Friday, December 27, 2013

December Rites (part 3): Folk dances, Grandparents, Christmas

Family Christmas with grandparents wearing tailor-made Bujumbura themed Gitenge shirts for the men.  Rebecca's dress was also from the tailor.


As the dust of Christmas revelry settles, I am finally able to sneak away from familial activities to log some of the events of the past week.  Indeed the rituals of December seem to build to a crescendo in the week preceding Christmas and this year, perhaps because it is our last here, seemed even more full of gatherings and merry-making then any year previous.

Starting from last Friday and working forward, I would have to say that the preparations and execution of our annual Christmas folk dance was the most time consuming activity of the past week.  The kids finished the week of school on Friday and by that time many of their compatriots had gone or were planning their departure from Burundi for the holidays.  Many of the Europeans from the school return home over Christmas as do most of the Ecole Belge teachers. 

The kids did really well in school socially this year and it is hard to believe the first trimester is already over.  My last ballet classes of the semester on Friday finished fairly inauspiciously with only 3 of 20 girls showing up for either one.  My disappointment was short-lived though as the plans for Friday evening at our house were elaborate.

When I arrived back at the house that evening, we had 5 service workers over at the house.  Teresa and Julia were down from Kigali, and Melody was down from Gitega.  Patrick had come from Bukavu.  (Actually Teresa and Julia came down with Patrick as they had popped round for a visit to Bukavu before heading to Bujumbura.)  Matt Alan also stopped by the house as well to greet his fellow SALTers.  We shared dinner together Friday night and the service workers played card games in the evening. They had all come down to join us in our Christmas folk dance scheduled for the next day.

I had an ambitious project that same night to complete a gingerbread cathedral.  Last year Oren and I had used his magnet blocks as a pattern to build a very impressive church and we wanted to do it again this year.  Unfortunately the building part of the project went late into Friday night so Oren was not able to help much in the design phase.  I used Joy Johnson’s method of gluing the pieces together by dipping the edges in molten sugar and completed the design before midnight. 

The next morning Oren, David and I were up by 6am to do the icing and decorating.  It was literally the only time during the day we had to work as the rest of the morning was occupied by yoga followed by mad preparations for our folk dance and offering of the arts.

The kids did a great job decorating the creation.  I really wanted it for the party as the half-life of gingerbread houses in Burundi is about 12 hours because of the heat.  It was my hope to display it, then have it eaten on the same day.  This was to be one of our ‘artworks’ for the party.

Rebecca and I had also discussed with Melody some ideas for songs we might sing as Melody and Rebecca are both trained singers.  We decided on a few Christmas carols, ‘Lo How a Rose E're Blooming’ and a “Come All Ye Faithful” medley with another song from the Mennonite Hymnbook (Sing the Journey) that can be overlaid.   After yoga, which was quite a large group, we began to work on the two songs.  Several other members of our team joined us, including Patrick who had brought his ukulele and after a few run-throughs we were ready.  The SALTers went to the beach at that point and our family stayed and got the house ready for the dance.  This primarily involves pushing all the furniture out of the living room.

Rebecca and I prepared several Christmas themed square dances, including “Strip the Willow” (in honor of the Carrs who used to do Ceilidhs here).  In general we had more traditional dances and no line dances this time.

Our family also did a few rehearsals of the carol “The Friendly Beasts” with Oren and David so that each one of us did a verse.  I was the donkey, Rebecca the sheep, Oren the cow, and David the camel.  We had masques to along with the song. 

Guests started arriving between 3 and 4 and by 4:30 we did our presentations of the arts.  The gathering this year was a bit smaller, probably due to the fact that it was done a bit closer to Christmas itself so many of our ex. pat friends were out of town already.  It was a very nice group, mostly from the mission community.  Among the families were the Wisdoms,  Guillbauds, Millers, Ivaskas, Van Aardes, Carlsons, Andersons, Peter and Linda Taylor, several other families from the Kings School, Ena and her son Carl and of course the MCC team of 5.  Perhaps one reason it seemed like smaller gathering this year was because we were lacking the Withrows with their 5 daugthers who have been at all of our dances for the past 4 years.  (Travis and Co.--We are happy you are all finally reunited in the US for Christmas but you are missed here this year.) 

