All Africa Meeting in Zambia

Rebecca Oren and David enjoying cotton candy, a rare treat, on a free afternoon during our regional meetings in Zambia.

I am trying to get, in bits and pieces, news about the hurricaine Sandy that is thrashing the Eastern Seaboard of the US, between meetings and when I am able to get a good internet signal. The circumstances that we find ourselves to today is our last afternoon of regional meetings in Lusaka, Zambia. We have been here since last Tuesday, and like that day we will be leaving for the airport at midnight tonight to catch a 2am flight back to Bujumbura, arriving about noon tomorrow (Wednesday).

Arriving after having little sleep last week was not ideal, as I mentioned in my last post. The flights were smooth enough and the kids were even reasonably well behaved given the late departure. Oren did score some strategic points in immigration when he laid down on the floor in front of the immigration official's booth. They felt so bad for him that they let Rebecca, David and him go on through to the departure lounge while I finished all of the paperwork and security checks. We arrived in Nairobi about 5:30 am and had a 3 hour layover before departing for Lusaka. In Nairobi we were joined by about a dozen other people from different parts of the continent as well as the US and Canada, who were on their way to the same meeting. Nairobi is a hub airport in Africa and many intracontinental flights are routed through there.

nice pool, no water

We got to Lusaka at about 11am and were met by MCC Reps from Zambia at the airport who loaded us into vans and pickups to take us to The Great East Hotel, where we were to have all of our meetings. I did take a peak at it online and we were excited to see that it had a pool, airconditioned rooms, and internet access. The reality was a bit below the expectation. The pool was empty and being retiled. The proprietor assured us it would be finished by 'tomorrow' and now on the last day here, I can confirm that indeed 'tomorrow' in Zambia means the same thing it does in Burundi. (--Sometime in the indefinite future beyond a week.)

Nonetheless the airconditioning did work and there were a few pieces of only slightly hazardous playground equipment on the grounds for kids and a large yard area for playing. Our interest in children's activities was sparked by the fact that much of our days would be spent in meetings and having engaging things for kids to do on-site was important so that we could keep focused on the work. (Child care was planned for as well.)

It probably took a few days for the magnitude and importance of this gathering to sink in. I think it only finally hit home for me on Sunday morning when we visited a local Anabaptist (Brethren in Christ) congregation and were asked to introduce ourselves. Eric, the Zambia representative introduced us by country, we had MCC reps from: Chad, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa (Lisutu and Swaziland). From North America we had program directors from MCC US and Canada, as well as about a half dozen other people with various other leadership responsibilities. As I listened to each couple or individual introduce themselves I was honestly a bit overwhelmed to realize that we were the MCC leadership team from all of Africa meeting and now worshiping together. On the first day we did a little exercise totalling up the amount of Africa experience this represented and it was over 450 years collectively.

greeting line after church

I think we overwhelmed the small BIC church we were attending as well as we made up about the half the congregation that day. The service was nice and not too long (2.5hours). We had been told we might be asked to present a song and many of us were prepared having rehearsed two hymns the night before that were a striking contrast to the more rhythmic offerings up to that point, but rendered in truly angelic 4 part harmony. (Mennonites are amazing singers if you did not know.) 

Sunday was not the first day of our time together and I will back up to Tuesday again when we arrived to the hotel and unfilled swimming pool. We did get settled in and the kids immediately found a few old and new friends. From our region the couple from Burkina Faso, Chad and Isa, have a boy Oren's age and a little girl as well. (Conner and Olivia). The exciting news though was the arrival of a new rep for Nigeria, AND a new rep family for Chad! The Austins—Jonathan and Angela and their 4 kids Caleb, Johnny, Hannah, and Lilly, has just arrived on the continent and had come to the All Africa meeting on the way to their assignment. Caleb is Oren's age and the rest are younger, but all the kids really enjoyed playing together throughout the 6 days of meetings.

Africa is divided into 3 regions by MCC, the South, East and Central West. We are in the latter with the countries of Chad and Burkina Faso, as well as DRC and Nigeria. Actually all the families with children are in our region which is nice for our kids because it makes these meetings feel a bit like a family reunion.

We began our first plenary session on Tuesday night after dinner, then met each day as a large group on Wednesday through Saturday in the mornings. In the afternoons we had breakout sessions and smaller sub-regional meetings. Each day had a theme, the Wednesday was on MCC structure and the changes that have happened in the last year, Thursday was on food security and disaster management, and Friday we talked about relating to the local Anabaptist church in our context. (That varies a lot between regions as not all of us have an Anabaptist church in our countries.)

The meetings were informative and gave old and new reps an opportunity to talk with people at the 'home office' about policy and implementation, both practical, logistical questions as well as philosophical ones. (Questions like: Is MCC in its ecclesial mission “The Church” or an arm of “The Church”.) I think we all came away with a renewed sense of shared vision.

There were some special events, on Wednesday night we all went out to an Indian restaurant, on Thursday afternoon we took the kids and others interested to a zoo/swimming pool. The zoo was interesting, it featured lions and other savannah wildlife. One lion was gnawing on the leg of a zebra that I guess had been fed to her. Generally, like in Bujumbura, one can get quite close to the animals and must use good judgment to avoid getting bitten or kicked by ostriches, baboons, camels, zebras, etc.

very crowded pool

The pool was once again not to be. We arrived at the pool connected to a giant water slide to discover it packed with rough-housing kids to the point where we feared for the safety of our own entering the water. There was a nice playground though that the kids enjoyed playing in, and best of all there was a cotton candy stand, a treat that is all but non-existent in Burundi.

