Small Miracles at the Hope School

Three year old Emilie reciting her vowels in front of the Premier Maternelle class at the Hope School for the Batwa

“Listen, Look, Touch.”  Beatrice, the education coordinator the Hope School repeated the words to me she had learned in last summer’s (2010) teaching seminar where pre-school teachers were introduced to modern pedagogical methods for the instruction of young children.  The occasion was a field visit this past Tuesday.  It was time to write a report for MCC and I went up alone on Monday afternoon to Burasira and stayed the night at the Grand Seminare nearby the school.  I went up to the school early Tuesay morning and had a meeting with the principles and Beatrice before visiting all the classrooms in the secondary, primary, and preschool. 

I am including some of my report in this blog entry because many who read this were involved in a book collecting project that is beginning to have impact at the school this year.

The Hope School for the Batwa Maternelle (nursery school and kindergarten) was excited about putting the new ‘listen, look, touch’ methodology into practice and began last year with extensive changes to the look of a traditional Burundian classroom.  Rows of desks were pushed around the edge of the class to form a large circle where students could interact actively with instructors, even writing on the floor rather than the chalk board to ‘reorient’ learning more toward the perspective of wee ones.  The children accepted the new methodology with enthusiasm as evidenced by smiling faces and attentive participation.

But there remained a challenge with the new ‘listen, look, touch methodology.  In a classroom in one of the poorest and marginalized communities in the world, a westerner would be shocked at the utter lack of material, visual, and tactile, with which the students can interact.  No posters, pictures, blocks, legos, toys, paper, scissors, paste, or any supplies, even electricity for that matter.  Most strikingly though—there is not a single book anywhere—here or in most other preschools in the country and certainly not in their homes!

There is simply very little to interact with in the classroom beyond tables and chairs.  Last year the teaching team was very creative in finding old magazines and even MCC calendars with which to create visual materials which was a great success.

This academic year though, thanks to a small miracle in the form of a container of children’s books collected by Mennonite and MB churches as well as other groups (organized by Jean Sack) and sent by MCC, there has been a virtual renaissance at the preschool.

It is an emotional sight to see the 4 and 5 year olds opening colorful books of pictures of tropical fish, wild animals, construction vehicles, planets, aircraft and ships, and stare in awe turning the pages with slow intent concentration.  Others play with alphabet blocks, or small toys.

The visual and tactile experiences have truly unified theory and practice.  Teachers are able to use the books and other materials to give children the necessary visual and tactile experiences to enhance the aural learning (rote listen and repeat).  Listen, look, touch is now a reality in the classroom and it has transformed learning so much this year that parents and neighbors in the commune and even neighboring school districts are taking note.

“One of the most exciting outcomes has been a much deeper involvement of parents in their children’s education” exclaims Innocent Gihimbare, the principle of the primary school.  We now have a very active parents group that meets regularly and has a new genuine interest in the school.”

Challenges remain, for the nursery school as the simple brick and mud constructed rooms have no secure windows or doors and there is fear that these treasures, which may look to Westerners like Salvation Army give-aways, have high market value and may make the school a target for thieves. 

6th Grade Class which has 50 students in one small room
this year.

Nonetheless, with a newly reanimated parents committee there is hope that parents will take responsibility to hire and pay 2 night guards to protect the classrooms at night.

“We don’t want to lose these gifts” said kindergarten teacher M. Silas.  Children used to come to school crying dragged by their parents, now they come running ahead of them and arrive laughing.”

I am always deeply moved and often stunned at the obstacles students must overcome to even go to school in this country, especially in a remote rural commune like the one where the Hope School is located. 

The school, for instance does much to keep Batwa girls going beyond 6^th grade.  But it is a huge struggle and there is about a 6 to 1 ratio of boys to girls in the secondary school.

Girls who do go often have to overcome even parental opposition to their continuing their education.

The most extreme testimony of hardship I heard came from a girl in 8^th grade named Athanasie.  She was very marginalized at the school in her commune and eventually forced to leave.  She came to the Hope School which she enjoys very much, but must walk 2 and a half hours each way to school and back.  Her mother, fortunately, does encourage her to go.

When I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she said she wanted to be a teacher.

I left the school after 4 straight hours of meetings and visiting classes.  (It did not seem long to me at all.)   I drove back to Gitega with Beatrice and dropped her off before continuing onto Bujumbura.  I arrived back hom about 4 on Tuesday.  Just on time to meet Oren at karate class. It was a very inspiring trip.

The rest of the week was filled with work. We are trying to prepare for a program evaluation (something that happens once every 5 years).  A group of 4 sent by MCC will interview all of our partners and help us to discern some strategic objectives in the next 5 years.

We also have an audit in the beginning of December.  But the most concentrated work has been on preparing for a retreat in Rwanda where we are hosting the entire Uganda and most of the DRC team.  We have been preparing a program, arranging logistics like childcare, etc.  (and by we I mean mostly Rebecca.)

At this writing we are in Kigali waiting to go up to Gisenyi our meeting point.  I will say more about the retreat in next week’s blog.