Our musical offerings were appreciated by the group as well as a poem shared by Jodi Mikalachki.  There were also many other Christmas food offerings from peoples home countries that were brought to share at the potluck that followed the dancing.

Actually, having a somewhat smaller group made the dancing a bit more manageable this year and we were able to learn a pretty cool double square dance that took both sets in a big circle around the room to change sides every repetition.  It was a lot of fun.  Hopefully I can make a recording of it next time we do it to save for posterity.  Strip the Willow was also appreciated and we did it in 3 simultaneous lines in the living room. 

Dinner was fabulous and and great to share with friends.  There were desserts aplenty and a good portion of the gingerbread house was devoured as well.  Fortunately I got some good photos of it.

The party ended at about 8pm and by 9 we had pretty much cleaned it up, thanks to help from our MCC service workers and Odifax, one of our cleaning staff.

This event, as big as it was, seemed almost little more than a precursor to other activities planned for the days ahead.  On Sunday I needed to go to a Baptism at 7 in the morning.  Rebecca and I had sponsored one of the youth at the church and needed to make an appearance at the Baptism. 

I should preface this a bit by explaining what constitutes Baptism in Burundi.   On the good side, among all Christians, Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Reform, there is no doctrinal question about what ritual represents the sacrament of Baptism.  Baptism is always a full immersion into Lake Tanganyika or a swimming pool next to the Lake. 

There are no churches with Baptismal fonts and certainly no small vessels for sprinkling water.  No one has ever heard of such things here.  So a Baptism is a big deal because it always involves scheduling a place, time and arranging for transportation of candidates and witnesses.  Consequently, Baptisms are usually done only once or twice a year for a large group of people, and not for individuals.

I arrived at Petit Bassam, one of the lakeside resorts with a pool, and met the group there.  There was a small choir, 2 pastors and about a dozens candidates for Baptism.  They all changed into white Baptismal robes and stood by the pool where the pastor did an introduction in Kirundi.  The candidates followed the pastors in, two by two to be Baptized.  The choir sung during the Baptism and the whole scene was quite picturesque on the beautiful sun-drenched morning.  I can see why no one would want to give up this kind of lakeside ritual for something ‘more convenient’ involving sprinkling at a church.

We all got back in time for church to begin where I met my family.  (I had gone to the Baptism alone as the family representative.)  The service was good and Rebecca taught Sunday school.  While we were at church our volunteers made an attempt to get back to Rwanda only to find all the buses were full, so we met them back at our house when we got home.  They planned to try again the next morning.

This was complicated by the fact that the next big event of the same day was the arrival of Rebecca’s parents David and Jean Sack that same afternoon.  The kids were thrilled to see Papa Dave and Grandma Jean and they were laden with gifts from home and other family members.  All but one of their bags arrived with them on the flight.  (The last one arrived the next day.)

Without piling it on too deeply, we did have yet another evening event planned on Sunday.  Our small group was to meet for the last time this year and we wanted to have a potluck.  The occasion was to be festive but also solemn as we were going to say our farewells to Tim, Jeanette, and Isabel Van Aarde, our longtime South African missionary friends.  They have been here for pretty much all of the past 5 years we were here and Isabel and David practically grew up as brother and sister. 

They had completed their assignment here and were returning to South Africa.  (Actual departure date was to be Christmas day.)  We had a short time of Bible study then we gathered around them, laid hands upon them and took turns praying for them.  This was followed by a potluck as well with offerings from Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia as well as spinach lasagna, and baked ziti dish made by yours truly.

