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