Sunday was a day of rest that began with church and ended with a trip to a mall and then an evening at the home of the MCC reps who have a lovely home and garden. I should say a bit about my impression of Lusaka here as our trip to the mall was one of the few times that we traveled outside the compound of the hotel.

I would say in brief that it has perhaps the feel of a large Mexican city, like Tijuana. The modern malls are gigantic and have everything one would expect to find at a mall in the US, including food courts with Subway, Wimpy's, KFC, and other franchises. There are shops like Kinkos, Staples, Walmart, and other first world businesses. There is obviously a Zambian middle class as well as many whites from South Africa and Zimbabwe who have emmigrated here. But there are also areas of the town with traditional markets and poverty. (Hence my comparison to Mexico.) The climate has been pretty hot for most of our time here although we did have a couple of cool days. Generally the enormous size of the city and the availability of all the comforts of modern urban life make it seem a very far cry from Bujumbura. It seems hard to believe this is Africa as well.

The last two days of meetings (this Monday and Tuesday) we divided into regional groups and spent time talking about particulars of our region. Again, it was good to see a full contingent of reps in our region after serious concerns that we would not be able to fill the Nigeria and Chad positions.

Generally the discussions were interesting and we had time to talk with Congo reps about collaboration between our country programs and small ways we might work for peace between Rwandese and Congolese who are currently on the opposite sides of the emerging conflict in Eastern Congo. (Rwanda and Uganda have been accused of aiding and abetting the rebel group-M-23 that is wreacking havoc in Eastern Congo.) There is considerable tension between the two countries right now.

Ruth Clemens, the MCC US International Program Director was with us in our meetings and it was good to have her strategize with us. Since she is also part of our Mennonite Church in Baltimore (North Baltimore Mennonite Church) it was good to see her and here news from home as well.

I see it is about 10pm. Our flight leaves in about 2 hours and I want to get a shower and an hour of sleep before the taxi arrives so I will stop here. The kids and Rebecca are in bed already.

We will be arriving back in Bujumbura just in time to begin our MCC team retreat. All of our service workers and SALTers will be at our house when we arrive and we will be heading to Kigoma Tanzania by car on Thursday morning. Pray that we will receive divine rest in the few hours that we will actually be able to close our eyes.

Squeezing In a Birthday

Rebecca hanging ladybug balloons in preparation for David's Birthday.

I feel like I am racing against time to get this blog up before we leave on a plane to Zambia. It would be ideal to have this posted before we go. The problem is that the flight is at 2:30 in the morning and our taxi arrives at midnight. Rebecca and the kids have just fallen asleep at 9:30pm which leaves me a couple hours to write. But do I want to do this or sleep?

The reason for the Zambia trip is an all Africa MCC regional meeting which is going on all this week. It should be interesting although the travel could not be less ideal. In order to minimize the number of school days missed, we have opted to take night flights. Unfortunately these leave at exceptionally late hours and could not be less ideal for travel with young children. The good news is that the kids will only miss 4 days of school. The following week is fall break but we have a team retreat scheduled for Tanzania (right after we get back). The return to a normal routine is really nowhere on the horizon for me. After these two weeks I will need to go up to Rwanda to place our new service worker Matt who will be arriving in a few days.

It seems this is pretty much typical of our work here. Not that it is insanely busy all the time, but rather that there are periods of a great deal of hustling and bustling with short lulls in between.

This past week was spent entirely in Bujumbura, a small blessing, but it has not been slow at all. I feel like we have been in meetings or hosting people almost everyday. Among our visitors were Peter and Linda Taylor, some friends of ours here who are getting married. We made arrangements on Monday evening to host an engagement party at our house. Jodi Mikalachki, our former service worker at Hope School, who is now working with an English language initiative through the US embassy, was with us on Tuesday evening. We do not get to see her often eventhough she is in town.

Wednesday was a busy afternoon with me teaching several dance classes for the normal Wednesday teacher as well as taking Oren to soccer. The good thing is that Oren's soccer practice is in the field right outside the dance studio. Rebecca and David usually come over and hang out with the other mom's and kids watching either the dance class or the soccer practice. This routine is repeated on Friday as well only I teach adults in the evening on Friday too.

Tuesday's and Thursday's Oren does karate, so we do spend a significant amount of time going to his activities. I usually take him to the karate class at the French school. David goes with me while Rebecca takes the afternoon shift at work on those days.

Oren's homemade Roadrunner 

Friday I think it all came to a head when several folks came down from Gitega who were participating in the GLPI conference. When I got home from teaching in the evening I found we had 3 guests, Michael Sharp, Violette (the trauma healing facilitator for that week) and an MCC DRC partner. Fortunately most of them left later in the evening, but both Rebecca and I were really beginning to feel the strain of excessive hospitality.

