Grandma Jean's Fourth Visit part 1

The family reading Tintin Au Congo, brought by Grandma Jean for a Christmas present.  Disclaimer: I love Tintin adventures but I do not recommend reading this particular Tintin in Africa or even bringing it here.  Not only is it racist, but he also kills an elephant for its tusks and blows up a passive rhino with a stick of dynamite.  (It probably does give a fairly accurate picture of how Europeans of the era saw Africans though!)



I think time must accelerate as one grows older or else these blog posts are getting closer together because the days are growing shorter.  It seems like I was just writing about our awesome vacation when FLASH another week goes by.

We had actually returned last Monday, several days before school started again but we planned to take Tuesday and Wednesday off to settle back into our home and ease back into work.  We were also preparing for our special visitor, Grandma Jean!  This is Rebecca's mom who has now made her 4th trip to see us here in Burundi.

This will actually be a combination work and family visit as she will be with us for most of the month of January.  While all of us are in town, she will be helping to build capacity at the medical library of Hope Africa University, located in Bujumbura.  But in the next 3 weeks both Rebecca and I will have to take trips separately.  Rebecca will be going to Uganda next week to lead worship at a regional conference, then I will be going upcountry the following week to assist a mission team that is visiting the Hope School for the Batwa.

Jean will stay in Buja with me while Rebecca is in Uganda, but will accompany me the following week to Rwanda to pick up the team and then go to Burasira to spend the week at the school with me while Rebecca stays with the kids.  The reason Jean will come with me is that she will help organize the books sent by MCC to the Hope School during the week the mission team is there.

That is the 'why' of her visit, but the 'how' began on Wednesday night with her arrival on Brussels Air from Brussels. The flight was scheduled to arrive at 8pm and although that is a bit late on a school night (actually the night before the first day back) we took the kids because they were too excited to stay home.  We were not the only ones out to meet the flight.  This is a twice per week flight directly from Europe and on this particular night, many of the kids, teachers and families who go to school here were coming back after the holidays.

The flight was on time and we were allowed to enter the airport and wait by the exit from customs.  (With 200 hundred others).  The kids amused themselves by sitting and playing on the dirty tiled floor (with some other kids who were also awaiting family members.)

Jean finally emerged about 45 minutes after the flight arrived with her 3 bags intact.  In the interim I was amused to see almost all the faculty of the Ecole Belge returning including both directors and Oren's teacher.  I guess they did lesson plans on the plane since school was beginning in the morning.

The kids were thrilled to see Grandma Jean when she emerged and hugged her.  We went to the car together and drove home.  There was much anticipation about Grandma Jean opening her suitcases since it was no secret that she was bringing a trove of presents from the cousins and other family in the US.  Despite the late hour we did open some gifts that night.

Actually when we opened the suitcase we found that a container of Equal (artificial sweetener) had popped open (cabin pressure? TSA?)  and it was kind of like her suitcase was full of snow in which the toys were hidden.  (Something Oren would have loved!)

The biggest surprise was a robot dinosaur (#1 on Oren's Christmas list request.) named Cruncher.  Oren had asked for one for Christmas, and we told him that was probably impossible. But our resourceful sister-in-law Gwendolyn hunted down this incredible creature on the internet and sent him on the plane.

Although we did not get the batteries until the next day, it was quite impressive.  With batteries it is even more impressive in that it takes advantage some of the latest advances in sensor technology to do some interesting and hilarious things without a remote control.  He moves around, roars, talks, snickers, dances, can catch food and chomp it up, learns tricks, responds to petting, can act as a motion and sound sensitive watchdog, even 'farts' when you pull his tail.  He also cries like a puppy if you pick him us or knock him over (and yells "I've fallen and I can't get up".  It should provide hours of amusement for the us....er I mean the kids :-)

Jean also brought plenty of chocolate from the US and an overnight in Belgium (home of Godiva chocolates).  Most of the chocolate is gone as of this writing.

We did eventually get to bed on Wednesday night and got up for school on Thursday morning.  The kids did not really seem to mind going back and went without any fuss.  It was good to start back with only two days before the weekend though.

