#200

Rebecca talking to Tanja on our hike in Igenda this last week.


With this entry I reach yet another milestone in bloglore.  #200.  Apparently I have been faithful enough to post 200 entries (pretty much weekly) for nearly 4 years.  (I will mention our 4 year anniversary here when it arrives in July.)  It actually astounds me, first that we have been here for this long, but secondly, that I have been able to keep this writing up for so long.

As part of my reflection on this accomplishment I went back to #100 to see what I had to say then and I was posing the question to myself about who I imagine I am writing this to?  To a great degree what I said then still holds true, I do imagine these stories being read by my children at some time in the future to let them know about their childhood here.  Of course I do imagine family in Baltimore and friends in Poughkeepsie, NY reading, but I have also found it interesting to see how this record of our time here has attracted some unlikely readers.  We have had a half dozen inquiries from people intending to move to Burundi (particularly families) about what to bring, where to go to school, where to look for housing, etc.  Several have ended up becoming close friends.

I have also had a couple of donor organizations ask for advice on where to give in Burundi and 1 even made a connection to one of our partners here.  I do occasionally get emails from people in other countries complimenting the stories or photos.  So it has had an unexpected reach.

I admit that as faithful as I have been about posting it, I would find that if I relied purely on my desire, rather than my will to write it, I would have quit long before now.  I rarely find myself running breathlessly to the computer to write everything down anymore.  Honestly, it often feels like a kind of Monday night chore (like milking the cows).   On the other hand, I feel like I have become a better writer over time and sometimes I find it easier to face a particularly enduring challenge when I can think of a way I might make it into a story for this blog.

One confession I should make is that our lives are probably not nearly as unified in a narrative sense as I try to make the weekly recounts on this blog.  I have to cut away a lot of the hum-drum moments to make it sound as action packed as it may seem.  (I think I take after the author of the book of Mark in the Bible, my favorite Gospel.)

s'mores!

This week feels a bit like school should be ending in a few days.  This is because we had two big events this week that felt end-of-schoolish.  The first was a holiday this past Tuesday (May 1--International Workers Day).  Since school was out our family and several other families with kids decided to go together for an outing up to Ijenda, which I have described in past blogs as a bit like Switzerland in Burundi.  Probably one of its most outstanding features is the chance it offers to hike in a relatively unpopulated area.  This is great for the kids who often attract a crowd as they walk in other places.  We were 5 families in all and amazingly, each representing a different nationality.  We had Denmark, Holland, Germany, Canada, and the US represented between about 8 adults and a dozen children.  It was interesting to find that while the adults could all communicate to each other in English, the only language the kids shared was French.  Since most were friends in school they were used to this, but it was interesting to hear them converse with each other in their second language.

At the end of a very nice 2 hour hike we came back and had lunch at a restaurant/ guest house that we like up there.  We were lucky because the weather just started to get cool and cloudy when we returned and we were able to have a fire in a round chalet style restaurant there.

After lunch, Rebecca surprised everyone by pulling out the ingredients for s'mores! --an American treat that no one but the Canadian's had ever heard of.  The kids and adults all really enjoyed roasting marshmallows over the fire on sticks and squishing them between pieces of Graham cracker and Hershey's Chocolate.  It was nice that the Americans could make a cultural contribution to the afternoon that was a real hit.

We went home in the late afternoon.  Scott and his 2 sons were in the car with us and we enjoyed talking to him on the way back.

Swami Bela :-)

The rest of the week was fairly normal until the weekend.  We managed to maintain our routines with work, swimming, and alternating going into the office in the afternoons.  I continue to teach ballet to kids in the afternoon on Wednesday's and to adults in the evening.  I have a picture of the class of younger girls showing off their sou-sous at the barre.  (I should add that this is the most challenging venue where I speak french although fortunately all the ballet vocabulary is already in french.)

On Saturday we had yoga in the morning where we said our final good-bye to Bela who left on a plane on Sunday.  I have a great picture of him showing off his balance here.  We will miss him here in Burundi, although his wife and kids are here until the end of the school year.

On Saturday afternoon we returned to school to watch the annual Spring festival.  This is a huge event at the Ecole Belge and all the kids in each class of the maternelle and primary spend weeks preparing song-and-dance numbers to show the parents.  There is a lot of work on costumes and sets as well.  This year's theme was movie revues and there were many creative (and risquee) offerings.  My favorite was selections from Mary Poppins by 4 and 5 year olds.  David's class did a little skit based on the movie Pocahontas, as they have been learning about the Plain's Indians in their class this year.  (An American kid learning about the Plains Indians in Burundi taught by Belgians--wow!)

Oren's class did kind of a spring love story and he was some kind of cupid-like angel who had to blow some magic dust (styrofoam peanuts) on a couple then dance in a circle with them.  David pretty much just sat in a canoe holding a little fishing rod, he did not seem to be very aware he was on stage.  In fact just before the show I found him sound asleep in the room where his class was getting made-up.  If I would not have awakened him I am sure he would have missed it entirely.

It was a lot of fun though because everyone is there.  The secondary school kids had made various carnival games for the younger kids to play and win prizes.  There was also the inevitable bouncy castle.

The one disappointment was probably the cotton candy.  Oren had his heart set on getting some so he and Rebecca stood in line for nearly an hour with him to get some.  When they got close to the front the adults pushing in line were so aggresive that Rebecca had to take Oren out of the line so he would not get hurt.  She was annoyed by all the butting-in but waited patiently for her turn.  But as a result, the moment she finally got to the front the machine broke down so they did not get any which was really disappointing for Oren.


Standing in line is a real cultural challenge here because no one ever does.  Everyone always pushes to the front and does not wait for their turn.  When Oren asked Rebecca why, she told him it was the 'spirit of poverty here'.  In a way she is right but I think the cotton candy experience points to a reality here, that is that if you don't push, you are likely to get nothing.  That is the truth about poverty.  I think people are used to experiencing that and have learned to survive by not being last.

Despite that the afternoon was nice and we enjoyed seeing friends again.

Sunday was another adventure as I had volunteered to be the translator for the sermon this week.  Normally we do get the text in advance so we have an idea of what will be said, but this time the pastor, our friend Emmanuel Ndikumana did not have time for a prepared text as he was coming back from a trip to Burkina Faso.  I think I did pretty well all things considered, but it was a big challenge.  The hardest thing I found to translate was humor.  Emmanuel likes to make subtle jokes sometimes and I have to admit, it was hard for me to tell when he was saying something that was supposed to be funny.  I think humor is fairly culturally subjective, so I often had to have him clarify the punchline to me before I translated (which does detract from the humorous timing considerably.)

Those are the highlights of the week.  I did say that it felt like school was coming to an end, but the truth is classes do not end here until June 29th, so we have a ways to go.

I did ask, in blog #100 for some of you who read this regularly or irregularly to leave a comment and let me know who you are and maybe what you like about it.  If you are someone who I do not know at all I would really be interested to know how you found it and why you read it.  I think I do need some encouragement to get to #300 which will be close to the end of our assignment here.

Bonus Photo:  The kids got haircuts Saturday night.
Hopefully the last buzz cuts before Homeleave.