Gingerbread Houses and Dancing in the Rain

The family gathered around the gingerbread house we built from scratch.



I am realizing that this is going to be the last post of 2011.  I am also realizing that if I do not get it up tonight I won't even be posting this in 2011 as we are preparing this evening to go on a one week vacation to a mission house in Kigoma, Tanzania.  It is supposed to be a very reclusive cabin by the beach that is fairly rustic (no electricity and no internet). So I am going to put up a concise story of the week's events as it is getting late and there is much to do.

I will say that much of the week seemed to be dedicated to Christmas related activities.  The kids did have school Monday through Wednesday, Oren did karate on Tuesday and then he and I went out Christmas shopping for some sidewalk chalk for David.  (That is his favorite thing ever these days, he has used up about 3 boxes.)

Wednesday I taught my last ballet class and while we did work Thursday as well, we split the day since the kids were out of school.  Friday was given over to preparing for our Christmas contradance party.   I think these bimonthly parties are essential to get Rebecca and I to clean and reorganize the house.  Particularly to get all the stuff that accumulates on surfaces back to its proper places.

Jodi was with us for part of the week but headed for a retreat upcountry on Thursday, but Yolanda arrived into town so we had her as a guest for Friday and part of Saturday.

The Christmas party was one of our best to date.  We cleared out the living room once again and prepared several dances for the group to do.  We had a very large number of people, most of them missionary friends, but among the newcomers was Oren's teacher from last year Mme. Crystelle and her daughter Pauline (4th grader).  There were alot of kids and it was a good mix of francophones and anglophones so no one felt left out. Pauline really liked the dancing and she asked us to repeat "Cotton-Eyed Joe" about 4 more times at the end of the evening.

 We ended the main set of dances before dinner with the Virginia Reel (Strip the Willow).  But I must add that through most of that time we had one of the worst downpours I have ever seen here.  Our backyard had about a foot of water in it and the rain pounding on the roof competed with the sound of the music indoors. A few people, who hoped to come late, were actually prevented from getting to us by the rain. Fortunately we stayed relatively dry indoors although some of the guests did have to help us bail and squeegee off the porch a few times.

Dinner was a potluck and the offerings were exquisite, featuring dishes as far-ranging as Mexican and Indian.  After dinner we did a bit more dancing and finished by singing Silent Night together in the languages of all represented there.  English, French, Danish, Dutch, Kirundi.

When the 45 or so guests left, Rebecca and I took several hours to clean the house up that night and got to bed close to midnight.  But it was good to leave the house in good order.

David and Oren woke up at the crack of dawn as usual.  They were excited that Saturday was going to be a day for the family at home.  We had planned to follow in the tradition of Rebecca's family and do baking on Chistmas Eve day.  The project that Oren was really looking forward to was a gingerbread house.  We try to do one every year and we have been able to have someone bring out a kit just before Christmas to help us make it.

This year however, no one was coming at the right time so we did not have any pre-cut gingerbread pieces and ready-made icing and selection of decorative candies.  So we had to 'kick it old school' Burundian style.  We were able to get the ingredients for gingerbread easily enough, but Christmas candies such as candy-canes, or any peppermint for that matter, does not seem to exist here.  I ended up buying several rolls of fruity menthos that were more pastel-ly than I would have liked.  I found some green candies that were spearmint and looked like gum drops.  Oren made little bushes around the house with them.  Unfortunately I think they were either breath mints or something for smokers to help them quit smoking because they tasted terrible, like a super strong cough drop.  But they did look nice.

I made the royal icing with powered sugar Rebecca bought in the Asian Quarter.  It is necessary for mortaring and decorating the house with snow.  We also had some other icing that was green and red.

Oren and I started work on the house by cutting a pattern while Rebecca made the gingerbread dough.  We cut out pieces on wax paper and cooked it right on the wax paper.  The gingerbread came out fine although it took 3 cookie sheets to cook all of the pieces.

We assembled it with the icing and it held together well.  I tribute this partially to my ingenious idea of using 2 craft sticks as rafters so the roof could rest on something while the icing was drying.  When it was fairly hard we decorated it.  Actually Oren did pretty much all of the decorating.  It was a very good job in my opinion.  We finished by noon.  We had a great sense of accomplishment.

Rebecca continued making several other kinds of cookies to take to a party we were going to on Christmas day.  Since we had no staff on Saturday, the clean up was enormous.  We don't have a dishwasher and we had about 3 loads of dishes to do after this was all done.  (Rebecca did them. but I did the same amount today, Monday).

The kids were ready for bed fairly early Christmas eve, but we let them open one toy that evening.  We also skyped both of our families and had some great video conversations as the network was working great that night.  This is the first time in many, many, years that I have not been at a Christmas Eve service.  But since Christmas was on a Sunday, our church was not having one.

This makes some sense here as Christmas day is seen as a big Holiday and would be the more important time of worship rather than Christmas Eve (as we see it in the West.)  In fact, Christmas is seen as a day to try to schedule special celebrations.  There were an enormous amount of Christenings, Baptisms, and Weddings this past weekend.  (I can imagine this is a hard day for pastors, especially because all Protestant Baptisms in Burundi are total immersion in Lake Tanganyika and nothing else is acceptable.)

It is a striking contrast to my own sense of Christmas day, which tends to be more of a private family time.  Here it is really a festival day and we even had a Birthday cake and juice at church after the service on Sunday while the children played games together.  (Rebecca brought the parachute for her Sunday School class.)

The kids were very excited and woke us up about 5:45.  We were going to wait to open gifts after church, but they could not wait.  Oren exclaimed many times "Look at all the Presents!"  What was pleasing to me was to see that he was referring to a stack of about a dozen small gifts for all four of us.  It really looked quite modest compared to what I remember in my childhood.  But he saw it as quite a lot.

Among the favorite things were 2 remote control cars I bought at the Chinese version of K-mart (T-2000) for about $10 each.  They worked fairly well until Noel our younger dog caught David's and chewed off a wheel.  (By the way, it was Noel's Birthday --1 year on Christmas.)  She is now much bigger than her mother --Bella.

Sunday afternoon, after church, we went to yet another party.  This one at our friend's Astrid and Travis.  They have recently moved into a house vacated by our friends Thomas and Naja.  It is a great house and we saw many of the people that had been at our party as well as friends from church.

Travis and Astrid had made up several very fun games for kids and adults to play.  The best was probably one where you had to try and get dressed on the trampoline while someone was bouncing you around.

We had another pot luck then a White-Elephant gift exchange.  It was one of the more unusual ones I have been to as someone had snuck in some currency into some of the gifts, there was a $100 and a $50 bill.  (The kids really went for the money which was kind of funny.)  I think a little girl ended up with the $100.

We left late in the evening and fell into bed.  I can't believe I am up late again but we have to get packing as we want to leave by 8am for our vacation in Tanzania.  I think we are almost done though which is good since I am falling asleep at the computer.  (sorry no proof reading)

A Sabbath Day to Remember

Sitting with Marcelline as guests of honor at her graduation party.

The activities of the past week seemed to all fall disproportionately on one day.  Not that a lot did not happen the rest of the week, but Sunday stands alone as a day in which we were relationally and culturally stretched well beyond our comfort zones.  The good news is that the children, especially, held up well in all of the difficult circumstances in which they found themselves, especially in places where they were to be on their best behavior*.