Our small group with Tim and Jeanette in the center.
It was a fun evening and Rebecca’s parents joined in the festivities despite their jetlag.   Although this was pretty much the last time we saw Tim and Jeanette before their departure, it was hard to experience at that moment, the full impact of their departure.

I later described to our friend Joel Miller the sense of what it is like to be in our last year and be the last to leave among the ‘cohort’ we started with.  (It seems many ex pats spend between 3 and 5 years here.)  With the Spanners, Hoffmans, Jacksons, and now Van Aardes gone, I feel like our senior class graduated last year and left and we stayed around an extra year to start a graduate degree.  We are in the same place, but everything seems different.  I am not complaining, we still have good friends here, but we are feeling that gentle tidal pull of our time coming to an end here.

Monday was a day of preparation for Christmas at home.  Our cook was sick so we did prepare some food, the kids were home from school because of holidays and Dave and Jean were here with us.  Rebecca spent some of the day preparing music for the evening as we were going over to a “Lessons and Carols’ at Joel and Janette Miller’s home.  This is the second year they are hosting this event, and hopefully it will continue to be a tradition.

Papa Dave and Grandma Jean making cinnamon rolls
Again we had a large group of many of the same missionary families that were at our house, but with the addition of the Johnson family who numbered about 20 all counted.  It was a really beautiful evening of readings and singing and Joel Miller thoughtfully prepared appropriate rituals for different parts of the service which was held in their living room under candlelight.  Some of the highlights included short dramatic readings by some of the Miller kids of certain parts of the Christmas story.  We ended with Silent Night sung while lighting candles—the sin qua non of Christmas Lessons and Carols ceremonies.

Because we did this on Monday night, before Christmas eve. it left the day and evening of the December 24th completely unprogrammed for us.  I can’t tell you how relieving it was to have a day with nothing specifically planned.

Grandma Jean and the kids spent the day in a cinnamon roll making project.  A grand Sack tradition.  They made several dozen, the first of which was eaten by us on Christmas morning.

For Christmas eve. dinner we opted to go out to Kohinoor, the Indian restaurant in the Quartier Asiatique.  (as an Indian food connoisseur I need to let other ex pats. know that this is the best Indian food in Burundi hands down—former chef of Khanna kazana working there.)  We had a fabulous Indian meal for Christmas eve. AND no dirty dishes to wash to boot.

We went home and did our final advent candle lighting and finished our Jessie tree before going to bed. 

Oren was up several times in the night to check his stocking.  He could hardly wait until Christmas morning.  Both kids were up a 6am and opened their stockings and played with things in there until everyone else got up.

We opened the presents Christmas morning which seemed like a bonanza to the kids with all the ‘loot’ brought from the US.  They got many of the things on their Christmas list, most notably, David’s pet turkey (a stuffed one) which he named Sherman. 

We had a lazy morning but prepared a salad for our last Christmas social gathering.  Ben and Christie Carlson, some friends of our in the coffee business here, (longmilescoffeeproject.com), invited us and several other families to share Christmas dinner together.  It was another gathering of familiar faces, and Ben and Christy had really extended themselves with delicious gourmet food offerings featuring a roasted lamb.  There were also selections of things we don’t often get here like roasted walnuts with dried cranberries and relishes of wasabi mayonnaise and blue cheese.

We had a great time together with them the Millers and Ivaskas as well as several visiting parents.  The kids, who are all classmates at the Ecole Belge, had a great time playing together as well.  One interesting note is that the Carlson’s hosted this at their new home in Mutanga Nord, the old house of our German friends the Hoffmans who left last summer.  It seems like these houses continue to get recycled in the ex. pat. Mission community.

Ben explaining Greed rules to kids.
In the evening, by candlelight (because of a power failure) we had a big greed game.  We divided it into a kids, then an adult game.  It was a lot fun, and Rebecca and I tried unsuccessfully to unload a particularly dreadful greed gift we had received at a similar game 3 years before here in Bujumbura. (Papa Dave won it back.)