Probably the thing putting the most pressure on us this past week, was trying to plan for David's 4^th Birthday party. His actual Birthday is the 29^th of Oct. but we realized it would be impossible to have a kids party on that date with all of our travel. We decided to schedule it for Saturday and invited several of his friends and their families. Invitees included the Miller's (Joel and Jeanette), Tim and Jeanette with Isabel, the Ivaska's and their daughters, Thomas and Naja's family, several German friends with kids in Oren and David's classes, and a few others. It was actually a very big group, and consistent with tradition, David and Oren wanted a costume party AND a piniata. That is all well and good, but with absolutely no evenings free it was not clear how all of these preparations would be accomplished.

I was able to get a start on the piniata on Wednesday evening and paper mache'd a balloon. I was not exactly sure what I was going to make, but David was going to be a ladybug for his costume so I thought that might be a good theme. (Actually David wanted to be a 'bug scientist, but we were not sure how to dress him up as that.) Oren wanted to be a road runner.

On Thursday we were able to start painting the balloon and by Friday evening it was ready to be stuffed with candy and hung. (Thanks Krystan for leaving paints at the Kigali house to paint the ladybug with!) We worked on the kids costumes with them when we had some spare moments and by Saturday morning they were pretty much complete.

ladybug piniata

We had a leisurely morning on Saturday after yoga, hanging around at Nina and Bela's house for several hours after we were done. It will be sad to see their family leave at the end of November, but she will be finishing her assignment with GIZ and returning to Germany.

The house was a bit of a mess but we somehow managed to get it arranged by the time the first guests arrived. We cleared about half the living room of furniture so we would have some indoor space for games in case it rained. Miraculously it did not the entire time of the party. I say this because if there is one thing I can say about the rainy season this year, it is that it is one of the wettest I have seen in my 4 years here. It seems to be raining almost constantly. It is great for our gardens, but extremely inconvenient, especially when it happens during morning rush hour. This can extend our 5 minute drive to school by up to 45 minutes because of the number of accidents on the road.

When most of the guests had arrived we started the costume party with a costume contest. There were quite a variety of costumes, several of the little girls were princesses and balerina's (one pioneer woman) while the boys were football and soccer players. Oren and David were probably the only 2 animals represented. They did a nice costume parade and the winners got prizes.

We played musical chairs next, several times in fact. It is interesting to see how popular the old standards are at a Birthday party. We also brought out the parachute and played with that as well.

The piniata was a big hit after David opened his presents which was followed by Birthday cake. (We copped out and had one made.) David very much enjoyed being the Birthday boy as he has been to quite a few Birthday's in the last year and has asked several times when his is.

Among his favorite presents were a number of bath toys, probably because he is always SO dirty, and Elias and Aviaja gave him a bug collectors container with a magnifying glass built into the top. It is excellent for magnifying bugs and David LOVES it.

When guests left in the evening it felt like the first time we were alone in the house as a family for a week. It was not completely unscheduled time though, as I had volunteered to teach Oren's Sunday school class the next morning. Despite somewhat last minute preparation, it went very well as I had a moment of genius on telling the story of Jacob and Esau from the point of view of Isaac. I dressed up in a blanket with a headband like a shepherd and hung a black platic bag from my ears to look like a beard and dark glasses (because I was blind.) I sat and told the kids the story as if I was Isaac recounting being tricked by Jacob, but I did like a kind of cooky, grouchy old man, (who probably looked somewhere between a bedouin and a terrorist). The kids found it very funny, but were also extremely engaged in the story.

adult's corner

We talked about times they had been tricked by someone or had tricked someone. There were many amusing stories about brothers tricking each other, (especially to get access to a gameboy). The lesson went very well and I actually really enjoyed teaching it.

After church we went home and spent some time with Michael Sharp before our Bible study. Several other GLPI participants who had come down to Bujumbura for the weekend rendez-vous-d at our house before heading back up to Gitega.

The timing was again tight so there was really no time between their departure and the arrival of our Bible Study group. It was great to them (just Tim and Jeanette and the Ivaskas this week), despite the lack of 'down time'.

Sunday evening we began to pack and plan for our departure tonight (Monday). We did send the kids to school today so they would not miss too much. Sadly, despite considerable effort, we were not able to take a morning swim ourselves. The reason for this was that they have officially closed our pool “Entente Sportif” for several months while they do a major renovation. I hope it will be more permanent than the one they did about a year and a half ago. (The broken tiles replaced on the bottom of the pool came back up after 3 months.)

We tried several other places but for various reasons were not able to swim. We are hoping to find another pool where we can continue this very important part of our weekly routine. It is an important part of keeping us from getting too stressed out from the kinds of things that weeks like this past one can require of us.

We are still struggling with fuel shortages, although I have been able to continue to exploit my taxi-driver connection to get gas for a small service fee. (He also picks up and delivers the car so it has definitely been worth it.) I am hoping the crises ends soon though.

There have been other stressors this week, we have had a number of tech items fail including a computer, ipod and hardrive. I won't go into too much detail because I don't want to be a complainer, but suffice it to say that a couple weeks away from Burundi are not entirely unwelcome, even if much of the time will be spent in meetings.

Hopefully I will be able to post again at the end of this week from Zambia.   

Welcoming Melody and Celebrating Abundance

David playing with the Noel on the porch.

If I had to characterize the sense I have about the beginning of our 5^th year in a word, it would probably be 'abundance'. It may seem surprising to say in a place where scarcity is something we are experiencing in the petrol and sugar market. But in our work and life here there is really a sense in which we have received a rich blessing of friends, colleagues, and 'workers in the vineyard' with us.