But I will get to Sunday soon.  I just want to recap our week briefly since I last wrote from Kigali.  My trip with our area director Mark Sprunger and program assistant Felix went well.  We were able to have several important meetings both with our local volunteers (Ruth, Krystan, Bethany, Annie) as well as all of our partners. 

It was good to see them all doing well in their assignments.  I was also aware (painfully) that Ruth and Krystan will complete their assignment in April of this year and discussions about finding replacements for them was actually underway this week.

Our partners were doing well and one of them Friends Peace House had a change in leadership.  We had a big meeting with them which included several leaders in the Friends Church and others.  The photo is of our group after the meeting.  The mzungus are me and Mark Sprunger with Krystan on one side and Bethany (our SALTer) standing front and center.   This was just prior to us proceeding to a feast of Rwandan food at a local restaurant.

We returned to Bujumbura on Friday without incident.  I don’t know if it was because of the new car, but the trip between Kigali and Bujumbura only took about 4.5 hours, that is fast (but I did not feel like we were rushing).  I was dead tired when we got home and wanted to just veg out, but a very persistant person who wanted to by our old car came over and convinced me to sell.  So I have completed now both the transaction of buying a new car and selling our old one.

Saturday was a somewhat uneventful day, no ballet or yoga, but Jodi did come by to stay with us about noon.   David started running a fever during the day so we laid around at home but in the afternoon all of us went to the Marché de Noel.   This is an event put on by Oren and David’s school (Ecole Belge de Burundi).  It is a very popular event with food some entertainment by the children and many stalls that sell great handicraft style Christmas gifts (as well as some imported stuff.) 

Since David was sick when we went we put him in our jogging stroller and walked him around.  It was fortunate since it rained lightly through most of the event.  It gave it all a bit of a gloomy feel.

I could say that the weather on Saturday was a bit reflexive of Rebecca and my moods after nearly a month of very hard work.  But Sunday was not to be our day of rest.  In fact, it was more of a grand finale of responsibility and obligation, but as is often the case for such days, it did give us more insight into what it means to live and work in this context.

The day began with church where Rebecca was preaching.  It is great that she has been asked to preach more frequently there as her messages seem to cross cut well through the cultural diversity of our international church.  Her now nearly 4 years of experience in Burundi also gives her the capacity to bring very relevant testimony to her messages.  I am including her comments on her experience preaching below:

This Sunday, I was assigned to preach the third in our church’s advent sermon series. My topic: how God reconciled himself to us, and how he calls us to be reconciled to one another. I chose the famous Christmas passage on the angel’s announcement to the shepherd on the night of Jesus’ birth. What really struck me was the mighty potential of that celestial army, who could have easily been expected to come to earth and deal with sinful humanity once and for all, in an invasion on that Great and Terrible Day of the Lord. Instead, God himself infiltrated behind enemy lines, and the only invasion we knew was the invasion of his birth as one of us. This marks the beginning of God’s process of reconciliation and demonstrates as well as anything the posture of God towards his enemies: giving up power, dignity, rights, even the right to speak and defend himself.

It is a challenging picture of the posture we are called to take as we are faced with conflict. Even if we are right in an argument (especially if we are right!), we are called to lay down our arms as we approach our offender, to go behind enemy lines, to ask for compassion, and to go seeking reconciliation. From personal experience, the power to not resist evil with evil is something we must train for. And every interpersonal conflict we face gives us the opportunity to ask God to form us into ministers of reconciliation, with the courage to face and love our enemies by following the vulnerable example of Jesus.

Rebecca did mention as testimony in the sermon some of our more difficult meetings we have had with some local Burundians who have wanted partnership with MCC and have approached as if was a matter of entitlement and were somewhat menacing in their requests.  Dealing with ‘Christians’ here, especially pastors can be disheartening on a number of levels.  And does remind us that the Gospel preached by evangelists may not be the one heard by the poor who see the real ‘Good News’ as a connection to riches from the west.

But all of this has been an opportunity for us to learn patience and to try not to assume the worst about the motives of others which we may not understand.

Rebecca received many kudos for her sermon that seemed to strike a chord with many this season, especially with regard to conflict and opportunity for resolution among colleagues at work.

The day was hardly over after church.  Actually we had brought our swimming gear with us and we went directly to the beach afterward for a quick swim and a bite to eat.  This was Mark Sprunger’s last hour in Burundi and since the Lake is near the airport and the church, we decided to have a last meal together there before he headed off to Addis Ababa about 2pm.  Rebecca and kids stayed and swam when I dropped Mark off.

At this point in the day I would have been happy to go home and relax, but in fact we had two other social obligations that ended up being quite a study in contrast.  The first was a birthday party for one of Oren’s Burundian classmates and the other a ‘graduation party’ for our cook Marcelline at her home (outside her home actually.) 

The first party was in an upper middle class neighborhood and the very as the classmate’s family was in the construction business.  The party included the rental of the de rigeur bouncy castle and the kids seemed to be having a lot of fun.  Oren is now able to be quite social in French with his friends.

The second part was about 15 minutes away in the quartier populaire of Kamenge.  That is to say a very populated poor part of town.  It is also known as an area of a lot of banditry and other criminal activity. 

Nonetheless, Marceline, as many others live there and she really wanted us to be at her party.  This was a party she was obliged to give herself as head of household and an orphan.  But finishing high school is a big deal and I think many expected her to throw one. 

The purpose of such an event is to share food and drink (fantas) together, a kind of potlatch provided by the honoree. 

Having mzungus present was a huge deal and we were of course ushered to the front of the event to sit on the couch of honor beside Marcelline.   We actually left Oren at the Birthday and only brought David.  In fact our biggest concern was how to control our kid in this very formal, kid unfriendly event.  (In that we had to sit still for several hours listening to speeches and smiling and drinking fantas.)

Rebecca again provides her synopsis of the events as they transpired there as well as some reflection:

The Walls that Divide Us.

One might imagine that making a friendship or a professional connection with a low-income Burundian might be dangerous to us as foreigners. In fact, what we are learning is that such connections are actually much more dangerous to the Burundian in question.

This week, a friend of mine told me that her cook had quit her job—out of self-preservation. Over the weekend, a group of armed men broke into her little house in one of the slums of Bujumbura. They beat her and demanded money. She told them that she didn’t have money. But they insisted that she must. “You work for a mzungu, for someone at the embassy. We know. We’ve followed you. You must have money!” they said. And they beat her more, thinking they could get more out of her. Eventually they settled for stealing everything in her house, except for the clothes she was wearing: pots, pans, her stock of beans, and every other stich of clothing in the house. So this woman decided that she could not go back to work on Monday. She’s left the country to be with relatives across the border for a while.

It’s appalling to imagine how the poor rob from the poor, robbing them naked. But this is an extremely common story. In fact we know almost no wealthy people who have been robbed, but we know at least 10 poor people personally (including some of our staff) who have been robbed in this kind of way. And one of the main things that puts people at risk is the perception of association with wealth (mzungus). We have to think very hard whether it is worth it for us to go and visit our house-staff in their homes: they both live in different slums where security is very bad. Really, we’ve only gone when there is a dire situation of illness, and the staff member needs money or transport to the hospital.