Felix has also been very busy this week getting the book container, sent to Burundi, to continue on its way to Rwanda where books will be distributed to schools of the Friends Church.  (The books came up to Kigali yesterday and they could be cleared from customs as early as tomorrow).

We actually left for Kigali on Sunday after church, which meant we got on the road around 2:30 pm.  That is later than normal for church, but we had a special day there because we officially installed our new pastor and had a very nice celebration afterwards. 

We really had a car full with the whole family plus Felix, Janelle and Yolanda.  We arrived in Kigali around 8:30 pm, pretty tired, but not too much worse for the wear, especially since both kids fell asleep the last hour of the trip (when the real whining can begin.).

We had meetings all day today (Monday) and connected with the rest of our team.

I will post more about the retreat next week.

Bonus photo:  Oren in Karate Class. 

Power Struggles and David's Birthday

T-Rex (me) vs. Stegasaurus (Oren) at David's Costume Birthday Party.


The family is actually relaxing in front of the TV this evening (watching Vegi-Tales).  We have just finished cleaning up from David's Birthday party this afternoon (Sunday).  Preparation actually began in earnest on Friday as we were blessed with a long weekend (national Holiday).  The party planned for Sunday was a week ahead of David's real Birthday but I was not supposed to be in town for it next week.

Despite the fact that it is still early for Halloween, we did decide to make it a costume party, so preparation meant, not just baking a cake and decorating the house, but also constructing costumes (as there are none commercially available here.)

It is kind of fun, if one has the time, to do everything oneself, and that was the case this weekend.  All of us took part. Rebecca made 2 cakes--(a brownie one decorated as a ladybug and a bundt cake that was decorated as a millipede).  Oren made a picture of an elaborately decorated 23 layer cake on which the kids played a game called 'pin the candle onto the cake.  (The idea was to hit a particular layer).  My contribution was dinosaur masks for the kids and a piniata.  Rebecca also contributed to the costumes helping Oren design a stegasaurus spiny back and tail to go with the mask.  Oren was very excited to help on every project and from time to time he was actually a help.

Saturday we did take the afternoon off to go to Entente Sportive for a swim.  This is Oren's preference these days as he now loves to jump off the 3 meter platform about 30 times every time we go.  He was very excited to see that his 'friend' was there.  This was a kid who would count for him before jumping and would jump with him on the adjacent platform.  Weighing at what I would guess was about 250 pounds, he made quite an impressive splash every time he jumped off the board.

We were going to get food out for dinner but discovered that we did not bring enough money so we stopped at a boucherie and bought hamburger meat and had burgers and salad that night while watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  It was a nice family evening together and David and I actually got through half the movie before falling asleep.

Sunday was quite a change of pace from the relaxing two days preceding.  The morning was complicated as we had to pick up someone at the airport at 8am, then Rebecca was preaching at church at 9.  We decided to send Rebecca for the pick up so she could have some quiet time while I dealt with the kids and brought them when church started.  It all worked out well and we were all at the church by 9:10.

 Rebecca preached on Acts 6.  The passage about appointing deacons to resolve an ethnic conflict in the early church.  (Between Greek and Hebrew widows.)  She made some excellent point about leadership:
1) Leaders recognized their limitations and stayed faithful to their call
2) Leaders gathered the assembly to acknowledge and address the conflict and built consensus
3) Leaders came up with a solution but then handed power over the the assembly to choose the delegates to resolve it.

The involvement of everyone and the humility of the leadership were important lessons here where participation is not always encouraged and leaders, even in the church can be quite autocratic.

She also reminded us that most church settings these days in the West and here are monocultural, and that we have both a privilege and responsibility in participating in a multicultural church.  But practically speaking, conflict will arise even as we try to love each other.

(She gave an example of a day when a meeting was scheduled from 11am to 4pm.  She came at 11:30 knowing it would not start on time.  But it was raining and what she did not know was that normally here, when it rains, all activity is postponed until after the rain, then everyone picks up where they left off.  She waited for the meeting to begin for about 2 and a half hours.  When they did meet she stayed until 4:30 but then had to leave having been gone from home all day.  As she was heading out, one of the leaders who was just arriving passed her on the steps and said in surprise: "You're leaving already?)

Rebecca told it in a humorous way and everyone in the congregation, Burundian and foreign, laughed out loud, but the point was well made.  It is hard to connect culturally when our different perceptions and responsibilities sometimes permit us to only meet each other in brief passings coming and going. (She suggested that probably Greek and Hebrew widows had very different needs and lack of sensitivity to that might have contributed to the conflict.)

Her final challenge was for the congregation to recognize that when the leadership asks us to take responsibility that we do so.  It is not right to expect that a small minority do all the work that is required to build a loving community.

The sermon was well received by all who heard it.  I was able to enjoy about half of it before David's restlessness required me to take him out of the service.


After church Rebecca was obliged to stay for a committee meeting while I took the kids and our guest. Violette (who is here to teach at GLPI) home.  Rebecca got home an hour later and we began the frantic last minute house cleaning and preparations for the Birthday.