We got home late and went to bed shortly after our arrival home.

The day after Christmas we took Papa Dave and Grandma Jean to the zoo to see the kids’ 'pets'.  (Kita the chimp, the leopard, snakes, etc.)  Kita was thrilled to see David and began to bang on her cage as soon as she saw him walk into the zoo entrance.  We fed her some fruit and David entertained other visitors playing ‘keep-away’ with her and a plastic bottle.

We then stopped by Cercle Nautique where 2 hippos obliged to show up and play around the boats in the marina.  It is nice when we can time visits to these places with out of town visitors to see these sites which do not happen everytime we go.

We enjoyed a family movie night last night and today are getting ready to depart for Kigoma Tanzania for a 5 day vacation with Rebecca’s parents.  We do have one more small social gathering today as we have invited several of our Burundian friends and partners who know Rebecca's parents to drop by to greet them between 2 and 5 pm.  (That will probably end around 9 :-).    

As I look back, I realize how much I will miss the kind of 'do-it-yourself' Christmas we have here.  We do re-create many of the traditions we have grown up with, but they all have to be invented again--there are no pre-packaged, store-bought versions.  I will miss the need to do it all from scratch, from services, to gingerbread houses.  In some ways I fear trying to find our role in our community back home where we can choose from a potpourri of Lessons and Carols services, square dances, and a host of other Christmas special offerings at our local supermarkets, and delivered to our homes on cable TV.  Maybe I will miss the feeling that we have something unique to offer to our friends and family.  

This will be the last post of 2013, and a record of our last Christmas in Burundi.





Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The Rites of December (part 2) Gingerbread Moms


Oren and Caitlyn working on gingerbread houses at Joy Johnson's Annual Gingerbread Extravaganza


We are now deep into the rituals of Christmas.  The third Advent candle was lit in our little makeshift wreath on our coffee table yesterday, and we had participated in a number of family style Christmas events in the past week.

Working backwards, Oren and David’s English reading group had a big cookie decorating Christmas party today (Monday).  We are blessed to have Debbie, an 'embassy' mom who supplied many goodies from the US to decorate cookies with and turned the airconditioning down in her house to give a feel of winter.  The kids ate cookies, watched Christmas movies on a big screen TV and drank hot chocolate!

Sunday, we had a modified children’s Christmas pageant at our church.   Rebecca was very involved in this and was actually leading worship.  She had worked on a number of Christmas songs for the Anglophone kids, (with the help of several other moms).   The chairs were arranged in the sanctuary with a big space in the middle for the kids to sit in.  The presentation was very cute and surprisingly well rehearsed, even with musicians arriving less than 5 minutes before Church started on the day of the show. 

Oren and David had been practicing their songs at home during the week, especially “The Friendly Beasts”.  David has a beautiful voice and could sing the part about the donkey and the camel expertly.  He, however, was not much of a performer and didn’t seem to notice when his group was actually singing for the real thing.  It was still very cute though.

Oren played Joseph being visited by ‘Zack Guillbaud’ the arch angel, telling him to take Mary as his wife.  (Mary was an Ethiopian girl about a foot taller than him.)

The kids said their lines audibly and well, most of them memorized.

There were songs from the Kirundiphone kids and even a guest children’s choir from a town upcountry.  It was a successful production that showed a lot of effort on behalf of the many mother’s who are involved in the Sunday School, and appreciated by all of us there.

Afterwards, I took Rebecca and the kids out to Ubuntu restaurant to get pizza.  She definitely looked too exhausted to go home and prepare lunch. 

The Saturday before that was also a big, mulit-event day.  It began with yoga, as usual, but afterwards we went out to Pinnacle 19 on the beach to spend some time with Tim, Jeanette and Isabel.  (Our South African friends.) The occasion was an official good-bye get together for them with many friends from the ex-pat community who have come to know them.  The Ivaska’s, Millers, Guillbaud’s, as well as others who dropped in.  Many of these were folks we saw at Thanksgiving and other gatherings this month.   It was a pleasant afternoon, with kids playing cricket on the beach and swimming in the lake.