So, when our cook Marcelline invited us to her house this Sunday evening, we had to think hard about it. The occasion: her successful completion of secondary school. She was not able to finish school earlier because of tremendous hardships in her life, especially the death of her father. But after she had been working for us for a year and a half, we talked to her about building her capacity and what we could do to help her. She is very intelligent and still single, so she really has room to improve her educational level. Together we decided that she could try to finish her secondary school diploma by going to night school after work., and we paid the tuition. It was very draining for her, but she succeeded in jumping through all the hoops and finished with good marks.  So, according to local custom, she threw herself a big party. The party would start at 4 pm and she instructed us to come then, and prepare to leave by 5 pm for security reasons. “You know my neighborhood,” she said.

We came in to the neighborhood through a back road, as Marcelline suggested (so our car would be less obvious) and had to pick our way through compounds to get to the entrance of the tent. We passed by the shell of a mud-brick house, just two walls still standing around a pile of fallen bricks. I wondered if that was the house where a 6 year old girl had been killed two months ago when the house collapsed after a heavy rain: another casualty of poverty, where the family couldn’t afford to keep their house repaired and lost a child.

Finally we reached the door of the makeshift tent, constructed right outside her small house, blocking the whole muddy street (many of the tarps were recycled UNHCR tarps for refugees, now rented out as a small business!). The typical rows of chairs were set up, facing the front of the enclosure, where all the living room furniture had been placed as special seating for the VIPs. We were led to the long sofa (Paul, David and myself) and waited to see what would happen, trying not to stare at the rows and rows of smartly dressed poor people staring at us. Finally Marcelline appeared, wearing a gold satin evening gown and a hairstyle that would have put Princess Amidala (Star Wars 4) to shame.

There was an emcee who announced each part of the program, a brief homily from one of her pastors, and a delightful group of 5 dancers from Marcelline’s youth group. Then the fantas were distributed to all of us. Marcelline was very nervous as she sat in the middle of our family – she had never been the center of so much attention, I think. She asked for help to stand and raise our glasses, to signal that everyone could share their beverages. Then heaping plates of food were brought out to some of the VIPS – Marcelline and her friends had been cooking all weekend. We were invited to serve ourselves from a laden buffet table, in full view of everyone. By this time, it was already 5:30 and we had stayed beyond the curfew Marcelline had set for us (and we were late to pick up Oren). But we were caught in the logic of the situation: Marcelline needed to speak and introduce us to all of her community and be sure they knew how we had supported her in finishing her degree. So, she spoke, and then I spoke, and then Paul spoke. I praised Marcelline’s determination in the face of hardship, and also called the community to support young women like her. Believe me, never come and serve in Africa unless you can be prepared to give a formal speech at any moment!  Finally, Marcelline was able to excuse us and we made our way back through the households to our car, at 6 pm, when it was still not quite dark.

In fact we did not really feel that we were in danger at any point. And it was thoroughly necessary to help Marcelline celebrate. What we hope is that Marcelline’s association with us will prove to be a lucky break in her life that will help her in the future—and not put her in danger at the hands of unscrupulous thieves who probably live right around the corner.

When we left and picked up Oren we were ready to be done for the day.  We had a quiet evening at home bathed the kids and put them to bed. 

It was a long week and the thought of one more before our vacation is difficult to think about.  We are relieved to have  the long evaluation process and follow-up done, but I think it probably opened up as many new cans of worms as it closed old ones.  I think  we are entering this Christmas season more mentally worn than any of the others we have had here.  We do have a nice little break planned in Tanzania, more about that in a few weeks though.  For now we are slouching along toward the end of the week... (looking forward to our Christmas Party folk dance on Friday, for anyone in Burundi reading this, don't forget to come!).  

*I put an asterix in the first paragraph about children's behavior to mention that David did manage to pee on the Birthday party hosts couch during a nap, knocked over one stemmed glass of coca-cola on an honored guest at the graduation party, and then knocked over a bottle of pineapple wine all over Jodi's stuff in her room when he was chasing a lizard.  But at least he did not throw any tantrums.

The Patron Saint of School Kids

Patron des Ecoliers

Dans la nuit, je revais

Que tu m’a donné

Un avion qui peut marcher…*

The opening lines to a poem Oren was to memorize last week is about St. Nicolas, the patron saint of school kids and the Belgian version of Santa Claus.  St. Nicolas comes on the night of the 5^th of December and fills shoes set out on the staircase with sweets.  He is accompanied by his sidekick Pere Fouettard “Black Pete” who carries the bag of toys but also a broom for switching naughty children.  St. Nicolas also has a donkey and looks decidedly more Catholic than Santa Claus, quite tall and thin and sporting a Cardinal’s mitre and a long priestly robe.

St. Nicolas came to all the classes in the Ecole Belge last week and brought all the kids candy.  Oren and David both received pictures of themselves on St. Nicolas’ lap.  David also got his own little Cardinal’s hat that he wore for much of the rest of the day. 

It is nice to have some Christmas related events in the season which bears little resemblance here to the hype we are so accustomed to in the US this time of year.  We do have our house decorated with lights, a tree, and keep Christmas carols playing in the evening from our ipod.  It is nice to feel the change in season in the inside of our house at least.

I am considerably late in getting last week’s news up on the web and I am sad to say that the culprit in my delay has been a toothache, a bad one, that has made me strangely tired in the evenings when I usually have time to write.  I have gone to bed early most nights since Sunday.  I am currently in Kigali, Rwanda, making a visit to partners with our Area Director Mark Sprunger, and had a chance to visit a dentist here to get it attended to.  She found a cavity in a back molar and will fill it this afternoon.  I am looking forward to not suffering.  The family is still back in Buja as the kids have had school this week.

There were a few significant events from the past week worth recapping.  Probably the most notable was the purchase of a new(er) vehicle to replace our landcruiser.  This is a plan we have had for several months as the “Prado” landcruiser (1994) which has over 200,000 kilometers is definitely beginning to show its age.  It has been very reliable, but has required a considerable amount of repair.

A trustworthy car is important, especially in Burundi these days for trips upcountry.  We do visit several places off-road fairly regularly.  We have also been aware of increasing insecurity at night on upcountry road.  Getting stranded in the late afternoon from a stalled vehicle could be dangerous.  All said, we felt this was the year to improve our ride.

Finding a newer car here for a reasonable price is not a small matter.  There are numerous options to buying but all have a down side.  Some of our friends encouraged us to order one from Japan.  It is fairly cheap to find a vehicle newer than 2000 online and to ship it for a few thousand dollars.  The problem though is that duty to import a car is 50%, so that makes the car quite expensive by the time you get it.  (a $12,000 car would end up costing about $22,000 with shipping and duty)

But it is hard to find a car for sale in country that has not been driven to death.  I was shown a lot of cars as people spread by word of mouth my interest in buying.  (There are really no car dealerships here I would trust to buy a used car.)  Among the things I was shown were many used UN landcruisers complete with reinforced land-mine proof flooring.  A feature I did not think would be particularly useful at this point in Burundian history.  (This added quite a bit to the cost and detracted from fuel efficency.)

I was about to give up hope when I talked to our mechanic about the matter and found he is quite well connected and had an interest in making sure we got a reliable car.  He found a 2006 Toyota “Fortuner” which had about 70,000 km on it.  We got it for about the cost of importing an older car from Japan.  Here is a picture of it.  Decidedly less boxy and ‘missionary’ looking than the Prado we had, but has pretty much all the same features (4WD). 