We invited families with some very young children. this included Scott and Danika with their 2 young sons (link to their blog here).  They are a new mission family with Food for the Hungry.  We also invited Kirsten with her daughters Emily and Rebecca as well as Ann Glick and her husband with their 2 boys and Tim and Jeanette with their daughter Isabel.

We did have plenty of activities starting with a parachute that someone gave us this summer that the kids loved to run under.  We also had a costume parade, played pin the candle on the cake, opened presents, ate cake and knocked down the piniata.  It was a good Birthday for David as you can see in the pictures in this blog.

The week preceding was one with several trials.  The first was the continued lack of power which lasted until Friday.  After a couple days without any power, our back-up system cannot keep up with demand, especially since it rained Monday- Wednesday which meant there was no solar power to help charge the battery.

We spent several nights in the dark which makes many things difficult in terms of getting the kids to bed.  We also had to provide the dogs with a feast of all the left-overs we had not used in the refrigerator which once again served only as cabinet storage space.

Power shortages have been getting worse and worse and there is a lot of speculation as to why.  My favorite rumor has to do with the large new nickel mining operation that has begun in a province up country.  According to the rumor, a South African mining company is doing the extraction but under the contract is obliging the Burundian Govt. to supply the power to do the work.  They need about 245 megawatts and Burundi produces about 11.  So most of the power is going up there.  The govt. is saying that there is generally an increase in demand and has not mentioned the mining at all.  (Which makes me suspect even more that this is part of the problem).

But as far as our neighborhood, when I was complaining to my gardener about the lack of power he told me that if I looked outside at the transformer for the neighborhood, I could see that it was open and all the fuses were stolen.  Sure enough he was right.  We alerted the power company who was aware of this and said they were planning to fix it the next day.  Amazingly they actually did come the next day.
They told Rebecca that this problem of fuse theft is growing and in fact this was the second time in 2 weeks that all of these fuses were stolen.  (They welded a metal plate onto the transformer making access at this time impossible.)  That should keep the theives out as well as anyone who may need to repair it in the future.

Activites parascholaires (extracurricular activities) have been in force this month and I taught my first ballet class for little kids this Wednesday.  Sadly interest this year has dropped of significantly with the change in date to Wednesday (not my choice.)  Particularly the class of the older more advanced girls had to be cancelled because I only had 1 student.  (I am thinking of adding an adult class in its place.)

The other activity we have added is for Oren, who now goes over to the Ecole Francais for Karate every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.  He had his first 2 lessons last week and got measured for his uniform.  I will get a picture when he wears it next time.  He seems to like the class and it is another opportunity for him to be exposed to and practice French.

We continue to have many guests pass through.  Jodi was with us for lunch on Wednesday and I mentioned  Violette who was with us on Sunday on her way to GLPI.  We also had Yolanda pass through last night as well.

Generally our family has been healthy but one of our staff had a very sick baby suffering with severe diarrhea.   The mother took him to a local clinic seriously dehydrated first thing in the morning.  The nurse told her she would have to wait at least until 3 in the afternoon and to take the child home and come back later.  Fortunately our worker let us know and we sent him immediately to a less busy (more expensive) clinic where they started an IV (with difficulty) soon after they arrived.  Again another poignant reminder of the healthcare system here and the lack of access to those without resources--eventhough it is austensibly free for children.  If our worker had not had the means (through us) to pay for a better clinic, I fear the child, in severe dehydration, would not have survived until he could have been seen by a doctor.  Please pray for continued healing of this child as he is not well yet and still has the diarrhea although he is receiving treatment.

**update on the situation:  Rebecca went to the clinic today to see the child.  He had not received any tests yet (waiting for payment).  When Rebecca showed up the treatment for the child took on a new seriousness.  Apparently if it is true there that if a rich mzungu takes an interest in an individual their chances of getting necessary life-saving diagnoses and treatment improves greatly--a sad truth that has been our experiences in other health crises as well.  

This morning (Monday) I am off to Mutaho to visit the Hope School and get some photos and interviews for reporting.  Rebecca will be home with the kids.  I will return on Tuesday.

Bonus Photo:  David brandishing the scar on his forehead he got while playing with his dog Noel.  Looks a bit like Harry Potter, but the hair is Draco Malfoy.  

An Entente in Abyssinia

Ethiopian Airlines arriving in Bujumbura on Wednesday afternoon to take us to Addis Ababa.



A Challenge:  You are charged with bringing together representatives from several countries in West Africa-- Chad, Burkina Faso, Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Rwanda, and Burundi.  You want to minimize travel time for each one, so where could one meet that would allow everyone to arrive in 1 travel day?

The answer would be Paris, France or Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

It would seem reasonable that a common meeting place would be more centrally located in Africa rather than the far east edge of the continent or in Europe, but not when you consider travel routes available for these countries.  (West Africa is not particularly well served by airlines, particularly between countries.)

So once again the MCC Reps. from the Central West Africa region (CWARM) gathered together for our semiannual meetings, this time, for reasons stated above in Addis Ababa.  For all of us, the travel time was to be reasonable.  (about 5 hours from us counting a stop-over in Nairobi)  But as usual, Africa did offer up some frustrating logistical hi-jinx's for several of us that completely undermined our best laid plans.

