Yolanda had to face the fact that this would probably become intolerable.  The sad truth was, our partners were right in that their concern was a self-fulfilling prophesy.  We decided on the more conservative house where she would be more alone, especially given that her much of her work would be concentrated in a cross cultural poor village context.

Seeing Jodi was good and she affirmed our decision.  She has been living in a village for 2 years now, but has a private, walled house and still feels quite invaded at times.  She said that having some private space was very important, particularly when one is out of one's own culture.

We had arrived in Burasira in the afternoon and spent the evening talking with Jodi.  I left fairly early on Friday morning to try to get back home in time to pick up Oren from school (I did not make it.)  Yolanda stayed with Jodi to work on language.  

Rebecca, all this time had been in Buj with the boys and had had to take Oren to school by taxi with David in tow as Marcelline was sick all week.  Spencer (our housesitter) left to go back to college on Thursday night, so by the time I got back the house was empty of all staff and guests.  It was actually kind of nice to be alone as a family for the first time since returning from the US.

It has been raining daily, but Saturday afternoon we did go to Lake Tanganyika to swim, and I have put the pictures from the outing on the blog this week. (sorry for the lack of pictures from Gitega, I forgot my camera, but will send some pictures of Yolanda's place once we get her installed.)

Open the Floodgates of Heaven

 David enjoying the first gullywasher of rainy season.

Rebecca rightly predicted that the first rain of the season would be a 'gully washer'.  It has actually threatened several times this week, but the clouds did not burst until this evening (Sunday) at about 5pm.  Yolanda, Spencer, Rebecca, the kids, and I were all sitting on the porch looking at the dust covered mango trees wishing it would rain, when it did.  Oren and David immediately ran out into it, eventually shedding their clothes and splashed around the house in the rapidly filling rain gutters.

Rebecca and I have mixed feelings about the arrival of rainy season as we are dying to be out of the oppressive dustiness of dry season, but are very concerned about the still uncompleted ditch in the front of our house which is a trench but without cement walls yet, so the erosion of the ground underneath the entire front wall of our house is only a matter of time.

The 5pm rain shower is the only precipitation we have had for months, and the past week was spent in dust and grit as well until now.  But it was not a week that past slowly for lack of things to do.  

I have been doing construction updates and I am including, on the bottom of the page, a picture of our new bridge which was built this past Tuesday.  We had given up on trying to get the work crew to put back the rocks they had taken out on Monday.  The solution of our neighbors was to hire carpenters to build a wooden bridge across the ditch.  We hired a carpenter that confidently assured us that he could build such a bridge for about $100.  He came with lumber, a saw and a hammer and nails.  Several hours later he had completed the BSO (bridge shaped object) in the photo below.  I was doubtful that it would hold a truck  (I did not see any civil engineer managing this project.) but on trying it, I found it did on the first run.  It has since begun to fall apart in subsequent crossings, and we will probably have to have it rebuilt before our permanent bridge is ready.  (Hopefully we won't fall in before we get it reinforced.)

Tuesday evening we were pleased to host some friends who work upcountry, a couple named Isaiah and Samantha who came here to do work with children in a small town called Muramvia.  They just had a baby (Malachi) and are doing well.  I have to say I admire their courage for coming here in faith to share God's love in very difficult circumstances.  They are basically pioneering as a new mission organization here and they shared some of their successes and failures in trying to work with local pastors and churches in the area. (The take home lesson was 'don't trust everyone who says they are a Christian with your money'.)  We did spend a very nice evening together visiting for an evening.

Wedneday was the climax of the week as it was Oren's first day back to school AND the day our former SALTer Yolanda was arriving back in Burundi to begin her 2 year term as a continuing service worker.  

Oren was quite happy to go back to school the first day, did not seem at all nervous and went directly to his new class and teacher and greeted her in French.  Madame Crystalle was Timmy's teacher last year and does not speak any English, so Oren will be challenged even more this year to speak well.  Many of his friends were in the class as well as Zack, Joy and Jesse's son, who is starting this year.  I think he is the only other anglophone in the class.  One change we will have in troisieme maternelle (kindergarten) is that he will go to school every day from 8-12, but also return on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for 2 more hours of class.  (He also has to pick a language to study: Flemish or English.  We decided on English as we could not imagine him trying to learn another language being taught in a language he still does not know.  He will be like a genius in english :-)

Taking Oren to school was kind of fun as I enjoy minor celebrity status as the dance teacher because of the class I taught last year.  Many children ran up to me and hugged me and asked when I would be restarting.  I think I will do it again this year, but will not start until October.

Yolanda returned on Kenya Air about midday.  It was very good to see her and remember the same trip I made almost exactly a year ago to pick up her Robyn and Brandon.  She seemed very at home this time in Burundi.  She has been staying with us this week and I will take her up to Gitega this coming Wednesday to look for a house then she will spend 2 weeks in Burasira with Jodi doing intensive language study for 2 weeks.

We have had a full house this week as Spencer, our housesitter is still here and is scheduled to go back to Scotland for school (St. Andrews) this coming Thursday.  It has been interesting to have here as he is studying theoogy and was doing some training with Moisson Pour Christ (one of our partners).  He enjoys engaging in exchanges about the need for discipleship in churches here that have had extensive exposure to Evangelism but not much else.  (He says he preached at churches where hundreds of people come forward week after week at every alter call to be saved, because that is all they ever here by way of sermons.)

Saturday I did begin teaching the exercise/stretch class (formerly known as yoga).  Spencer, Yolanda, and Naia (one of our Danish friends) came over for it.  It was good to get back into it, but it was hard and I sort of wrenched my back on day one.  But I am reminded of the need for exercise to keep down the feeling of stress in working here and enduring some of the difficult parts of living here.  I was very happy to have been able to swim every day this week as we did not have to travel anywhere this week.  (This will not be true again for about 2 months as we have things to do upcountry and in other countries every week through mid October.)

Rebecca and I have continued as well, to faithfully fast two days a week, although we changed it to Monday and Tuesday from Friday-Saturday.   Strangely, it does give a sense of well-being, even though we feel quite hungry.  Rebecca did observe and I concur that fasting during our time in the US was far harder than here because of all the incredible food there is to eat there.  Giving up a lunch of rice and beans is far easier than passing on a salad with fresth apples, salmon, and toasted almonds.  I do miss the food in the US but I am thankful at times for the lack of temptation we experience here.

The weekend was enjoyable, spent with friends.  We had our German, Danish, and South African missionary families over along with Bridget, Zachee and Tim (Bridget and Tim just returned from Canada) over to our house.  Everyone had come back from a vacation home and had about the same feeling about returning to dry dusty Bujumbura.  

Sunday we went to church where Rebecca began a french/english Sunday school class this past week.  There are a few kids who do not speak kirundi and tend to run around the church property during church time (ours included) and Rebecca decided to begin teaching there.  (This replace the Sunday School we were doing at the afternoon English fellowship last spring.)

The rain on Sunday feels like a Godsend and the mountains of Congo were in full splendid view from our veranda this morning.  We have a busy day--interviews of candidates to replace Zachee, so I had better get back to work.

The Replacement bridge for last week's rock bridge.  Definitely weaker!