Phases of 50 part 4: 53

Not many photo-ops this week, but here are some random ones of the kids at school and other activities.

I made brief mention of my Birthday at the end of last week’s blog, but another year down probably merits a bit more reflection.  I am writing this balancing my one-armed reading glasses delicately on my nose.  I started to need them about 6 years ago and since I never had glasses before in my life, I have not been able to develop any good habits of keeping them handy or intact.

My strategy here is to buy about 8 pairs in the US before I come back each summer and hope that I will lose or break less than one pair a month.  People do seem to feel sorry for me, especially when I am balancing a pair armlessly on my nose like Ben Franklin and some have even donated a pair or two to me at random times.

My vision and thinning hair seems to be the only physical signs of aging, the forewarning of impending mortality.  But I am not feeling morose about it and continue to do my best to age into wisdom and experience rather than becoming an old fool.

Looking back on the pastiche that is my life, I am amazed at the experiences I have had and that all of this memory can be inside of one person.  I really have lived a lot!  Some years admittedly were ‘eaten by the locusts’ but I really feel that God has redeemed them all to me in the last decade. 

Facebook continues to a surprising map of the tapestry I have woven.  I see there friends I have collected along the way.  I appreciated the well wishes of more than 50 of them whom I have come to know over many decades.

Life here continues to be interesting, but I think I need to update readers at home on the unfolding events that are concerning us these days.  Probably the most alarming thing is how much richer we are getting!  Not usually something that one complains about, but in this case it is not good.  The problem is the very rapid devaluation we are seeing of the Burundian Franc vis-à-vis the US Dollar.  When we moved here it was about 1100 francs per dollar, and now it is close to 2000 francs per dollar, almost a 100% decrease in value in 5 years.  But more than half of that has happened in the last 3 months. 

It is tempting to see that our programming dollars are going a lot further, but when we realize that people’s salaries in local currency have less and less value, we are gravely concerned.  Local food prices are skyrocketing, not to mention the cost of imported goods.  The problem is that even local produce depends on fuel to get into the city. 

Burundi has always had a terrible balance of trade but I don’t pretend to understand what is happening now.  I have heard some theories about block grants that went to the govt. in dollars being cancelled this year because of corruption, or that the IMF if forcing the country to liberalize and not protect its currency value.  Some blame the fire at the Central market, but the financial collapse seems to have begun even before the fire.  Others claim that some wealthy and powerful people are hoarding dollars and raiding the banks.

One thing is clear, as expressed to Rebecca by our friendly neighborhood Forex moneychanger:  “There is almost no foreign currency in the country right now.”

I don’t know what the reason is or why this is happening but it is having a devastating effect on the economy here.  I could not imagine I could watch such a poor country get any poorer.  But it is.

One immediate consequence of this has been a serious fuel shortage as merchants are not able to keep an inventory of fuel.  The price of gas is regulated by the govt. so when the currency value goes down, gas station owners cannot make enough devaluing local currency to buy more fuel in dollars.  They have quit selling it altogether as of yesterday in anticipation of a much needed price rise. 

Because of this, Rebecca and I bought a second very small fuel efficient 1998 Toyota Raum to use for driving in town as the Fortuner uses a lot of gas and will only be used for trips upcountry now.  What was amazing is that we bought it for $3000 because the price in francs, which would have equaled $4000 a month ago when we started looking, dropped 25% and the owner was very happy to even sell it when she did.  

A car was not our only purchase this week though.  We have needed to replace our stove, which has been falling apart bit by bit.  We have been living without the use of 2 of the four burners and the oven door that would not close properly.  The last straw for me was having to try to circumnavigate the chair with the 20-liter drum of water on it that we use to hold the oven door shut.  To get something in or out had become a fairly major ordeal. 

It tool me several trips to get the right stove and when we got home we found that the oven did not work.  After taking a good bit of it apart to find the problem, I discovered that one had to hold the regulator knob in when lighting the gas to get the flow to start.  Fortunately I was able to put it back together again.

We have also raised all the salaries of our staff this month to help them deal with the currency devaluation, but even with a 25% raise, they earn (in dollars) just the same as we were paying them a year ago. If inflation continues, we’ll probably need to raise them again. But we are probably some of the few that can afford to keep pace with inflation. Parallel to this economic disaster, is a notable increase in the number of thefts happening to people around us. We don’t think this is an accident as people become more and more desperate.