For the Rwanda Burundi crew (our family) we had bought tickets to leave on Tuesday, only to be told on Monday that our flight had been cancelled.  We rebooked for Wednesday but that meant we would miss the first day of meetings.  Gopar, our regional peace rep, who is from Nigeria but was with us in Burundi last week was virtually assured a visa up until the moment we were to leave on Wednesday and then was told he could not have an Ethiopian entry visa.  (He was able to obtain a transit visa and was with us for 1 day.)

The worst situation were the Nigeria reps, our good friends the H_____n-S_____s (names omitted).  They live in the North, in Jos, and had to make a 4 hour dangerous trip down to Abuja to catch a flight to Addis. They were having trouble getting exit visas, but had been assured by their lawyer the night before that the papers were signed. They made the trip down only to find, as we so often do, that this assurance was in fact a 'false hope' and their exit visas were not granted after all because of some small irregularity discovered at the last minute.  So their trip to Abuja was completely in vain and since they had to miss the Wednesday flight they were not able to get to us for the meetings at all.

This was a big disappointment for all of us at the meeting, even for our kids as they have an older son and daughter that Oren really likes to play with.

The good news is that we were joined by 2 new families as Chad and Burkina Faso both have new representatives.  The Burkina Faso reps, (Chad and Isa) have 2 kids about the ages of our kids and Oren and Conner hit it off extremely well the whole time.  (They share a common interest in trains.)

The Chad reps Doug and Naomi have an older daughter Hannah (college age) who was with them and graciously offered to do childcare with one of the MCC Ethiopia service workers.  All the kids seemed very satisfied with this arrangement and had a good time playing together in the hotel garden in the morning and watching a movie while the little ones napped in the afternoon.  Oren and Conner also produced reams of drawings of trains, dinosaurs, hotels, volcanoes and other things.

So despite all of the aforementioned snafus we did have a good set of meetings.  As the more senior members of the group now, Rebecca and I did feel we had a share of good advice based on our experience in the field.

We were also able to have some good conversations with our Area Director Mark Sprunger as well as Tim Lind the DRC rep. with whom we share some common interests being so close to Eastern Congo.

I will say though, it is humbling to hear the challenges that the other countries in our region face.  Even with the incresased instability here, our life in Burundi is far less complicated and difficult than say our colleagues in Nigeria who, in Jos, live with a civil war on their doorstep.  The insecurity is palpable, there are parts of the city where a Christian even passing through without stopping would be killed immediately (and vice  versa).  The school their children attend is closed frequently because of bomb scares or other threats of terrorism.

DRC (Congo) is a challenge because of the daily assault of corruption which one must confront daily even driving to work.  Tim Lind described doing programming there like "setting up a fine china tea service on a boat in a hurricane."  (the things that will go wrong are completely out of one's control).

N'djamena Chad, where our reps live face temperatures that soar up to 120 degrees fahrenheit.  To make matters worse, they have electricity at best a couple hours a day.  So they live in this climate without airconditioning.  (They do have fans that run on solar power.)

Burkina Faso, is also terribly hot although enjoys more political stability than some of its neighbors.

As I said, when we look at what other reps in our region face, I feel I have no right to complain when we arrived home and have been here for 48 straight hours with no electricity.

So meeting together is also an opportunity for us to encourage each other.  I will say that Mennonites as a rule are not very verbose evangelists, or comfortable in the victorious Spirit-filled language of Charismatic Christians, but their witness of service in these very challenging places speaks volumes about their faith and what it means to serve Christ in the world.  I come away from these meetings feeling a sense of awe and pride that our family is able to be part of this witness, however cushy our assignment is by comparison.

The days were mostly but not all work and no play.  Although we did not get to go out on any extensive field trips, we did get to go out one evening for Ethiopian food.  For any of you who love it (the injera bread with those incredible spicy sauces) imagine having that in Ethiopia!  It was awesome!  I admit I get a craving for it every time I think of it.

A group of us also did go out one evening to get some Gelato.  This was a real treat for the kids who love icecream.  As you can see from the picture, Oren, David, and Conner enjoyed it thoroughly.

We did go out one evening for a walk in the neighborhood around the hotel as well.  While the Tegen Hotel was a lovely well appointed place, it was located in a fairly poor neighborhood.  Nonetheless, even in that brief sortie into the neighborhood I could sense a profound cultural difference between Ethiopians and Burundians.  Even as we passed numerous children, none of them were remotely interested in following us.  Those engaged in playing ball on the road would occasionally kick it to Oren to get him to join in, and one little kid came up to kiss David, but there just was not the fascination with 'mzungus' that we experience in Burundi.

There could be a lot of explanations for this but certainly Ethiopia's history is part of it.  An ancient culture with even its Christian roots going back to AD 300.  It was never colonized (except briefly by the Italians during WWII who were then routed by Emperor Haile Selassie who had been in exile.  All that to say, that Ethiopians all seem to exude a cultural pride that does not make them particularly enamored of Europeans.

