Usually I can write this blog in a way that focuses more on importance rather than chronology. This week, however, amazing and unusual events came as such an onslaught that I am hard pressed to know where to begin.
This was the last week of Advent and the kids were in school
Monday through Friday. It was a bit of a
challenge at work as we limped toward the end of the year on borrowed
computers. But we did manage to get last
minute emails written about planning for next year’s programming.
Things started to get interesting fairly early as visitors
and guests started to arrive as early as Tuesday. Teri-Lynn our SALTer at the Hope School was
down all week and it was interesting to talk to her about how teaching was
going. She told us about the rewards and
challenges (sense of isolation being high on the list.) She also talked about different cultural
perceptions of teaching. I was
fascinated to hear how some of her colleagues advised her that-- “The teacher
should always be the last to arrive in the class and the first to leave.” It is so interesting how this is exactly the
opposite of what we are taught.
The perception here is that the teacher is the most
important person in the classroom and is accorded a place of very high respect.
In our culture education is focused on the student with the teacher playing
more of a facilitator role. The Hope
School would like to be more of a child-centered-learning school, but it is
clear from the perception of some of the teachers that they have a ways to go.
Things did not go exactly according to plan as she had
planned with her cook to have an elaborate Christmas dinner planned while they
were up there to welcome them. When they
arrived, the cook was completely AWOL and never showed up the whole 3 days they
were there.
Unfortunately the trip continued to get worse when they
returned Sunday in a rain storm and the driver, who was speeding drove off the
road into a ditch on the mountain side of the escarpment they were
descending. They were quite livid about
his recklessness and after they were pushed out her dad took the wheel and
drove home.
There were several very tense minutes when she was trying to
call us on her cell phone to tell us what was happening. The site of the accident had terrible
reception and the phone kept cutting out everytime she tried to tell us what
had happened and how they were. We
finally got the story and just when I was preparing to get in my car and rescue
them we got a message that some folks in the vicinity and hoisted them out of
the ditch and they were on their way down.
They arrived just in time for our Christmas party on Sunday
afternoon, but I will come back to that in a minute.
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| Yolanda, Melody, Jennifer, and Michael Sharp all passed through Bujumbura this weekend. |
I taught ballet that day and spent some extra time rehearsing
a piece for our Christmas Party.
Saturday was a big day of preparation. After exercise Oren and I set to work on a
fantastic gingerbread house. He was to
be the architect and used his magnet blocks to build a church with a high-peeked
roof, a bell tower and a smaller gabled roof.
Once he built it with magnet blocks, Rebecca made dough and I laid out
pieces on the dough we rolled out and set in cookie sheets. It took 3 trays but we baked all the
pieces. We learned an excellent gluing
technique using melted sugar which we
dipped the edges of pieces in. It
hardened like epoxy, very quickly. I
also used a cheese grater as sand paper so we had very square pieces. I also made the royal icing to stick the
candy into on the roofs. (powdered sugar
and egg white.)
Sunday was the actual day of our Christmas party. (December 23rd) We had been planning this for a while and
were calling it a Christmas Dance and Offering of the Arts. People were asked to bring a song, dance,
piece of visual art, or some specialty food or tradition from their culture to
share.
We had a very large group as usual and after most had
arrived we had a time of sharing.
Rebecca had organized a group of us to sing some acapella Christmas
carols, one of our friends, a teacher at the Ecole Belge performed a flute
solo. We had several families show off
some of their specialty foods, Oren showed his gingerbread church, (which every
kid ooohed and aaahed and said how beautiful it was and asked if they could eat
it immediately).
There was some handicraft and toward the end I performed a
short dance I had created for Christmas.
I will try to mount it on the bottom of the blog.
We ended the offering of the arts with a sing-along to the
Hallelujah chorus. (We did print out
sheet music.)
From MCC, Jennifer, Yolanda and Melody were all in
town. Michael Sharp had also been there
the day before and they had gone out together, although by Sunday he was on his
way to Kampala with friends for a vacation.