I am hoping the Franc value will level off soon, we would dread seeing something like what happened in Zimbabwe or DRC under Mobutu happen here.  Please be in prayer about this, and if there is anyone who can explain clearly to me why it is happening, I would like to understand.

Besides this we had a series of work related crises this week that we can’t really talk about here.  Fortunately we were in town all week trying to complete all our late year-end reporting by Friday. So this meant that we were actually dealing with the 7 different crises during the period that we were also staying up late to finish the reporting. Perhaps it just added more interest to the week, relieving the boredom of data-entry. Rebecca’s perspective: I would have liked to take a rain check on one or two of those crises. Anyway, we don’t always have that choice.

One of the biggest challenges in relation to that is our decision to fast for Lent.  Rebecca and I are only eating one meal per day (dinner), so we definitely feel a bit lower in our energy level to deal with problems.  The other is problem is that you can fast from food, but you can’t fast from parenting, and having to keep the kids in line without eating during the day is a challenge as well.  Despite all of that, the fast has been a good opportunity for quieting our hearts, minds, and spirits, and being available to the ways God is using us.

The low energy I felt yesterday also proved to useful in tolerating the nearly 4-hour wait at the ‘DMV’ to get the new car registered in my name.  I had to sit quietly and wait for a title search nearly the whole afternoon.  I did so, and fell asleep for over an hour, which passed the time well.  I can now see there is a high correlation between patience and hunger, which might explain why people here seem so calm and patient in general.  Impatience and stress use a lot more energy than patience and calmness.

Although the week was generally not punctuated by many major events, we did have Yolanda and Melody pass through over the weekend, and Saturday evening we were invited to an adult Birthday party for our friend Naja Spanner.   It was at their house and we had arranged a baby sitter for the evening.  Sadly David spiked a fever that afternoon and we ended up bringing him along with us.  He was quite happy with that and spent time arranging the toys of Elias and Aviaja who were at a friend’s for a sleepover.

The party was nice with many of our mutual friends. We stayed until after 11pm which is very late for us.  Unfortunately we came back to find that Oren had found a website on the computer with a lot of free video games and was playing them incessantly when we got home.  It was quite shocking considering he only discovered there were such things as computer games in the past few months.  (Mostly while we were trying to meet our annual reporting deadlines, and doing lower quality parenting.)

We are working to wean him off them again, and teaching him how to be disciplined.  Fortunately our Internet speed is still a bit too slow to allow for too much gaming. 

The weekend was OK despite David’s sickness.   Our small group was big this week as most everyone was there at once.  We had dinner with our friends Tim and Jeanette afterwards. 

It was good to see David’s virus had ended by Sunday and on Monday morning both kids were back in school and we were ready to begin another week.

Rebecca’s notes: One high point of this past two weeks has been reading to Oren. He has reached the age where chapter books are starting to interest him. Over Christmas, we read the first Narnia book. In the last two weeks, we read the Magician’s Nephew. He has really loved hearing these stories and he’s old enough to understand the analogies that C.S. Lewis is making between Aslan and a Christ-figure. It has been very good bonding time for us. David is totally bored, on the other hand, and just rolls over and goes to sleep when I start reading Narnia. In a few years he’ll like them – maybe then, Oren can do the reading!

A Visit to Nyungwe Rainforest

A double collared Sunbird perches in the garden outside our hotel window at Nyungwe forest lodge in Rwanda.

In my last posting I mentioned that the kids were on vacation the following week and that we were going to take them to Rwanda with us for a business and pleasure trip.   We have, at this point returned, in fact we came back this past Thursday and I will be assuming my travel agent persona to talk about our trip to the Nyungwe rainforest.

Although Rwanda is not a large country it features several temperate zones, from the savannah, typical of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, in the east, volcanoes and ‘gorillas in the mist’ in the north, and picturesque lake Kivu and an extensive area of rainforest parkland in the east.

The Nyungwe rainforest is a protected area and because it was one of the very few places on the African continent that did not freeze over in the ice age, it features a huge amount of biodiversity and more than half of all the animals in the continent are represented there.

Sadly man has played a role in the eradication of several species, including the mountain elephant (the last one was shot in 1999).  But at this time Rwanda is working hard to protect it as a natural park which offers some opportunities for tourism including chimp tracking, bird watching, a canopy walk, and some other hikes to various natural wonders within. 

Rebecca and I did not want to leave the region without ever seeing the forest, but it is not exactly on the direct route to Kigali so we had not seen it.