We are now in the process of selling the Prado.  Hopefully that will go well.  We do have a lot of interest but most want it for less than we feel we can sell it for.  We are hoping another Christian NGO might take it from us.  We had done our best to keep it in good condition and it has some years of life in it.

The final step in the purchase, after payment was the process of registration.  This involves going to the Burundian equivalent of the DMV (far more bureaucratic) with the original owner and getting the title switched into my name.  I am glad he was with me because I would have never been able to figure out what to do.  I am honestly amazed that this only took 2 days as the look of the building which housed thousands and thousands of horizontally stacked manilla folders (a file for every car in Burundi).  They had to find our car’s file and check to make sure all documentation was in order before transferring the title.  I could not believe they could even find it.  (On the other hand the former owner was a former Minister of Parliament so maybe as a big-man there was cause to move this quickly without the help of a bribe.)  It was a relief to get the process done and I was happy to find there was only one minor  misspelling of my name on the title Paul MOSLEV.  On the Prado I am actually listed as Paul MOSLOY.  So I really can’t complain.

I wish the visit to the DMV was the only encounter I had with Burundian bureaucracy.  But in fact I had another that I was not expecting.  For the ballet class I teach, I usually oreder the kids some ballet shoes from China, where they can be bought for about $3.00 each.  Shipping costs about $60.  I had bought about $100 worth of shoes for the kids who buy them from me.  I have done this in the past and had them DHLed to me from China without problem.

This year, for no apparent reason, the very small box (about the size of a shoe box) was stopped in customs at the airport and I had to retrieve it.  I thought this would be a fairly quick procedure and was only a bit annoyed that now I would have to add the duty cost to the cost of the shoes.  What I did not know was that getting a package out of customs involves a bureaucratic set of procedures that dwarfs any I have experienced to date.  I also ended up paying 50% duty on the shoes. 

It actually took me half a day and I think I was lucky because I had gone on a Friday afternoon when there were not many people there, but fortunately all the important signatories were in their offices.  I was also lucky to find a person who does the work of getting merchandise through customs professionally for regular importers.  For a small fee he walked me through the entire process which I would have never, never, figured out on my own.  It took a visit to 9 offices in different building to fill out different forms, collect various receipts.  Some people, especially the director had to sign every form at each step along the way, so I had to return to his office after each step to have him sign off (instead of once at the end.)  Several others had to sign off 2-3 times at various stages along the way.  I have to say I have never seen a set of bureaucratic processes that could not have been simplified more easily.  I have no doubt that keeping people employed is the only reason this system remains in place today.  It is also another indication of why Burundi will continue to lag behind many of its economic partners in the East African region as they seem to not be able to let go of their beloved idiotic French colonial bureaucratic heritage.

The rest of the week went fairly normally (not counting the toothache which came on Sunday.)  We did go to one early Christmas party at the house of our friend Olivia on Saturday evening.  She is working here with a mission called GLO (Great Lakes Outreach) and does many things including managing a large conference center.  She had a themed costume party based on things found at the market.  There were prizes for different categories including:

African King and Queen

Best Bargain

Most Outrageous

Worst Misspellings

I think there was another, but you get the idea.  Our whole family was invited and Rebecca had gone out with Jeanette (South African friend) to buy us clothes from the market. 

It was a fun party with lots of great food and a good opportunity to catch up with fellow missionary friends.  I have some pictures of some of the costumes.  My favorites in the outrageous category were Olivia who was the Bujumbura Sugar Plum Fairy, and Shiela who had made an outfit out of palm tree leaves. 

This week, which is well underway really began Sunday with the arrival of our Area Director Mark Sprunger.  We have been debriefing with him on Monday and Tuesday and are now on a visit to partners in Kigali.  More details about this next week.

Bonus Photo:  Oren in Karate class.  Although he claims not to like it much, he said last week, "Oh well, I guess I'll stop when I get my black belt."

*Father of School children

In the night I dreamed

That you brought me

An airplane that could walk…

Getting our Clocks Cleaned

Rango, the Chameleon we found while waiting for Oren in karate class.  He now lives in the lemon tree outside our house.


Well in the past three weeks I feel like our program has had a physical complete with prostate exam and have been given a clean bill of health with some promises to eat better, exercise, and brush and  floss regularly.  Actually, we are still waiting the results of some blood work, but all in all we do feel good about the 5 year program evaluation followed by a one week internal audit.

In truth, we were not anticpatiyng any of these activities with dread.  We had been feeling that our program was needing some external feed-back about our strategic planning, particularly since the context in Burundi has changed considerably since we arrived in 2008.  This is evidenced in many ways but particularly, for me, in the way that Bujumbura has been growing, developing and improving infrastructure, particularly roads.  The large influx of expat. families also suggests that there is a perception of more security in the country.

Despite this, deep, profoundly entrenched poverty abounds as well as conflict inherent in scarcity of resources, particularly land.  Burundi is an extremely overpopulated country with a population that has been displaced frequently and this remains an area of opportunity for conflict resolution action according to our evaluators.

They did also encourage us to continue to move away from relief into sustainable development activities, like setting up village savings groups, and other income generation activities.  They expressed some concern that some of our projects, while laudable, did not seem to be sustainable in the long term.

Overall, though they were very encouraging and we are waiting the final report of recommendations which will guide our program for the next 5 years.

I have never really been part of an audit until last week and I have to admit that my idea of one involved a spectacled accountant with an adding machine and visor pouring over 5 years of receipts and pulling a handle to subtotal each one.  In fact, our auditor Rebecca, though spectacled, did not have a hat or adding machine for that matter, and only sampled a few of our monthly reports over 5 years to verify receipts.

Much of the audit was about risk assessment (whether vehicles were legally registered) and what control mechanism (ex. 2 signatures) we had on bank accounts and financial transaction procedures.  She also gave us some recommendations on good accounting procedures in the office and left us feeling like we had been doing a good job up until now.  That was a relief since we really did not know what to expect and by and large non-profit organizations are being held to ever higher standards of rigor with regard to accounting.

But, like any complete exam, there is a really good feeling of having it all done and when we put Rebecca (the auditor) on the plane this morning to audit the Tanzania program, there was a certain sense of relief.

This coming week would be one of those extremely rare and mis-named 'normal' weeks in which we will be in the office every day with no trips and no special visitors.  That will be short-lived however as our area director Mark Sprunger will be paying us a visit next week and we will take him on a tour of some of our partners in Burundi and Rwanda.

December is a time programatically that we start to wrap up.  Our fiscal year actually ends in February, but it is this month that we ask partners to begin submitting plans for the new year and turning in final reports for the year we are completing.  Making the rounds once more with partners again is important this month (although they may be getting sick of seeing us by now after several visits by evaluators).


To review this week, I will say that having an audit is a fairly quiet process and we did spend most of this past week at the office answering questions and making certain documents and contracts available.  We did miss several days of swimming however because Burundi was hosting a large East African Community conference and they were meeting in a hotel right next door to our swim club.  The police, had set up roadblocks all over and when we tried to get down the road to the club they insisted that the club was closed for the duration of the conference.  (When we were able to get back in Wednesday I asked the club if they had been closed and they said no.)  Apparently others knew a way to talk themselves by the police roadblock.