The other thing worth mentioning is that it was REALLY COLD THERE!! That is to say it was like autumn weather in the US.  We had to wear long sleeved shirts, jackets, etc. and slept under very comfy down duvets.  Despite all the coziness, I did not sleep particularly well as I am now acclimatized to sleeping in fairly warm conditions.  I had a terrible time with a stuffed and runny nose that kept me up at night.

The meetings ended Saturday and we all headed home on Sunday morning.  The flight which stops in Nairobi both ways was not bad.  The plane for this trip was a wide body (boeing 757) and it was full to Nairobi, but only about a dozen of us continued on to Bujumbura.  It is always odd to feel like you have this enormous jet all to yourself.  The kids did enjoy the trip a lot as they like to go on airplanes and have their routines down both in the airport and on the plane.

Oren particularly likes to get meals on the flight and usually keeps his tray in front of him for over an hour to savor it all.

It is quite a contrast to fly on non-US carriers where serving food is standard procedure even for a short flight.  Between Nairobi and Addis which took about 1 hour 10 minutes we had a full meal which even included a free bottle of wine.  (In the US I have flown from Seattle all the way to NYC without hardly a snack.)

We got home Sunday afternoon and made plans to go out with our missionary friends Jesse and Joy Johnson.  Their kids and our kids ran around the grounds of a Chinese restaurant that Rebecca and I had never been to before.  It was not bad, and we had a great visit with Joy and Jesse who will be on a 5 month furlough in a few weeks.  They have not been home in 2 1/2 years so it is really needed and well deserved.

That about wraps up the highlights of the week. 2 milestones worth mentioning:
1) David's potty training seems about at an end.  He regularly gets himself to the potty.  (Oddly he prefers to squat on the seat and not sit.)  So I think we will not be buying anymore disposable diapers when this last bag is done.

2) He misplaced his pacifier on Monday and we told him it ran away.  He was not pleased the first night but has gone 8 days without mentioning it so I think those days are done as well.  It is good not to worry about always having to find it at bedtime, but I do feel a bit sad to see him growing up so quickly.  Next thing I know, he will be driving.

Bonus photo:  The boys with a lizard the dogs caught last Monday.  We brought it into the house and put it into a box thinking it was about dead.  But an hour later it was gone.  We found it the next day in our living room climbing up the screens of one of the windows.  It looks like an iguana with a very blue head.

Double Dipping into Illness

Rebecca in her Invutano at a dowry ceremony at the home of Janelle's host family.


One big change that has occured since our return that has nothing to do with culture, is David's personality.  I know many parents know what I am talking about, but I am surprised at how abruptly the 'terrible twos' came on in the past month.  The change is very marked.  No longer the happy-go-lucky child who wakes up humming a tune in the morning, his disposition is very sour, testy, and generally lousy.

As the parent of a an older child it is easier to recognize this phase.  When Oren entered it though, we thought it was just the way he was, a very intense, easily frustrated little guy who spent much of the day in a bad mood.  But low and behold, at the end of 5 and now 6 he is once again generally a very sweet natured happy kid.  So I guess we can look forward to the end of the phase for David in about a year and a half.  In the meantime we are bracing for at least one more year of tantrums with our last toddler.  It is some small consolation to know that this too shall pass.

Actually, quite independently of this was David's (and my) health.  Sadly, like the economy, we double dipped back into illness for most of the week after feeling we were on the road to recovery around Monday.  In fact David was spiking fevers up to 104.5 right up until Friday.  We did do several more Doctor visits and emailed our pediatrician at home for advice, but it all seems to have been pretty much a severe flu virus.

Because of this, David was home all week which put Rebecca and I back into an un-ideal 'tag-teaming' work mode rather than having mornings together to strategize on what we need to accomplish.  In fact since I was under the weather as well, I stayed home with David most mornings except Wednesday.

The other significant break in routine came as a result of a large number of MCC people who passed through Bujumbura on the way to one place or another and spent a night with us.  The first person to arrive last Santurday was Gopar Tapkida, our regional peace officer for Central West Africa (based in Nigeria).  He was on his way up to Gitega where he was teaching the first unit of the Great Lakes Peace Institute.  (an institute supported by MCC in Burundi as explained in this earlier blog entry: GLPI. )

Gopar did not actually stay the night, but did greet us on Saturday afternoon before heading for Gitega. Tim Lind, the MCC rep for DRC (Congo) arrived on Tuesday and was obliged to stay until Wednesday before heading to Bukavu in Eastern Congo.  He was visiting some partners in Eastern Congo and found that coming from Bujumbura would be the easiest way to get there.  I picked him up at the airport on Tuesday afternoon and brought him to our house for the night.  The next morning he was dropped off at a matatu taxi that travelled to Bukavu from Buja.

Wednesday, despite my less than ideal health was a travel day for me as I had several meetings I needed to attend in Gitega.   I needed to visit Innocent and Beatrice who run the Hope School for the Batwa as well as stop off at MiPAREC where the Great Lakes Peace Institute is held.  I went up fairly early with Felix.  We stopped at MiPAREC first and took in about an hour or so of the GLPI workshop led by Gopar before having lunch.  I was pleased to see that it was running well and now that I have been here for 3 years, was not surprised to hear that the whole thing had begun a day late as no one arrived on Sunday evening as planned.  (In Africa a start-time is more understood as a time to begin to end other activities to get ready to begin something new, not as an arrival time.)  But other than that it seemed to be going well and they had some very experienced peace builders participating.