That same afternoon, as if that day was not complicated enough, the Ecole Belge’s Marché de Noel was scheduled.  This is a great place to pick up Christmas gifts for Friends and family as many merchants set up booths at the school to sell souvenirs and other handicrafts.  Mothers provide cookies and other sweets to sell, all of this to fundraise for the school.  It was like ‘deja-vu all over again’ as far as seeing everyone we had just left at the beach.  It has become an attraction for almost every expat. in the country in my opinion, and I think I saw just about everyone I know there.

The kids enjoyed Christmas shopping for each other, Rebecca took David and I took Oren and we walked around and shopped.  Sadly, for the second year in a row, the weather was particularly disagreeable for an outdoor fête with overcast skies and rain on and off.  One highlight was Oren winning a raffle prize worth about $50 at a local restaurant.  He is excited to take us all out to dinner in the next week.   

Friday was family movie night and we did our best to watch A Christmas Story by streaming it without much success.   So much for Spidernet being a great internet provider all of the time.   Oren managed to stay up and watch it all the way through with many interruptions, but Rebecca, David and I fell asleep. 

What made it fun though is that the kids have been on a serious ‘screen time’ fast, so this was a real treat.  Rebecca and I have been fasting from food during the day over the season, but the kids are giving up screen time except one evening per week during this month.  I will say that I have seen a marked improvement in their behavior—far fewer fights.  I am one of the parents that is becoming convinced that the paradoxical inertness of watching combined with the high brain activity of the content watched (shows or games) does cause the kids to be very aggressive and agitated, especially with each other.   I think this means we will probably not be getting a Playstation anytime soon in our move back to the States.

Earlier in the week, the biggest highlight was a gingerbread house making party hosted by Joy Johnson.  This is the second year in what will probably continue to be a tradition here.  Although I did not attend, Rebecca described it as epic!  Joy had made several dozen undecorated gingerbread houses, and all the other mothers who came supplied candies to decorate the houses with.  It was a huge even with at least 25 participating kids.  The results were impressive and Oren and David brought theirs home and promptly began eating it.  At this writing there is less than half of it left.

I still have not made our own gingerbread creation but have designed a kind of Gothic Church that Oren and I will work on this week.  We will be able to display it at our own Annual Christmas Folkdance and Offering of the Arts this coming Saturday.  We will be doing some carol singing as well for this event, so there is a lot to prepare. 

We do expect most of our MCC team to be down for the weekend as well, so it should be busy.  Rebecca’s parents also arrive this Sunday so we will be doubling down on hosting for at least the next two weeks.  Its all good though!


Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Rites of December


  1. A sticker activity coloring book
  2. A book that shows information about leopards
  3. A book that shows information about dinosaurs
  4. A space almanac
  5. A photo of Teddy (who is at Gramma Jean’s house)
  6. A photo of the kind of pine tree that can be a Christmas tree
  7. A lego set – of the crocodile boat?
  8. A big bag of gumdrops
  9. A bag of marshmallows
  10. A photo of Grammy’s Christmas tree with the decorations on it
  11. A photo of a squirrel
  12. A photo of a gingerbread house
  13. A photo of my bike that is at Grammy’s house
  14. A plastic animal hawk
  15. A beautiful bracelet 


Oren began making his Christmas list right after Thanksgiving.  It is interesting that for as far back as I can remember, Oren never believed in Santa Claus, but this has never deterred him from the ritual of writing his annual Christmas list.  Actually this year, I would have to insist that “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” in the form of his Grandma Jean who will be coming out with Papa Dave in a couple weeks from Baltimore to share Christmas with us. 

Actually I find Oren’s Christmas list refreshing in that it seems relatively untainted by things he might have seen on television or at the houses of friends.  We are blessed to be in a plae that is so ‘non-commercial’ during this season, so the kids are not exposed to a lot of things to covet this month.