This time, however, we went up the western route passed the border with Bukavu, DRC and continued into the forest.  It was about a 4 hour trip from our house in Bujumbura.

We had called ahead and booked rooms at two places, one for each of two nights.  The first one, a hotel called Top View was quite new, and featured a large round central reception and restaurant building that resembles a giant traditional hut, and about a dozen bungalows with a queen bed, and separate living room and fireplace.  The rooms would have made perfect honeymoon suites and if your idea of a honeymoon is a very high remote place looking down on a Central African rainforest, this is the place for you. 

The hotel was pricey and we had initially rejected even going, but when we declined on the phone, the manager asked us how much we would be willing to pay, and we agreed on a reasonable price for the 4 of us for one night.

The fact that he was so willing to negotiate made me suspect that they are having a bit of trouble filling it, which was the case.  When we arrived, I could see some of the reasons why. 

Although the hotel aspires to be a five star venue and has many of the necessary features, the spectacular view being chief among them, but there are some key features missing.  The first and most obvious is the road leading up to the hotel.  It is about a half kilometer of dirt path that passes within inches of houses in a local village and climbs at nearly a 45 degree angle.  Even with our 4X4 we had trouble climbing to the top.  If it would have been raining or if we would have met someone on the way down, we would have been greatly delayed.  (It is not  wide enough to pass a vehicle.)

The manager told us the place was built in anticipation of a new road which had thus far had construction blocked by the local villagers who live along the route.

Getting to the top certainly seemed worth it, considering the view, but not if you had to go up several times per day for various excursions into the forest.

The service is very good, and quite labor intensive as staff have to travel several hundred meters from the main building to bungalows to bring tea, light fires in the fireplace, deliver messages, etc. 

The food, however, at $15 per meal per person was not stellar. 

We did, nonetheless, enjoy the very new, well appointed Bungalow which was adorned with calla lilies in each room upon our arrival.  There was hot and cold running water in a very nice bath tub, and as I said, seemed set up for a couple on their honeymoon. 

The kids did enjoy running around inside and out anyway and we took turns looking through binoculars at the birds we could see from the balcony, including some rare species of sunbirds that are only found in this forest.  (regal sunbird)

We had dinner which was so-so and played Carcisone with the kids in the evening while roasting marshmallows on the fire in our bungalow before bed.  We got up early the next day to walk in the forest.   We had breakfast (disappointing),  checked-out, then headed about 45 minutes up the road to one of the park entrances.  On the way there you are driving in the rainforest and we saw some interesting wildlife, particularly 2 species of monkey (mountain and blueface).  The mountain monkeys look like black and white colobus monkeys. 

The park fees are somewhat high and a bit complicated with regard to what trail you take.  For a hike that lasted about 3 hours and covered 4 kilometers we paid about $90 for our family as East Africa residents.   The  hike included a guide and would have been better without two young children in tow.  As much as we wanted them to enjoy it, it is a lot to expect a 7 or 4 year old to be super excited about eco-tourism no matter how many Dora the Explorer and Diego videos they watch.

We did see some interesting flora, a few monkeys and many more sunbirds, but the spectacular Rwenzori turaco eluded us as did chimpanzees.  Despite the frequent complaints from Oren of how hard the walk was, there was something sublime about walking in the rainforest.  This was afterall the dark heart of Africa explored by Livingston and Stanley.  Little of it looks uncultivated anymore, but is this what it was like for them?

Probably the only hint of the treacherousness they faced by pests large and small were the ants.  In several places on the trail there were literally carpets of them covering up to several hundred meters on the trail.  The only thing to do was to stamp through them quickly, then, if necessary, strip off you pants and pick off the 20 or 30 that managed to get into your pants and pinch you.  (I was able to successfully slap them through my pants, but Rebecca had to take hers off to get them all.)

We did manage to push Oren to walk the entire hike, but David was carried on shoulders by me or the guide most of the way. 

It was a good challenge for Oren and we were exhausted by the time we left and went to stay at our second night venue, the Gisakura guesthouse. 

This was near, but far more modest then the Top View Hill.  It was also much cheaper and more the feel of a youth hostel.  Rooms ran about $50 per night for us to stay together in one.  Bathrooms were shared as well. 

The food at dinner was good, as was breakfast—Rwandese fare.  The garden was probably the most exciting feature and boasted large beds of calla lilies and poinsettia trees thronged by regal and double collared sunbirds. 