This is evident in several different areas of our lives. I will try to make a list here of the ways in which we have experienced this (not necessarily in order of importance):

1. We have several new American families here that have become good friends. The Ivaska's (JJ and Courtenay) and the Millers (Joel and Jeanette) with their kids have been a pleasant reminder of the some of the cultural uniquenesses of Americans that we sometimes miss. Sam Miller, Joel and Jeanette's 7 year old is in Oren's class and a very good friend. I have never seen anyone crack Oren up so much. He thinks Sam is absolutely hilarious and I think they have even gotten into some trouble at school by sharing jokes during class time. I admit as an adult I have trouble appreciating the rather broad allusions of 7 year old humor. ( I asked Oren what was making him giggle uncontrollably all the way home in the car one day and he said that Sam had whispered “Qu'est-ce-que tu bottom?” to him in class. --I am guessing it sounded to Sam a lot like the French expression Qu'est-ce-que tu pense? )
2. Our small group is growing larger: With the arrival of anglophone newcomers to our church this year we are finding our small group has been growing quite a bit. We may even have to split in two if it gets any bigger, but it is really good to see people committed to meet together weekly and support each other through prayer, study and fellowship.
3. My dance classes are really awesome this year. I have now committed Friday afternoons (3-7) to teaching dance. This is my 4^th year of doing this at the Belgian School and this year with many new children joining the first level and more than 10 returnees in the second level, I have an awesome group who are really ready to learn something this year. Another surprise is to find 10 adults, some with considerable past experience, who are willing to come out and do my 6-7pm adult class. I am actually excited about this extra-curricular activity. Saturday morning yoga is also now a fairly stable group of about a dozen.
4. Our team is growing a lot this year and we will be 14 (including David and Oren) at our retreat at the beginning of November. For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, I am sure it must seem like some dramatic series that suddenly added a confusingly large number of new cast members. We added another this week, and still another is coming in about 10 days.
5. Our fruit trees are also extremely productive this year and we are beginning to harvest enormous quantities (buckets) of avocados and mangoes. They should be fully ripe in a couple weeks, but the early ones have been coming every day for the past 2 weeks.

This year feels, in the arc of our lives here, like a season of harvest of seeds we have been sowing for the past 4 years. I admit there were times when we thought that many of these fields would never produce and we have been content to be satisfied with what the dry ground here would produce, but I see now that the bigger problem was our lack of patience to let the seeds of our community building reach the point of germination. It has been a very blessed season thus far this year and I feel that we go out into the fields of our communities like the husbandman who has taken care to plant his land with a variety of crops, mended the fences, pulled the weeds, watered, fertilized and having waited patiently for the harvest, can now go out and walk through the high amber waves of wheat, maize, and barley, as the time of fruitfulness has finally come.

Having said that, I should mention at least one significant area of attrition this month, and that has been in finding petroleum. We are in the midst of a gas shortage caused by a dispute between fuel station owners and the government about what the price should be. Gas prices are controlled by the government, but from what I understand, there has been an increase in gas prices coming into the country while prices in country have not changed. This means that gas station owners get even less of a very small margin of profit. They are expecting prices to go up soon so they are 'sitting' on the gas in anticipation. Almost every station is closed and where one does find a station open there is a line of cars that may take one a full day to arrive at the pump. And even then, there is no guarantee of success. People have been scrambling to find ways to get gas in their cars.

I came up with at least one 'African solution' which was to have a friend of mine who is a taxi driver take my car out and use his 'connections' to get it filled up. (My Fortuner is big and getting it filled is next to impossible.) My friend was able to do it with a $10 commission (split between himself and the gas station attendant.) It was well worth it to me.

By contrast, after a trip upcountry later in the week, I went and tried to fill the tank myself. I saw a gas station where only 7 people were lined up by the time I got there. I thought I had it made, but without connections, the progress of the legitimate line was so slow that I did not even get to the front for nearly 3 hours. I am hoping this problem ends soon, but for now, we are trying to less driving, although the necessity for weekly trips upcountry to orient new team members has not diminished.

Going back through the chronology of the week, I feel, among my the many hats I don as Country Rep of MCC, the chauffer's cap was the most well worn this week. It began on Monday when I took our SALTer Terri-Lynn and her dad Doug up to the Hope School. He planned to spend the week there to see what she did, and also brought some supplies to fix the swing set at the nursery school. The school was not the only stop on the tour as I also passed through Gitega to drop off our short-term service worker Saffy who had come along for the ride.

I did not want to spend the night up at the school as I feel I have been away a lot so I took them up and came back the same day with a very short turn-around on arrival. I also gave one of our partners a ride down on the way home. It was not a bad trip except our ipod unexpectedly died just before I left. I happily avoided several rain storms that occurred in different places along the route until I got back to Bujumbura where I got pounded by a big cloudburst.

Tuesday was a nice day with everyone home and on Wednesday I taught ballet for the other teacher while Rebecca took our service worker Jennifer to the airport for a short visit back to the US.

Thursday we welcomed Melody Musser our new service worker who will be based in Gitega to work with our partner organization MiParec. Rebecca and I picked her up afer lunch from the airport and did some work in orienting her in the evening. That was also the day when I spent several hours buying gas.