In the afternoon Felix and I met with Innocent and Beatrice to go over some financial matters at the school and then left town at 3:10 pm.  Enough time to get down to Buja before dark as it is no longer considered safe to drive upcountry after dark in Burundi anymore because of rebel activity.

It is sad as this was the case when we arrived but it got better, now it is insecure again.

On Thursday we had another guest.  Jimmy Juma, the MCC regional peace officer for Southern Africa arrived in town on his way to Congo as well.  He also will be teaching at GLPI after Gopar so was eventually on his way up there.  He stayed the night with us on Thursday and we put him on a bus to Congo as well the next morning.

On Thursday afternoon Rebecca and Janelle attended a dowry ceremony for a sister of Janelle's host family.  Rebecca was our family rep since David and I were still sick.  It is always great to see her dawn her traditional Burundian Invutano (like a sari as shown above.)  Of course the photo was taken just moments before one of the women in attendance took Rebecca discreetly in the bathroom and 'readjusted' it completely seeing that Rebecca did not really have it on right.

The family is apparently very well connected to the Anglican church as many priests were in attendance and the Arch-bishop of the Anglican Church here played role of the 'Uncle' who negotiates the bride price with the husband's family.  (A ritualized performance that is often quite amusing but steeped in tradition.)

Friday was fairly low key and David and I were both feeling better.  In fact David went to school and I was able to swim and go to work in the morning with Rebecca.  I worked as well Friday afternoon writing reports about my Gitega visit.

Saturday was a nice break from work and in the afternoon our family went over to Entente Spotive where Rebecca and I swim.  It was an outing that began badly but ended very well.  The kids were in horrific moods (especially David).  Upon arriving and putting our towels down, a family of 4 children and 2 parents bizarrely moved from their place and set themselves up as an audience about 4 feet in front of us where we were setting out our towels etc.  It was very weird to have them all sitting on a step as if we were some kind of a circus act.  Things got worse when one of the children stole Oren's peanutbutter sandwich and really set him off.  I was ready to leave by then especially since neither child expressed any interest in swimming.

Fortunately our friend Naja was there with her 2 kids and we joined her for a bit and our kids' moods improved somewhat and the spectator family moved on.  Then after an hour they were having great fun and enjoyed a long time in the pool.  Oren decided to try the 3 meter platform again after not doing it for a year after he first did it.  He went off of it about 25 times and made a new friend who knew just enough English to count off for him when he was jumping.  1...2...3...jump!

We finished off the evening by going to Ubuntu for pizza for dinner.  Actually before we did that, we dropped Janelle at the wedding that was connected to the dowry ceremony I mentioned earlier.

Sunday was a bit of a work day again after church because Gopar and Jimi both came into town again and rendez-vous'd at our house as one was replacing the other at GLPI.  They talked for several hours on our porch before Jimi headed upcountry with Oscar from MiPAREC.  Janet hitched a ride up as well as she will be doing one unit of the training this week as well.

Gopar has remained with us as he will be heading to Ethiopia with us on Wednesday for our regional meetings.  (more on that later.)

Rebecca also has put in her own 2 cents about the experience of the week as well.  Here is her report:

I have realized more clearly over the last three years what a privilege health is. In the majority world – previously known as the third world – mothers do not live with the assumption that their children will be healthy and grow to adulthood. There is no sense that good health is an entitlement – instead it’s a rare blessing. Partially this is due to the more serious diseases which are endemic in the majority. But mainly this is due to the poor quality of health care available to the majority of the world. It’s unjust and terrible to know that many children die of diseases which could be easily treated, if only their parents had the money to pay for good treatment. But the parents don’t have the money and the children die. I hate this reality, and ending this type of disparity is part of why we want to be here in Burundi.

But let me be very honest: in the past week, I have had moments of longing to be back in the USA. As David went through several nights of running fevers at 104 degrees and above, I longed to be in a place where I could say, well “it’s either a flu or a throat infection.”  I was wishing for the privilege of living somewhere where malaria, typhoid and meningitis were not also on my list of things to worry about. And then wondering if David’s sickness was one of these last, where we would be able to get adequate treatment. Or if it was an infection, would we be able to get an antibiotic that could treat it effectively? Would we be sold a fake, or an expired drug? If we did a test for a disease, would it be accurate?

David has now been well since Friday and I am so thankful. Probably it was just another severe throat infection, something he could have gotten in Poughkeepsie NY, too. It’s been great to see him eating in the last two days (making up for almost a week of not eating). He’s been able to run and play and throw normal tantrums, instead of just lying on the couch in a stupor. But I know that even in this situation, we were able to access certain privileges to help him get well. We bought a reliable malaria test kit in Kigali for $4 (negative again) and used antibiotics imported by our pediatrician, which are not available on the market here. The average Burundian child could not afford to see our pediatrician, whose $20 consultation fees are very expensive for here, compared to the 50 cents to go to a government clinic and see a nurse of questionable expertise.