We left mid-morning the next day to continue our trip to Kigali.  We had to drive through the entire rainforest again to arrive there which was actually quite nice.  We saw more monkeys on the way out as well as a mountainous divide where water which falls eventually ends up in either the Nile river on the north side, or the Congo river on the South side.

It was an enlightening 2 day excursion, but my impression of tourism of Rwanda in general was reinforced by this experience.  That is, that there are great things to see, but Rwanda tourism has not learned to really market to a wide range of tourists from College students and back packers to families and then of course rich retirees.  Almost all tourism here tends to be aimed at the latter.  Most booked tours are incredibly expensive here when you factor in park fees, transport and lodging.  There are virtually no mid-level offerings.  We are lucky to live close and have our own transportation and a resident visa.  But from visitors coming from elsewhere, be prepared to spend a lot for an interesting experience.

We arrived in Kigali without incident after a 5 hour trip from the forest.  On the way we passed through many of the towns where our partners have projects including the Kigeme refugee camp, about half full the last time I saw it and now filled to capacity.  It is a sobering sight to see these Congolese refugees, in limbo, waiting for the chance to return home. 

Upon arriving, we checked into the Amani guesthouse where we like to stay.  We were also pleased to know that the Johnson’s our American missionary friends (Joy and Jessie) with their 3 sons Zack, Micah, and Elliot, roughly the ages of our kids, were staying at the same place all week.  They had come to get some dental work done.  (If anyone is into medical tourism Rwanda is an awesome place.)  There is a 7^th Day Adventist Filipino dentist here, who does excellent work for about $25 per filling and even does root canals and other procedures for under $100.

We paid a visit to her as well during the week to have her look at a small gum injury David had.

The kids really enjoyed playing together during the week.  Our visit to Kigali was not vacation and Rebecca and I tag teamed to attend a half dozen long meetings with partners, but we did feel very productive and we were able to let the other parent stay at the guest house while the Johnson kids and our kids played together.

We did spend some time with our SALTers Alyssa and Janelle, as well as Matt, our service worker.  He has added a puppy to his menagerie at the house which Oren and David really enjoyed playing with.

Johnson and Mosley kids at Mexican restaurant.

We did some activities together with Joy and Jessie.  They are missionaries with the Emanuel Church in Burundi (connected to Plymouth Brethren) and Jessie’s family has been living here for generations.  They run a school (Discovery School) at the church which is not unsimilar to Hope School although it is in Bujumbura.  (They are always looking for teachers if there are any volunteer minded people reading this.)

One of the highlights of our time was a trip with them to a Mexican restaurant on Wednesday evening.  It was a great place where you can get real LA style giant burritos.  Very American!  The kids had a great time running around together in the restaurant.

Yolanda playing Sorry with Oren

By Thursday it was time for us to leave and our family headed back to Bujumbura without incident.  We arrived in the afternoon on Thursday and I was even able to take a swim on Friday morning. 

The weekend was relaxing and we had a number of service workers come down for various reason, Yolanda, and Melody came down from Gitega and Michael Sharp was passing through from Bukavu.  They actually stayed with our other service worker Jennifer Price who now has a decent size apartment very close to us and can host some of our team when they are in town.

We also had a nice evening on Saturday with our friends J.J and Courtney and their 2 daughters.  (Who are in my ballet class)  He works with World Relief and they are also familiar with the Baltimore area as they are from there. We have wanted to get to know them better.  We do see each other in our small group on Sunday's but the evening together was a chance to talk a bit more intimately.

Monday was my Birthday and though it was a bit understated this year, we did have a cake made from a real Betty Crocker cake mix!  (A rare treat here.)  We shared it with Oren, David and Tim and Jeanette (our South African friends) who in turn baby sat for us while Rebecca and I went on a date night to an Indian restaurant.

 

Happy Birthday to Me!

A Week Without Drama

Melody with her colleagues Oscar and Chantal at the MiPAREC office in Gitega.

Do I need to start to explain my delay in posting this week?  Maybe only to myself.   One thing I have noticed is the titles of the past 4 blogs sound a bit like we live in a situation of perpetual drama, which is actually not the impression I want to give  about our life here.  It is nice to have something a bit more mundane to say for a change. 

I feel like there is some follow-up due on the last post which was written the day after the Central Market fire.   Not much to say beyond what I have said.  There was an arrest of the head of the market board for not upholding the fire code (an impossible task I am sure).   It is hard to say exactly how it is affecting us personally.  One big concern is inflation, which is already at about 11%, but it is hard to see any differences at the forex where we change money.