It was good to finally get to go swimmimg again on Thursday, but we made the most of the time in the office on the mornings we arrived early.

The kids were generally good this week and Oren did his first 'dictee' in school.  That was a test, which he will now have every Friday where the teacher says a series of words or phrases and the kids have to write them.  He is given the words in advance and we drilled him all week.  Actually his spelling is quite good and he seems to like to read, eventhough he often does not know what the words mean that he is spelling.  This week he did: la fée, le vélo, le fil, il lave, elle rêve.

Oren continues to go to karate on Tuesday's and Thursday's.  Usually I take him and bring David along. While Oren does karate David plays in the playground at the Ecole Francais or explores the grounds.  This Thursday, to my amazement he found a chameleon!  I knew there were chameleons in this part of Africa but have not been able to find one in Burundi.  I am amazed we spotted it because it was virtually invisible in the grass where it was hiding.  It turned black and hissed and tried to bite when we caught it but later calmed down when we brought it home and returned to its brilliant green hue and was quite happy to walk on me, even sit on my head.  The next morning we put it in our lemon tree where it is now living, however, I have not been able to see for the past 2 days.  (It really turns invisible when it is among leaves.) (hey Barbara B., hope you get a chance to read this blog, I think you would be impressed by this guy.)

We had a fairly social weekend after the audit, especially because it really felt like the end of quite a long series of evaluations.  Also, Rebecca (the auditor) had never been to Africa and was keen on doing some sightseeing.

It began Friday evening when we had Janelle (our SALTer) over for dinner.  She seemed to be doing well and always has some amusing stories to tell us about life in her host family, odd people she has encoutered, or marriage proposals that she has had to turn down.  Generally it seems she is doing well and has a very good attitude.

We took Rebecca out to Club du Lac Tanganyika on Saturday after my ballet class.  It was a perfect day for body surfing as a storm had just past through and the waves were really high.  David especially enjoyed frolicing in the surf (with his lifejacket), and Rebecca, Rebecca and I were right in there with the kids.  It was nice to visit Club du Lac T. after a fairly long absence from there in the past month.

Saturday evening we were invited for dinner by our friends the Mackenzie's (Scott, Danika, John, Jonas).  They are going back to Canada for Christmas any day now so we will not see them for the next month.  We will miss them as they have become a valued part of our community.  (Also Scott, you all are going to miss our Christmas contradance on the 23rd--since I know you read this blog.)  We had a great dinner together and the kids played fairly well given that their oldest is David's age, which makes Oren a bit the odd man out.

Sunday we went to church and Rebecca taught Sunday school again.  She has been some strategizing with her teaching team to divide the English speaking class for kids from 3-12.  At this point there are more than 40.  Fortunately they were able to get a second room and now have an older and younger group and several teachers and helpers that are able to share the job of teaching.

After church we decided to take Rebecca (the auditor) for a little visit up country since she had spent the whole week in our office in Bujumbura and had not seen what it is like in the cooler high regions of the country.  We headed up to Ijenda which is to the Southeast about an hour.  The weather did not disappoint as it was quite cool and rainy until we got up there when it cleared up enough for us to do a little hike around the top of the mountain we were on.  (I have written before that this is about the only venue in Burundi where a mzungu can walk around without picking up a trail of children to follow him everywhere.)

Our family actually went with our Danish missionary friends (or at least part of the family) Naja and her daughter Aviaja.  Another guest was J.J. who is a visitor that will be joining the World Relief team.  He is coming with his family in May and was getting a lay of the land.  We talked to him a bit about bringing a family to Burundi.  It was a nice day for a hike for all of us and the kids really enjoyed it as well.  After the hike we returned to a guest house/ restaurant where we sat and ate a late lunch by a roaring fire and talked.  It was a very relaxing Sunday, all in all.


We came home in the early evening and lit our second advent candle and watched some Christmas shows on the computer before putting the kids to bed.  With our tree up and our house decorated we are really feeling the Christmas spirit despite the warm weather and lack of snow or pine trees.  (Actually there were some cedar trees where we were hiking and Rebecca brought back a few branches to add to our advent candle centerpiece.)

Monday morning we put Rebecca on a plane and went back to work.  This week we are going to try to do some Christmas shopping and possibly buy a new vehicle for our program to replace the 1994 Prado. It has been a great car but the motor is 'fatigué' according to our mechanic.  Will let you all know how that goes.

Giving Thanks Amidst Shortages

The family decorating the tree to herald the Christmas season here.

I have not written much recently about the change in season and how we experience it.  Last year around this time I think I had a picture of a bucket of mangoes which was about a daily yield for our trees in November.  We are indeed in the height of mango season again and while they are readily available in the market, our trees seem to have suffered from a blight that has rendered them all but fruitless this year.

I comment on this only because it is just one of several cases where we are experiencing shortages.  The others however are not nearly as innocuous as a mango virus which one can hardly blame on some ethical shortfall by the government.  

The other two items that seem to be in an ever-shortening supply are sugar and electricity.  We are now well out of the dry season, a time when hydro-electric power is down, and we seem to have less than ever. We are blessed to have a solar back-up system but there are times we have no electricity for 3 days at a time.  

The more insidious shortage we have experienced recently is the complete disappearance of sugar from the market and in fact anywhere in Bujumbura.  Since Burundi has large sugar cane plantations and is self sufficient in sugar, we can only presume that someone in the government has found a way to profit personally from some manipulation of the market or perhaps selling it off as export to other countries.

The same is true of ARV drugs which are provided for free by several countries but seem to not be available at HIV clinics or hospitals anywhere in recent months.

It is in these ways that corruption is experienced in countries like Burundi.  Whenever something is not available, no matter how valuable or ubiquitous, you can be sure that someone is benefitting (profiting) massively from the inconvenience or suffering inflicted on a large number of people.

Seeing the stately mango trees in our yard that are bearing no fruit, reminds me of the story of Jesus' encounter with the fig tree out of season which was bearing no fruit.  I think that more and more the international community and the local populace here are getting fed up with the current government and its lack of 'fruitfulness' since it won the elections last summer.

Although we do not eat a lot of sugar ourselves, the lack this year did have some disappointing consequences at Thanksgving.  Last year Rebecca found a very good substitute for cranberry sauce using locally available Japanese plums instead of cranberries.  It was a very tasty alternative, here is a link to the recipe. (cranberry sauce recipe).  

However, as we were not able to find sugar she made the sauce without it.  It was unfortunately, extremely bitter and not very tasty as a garnish.  The pumpkin pie was OK because we had received as a gift a jug of Rwandan honey which was an acceptable substitute in the pie.

I should probably back up a bit and talk about what we did for Thanksgiving.  We have been fortunate to have had an interesting gathering to share this traditional American feast every year that we have been in Burundi.  We have chosen this meal as one to share with Burundian friends and this year we invited the family of Normand Ndayizeye (him, his wife and 3 kids) to sup with us.  Normand's family is in fact the host family for our SALTer Janelle.  So she joined us as well as Jodi Mikalashki who happened to be in Bujumbura for car repairs and two other young women Safi and Helene (from UK and Sweden respectively) who are here working in various capacities with the Friends Church.  