On Friday morning I took her up to Gitega. The urgency for getting her up there was due to the fact that the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute is going on this month and she will be working with the partner who presents it. We want her to experience as much of it as possible. Our trip up was not easy, in fact, the police had blocked the main road that goes from the town of Bugarama to Gitega. When I asked what we should do they pointed in the opposite direction, toward the Kayanza road and said there was another way. I had never done it, but I did eventually find a dirt road heading off toward Gitega about 16 kilometers down the other road. It was quite long and steep in many places, but we did eventually get to Gitega only half an hour later than we had hoped.

We went over to MiParec, where the Institute is being held and watched the last hour of Gopar's presentation of a critical methodology for evaluating peacebuilding programs. We had lunch with the partner and Melody, then I took her over to Yolanda's flat where she and Michael Sharp (who came with us) began to make her feel welcome. I am happy that there are other service workers up there so she will not feel quite so alone in her new assignment.

On the way home I brought Teri-Lynn, her dad, and Saffy back to Bujumbura. I got home in time to teach my adult ballet class.

Saturday after yoga we went to the beach with Teri-Lynn and her dad to give him a bit of a taste of the touristy side of Burundi. We had a nice afternoon. In the evening our family went over to Joel and Jeanette Millers house at Hope Africa University. They made pizzas for us and Oren and David really enjoyed playing with their kids. Sam cracked Oren up the whole evening and we could hear peals of hysterical laughter emanating from the hallway that connects the bedrooms to the living room much of the time we were there.

I have not mentioned that with all the aforelisted activity, Rebecca was also preparing a sermon all last week. It was based on the passage at the end of the sermon on the mount (Matthew 7: 15-27) On Sunday she did a stellar job of talking about the different images of obedience that comes from a life of following Jesus. The first is the unconscious natural obedience that is produced like a tree giving fruit, the second is the obedience that comes from knowledge (knowing and being known) and finally the deliberate obedience of doing, like the wise builder who hews out a firm foundation in the rock.

She had some excellent anecdotes that went along with the sermon. In talking about a good tree bearing good fruit she told about her experience in Botswana of working with an NGO that was trying to propagate indigenous trees (marulla). In order to find good trees they had contests in primary schools to have children bring the best, tastiest fruits they knew of. From the winners of these contests they were able to find the best trees for future propagation. (Truly a living metaphor of a tree being known by its fruit.)

She ended with a story of what this obedience looked like in the famous story of the Anabaptist Dirk Willems, who in the 15^th century faced execution in the Netherlands for the heresy of believing that baptism should happen after a deliberate decision to follow Christ and not at birth. After being condemned to death he managed to escape from prison. While fleeing across a frozen river he was pursued by a prison guard. Dirk was outpacing him when he heard a crash and scream and realized the officer had fallen through the ice and was drowning in the freezing water. Dirk made the decision then to turn back and rescue the man. When he did so, he was immediately recaptured, taken back to prison and burned at the stake for the crime of heresy. Dirk knew that the decision to turn back and help his enemy would cost him his life, but he did it anyway.

Rebeca used this story to illustrate what these 3 types of obedience look like in the life of a man who truly imitated the sacrificial love of his enemy that we see in Christ.

Truly he could not have made that choice if he did not feel himself deeply grounded in the assurance of the love of Christ. His act was both unconsciously and deliberately obedient.

We had a very moving discussion about the sermon in our small group that evening. Among our more poignant observations was the fact that there is a great temptation as a builder to work a lot more on the superstructure than the foundation because no one really sees the foundation. People are easily impressed by the superstructure and having a tall multistory building in one's life may give the appearance that one had a great foundation. (Look at televangelists of mega-churches) Yet when one of these individuals falls (like a Jim Bakker) the entire empire comes down with a colossal crash. On the other hand, someone with a deep foundation may not have a very impressive house, a solid structure may never be as tall as a house built on the sand. But as the Bible says, when the storm comes it will withstand it.

We took Teri-Lynn's dad back to the airport today and we are looking forward to an entire week with no travel upcountry whatsoever. The first full week home since our arrival.

Sorry for the dirth of pictures, I will try to do better next week.  I forgot my camera when I was traveling. 

The Beauty We Love

David sitting on the lion statue at Ijenda.



Last week, Paul mentioned that it would be me, Rebecca, writing the blog this week, and I am very happy to do it. I find I have something about permanence I really want to reflect upon and share.

As I write on Sunday evening, we have been in a swirl of comings and goings all weekend, with no fewer than 4 different individuals having spent the night at our place. On Friday, Yolanda and new team member Michael Sharp from MCC Congo came down for the weekend. Michael is in Burundi taking part in the Great Lakes Peace-building Institute, and it was my first chance to meet him. He will certainly make a fascinating contribution to the eclectic mix of people who are filling out our team. We are continuing with a process of welcome and orientation that should be complete by the end of October. Our volunteer Teri-Lynn came down from up-country today by bus to welcome her dad Doug ton Sunday. He's visiting her for a week, seeing what her situation is like in rural Burundi. It's his first time in Africa and he's excited to be here.

Jen, Yolanda, Michael with Rebecca

In between, we ourselves took a little trip 40 minutes up country to our favorite walking spot, Ijenda, in the mountains. It was great to be out in nature with our good friends Naja and Thomas and their kids, enjoying the feeling of putting on sweaters as we walked, and the pleasure of sitting around a fire after the outdoor exercise. It was also restful to leave our home responsibilities behind for just a bit.