The down side is, that without a change of season, there is really no way to get into the Christmas spirit without making a real effort by way of home décor to change the atmosphere.  The contrast, between here and home with regard to weather is striking.  While winter storms blanketed the US on Thanksgiving, we were attending a dinner with some other Americans where the main kids’ activity was playing on a slip and slide outdoors. 

Thanksgiving is probably a good place to start the recollections of the past 10 days as so as much has happened since then.  As I had mentioned in the previous entry, we had plans to have two Thanksgiving dinners this year.  The one on Thursday was at our house with and Ethiopian family and some Burundian friends from our small group. 

Although we did not have a turkey, we did get some rotisserie chicken and made stuffing and all the other fixin’s.  Rebecca made her awesome faux cranberry relish out of Japanese plums that are readily available here.  (recipe here)

Our guests really appreciated partaking of an American Thanksgiving, which they had all heard about, but had never been invited to one.  I did my best to recount the origins of the Holiday with some caveats about our historical treatment of Indians.  But I did have a new appreciation, through their eyes, of a national holiday dedicated to giving thanks.  This does not exist in Ethiopia or Burundi.

That was Thursday, but on Saturday we had another feast, this time with some other Americans and various other Anglophone families from the Ecole Belge.  It was at JJ and Courtney’s house (Naja and Thomas’ old house).  The featured dish at this party was an entire lamb roasted on a spit.  I think it was one of the tastiest Thanksgiving meats I have ever had.  Many people contributed the rest of the meal, including an array of pumpkin pies.  There we about 50 people in attendance including kids, and we played a big game of volleyball, and visited well into the evening.  The kids enjoyed running around outside in the dark playing various games of tag and hide and seek.  Seeing the kids running around in the dark reminded me so much of childhood with cousins and friends at family gatherings.  They had a great time together.  I again felt the now familiar pang of seeing the milestone of another ‘last’ come and go.   I will miss the warm-weather makeshift Thanksgivings we have here with friends, local and ex-pat.  Such celebrations have given me a deeper appreciations of these traditions that I have long taken for granted back home.

kid's table
The day after our first Thanksgiving also marked what had become the beginning of our Christmas season at the house.  Creating a change in season is a very intentional act of decorating here, and at this point, Oren is the one who leads the crusade to get it started and completed.  We agreed to put up the Christmas tree on Friday evening after ballet.  We are lucky to have a tree inherited from former service workers that is life size.  We also have collected, over the years, a suitcase full of Christmas paraphernalia.  It is all we can do to keep Oren from getting it out during the rest of the year.

So the big night arrived and Oren and David opened the suitcase while I put lights on the tree.  This is an important ritual for them and the duties were already agreed upon between them.  David would take the ornaments out of the suitcase and hand them to Oren, who in turn would hang them on the tree.  They carried out the solemn ceremony for well over an hour while Rebecca and I hung lights, stockings, set up Advent candles and other Christmas decorations around the room.  By the end of the evening we turned out the lights, and listened to Christmas carols and admiring the tree.  It really transforms the room and gives the feel of Christmas.

We had a nice family day on Sunday which was good because I left for Kigali on Monday after school.  It has been great to have two straight weeks at home, but visits to Rwaanda with our two SALTers and multiple projects is complex now and needs a visit at least once per month. 

Despite being away from family, I do enjoy seeing the work on the projects in Rwanda.  The conservation agriculture project is going well and we are beginning to see results of the improved technique.  There were also elections recently at the Friends Church (who we partner with_ and a new Legal Rep. was named.  Fortunately it is someone we know well, so we will continue to have good relationships with them after the transition.

Matt, Julia and Teresa were doing well and we went out for Ethiopian food on the Monday night I arrived.  I stayed with Matt while I was there, and had many meetings with partners in which service workers were involved.  It was good to see how valuable our SALTers have become in their work with our partners.