Our workers say that cost of food has gone up somewhat dramatically as people deal with shortages, but it does not seem to be affecting daily life here as far as the city as a whole.  I don’t know what the plans are for rebuilding at this point but we are not allowed to go down to that part of town and other areas are being set up to work as a temporary market and bus depot. 

Last week was the beginning for us of several weeks of data entry.  We are nearing the end of our fiscal year and we need to do a lot of reporting into an MCC data base, as well as entering plans for the coming year.  Somewhat methodical work but does give us an excuse to stay home for the week rather than travel.

Teri-Lynn teaching grade 2.

Despite that I was upcountry last Tuesday and Wednesday.  I dropped Teri-Lynn, our SALTer back at the Hope School and did get a chance to look around briefly at the beginning construction of a library there.  I also had a chance to see her teach some second graders English.  I posted a clip of that on the Hope School Facebook page.

I stayed the night at the seminary in Burasira before heading on to Gitega on Wednesday to meet with Melody our service worker with MiPAREC.  I am always amazed at how terrible the roads get during rainy season.  It had been freshly graded over the summer, but the road from Burasira to Gitega was terrible.  I have characterized these roads as their worst as driving through a dry river bed, but there were several instances when there was 8 inches of fast moving water going across or down a section of the road that I was driving on.  I cannot imagine how anything smaller than a 4 by 4 could go on it.  I was relieved to arrive in Gitega without incident.

Melody and Yolanda in their apartment

After a good meeting I went to Melody and Yolanda's apartment for lunch and had an excellent eggplant parmigiano prepared by their very capable cook Alphonsine.  After lunch I continued on to Bujumbura and arrived in the afternoon on Wednesday.  Oren was at soccer and Rebecca was there with our friend Jeanette and her daughter Isabel who was playing with David. 

The rest of the week was fairly normal, except Friday when I had to teach ballet until 7:30pm and Rebecca had an elders meeting at the church at the same time.  We worked out a complicated hand off involving our cook Marceline, but all in all it went well.  It ended with the boys and I watching the Speed Racer movie until late in the evening.

The weekend was good, we had dinner on Saturday with Tim and Jeanette, I helped with Sunday School on Sunday, we had small group, and even went to the beach during the afternoon on Sunday.

We continued our work week the following week without any travel but found it quite difficult to get in 5 straight days.  We had some technical problems that prevented us from updating our database despite the fact that I am happy to report that Burundi now has 3G internet and while it is nothing like the US we can send a 50 mb file in about half an hour.  

The kids were also off Monday and Tuesday for Burundian Unity Day so that meant one of us could not work.  We did take the day off on Tuesday and had a nice lunch with Thomas and Naja and their kids and spent the afternoon at the pool at the World Relief office where Thomas works.

Other perturbations was the necessity for me to do some work on the kids visas this week at Immigration.  Felix, our program assistant usually takes care of logistics and that is a good plan.  I found it quite difficult to get everything perfect and even had to make 4 trips before completing the work.  Each trip involved standing in lines only to be told that I needed to be in a different line.  Only one official directly asked for a bribe (I did not pay), but by Friday I had successfully gotten permission for them to leave for this week.

The reason for all the work on that is that we will be going to Rwanda this coming week as they have a week off of school.  Preceding that, this past Friday they had a Carnaval festival (since they won't be there for Mardi Gras.)  Both Oren and David went to school in costumes.  David in his ladybug we made for his Birthday and Oren in a house we constructed together based on a movie he saw called Monster House.  Oren also had to memorize a poem about Carnaval for his class.  He told us he recited before the class perfectly so Rebecca made a recording and we attached it below.  It is amazing to hear how good his French accent is.  He certainly did not learn it from us!

Our trip to Rwanda this week will be business and pleasure.  We leave Saturday and will drive up the western side of Rwanda into Numwe Park.  It is a rain forest which is supposed to have amazing birds and tons of monkeys including chimpanzees.  We will be there 2 days then continue on to Kigali.  There Rebecca and I will tag-team meetings with partners and service workers while entertaining the kids at the guest house and town.  Actually we are lucky that Jessie and Joy Johnson some missionary friends of ours will be there with their kids at the same time at the guest house.  Hopefully that will be fun for everyone.

Oren reciting J'aime le Carnaval