Terri-Lynn and her dad

As a side note, Oren surprised us greatly this week. By necessity, Paul had Oren go to soccer (football) practice at the school on Wednesday afternoon. He was not great (why should he be when his lame, non-sporty parents never kick a ball around with him?) but he LOVED it! On Friday, he exclaimed that he was happy it was Friday because it was soccer day again. We were delighted to watch him do the drills with all the other kids that afternoon, seriously engaging in the sport, and not just lost in thought as we often see him. He was so thrilled that he even scored a goal “against Monsieur! And that's hard to do!” I got to watch all this as Paul started up his new season of dance classes at Ecole Belge. He'll be teaching on Friday afternoons, and he is really pleased with the number of kids and adults taking his classes this year, and the quality of their concentration. I'll let him write more about that next week.

Trip to Ijenda with Spanners

The week started with travel, too: I caught the early bus up to Kigali, Rwanda for a few days of work. I had a good chance to talk with one of our short-term volunteers, Janelle, and hear her reflections on her experience so far. We had a nice long walk together from town to an Indian restaurant for a delicious dinner, and good time to share on another day as well. I wasn't able to catch up in person with Alyssa, who needed to attend her host-father's graduation out-of-town during my visit. My Kigali agenda also included:

• sorting out a fee dispute at our bank
• training our partners in how to use MCC's new project formats
• working on details of some training to help rural community groups learn how to save money together
• hearing about the progress of MCC-supported assistance to new Congolese refugees in Rwandan refugee camps (trauma healing and conflict mediation training)
• showing an accountant how to do improved financial reporting
• discussing renovations to the house we rent for the volunteer coming in November, and preparing the house to be renovated.

Those are the facts of what happened. But my overarching feeling of the trip was deeply colored by the task of dismantling the MCC house, the place where our former volunteers Ruth and Krystan used to live. And the entire trip took place in the context of listening to the novel Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry.

Kigali with SALTers and partners

You see, the one thing that can make bus travel in Africa tolerable is an ipod and a good audiobook. (Yes, many people tolerate it without those crutches, but it really helps me to get through the long hours of winding roads). A fellow Regent grad Stephen Ney had recommended Hannah Coulter to us last year and we downloaded the audiobook (thanks, Steve!). Paul, who travels more than I do, had already listened to it, but this was my chance to finally enjoy the book.

The novel is the story of a life and a community, set in rural Kentucky right after World War II. Hannah narrates her love for her husband of 50 years, wrapped up in her love for his people, and her love for the land that is “their place.” The land itself is a constant protagonist in the story. Hannah and her husband are farmers: they work the land, and the land gives them their life and in turn the love they share is made possible by the land they live from. The land remembers them, even after they are gone. The story celebrates the possibility of being from somewhere and belonging there, with the generations after belonging and rooted to the same place. Yes, they suffer hardships and set-backs and unrealized expectations. Hannah's own children become educated and find that they are drawn off to seek “a better place,” but they are never really comfortable in their own skin after they leave. In Hannah's view, the best kind of life and the best kind of love is deeply rooted in living from the land, an earthly life that roots them to heaven, the pleasure of the “altogether given”.

Listening to this story, I found a deep sense of rightness in the book: there is no “better place” than the place that we really come from and belong to. I want that. And yet, that kind of belonging is not my heritage. There is no longer any farm handed down in my family. There is no community that we can call deeply “our place.” On both Paul's and my sides of the family, we are raising the third generation of gypsies. And all the while musing about this desire for permanence, I was slowly dismantling the “place” Ruth and Krystan had created as a home for themselves, gutting it and erasing their memory from the place.

Ruth and Krystan are artists, and their art overflowed all around them into their home, and generously out into their community. Photographs, oil paintings, sewing projects and literary/visual collages are scattered out abundantly like seeds into the community of people who knew them. For example, Oren and David each have school satchels with monster faces, sewn by Krystan, part of one year's discipline of creating and finishing a creative project on each day of Lent. They held Art Parties several times a year, when they invited friends to contribute and discuss art works according to a set theme. The couple took much of their work with them when they left Rwanda in April, but still their home was warmed by myriad decorative projects. Since the house became vacant in July, a number of remaining paintings were picked up by friends. But still, I had the task of finally dismantling the museum of Ruth and Krystan so that the house walls could be patched and painted. I was lodging in the house. So over two evenings, after long days of meetings, I meditatively detached photos from the walls and listened to Hannah Coulter's celebration of place.

If you are someone who comes from someplace, I urge you to cherish this. Give thanks to God for it, and don't take it for granted. Don't be quick to assume that there is always “some place better.” Don't run from the familiar, just because it is familiar. If you are from some place and you are committed to that place and that community, remember that you are blessed. If you can look around you and remember the parents and grandparents of your friends, and know what your neighbor's grandchildren are doing, count it a privilege. Please don't imagine that it's only the people who travel who do the things of consequence.

And what about those of us who live where we do not belong? Are we only chasing after wind? For many of us, this is our heritage: a heritage of coming from no place in particular, having nowhere to call a rooted home, belonging to no single community. Is there a hope of really belonging and deeply loving?