There’s something here that needs to be said. Our ideals, the faith which has led us to live in a country like Burundi are all very fine until we start to see one of our children suffer because of this. We aren’t about to run home because of a week of bad back-to-school flu. But it IS hard. I have felt very strained, knowing that David could have a serious illness because of our choice to live here. Strained just dealing with the illness itself. And also strained by the knowledge that I don’t have the faith or courage in me to live in true solidarity with my neighbors. If my child is ill, I am prepared, like any parent, to use every means in my power to help him get well, and yet I have so many more options available to me than even fairly middle-class people here, and  I can’t offer those means to everyone else around me. I hate the contradictions within myself that manifest themselves under pressure. 

Paul again:

I am hoping the trip to Ethiopia this week will be an opportunity to enjoy some great Ethiopian food.  I have to admit, our schedule since returning has been more 50% travel which means we have not been able to keep our very thoughtful routine in force.  Sadly there is no end in sight after we get back as the weeks between now and Christmas all have some travel for one or the other one of us every week.  

BONUS PHOTO

Artwork by Oren.  It is Martha the talking dog, his hero,
who he saw for the first time this summer on
PBS kids in Baltimore.

Kigali, Gitega, and a Hard Weekend

Yolanda looking out her kitchen window in Gitega.  She made the tree out of bottlecaps bent around string.


I mentioned several weeks ago the phenomenon here of the good and the bad here often being a zero sum game.  So to offset the nearly perfect weekend the week before, we had a far less than ideal one as all of us were a bit sick and David and I were actually quite sick.  All of us suffering with flu like symptoms, throat and ear infections, fever, etc.  Although David's has been as high as 103.5 we have not suspected malaria because of all the respiratory problems.

The timing of this is about right for the infections that happen when kids are back in school for a month.  Most everyone we know has been suffering with the same malady.  So today (Monday) David and I skipped school and work respectively and went to the doctor to get a check-up and a prescription of antibiotics.  I have said before that I have been on antibiotics here more in the past 3 years than in my entire life prior to arriving.  But infections here are rampant.  One of our friends poetically remarked that without winter 'nothing ever dies'.  So it seems that it is easy to catch any number of infections, respiratory, intestinal, in the skin, etc.

So the weekend was pretty laid back.  With fevers setting in on Friday we did get through morning yoga on Saturday, but decided to lie low in the house in the afternoon.  That was good because I had asked our electrician to install a second solar panel on our roof (which we had in the garage).  With the lack of electricity we are experiencing and the expectation now that change is not coming soon (the power company is not able to meet the growing demand), we are trying to keep our back-up power system as high-functioning as possible.  (We still can't run the fridge on it, though.)

As an aside, it is interesting to see the process of adding a solar panel begins with construction of tools.  Since we don't have a ladder to get to the roof of our house we had to buy one.  Unlike the US where one could get one at a hardware store, here, you go out to a construction site and buy about 8 lenghts of eucalpytis tree stalks and hire a carpenter to cut and nail them together for you.  (price=$6 for lumber, $3 for labor.)

Despite not feeling great Saturday evening, we did have a very nice dinner with Tim and Jeannette (our South African missionary friends.)  They invited us to arrive early for some surprise games they had planned.  Indeed were quite surprised to find that they had brought back a Wii from South Africa on their homeleave this summer and the four of us played DDR (Dance Dance Revolution)--while the kids watched a movie.  (If you don't know what DDR is, it is the video game where you have to do steps on a footpad corresponding to arrows on the screen in rhythm to music.  (I confess I have had the chance to play this in the past so I was actually quite good.-- Why I played in the past is a long story but it has to do with an experiment in a Cognitive Science class I helped design at Vassar during my academic days.)  In short, we had a blast!

We had dinner as well and it was really good to catch up with them.  We have had a small group in the past together and we discussed the possibility of restarting it.  One of the big problems last year is that we were the only 2 consistent couples, but with small kids one or both 'mom's' were off managing the children which meant that it left Tim and I and one other guy alone to do the small group.  We acknowledged the fact in our discussion that having a small group with kids our age was going to be a serious challenge.

Sunday we did go to church even though David was definitely sick. I took care of him while Rebecca taught Sunday school.  I did peek in a bit: she was teaching on the Lord's supper and had prepared a 'love feast'' for the kids with some pastry that looked like a donut hole and juice.  It seemed to go quite well considering how many kids are in the class.

I also tried to hear most of the sermon, preached by a Congolese woman pastor about the role of a pastor and the expectations the community should have about pastoral care.  I was struck by just how different cultural expectations are about pastors.  For instance I struggled with her call for pastors to receive a 'double portion' of the blessing.  And her call for members to bless the pastor with food and gifts otherwise "how can you expect him to pray for you if he is thinking, 'what has this person ever done for me?'"

All in all the sermon seemed well received by the Africans and the ex-pat westerners seemed non-plussed.

The rest of Sunday was again spent laying around at home while David nursed a high fever.  We watched a lot of videos which gave me a pretty big headache.