Monday was the first day the kids had off so we were not
really able to do any work. I did do a bit
of Christmas shopping and we wrapped some presents for each other and others we
were going to give. Melody, Yolanda and
Jennifer was around as well. Rebecca did
practice the piano some for the evening event we planned to attend.
We were very excited to be going to a Christmas Eve service
at Joel and Janet Miller’s house. Oren
and David really like their 4 kids and were happy to see them twice in 3
days.
Despite the loss of two computers, the returns of the
Holiday Season had been happy indeed and we were looking forward to sharing
this evening with friends in a Lessons and Carols Service.
What I was not expecting to receive was a call, on the way
to the service, from a friend who is a missionary who works with street kids,
calling to tell me that someone in the thieves network had contacted him with a
White Macbook to sell. (Apparently they
found it fairly useless without the powercord.)
He told me to come out and meet him immediately. It was a bit awkward as I had to borrow
Jennifer’s car but the place he was parked was enroute to the party. I met him and was able to buy back my macbook
from him after he bought it off a thief.
I could not believe I
had gotten one back, although there had been some people praying for just this,
that we would recover at least one by Christmas.
I walked triumphantly into the Miller’s house brandishing
the computer. We had a lovely Lessons
and Carols service with Rebecca playing the keyboard competently for the songs
we sung and some very creative dramatic staging and readings for the
service. We ended by singing Silent
Night by candlelight.
We returned home and the kids fell asleep in the car on the
way home. I did some inspection of the
computer and found it was working well and really had not been used very much
at all (because the battery died).
We did Skype our families to tell them the good news. At this time we are still holding out some
hope that the other will be returned as well, particularly since it is password
locked and may not be that useable either.
The kids were up early on Tuesday for Christmas. We had a
very modest Christmas this year since we did not have visitors from the
States. The featured toys were two
wooden tow trucks that we got at the Marche de Noel the week prior.
As an aside I would add that they will probably receive a
few more gifts in the mail. A parcel
with their Chocolate filled Advent calendars still has not arrived. So they will be able to enjoy that in
February probably. In the same vein, we
did get a parcel for our SALTer Janelle on the 22nd. Just in time for Christmas. Unfortunately it was not for the Janelle who
is a SALTer this year, but Janelle Tupper who was our SALTer last year. Her Grandmother sent it to her in November of
2011 and it just got to Burundi on Dec 22, 2012! We told Janelle about it and she said to go
ahead and open it as it might be food that would not be good anyway. (She is currently back in Washington
DC).
We did open it and it would definitely qualify as one of the
best gifts for naughty children, probably even better than coal or
switches. Apparently cookie dough packed
in a tin had exploded enroute making the address hard to read. You can imagine how rancid that was. It was
on everything including some dried fruit, other cookies, mixed nuts (which tasted
OK) and some fiber bars. The look and
smell in the box were really quite dreadful.
I think it must set some kind of record for belatedness though.
The kids had fun with them as well as with a lego kit and a
new Magic Schoolbus Video. We spent the
morning playing games with the kids and watching the new videos.
Sadly Oren started spiking a fever by mid-morning and it was
obvious he was coming down with a virus.
Nonetheless, we did go to a final Christmas dinner at the Kings
Conference Center hosted by Simon Guillebaud.
Many of the same folks were there who had been at the two previous
parties so it was one more chance for all of our kids to play together. Actually, after the delicious buffet meal we
had the kids watch a movie while the adults set up several games of ‘speed
scrabble.’ (or bananagrams.)
We went back home and by mid afternoon Oren’s fever was up
again. We did a malaria test (negative)
that evening and gave him more aspirin.
Before bed we began packing for our trip the next day. We are going with Tim and Jeanette Van Aarde
to Uganda for a week vacation at Lake Bunyoni.
This final post of 2012 is being sent from Kigali where we
have stopped for the night enroute to Uganda.
More in the New Year!
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