It was a very enjoyable gathering and we did savor some traditional favorites including succotash and mashed potatoes and stuffing, but had to substitue rotisserie chicken for turkey.  We celebrated on Friday night rather than Thursday as the latter was the last day of the visit of our evaluation team.  In fact Thursday was one of the longest work days of the year as the team debriefed us a bit on their findings on Thursday evening after a long day's work.  Since Toss had to be on a flight out of Burundi at midnight we ate dinner together and then talked over the finding until about 11:30 pm.   We were pleased with how thorough they were in their work, but were completely exhausted by the time they left.

We did not take the day off on Friday as we had other work that had been set aside, but did take the afternoon off to prepare for our Thanksgiving guests.

The weekend was the real day of rest and family time, and we had felt that the children had been somewhat neglected during the time the evaluation team was here, or at least relegated to watching movies in the backroom while we talked.

But Oren was up bright and early Saturday morning and ready to set up the Christmas tree in the living room.  (We had promised him that we would do this after Thanksgiving but not before.)  He got out the tree and all the decorations and we began the process of decorating the tree and the rest of the living room for Christmas.

Honestly since we do not experience any of the seasonal changes in the year as far as weather, it is nice to create changes to our internal environment to feel like we have entered into the Christmas season.  I can almost feel nostalgic for a touch of Christmas commercialism (Black Friday) because here the and months and years can plod along with little variation.  It is up to us to create the feeling of a new season.

It is nice ot see the season through Oren's eyes who is really into crafts and decorating.  He is dying to make Christmas cookies.  The one thing which we do not have that we managed to bring in last year is a gingerbread house kit.  He would love to have the opportunity to make one of those again which he considers to be a tradition now.

Sunday was another day of rest with church in the morning and an afternoon of laying around the house.  We would have happily gone out swimming or something but Oren really just wanted to spend the day in the house with the Christmas tree.  (we did watch the original Grinch who stole Christmas, Rudolf, and Charlie Brown Christmas on the computer that day.)

We did go out in the evening to visit our friends's Thomas and Naja and their kids.  They are the Danish family (he is here as Director of World Relief).  We stopped by a pizza place on the way to their house and brought the pizza over to share with them.

It is good to see the children playing together and Oren being comfortable speaking french with them.  They spent a good part of the evening drawing a picture of two dinosaurs fighting from a comic book.  (Dinosaurs are Oren's new favorite thing and he has been asking for a dinosaur robot for Christmas,)

Rebecca, our auditor working at our office this week.

Sadly I began getting sick on Sunday might with a fever and went to bed shortly after we returned home.  On Monday I was still sick but did go to work.  We picked up 'Rebecca' (a different one) our auditor who arrived from Canada in the afternoon.  She will be with us for a week

I went to bed early on Monday and Tuesday and am finally getting this blog entry out today (Wednesday).  Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and Happy Belated Birthday Jonathan!

Evaluating Our Program

Oren has been suffering from Christmasitis this week and even brought out and decorated the tree in the guest room.

Sometimes when I think back to my life prior to living and working here, I marvel at the change in reading material I find I surround myself with.  My inbox is full of embassy and UN updates on security, as well as regional development work. My reading list is now primarily comprised of books on latest development theories and regional history--a far cry from the history of dance in 18th century France.  (Although I did always teach that from the perspective of how political power shaped art institutions in European history.)

Now I am working through a book called "Dead Aid" about the generally negative impact foreign aid has had on development in Africa, and simultaneously reading a book about the influence Chinese investment is having on the subcontinent.  I am looking forward to finishing so I can begin reading "King Leopold's Ghost" about the history of Congo, because that history has played a large roll in creating the dynamics of the Great Lakes region where we work.  I am not an expert on anything, I would say, but I am aware of changes in my capacity to be able to assess what is good and bad programming around here.  This is helpful because much of our job is to see that money provided by MCC is wisely used to have a positive impact that reflects God's character (justice, mercy, hope, love.)

It is actually always surprising to me how much work it takes to see money used in a way to do more good than harm.  

Toss and Jimmy our two Congolese evaluators.

In that light, we have continued to be busy hosting the Evaluation Team that is here to help give us strategic direction for the next 5 years.  I think it is fortunate that all of the 4 evaluators are African, from DRC, Burundi and Rwanda.  They have a deep familiaraity with the context and have been able to get at the real marrow of some of our partners programs.  They have generally been committed to meeting 'benficiaries' of all of our programs and not just the partners.  (The level where Rebecca and I primarily interact is with the partner.)

They have also helped us sort out how to relate to two "Mennonite Churches" in our region.  Those are 2 churches that have registered themselves as such with the Burundian Government but have no connection to the Mennonite World Conference of other Anabaptist organization.  It is tempting to regard those who registered them as simply opportunists wanting to plug into some mzungu money, but the reality is often more complicated than the appearance.

I did my own evaluating this week when I went up to Gitega on Friday and did a follow up of the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute.  It is a project we have been funding for about 7 years and it is encouraging to see it beginning to move into self-sufficiency this year as a well respected peace-building program that trains trainers in peacemakers throughout the region.  It is also the only one of its kind that does instruction in French.

Friday was fortunately the only travel day and I went up with a Congolese colleague on Friday morning about 6 am and drove back with him the same afternoon.  It was funny because we were supposed to go up and stay the night Thursday.  I told him I was leaving at 3pm and he said he would get to Buja by noon.  As I suspected that meant 5:15 pm, an hour too late to head up country as driving after dark is not considered safe upcountry.  We stayed the night at our house where we enjoyed talking about regional issues (he helped me understand better the deep animosity Congolese feel toward Rwandese.) and left early the next day to get to Gitega by 8am.

We talked quite a bit on the drive about how MCC could be more involved in Eastern Congo and both agreed that we really need a volunteer living in Bukavu.  (I know MCC Congo is advertising for this position, so if any readers feel a call to serve in this region through MCC, there is a great need for ‘eyes on the ground there’ to accompany with our church and peace partners.)

Rebecca was at home with the kids and took them out to a park with our friend Jeanette (from South Africa) and her daughter Isabel as well as Kirsten and her daughters Emily and Rebecca.  I have included some pictures.  Most playground equipment here would be illegal in the US.  For instance notice the slide that goes down about 50 degrees straight into a hole, there is no deceleration curve at the bottom.  (more like jumping that sliding.)

Other than those events, the week has been fairly consumed with doing logistics for our evaluators and meeting them in the evenings.  It has been good to see things through their eyes.  (We do not participate in the interviews, but do get feedback afterwards.)  They spent the early part of the week in Gitega and at the Hope School and seemed very positive about the work of our partnerships there.

We have also had several Skype meetings with some of our colleagues in the US and Canada regarding new projects.  It is always amazing to me that we can be so separated by distance and yet have a conversation that makes us feel as if we are in the same room.

Saturday was a bit logistically challenging as we had some work responsibilities related to the evaluation team as well as the adult ballet class I am teaching.  I have to say it has been a real pleasure teaching these past 2 weeks especially as I find that there are about a half dozen young NGO workers here who have had some dance experience—2-3 professionally. 

Sunday the evaluation team left for Rwanda and we went to church.  David was beginning to get sick (again) and slept through most of the service (which means I could here the sermon.)

The pastor shared on the parable in Luke about the Shrewd Steward (or manager).  If you haven’t read it for a while it is worth looking at.  One of the more confusing parables, but quite rich if you take time to flesh it out. 