Going back through the week though, I am happy to say that prior to Friday, we were all in good health and did not miss any work or school.  It was, as I had mentioned, another travel week with Rebecca going to Rwanda from Tuesday to Thursday and me going to Gitega on Friday.

I will let her tell you about the trip to Rwanda:

Continuing on the theme of practicing solidarity with our volunteers, I traveled to Kigali by bus -- I'm ashamed to say it was the first time! It was actually a very pleasant way to travel, and the drivers of those coach buses are much better disciplined than the drivers of small taxis to Gitega. The border was a breeze and we stopped part way through Rwanda for a refreshment break at a place named "You cannot pass this place without stopping." I had a really yummy beef kebab on a reed for about forty cents. It was a quiet trip and I enjoyed listening to an audiobook called When Helping Hurts. 


On arriving in Kigali, I found our volunteer Krystan on the street. We had some errands to run in town, and then eventually met up with all the Rwanda team for dinner at an Indian restaurant. It was great to catch up with our two Rwanda SALTers and hear how their host families, language study and cultural discovery are going. Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be any major difficulties to report right now. It was also great to see how much Ruth and Krystan's daughter Misha has grown, and how she can express herself in sign language now.


I was staying on the Friends Church Compound in a room of the house of the missionary teachers there for a very reasonable sum. So it was easy to share breakfast with Ruth and Krystan, and then walk the 15 minutes up to Friends Peace House for a meeting. As usual, it took all morning, but it's good to check in with them. I also had the opportunity to stop by and see the Rwanda Children's Peace Library at the Friends' Church. SALTer Annie was there supervising a dozen kids as they were practicing their after school reading. The library looks great, with six new large shelves, semi-empty to receive the long-awaited shipment of books which left the USA in February. Unfortunately, there have been many major formalities to work through in re-exporting Rwanda portion of the books from Burundi, where the container arrived. It's not simple, but it looks as though we've jumped through almost all the hoops now. We sincerely hope the books will arrive in Rwanda for distribution in October. There was one more evening meeting before supper again with all the volunteers at Ruth and Krystan's house. 


My final errand in Kigali involved picking up an anti-rabies vaccine from a Belgian doctor. In brief, one of our volunteers was bitten by a dog in August and has had to get a series of rabies vaccines. She was able to get good quality vaccine and bring it here to Burundi. We asked the best local private hospital to store it in their generator backed-up fridge, and administer the vaccine on the normal schedule. It all went well, until the volunteer went to get the last dose. She found out that the generator had been broken for two weeks! And during this time, our city has had power cuts that lasted up to two days. So her vaccine was no longer reliable. We felt that if the best private hospital couldn't keep their vaccine cold, we didn't know whom we could trust to have a reliable vaccine available anywhere in Burundi.  So I brought back the replacement dose, wrapped up with cold packs and 3 frozen mozzerella cheese balls (something special from Kigali). Hopefully, this is the end of the saga! I arrived back in time to go with Paul and the kids to the horse place in Bujumbura for a little play time on Thursday evening. And back to Paul...



The trip to Gitega was interesting despite the fact that its purpose was not an activity I relish.  We were celebrating the 15th anniversary of one of our partners MiPAREC.  This peace and development organization was actually founded with the help of MCC during the crisis (civil war).  It has had a significant impact in reducing tension and resolving conflicts in the countryside through local peace committees.

An anniversary celebration in this French-African culture requires certain things,  a lavish banquet, music and dancing, (burundian drummers) a string of government officials and NGO partners to make speeches.  And a long list of acknowledgement and presentation of certificates of appreciaton for just about everyone who has been involved and is on the invited list.

I actually went up with Janelle (our SALTER) and Yolanda (she was getting a ride back to Gitega).  So they participated in the ceremony as well.  I was one of the people invited to give a speech and I had it prepared and proofread by Felix ready for presentation.  I even wore a suit, and it is the first time, I think, that I have worn a tie in Burundi.

I think the speech went well, I was sandwiched between the Governer of Gitega Province and the 2nd Vice President of the Country.  (Neither of them showed but they sent their emissaries to speak in their stead.)  I did manage, in listening to other speeches catch all the important names that must be mentioned before beginning my speech...

Excellence M. Le Vice President
Excellence M. L'Ambassadore de la commission de Verité et Reconcilliation
Honorable Deputé
Honorable Conseilleur de Gouvernor de Gitega
M. Le Represantant Legale de L'Eglise Evangelique des Amis
M. Le Directeur de MiPAREC
M. Le President de l'assemblé generale,
Invitees Distingués
Mesdames, Messieurs...

I tried to talk a little about the history of MCC and MiPAREC even though I was not present for most of it, and did get one good line in about MiPAREC springing into bloom at the time of the crisis, like a flower in a battefield.

Anyway, it was well received and afterward we all went and shared a very large meal together which included several layer cakes.  Afterwards we said our goodbyes in time to be able to get back to Bujumbura before dark.

We stopped at Yolanda's house briefly. which was the first time Janelle had had a chance to see where Yolanda lived.  We spent about a half hour there then headed back down to Buja.  The fever started hitting about midway home, and you know the rest.