Although I spent most of my time in meetings, I had one interesting field visit to a trade school that we support (Mwana Nshuti) where the director had made an agreement with a local mechanic to teach auto mechanics in exchange for use of the partner's property to set up a repair shop.  I met some of the students apprenticing in the program and it seemed to be going very well.  

We continue to slog away at getting MCC registered as an independent NGO in the country and have made limited progress in getting all the necessary authorization.  We are hoping to complete this at the end of the month with some anticipation that Mark Sprunger and his wife Angela, the Area Rep. for Central West Africa will be able to move to Kigali in January.

I spent three days in Kigali and headed back to Burundi on Thursday.  I had a very full day planned as I went through Burasira to close down the MCC there where Jodi Mikalachki and Teri-Lynn Jordan had lived.  From there I was to continue on to Gitega to drop some of the stuff off from that house with our service worker Melody, then on to Bujumbura before it got too late in the evening. 

I got to Burasira about noon without incident crossing the border.  Jennifer Price and Felix met me there with a Prado they brought from Bujumbura so we could have at least 2 4X4s to take stuff back in.  We loaded the cars and stacked stuff on the roof rack, donated some stuff to our partner and paid out severance to the staff who were remaining—2 guards.  (Chartier and Lazarre greet you Teri-Lynn.) 

We had lunch at the Grand Seminaire then headed to Gitega in convoy.  We were praying against the odds that it would not rain (it is rainy season) because of the stuff on the roofs—especially a mattress.  We got to Gitega where we met Melody and Patrick (who was visiting from Bukavu).  They helped us unload stuff and we headed to Bujumbura about 5 pm.  I saw the storm approaching us and knew we were not going to avoid rain, or darkness.

Patrick, Melody, Jennifer in Gitega
I took it easy driving when the rain hit, and did feel a sense of peace and willingness to be patient.  This served me well as I started the descent down the mountain and came to the one small one lane detour (of about 30 ft) to find that a tractor trailer had gotten itself completely stuck there in the mud.  It could not go forward or backwards, which means the entire route was blocked going to Bujumbura, or coming up.

Cars started backing up, and I was the first in line.  It was 7pm then but I could see the problem was not going to be resolved soon.  I called Rebecca to let her know, then sat and waited for about 2 and a half hours.  Eventually some enterprising guys began digging around the truck against the mountain face and cleared out a space big enough for one car to pass every 5 minutes or so.  I got in line and agreed to pay a small ‘service fee’ and did get through.  I had to use my 4 wheel drive which unfortunately got jammed and I descended the rest of the way to Buja in 4 wheel, just about frying the transmission.  (The car went in for repairs the next morning.)

I was nonetheless, happy to be home before 11pm.  The kids were in bed already.  It was good to take them to school and go for a swim in the morning.  After ballet we went took the kids to a movie at a friends house (a new American family at the Ecole Belge) where they watched Monsters University.  It was a fun evening.

Saturday we had a big family day at the church which was really quite amusing.  It reminded me of a church gathering in the US from the 60s with potato sack and 3 legged races, water balloon toss, badminton, etc.  One notable difference was a race carrying a very large basket on ones head for several hundred meters.  It seems that all Burundians are experts at basket carrying and can run with one on their head quite easily.  It was great to watch this race.  Rebecca and some other Muzungu women tried and could barely cross the start line without knocking the basket off their heads.

It is Sunday.  We have had Patrick and Teresa here over the weekend for various reasons.  Patrick left today to return to Bukavu and Teresa will go back to Kigali tomorrow.  It will be nice to have our home to ourselves for a week or so before the arrival of the Grandparents.

Speaking of arriving Grandparents, here is David’s Christmas list.

1.          A toy bald eagle
2.          A T rex book
3.          A toy dinosaur
4.          A book with Noah’s ark
5.          A coloring book about birds and animals
6.           A pet turkey