The observation the pastor made that I appreciated was the 3 choices the steward seemed to consider he had as professions;

1) begging

2) scrapping (working, digging)

3) being a steward for someone. 

Since the master was going to fire him, presumably for not doing the last one well, he decides to cut the debt owed by some of the master’s clients to ‘make friends.’  The master commends him on his shrewdness. 

The pastor observed that it does seem that in life the three choices about how we acquire and use our wealth are quite applicable.

1) we can beg, that is live in such a way in which we consider that we are victims and depend on others for our livelihood, not taking responsibility for ourselves.

2) we can work, (the word has the sense of digging or clamboring)--we can believe that we are earning everything for ourselves, and that what we get is ours and clambor unceasingly to get as much as possible for ourselves.

3) We can be stewards:  That is in recognition that what we have we are holding for a master, and that what we do and the way we use our resources should reflect the master’s priorities, as all that we have belongs to  him.  

In the story of the shrewd manager, it is clear that the master is generous in that he compliments the steward for his generosity in cutting debts (self-serving as it was) it reflected the master’s priorities.

Anyway, I enjoyed the reflection and the different ways we might see our own lives as Christians.  Living as stewards rather than beggars (victims) or ‘scrappers’ (clamborers in the rat-race).

We are getting ready for Thanksgiving this week which we will celebrate Friday for logistical reasons.  I tried unsuccesfully to get a turkey.  (I asked Yolanda to get one from the Swahili Quarter in Gitega.) They wanted about $50 for a pretty small one so we will have rotisserie chicken again this year.

Bonus Photo:  Oren working on the car proving the adage that "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  Definitely true in the NGO world!

Strange Fruit

Say Awwwh!  Cutting open a jackfruit I found on the road by our house.  They are not native to Burundi, but someone apparently has one in our neighborhood. 


I feel somewhat remiss this week in not bringing my camera around to take pictures during the week.  Although we were in town most of the week, it was not uneventful.  I do have to admit that the fact that we were not traveling almost made it feel like we had a week of vacation.  Just to be back in our normal routine is quite refreshing.  When we have it, the week looks something like this:
Monday, Wed, Friday--
6:00 wake up
7:15 kids to school
8-9 swim
9-12 work together
12 pick up kids and go home for lunch
2-5 one of us goes back to work the other stays home with the kids
6 dinner
8 kids in bed asleep

On Wednesday's I teach ballet in the 2-5 slot to kids at the Ecole Belge.

On Tuesday and Thursday Oren goes to karate in the afternoons.

The routine has a rhythm to it of work and renewal activites that keep us balanced. (I did not mention the women's Bible Study and the men's prayer group that meet weekly as well.)  It is also really nice to not be on the road for a long trip with the stresses that accompany that--bad drivers, bad roads.

So we savored the week even though we were working very hard to prepare the logistics for an evaluation team that was arriving on the weekend.

The weekend itself was very busy but did have some high points.  One for me was the addition of an adult ballet class on Saturday afternoon.  I had been encouraged by several women who are here working with various NGOs to try one.  I had my doubts about whether there were any interested adults, but was shocked when at 1 pm, just through email and word of mouth about 10 students showed up another 5 expressed interest in coming in the future.  I will plan to do this every week until Christmas and then decide what to do after that.  It was inspiring to teach a class of people who were really interested in dance, and at most had previous dance experience.

Saturday was also the day that 3 of our 4 evaluators came.  Two were coming from Kinshasa, both Congolese, Jimmy Juma and Toss Mukwa.  Jimmy works for MCC in South Africa and Toss is part of the Mennonite Church leadership.  The other two evaluators are coming from Rwanda and Burundi respectively.  They seem to be an able team and we had dinner with them Saturday night at our house.

This make the work week feel like it had been extended a day, but it was interesting to be with them and share some of our thoughts.  They will be here for 2 weeks and will interview all of our partners and service workers.  They will be going up country and to Rwanda.  Fortunately we do not have to go with them on all these visits.

On Sunday we took them to church with us.  It was good to be back after a missing last week because of our retreat.  It is definitely a part of our routine we do not like to miss.  David is still not old enough for Sunday school and has trouble sitting through the service though.

Rebecca's Sunday school is enormous now, but she is getting some volunteers that are helping her split the class.

One of the mother's who has helped voluntarily is our new friend Danika ( of Scott and Danika fame), who are here with Food for the Hungry.  She is a family doctor and has been volunteering at the the large public hospital where she has been working in the maternity ward.  She recently related a harrowing story that I am directing you to here by this link.  It is about her experience of saving a life of a woman about to give birth who needed a C section.  It is truly by her actions that this woman survived, but does point out just how substandard maternal healthcare is here  (my-scariest-day-at-work-ever/).  We have had several colleagues lose their wives in childbirth and just today Rebecca was talking to one of our partners who said they lost a nurse in their clinic this past week when she gave birth to twins then had some problem with her C section several days later in the hospital.  Despite her cries of agony, no doctor was available to see what was wrong and she died of 'unknown' causes shortly thereafter.  (no relation to the person in Danika's story.)

I do admit that this and other stories does give us an understandable anxiety about needing medical care here.  What seems to prevail in many of the horror stories we hear is this sense of fatalism--like whether one lives or dies has little or nothing to do with medical care, it is all just fate.  I think that explains why, in Danika's story there was such a lack of urgency, even in an emergency.

I will relate one last story just because it is so bizarre.  A relative of one of our partners was in a car accident here.  It was serious and the spinal injury could not be treated in Burundi.  Her family was wealthy enough to send her by air ambulance to Kenya's Aga Kahn hospital where she was operated on successfully.  Unbelievably, though, on the way from surgery to recovery she had to be transported to another floor by elevator.  On the way down though, the elevator cable broke and it fell more than a floor to the bottom of the shaft while she was in it on a bed.  The attendants were not seriously injured but her spinal injury is now far worse than when she arrived.  And this is in one of the best hospitals in the sub-continent.   (Of course in all of these incidents there is no legal recourse as far as hospital or doctor liability.)

I think I will leave the topic of health care at this point and return to the happier subject of Sunday after church.

We did take the evaluation team out to lunch at one of the local beaches.  It was not one we usually go to.  We had a nice conversation and when our guests left Oren and David ran down to the lake for a swim.  We all enjoyed playing in the waves for about 2 hours before we were chased to shelter by a huge thunderstorm.  We drove home and sat on the porch and watched a gorgeous sunset over the mountains of Eastern Congo.  It is good to remember we have such a nice view from our porch.  (Which we tend not to use since the birth of puppies last Christmas.)  But now that Noel, the young dog is more mature, we can sit out there without being attacked to friskily.

We also enjoyed several other activities including carving up a jackfruit that I found on the road in our neighborhood (it had fallen off of a neighbor's tree.)  I tried drying it to make some kind of dried fruit for museli, but I have to admit, it does not taste that good.  (Like a smelly overripe banana.)

Oren has learned to play chess and we did play a few games during David's nap.  It is amazing how fast he is growing.  He can even beat mommy (with a bit of help from dad.)  Oren and Rebecca also constructed a T-rex puzzle out of wood.  Since Oren is fully in his dinosaur infatuation phase, he really loved it.  (Thanks Grandparents!)