This is an issue for anyone who leaves home. But for those of us living as expatriates in another country, it is particularly poignant. We arrive with no past and no future. There is no one here who has ever known us before. We are two dimensional beings who have come for an assigned purpose. It's hard enough for families, but at least within a family, you have a common shared history that stretches back to another time and place. For single people, I believe it can be excruciating. I understand that there is a desperation to be known and seen with the right people, a struggle to matter, a good deal of posturing and demonstrating that “the way I came to save-the-world is particularly clever” – because there is always the suppressed knowledge that before you came, you didn't matter to anyone here, and within a few months of your departure, your presence here will be swallowed up by the oblivion of a transitory community and a place you have no claim on. And thus, I believe there is a nihilism and carelessness with others that characterizes those who must come and then go, as they realize they will go without leaving a trace.

I realize that I do not have a heritage of a place, really. But I do have a heritage that offers other gifts handed down. For example, I have watched both my mother and my mother-in-law offer blessed hospitality over many years to hundreds of people. I have seen my parents create community where they were strangers, and I have seen them offer strangers a place when they were back at home. I have witnessed Ruth and Krystan's art parties in Kigali and danced at the Walker family Christmas contradance on their farm in upstate New York. I watched my parents leave home every Sunday night for Bible study, and then as a married couple, Paul and I gathered each week with our small group in New York to share and pray. It seems that these are the fields handed down to us: the fields of hospitality, creativity, intentional community. Sometimes the fields are hard work. But these fields give us back our life and our love. If we just guarded ourselves for ourselves, we would be null. In working these fields diligently, we finally see that our lives are fruitful.

I think the secret of thriving in a place which is not “your place” lies still in giving yourself to that place and that community. There is no greater pleasure in friendship than the pleasure of commitment. We have come to love Burundi because of a choice to commit to our church community and to commit to our friends. We have been inspired by many people around us and their own ways of putting down roots and sharing of themselves. I am thankful for a poem by Rumi, which Ruth copied down and surrounded by photos of art in nature.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.

Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel

and kiss the ground.

This is my challenge – for myself, for my fellow travellers, and for my rooted friends. Every day, find a way, even one way, to kiss the ground God has given us as our home for today.

A Plethora of Passers-By

Batwa boys performing a traditional dance at the welcoming ceremony at the Hope School.

As we have now entered our fifth year here in Burundi, I am becoming more and more aware of the subtle and not so subtle ways that culture shock begins to give way to familiarity and even preference.  I say this watching Oren heap red beans on his rice then add additional layers of shredded cabbage, avocado, tomato and mayonnaise.  He likes it all mixed together in a big glop.  I can’t imagine many American kids eating that. 

In other ways though, besides developing a taste for high starch food, I see how we change.  For Rebecca and I, it is really clear that our body thermometers are very different.  I never thought I would ever say I could live quite comfortably without warm water, but that has happened over the years of living in this perpetually warm climate.  We do have a hot water heater connected to our shower and tub, but I must say, that though I dip in the tub at least once a day, I cannot even remember the last time I ever turned on the hot water tap.  Taking cold baths and showers just feels better.  Airconditioning is also something we do not have nor does it seem even slightly needful.  Refrigerated drinking water and especially ice, actually sound unpleasant compared to a nice long draw of room temperature drinking water.

I am not bragging about any of this, these aren’t things or habits I’ve made any effort to acquire.  It is just interesting how sacrifices and hardships do eventually become preferences over time.

This is all a propos to nothing that happened in the week but as I am aware that friends and family at home are experiencing a fairly drastic change in season back home, I wanted to say something about the more subtle changes we experience here. 

Actually we are entering a time of abundant fruit harvest.  Our mango and avocado trees are full of fruit.  Bananas, pineapples, and passion fruit is plentiful and cheap everywhere these days.  Flowers are in bloom in the garden.  In fact I took some photos of the beautiful amaryllis growing in our front yard.  (That is amaryllis by the big clay pot.)

I am happy to say I was home for much of the week, but I did start out with a trip upcountry Tuesday morning.  For the second week in a row I was on my way to the Hope School for the Batwa.  This time I had Saffy accompanying me, and in fact the plan was to leave her there for the rest of the week so she could do some work with the partner.  She was not planning to work at the school per se, but rather do a field visit of some of the projects they have in the area.  UCEDD does not just sponsor the Hope School, but also has other projects including 96 women’s groups in the vicinity.

Safffy was going to be doing some interviews in the area, but along with all of this, there was to be a kind of welcome ceremony for Teri-Lynn and her as they are both working with UCEDD.  The ceremony was to take place at the Hope School on Wednesday morning and the kids, (according to Teri-Lynn had been rehearsing all week.)

We arrived in Burasira at Terry-Lynn’s house in the late afternoon.  Innocent and Beatrice arrived to meet us down there.  Innocent had made an arrangement in the earl evening to have Saffy meet several of the women’s groups in a nearby village and interview them.  Since Terry-Lynn and I did not have anything else to do, we tagged along. 

We drove about 10 minutes down the road and met a large group of women in a small building in the middle of a small village.  It was fascinating to hear the women talk about how empowered they felt working together in ‘savings groups’.  This is a kind of activity where members contribute a very small weekly fee and then the money is loaned to people in the group and paid back with interest.  One step below microfinance, but unlike the latter, does not have any donor input as far as money.  The women had been so successful in raising money that they were actually in the process of building a small nursery school with the surplus money that had been saved collectively.

Saffy doing interviews.

We spent about an hour talking to them before heading back to the house for dinner.  I stayed the night at the seminary. 