The weekend was enjoyable and we did some touristy things with Grandma Jean during the day.  Saturday we went to Musee Vivante which is the local zoo.  It features some animals from the region including a variety of poisonous snakes, crocodiles, a chimp, leopard and other various and sundry things.  What is always interesting about a third world zoo is the amount of close up interaction you can have with the animals.  No one will stop you, for instance, if you want to jump into the pen with the crocodile and touch it, or pull its tail.  There is also the option of buying a guinea pig for about $8 to feed to one of the animals.

I know it is humane society nightmare, but I confess a certain desire to interact with the animals.  The chimp whose partner recently died is lonely.  When we walked up to the cage (no retaining wall) she reached out and touched David and Oren.  We shook hands then she took my arm and started grooming it.  It was easy to tell she was quite depressed.  What was a bit unnerving was that when I tried to pull away, she held my arm gently but very firmly in a way that made me realize I would not be able to get free until she released me.  I did not panic but let her groom and distracted her a bit with a set of keys in my other hand.  She eventually let go.

The leopard was behind a kind of thick chicken wire and when he put his back against it, one could scratch his back and ears which he seemed to like.  Guides will offer to let you handle the python and other non poisonous snakes in the reptile house.   David had a green banana tree snake draped around his neck much to the horror of some Burundian onlookers.  But he loved it.

All in all it was an interesting experience that is hard to match at the more civilized humane zoos in the 'developed' world.

Saturday night Grandma Jean agreed to watch the kids while Rebecca and I went out and had some time with friends--Tanja and Stephen who are German and working with the Anglican church.  It was great to have some adult conversation.  We got home close to midnight.

Sunday promised to be an interesting day as I had accepted an invitation to go to the opening of a small Mennonite church in rural Bujumbura about 10k out of the city.  I have to admit that I do not really like to attend these events as I am invited in an official capacity and feel a bit like some kind of a big white seated statue whose purpose is to be just that.

I also do not like the fact that these are often very drawn out events that extend well beyond the time of a normal church service, even here.  I did ask the pastor who invited me to please arrange to have me arrive about the time the actual service begins rather than when they 'say' it begins.

He assured me that the church service began at 9am.  I met him at my office about then in a taxi (Rebecca, Jean, and the kids went to our church.)  and we headed to the church down some very difficult roads and arrived about 9:30.  We were of course the first ones there.  About 10 minutes later the musicians arrived to begin set up.  Long story short, we got underway about 11:00 am.  The church was the size of a large bedroom and about 100 people were crammed in there with more folks on the outside. I would say about 80 percent of the attendees were in one of the 4 choirs that each sang a long set, some twice, during the course of he service.

The service ended about 2pm and after sharing a fanta and dropping the pastor at his home, I got back home about 3:15 pm.  It was a very long day.

There was an odd parallel I felt to the experience of having the chimp hold my arm in a gentle but unremovable grasp the day before.  That is how these experiences often feel to me.  There is a desire to keep me as long as possible and while everything is done in a very hospitable way, it is clear that leaving before they are ready to have you go is not an option.

I generally had a good attitude though and watched with interest at the way they did evangelism.  Basically sticking a huge loudspeaker outside the church in a tree and having it blast throughout the commune.  Actually the music was not bad.  By the end of the service there were about 100 people gathered around outside.  The fact that there was a mzungu in attendance made the event even that much more interesting.

When I got home our family went out and enjoyed some time on the beach.  It was good to see our friends Scott and Danika there with their 2 boys, back from Christmas vacation in Canada.

This week we are back into a fairly normal routine with the addition that Jean is going to work as well at Hope Africa University.  The first day went well for all of us.

Just a short note about the weather.  We are in the season they call the little dry season.  It is about a month at the beginning of the year.  It is not like the longer dry season in that the heat and humidity are more extreme.  There are also regular severe thunderstorms and torrential downpours that are short but very violent.

We had two in a row last week, one brought hail that did a lot of property damage in the popular quarters and actually drove several centimeters of water onto our porch and into some of the rooms of our house. I will look forward to the end of this season and the return of the more normal and temperate rainy season this spring.

Bonus Photo:  Ladies' night out.  This is what Rebecca was doing while I was writing the blog this evening.  In the pic is Jeanette (S.Africa), Jean (USA), Naja (Denmark), Rebecca, and Tanja (Germany) at Geny's Cafe in Bujumbura.