On Sunday evening we gave both kids buzz cuts and they do look really cute.  (And are alot less itchy.)

Although all the fun was crammed into one afternoon and evening, it did really feel like a weekend.  Next week, more travel.

Retreating Under Volcanoes

Felix, our program assistant, relaxing with a book during our retreat this week.



Today has been a day of rest, more or less.  It is not often that we do not go into work on a Monday.  It is generally a good way to begin the weekly routine, especially when we are finally once again back into routine.

Last week I mentioned that I was writing from Kigali where we began the week before proceeding on Tuesday afternoon to Gisenyi. This town is situated on the North end of Lake Kivu, right at the border where one crosses into Goma in Eastern Congo.  Among the interesting features, besides the Lake in this region, are the numerous volcanoes that rise up majestically above the hilly countryside.  The Goma volcano erupted in the last decade, pretty much destroying that town, and it's still particularly impressive, as one can see the glow of lava from the crater reflecting up on the clouds above at night.

Although the town feels quiet enough, there is something that seems prehistoric about the region, the volcanic soil that produces prolifiic vegetation and the houses and walls constructed out of black porous volcanic rock.  Not far from here is the home of the "Gorillas in the mist" and the dense forest climbing the hills looks like a place where mountain gorillas would hide.

But our visit was neither tourism nor nor science.  We were here as part of a regional MCC spiritual retreat for the Great Lakes region.  So we had our entire Rwanda/Burundi team as well as teams from Uganda and DRC (Congo).

Arriving together was not without its complications.  While most of us did get there on time arriving by both public and prviate transport, the Congo family were delayed several days waiting for exit papers for their adopted daughter.  They were able to join us half way through on Thursday afternoon.

Since Rebecca and I were the primary logistical organizers as well as the ones responsible for the schedule, it was not exactly restful for us, (especially Rebecca) although we were able to have most everyone else share in the responsibility of leading evening devotionals as well as recreational activities.

Generally the format was to have a thematic study and discussions in the morning, with the afternoon off for activities.  The group provided many opportunities, including embroidery, yoga, water color, and origami.  The hotel we stayed at, although modest by western standards, had some interesting perks including a small pool, exercise room, and sauna and steam room.  There were also some nice grounds to sit around and read in.  There was so much to do in the afternoons that we were not even able to do all the acitivities planned on the schedule.

The themes in the morning were focused on parables of the Kingdom, specifically the sower, the parable of the wheat and weeds, and the parable about the woman baker working yeast into the dough.  The challenge in all of them seemed to be to accept the mystery of the growth of the kingdom that does not depend on our efforts, but may require much patient endurance on the part of the workers (especially to allow the wheat and weeds to grow together).

It was generally well received and it was good to have the discussions lead to opportunities to talk about the rewards and frustrations of working within our particular assignments.  I think the SALTers and service workers from the different countries enjoyed getting together to share experiences.  I am struck that overwhelmingly the SALTers are young women.  There just do not seem to be that many young men with the focus to do such a volunteer program out of college.  It is a shame because I think this kind of experience could be very valuable as a part of finding future employment, and even a vocation.

We were also very blessed to have great child care as two young women accompanied us, one was Katherine Deckert who works with MCC in Winnipeg and was out for a visit/vacation.  The other, Mireille, is a teacher at the Ecole Belge in Rwanda and a friend of Ruth and Krystan.  So the kids really had a blast.  (Oren was the oldest of the group with David a close second.)

For me, one of the highlights was Friday when we invited a special guest to share with us on the topic of facing injustice on a personal level.  (What can we do in the face of injustice as individuals?)  The facilitator was a Rwandese pastor named Joseph Nyamutera.  He has a fascinating life history and I am sending a link to his bio here.  (Nyamutera bio)  He led us through a 3 part series of discussions beginning with identity. He asked us what identities we possess and the ways that we might be either victims or oppressors because of them.   He himself is Hutu, and although he was not involved in the genocide directly, he was aware of the killings as they happened. But when the RPF came in he was forced to flee to Congo where he spent several years in a refugee camp and lost many family members.

He has had the experience of being perceived as both oppressor and victim.  He went on to conclude though that as Christians. we profess our primary identity to be in Christ and all others to be secondary, even if they are natural, like gender or race or ethnicity.

The second section was on wounds and trauma healing, and ended with us bringing our pain and wounds to the cross (where we symbolically nailed them) to be released from them.

The 3rd section I found particularly meaningful.  It began with a discussion about repentance which Biblically is both individual, but also corporate.  (Israel repenting as a nation is an example of that.)  Here we looked at ways in which we as Christians might, using Peter's description of us as a royal priesthood, be intercessors, or stand-ins to confess corporate sin of the groups we belong to.  He told us about how he has stood as a Hutu before Tutsis and confessed and asked for forgiveness for the sins of his people.  He has done the same thing as a Rwandan before Congolese.

He has described remarkable transformations in relationships between groups in his experiences of this kind.  Normally we come ready to rationalize or justify rather than to confess. By contrast, to come in with humility and penitence is quite liberating.

I was struck by the possibility that such confession might liberate one from the feeling of acting out of guilt--an emotion that drives much giving and foreign aid, I believe. Perhaps if we begin with confession as development workers and a request for pardon, we might be able to act more in the interest of others rather than out of guilt.

Pastor Joseph also warned about the trap of reparation that is motivated by guilt.  He observed that often reparation is usually not possible.  He gave an illustration of a priest in South Africa who had his hands blown off by a letter bomb during apartheid.  He said that if someone had come and apologized for committing this injury, he would ask him how that person would want to offer reparation? Wash his clothes? Help him dress? and for how long? Today? Until next month? Forever?  His point was that it is not possible to return the loss.  When the perpetrator asks for forgiveness, it is in recognition that reparation may not be possible.  It is up to the victim to decide to forgive.

What a heady idea to imagine confession, by individual Christians, standing in their priestly role as intercessors, to Native Americans, Jews, Palestinians, Illegal Immigrants, Colonized Countries.  I would be interested in seeing a forum for public confession for Christian leaders. (Although in our country our Christian leaders seem more fixated on righteous moral outrage and judgment and not on public confession and repentance.)

Saturday, our last day, we took the morning off to go to a beach on the lake.  It is nice that there are no hippos or crocs in this lake.  But it is a bit unnerving that there is methane gas in the bottom of the very deep lake and once every 10,000 years or so the Lake 'inverts' killing everything within hundreds of miles of it.  (Right now there is a pipe down to the methane and it is being harvested for fuel.)

But the lake is nice, and we played on a 'beach' made of volcanic rock.  The kids swam and even caught a crab.  We had a nice lunch at a hotel on the beach and the day would have been perfect if someone had not stolen a couple hunded dollars in Rwandese Francs from Rebecca's purse in a brief moment when she was not looking.

On Sunday we all headed home.  I took the Burundi crew home in the jeep which left about 7am for the 10 hour drive.  It was rough with the kids who pretty much took turns having melt downs most of the way back.

We arrived back exhausted Sunday evening and took it easy.  On Monday Rebecca woke up feeling sick so I took the kids to school and swam before coming home to do some emails.

There is a feeling of accomplishment to completing this retreat and it was clearly appreciated by all who came.  We will probably do it again in the future as this is the first Great Lakes Regional retreat MCC has had to my knowledge.