The next morning after breakfast we went up to the school and participated in a big official welcoming ceremony where the students played traditional drums, danced, recited poetry and each of us gave speeches. We finished off with a Fanta and goat briochettes.  It was an enjoyable event.

I had to get back to Bujumbura after the celebration and left about noon to get home by 4pm.  David, I should add here, had stayed home from school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but he seemed all better by the time I got home.  I should also add that we did end up taking him to the doctor (Joel Miller) over at the new clinic by Hope Africa University.  We did not have to wait long to see him and he did confirm that the cause of the fever was probably a sinus infection.  It was great to leave after only paying the consultation fee of about FBU2000 ($1.50).  The same visit in the US would have been closer to $250. (but don’t get me started on our country’s deep cultural commitment to overpay for healthcare.)

The rest of the week was fairly normal as far as our routine, but we had a lot of MCCers, both service workers and other pass through our home over the weekend.

The onslaught began on Friday with the arrival back in Bujumbura of Terri-Lynn who was down for a wedding of one of the teachers. She was followed shortly later by Yolanda who was also down for the weekend for various reasons.

The Breakfast Club

Yolanda and Terri-Lynn stayed with us Friday night and joined us for Saturday morning yoga.  We had a really big group that morning with about 15 comprising the Breakfast Club thereafter.  (Jennifer Price also came over for breakfast.)  This eclectic group is becoming more and more interesting with members from the UN, GIZ, the Belgian Development Agency, the Ecole Belge, service workers, and others from various missions and NGOs represented.  It is becoming a very enjoyable weekly social event where we probably share enough food to undo any benefit of all the exercise we did in the hour priorJ

After breakfast, Gopar Tapkida arrived from Nigeria.  He is our regional peace officer and is here for 2 weeks to teach at the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute here in Gitega.  It was very good to catch up with him and to introduce him to our many new service workers.  In the afternoon Rebecca and Terri-Lynn went together to the wedding of the teacher.  (I got to stay home with the kids.)  They reported that there was a deafening downpour right in the middle of it.  They saw Jodi there as well.  Gopar stayed the night with us and we had a small MCC Burundi gathering of service workers to meet him for dinner.

Doug, Gopar, Terri-Lynn at church.

On Sunday we went to church with Terri-Lynn and Gopar.  On the way we had a very interesting discussion about the church in Nigeria.  As we were driving past some policemen standing by the road.  Gopar lamented allowed that in Abuja these days, with the terrorist activities and attacks on churches by Boko Haram, he has to pass through 3 security checkpoints at the entrance to his church.  The first looks under the car for bombs.  The second searches all contents of the car and trunk.  The 3^rd search is a body search, and no bags whatsoever can be brought into the church.  He went on to say that the church now spends about $20,000 per year on security.

Rebecca shook her head and asked him how that was affecting attendance.  To our shock Gopar replied that all of this has actually led to significant RISE in attendance!!  He said that the more Christians are targeted the more they feel that if they are going to die, they would rather die in church.

I was really stunned to hear this.  Imagine that!  Persecution leading to a rise in faithfulness.  But isn’t that what we hear about in the Bible.  Although I was with the kids in Sunday school, apparently the sermon by our pastor was very much in the same vein.   He used the passage in John where Jesus returns to his disciples and says “Peace, be with you.”  How he calmed their fears as he stood among them and told them to go out and continue his work--confident, but expecting hardship and sacrifice.  I know that “God does not give us a spirit of fear”, but I am really amazed to hear such a testimony of courage in a place where Christians are persecuted today.

Our small group that afternoon echoed many of the same sentiments with several offering personal testimonies of overcoming fear through trust in God.

I need to add here that among the people I did see at church this week was Doug Hiebert!  (For those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning you may recognize his name as one of the former MCC reps.  He was back in town with a mission team from his home church near Toronto.  It was really interesting catching up with him.)

Yolanda, Oscar, Gopar

Gopar left our house mid-afternoon when he was picked up to go to Gitega by one of our partners.  Oscar also took Yolanda back up to Gitega as well.  She will be helping with some translating at GLPI this year.

Sunday evening was difficult after small group for work reasons.  After a relaxing weekend, Rebecca and I realized we had to finish our monthly financial report that night, especially since she was heading up to Kigali in the morning for 4 days.  (After making 3 trips upcountry 3 weeks in a row, she agreed to make a trip in my place.)

We were up very late to finish the work, and then she had to leave the house about 6 am the next morning.  Fortunately she was taking a bus so hopefully she slept.

Terri-Lynn, Michael Sharp

I was left with getting the kids off to school today.  Terri-Lynn goes back upcountry tomorrow, but another person, Michael Sharp who is MCC Congo’s service worker in Bukavu came down.  He was on his way up to Gitega to do the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute as well.  He had lunch with us and then I put him in a taxi at the bottom of the hill and sent him upcountry to Gitega.

The rest of Monday was fairly calm.  I worked on homework with Oren, played marbles with the kids, had family tea time (without mommy) and dinner.  They went to bed without complaining or missing Rebecca too much.  Tomorrow I send Terri-Lynn and Safi back upcountry to the Hope School.  I feel a bit like some kind of transport dispatcher coordinating all of these rides.  But it is nice to be the one staying home for a change.

Expect a report from Rebecca next week.