Up From the Gravy a Rose

Oren showing off his Easter Bunny bun he made at an egg dying party on Saturday.

If I had to begin to characterize the Easter we celebrated this year, I would say that it probably lacked the piety we have been capable of in the past.  There were several reasons for this, one is that we no longer play quite the roles in our church that we had in other settings.  Also Easter traditions are a bit different here, but the real culprit, I think, was exhaustion from the very long intense month of travel and hosting. 

We did not even make an attempt to find a Good Friday service.  This was the first evening we had had with our kids in I don’t know how long, and there really are no ‘family’ Good Friday services I am aware of here. 

We watched a movie together and fell asleep shortly thereafter.  I had taught two ballet classes earlier in the day to very small groups.  Friday was also the last day of school before a two week break so many of the children had already left.

Thursday Oren received his midterm grades.  We were generally pleased to see that his French had improved since the last quarter.  We felt that 75% on reading, grammar and vocabulary in one’s second language taught in that language was pretty good and hard earned as we had kept him on his homework diligently since the beginning of the year.  His math scores were nearly 100% and it seems that math comprehension is not affected at all by language.

He has had it tough in school this semester because his main teacher had to leave the country and return to Belgium for a family matter.  He has had a new teacher in the past month.  She is being well coached by the school, but I think it is an adjustment to become familiar with a new teacher.  Fortunately it does not seem to have adversely affected him thus far.

Thursday evening Rebecca and I were treated to a date night when our friends Tim and Jeanette took our kids for the evening.  We went to an Ethiopian restaurant near Oren’s school and enjoyed the food very much.  We have been relishing our evening meal for the past two months because of our Lenten fast which has been no breakfast or lunch except Sundays .  We were more than a bit pleased that the next, Good Friday, would be the last day of observance of that ritual. 

The holidays are welcome to all of us it seems.  Even Rebecca and I are ready for a bit of a break from the routine.  We have not had enough intentional time with the children in the past month and look forward to making up for that the next two weeks.

We are not going anywhere far but will do an overnight upcountry for a couple days to get out of the Bujumbura heat, probably to Ijenda, about an hour away.

The rest of the time we will spend around here.  Rebecca and I still need to switch off doing work during the week.  I am also going to do several painting projects including the front porch and a couple bed rooms.  We have had some masons in repairing some of the cement on the walls and I want to get them repainted once they are done.

I had done some paint shopping this week and always consider it an adventure to poke around the hardware stores in the quartier Asiatique to get the supplies I need.  I had commented in past posts about the highly eclectic assortment of goods any given store will have, for instance, a paint store will usually not sell brushes, rollers, or masking tape.  But I have noticed some new and interesting trends.  I would say that there a few common denominators and I would venture to say that if a store only had two items in stock, one would be a toilet bowl, and the other would be a solar panel.  (I would add that finding a seat for a toilet bowl in Bujumbura is next to impossible.)  I cannot say why these two items seem to be in the inventory of every store somewhere, but there it is.

The paint store I have frequented in the past is now closed as well, so I am having to try to find matching colors for the house from a different company.  The primary color of our house is that tropical crème (which looks like a mildewed yellowing white) but there are a surprising number of shades of it and matching is a challenge.

Saturday was a nice family day.  We had our normal yoga routine at our friend’s house who works for the UN.  We hung around and chatted for a while David took a dip in their pool.  In the afternoon we had a real treat: A giant Easter Egg dying party with a large group of our missionary and other friends.    It was hosted by the Hoffman’s a German missionary family with kids our sons ages who go to the Ecole Belge as well.  There were another 30 people there as well from school and church.  It was like a bit reunion as most of us see each other in some capacity during the week. 

The kids had a great time dying eggs that each family brought.  They also made some bread in the shape of bunnies that was baked and eaten while they were there.  I wish I could convey to those in the US and Canada how completely un-commercial holidays like Easter and Christmas are.  They are celebrated in churches as High Holy Days, but there is just not a lot of merchandise surrounding them.  It is honestly refreshing and does inspire much creative thinking to share some of our traditions with our kids.  Definitely 'old school'!

For my part, I did want to give the kids an Easter basket and was lucky to have found in Kigali a couple weeks ago, a small bag of egg shaped chocolate.  It was only remotely Eastery candy I could find.   I bought it and brought it home to put in some baskets for the kids.

With the dyed eggs and the chocolate eggs we had sufficient supplies to make two small Easter baskets (using some local woven baskets here) and we set them out on Saturday night after the kids were asleep.  There were also a few small presents left by Zachee, Bridget and Timmy as well that we put in a small bag by the baskets.

They were both up at the crack of dawn and were very excited about the baskets.  We did prevent them from eating all the chocolate before breakfast.

Church was very nice, although there is not a gigantic bump in attendance one sees in churches in the US.  There were a few more suits and the sermon was spot-on but by and large it was similar to most other Sundays.

Rebecca was teaching Sunday School that day and had a good lesson which she felt went very well.  It included making a cross out of rolled-up homemade paper beads that the girls really seemed to like.

After church we went to the beach and stayed into the late afternoon.  It was nice to be there as a family, and we did see some of our other friends out there doing the same thing.

On Sunday evening, (our small group is on a two week hiatus), Rebecca and I watched an episode of Downton Abbey.  It is in the very intense last weeks of season three and we have done our best not to let friends ‘spoil’ the surprises for us.  I will say the tragedies on the show are getting me to the point that I woke up Tuesday morning vaguely sad about some aquaintances having marriage difficulties amidst other tragedy and realized I was ruminating on the characters of Downton Abbey.

Fortunately right after the show my parents called us on Sunday night to wish us Happy Easter.  My mom is actually quite funny, often by accident, but does seem to channel Erma Bombeck at times (one of her idols back in the day.)  She was thrilled to catch us on Skype and told us excitedly that she had great news:  “Guess what?  I have great news today…. Well I guess the great news is that Christ the Lord is risen, but I really want to tell you about the new polyester bathing suit I found on sale, its hypoallergenic!!”

She and my dad told us about their Easter and asked us about ours.  Rebecca told her about our service and how the praise team did a very nice a cappella rendition in French of the song Up From the Grave He Arose.  My mom laughed and recollected to us her childhood memories of singing the words UP FROM THE GRAVY A ROSE.

 A fitting tribute to our less than pious Easter.   

Here is a snip of our choir singing Up From the Grave He Arose led by Jean Niyondiko.  I think it is truly one of the best Easter songs written and well done by our BICC praise team.