The Time of Lasts

David Oren and I, crashed out at the Addis airport after a 13 hour flight from Washington DC.

I have been aware of the significance these days have for us, since our arrival in Bujumbura this past week.  We are officially into the ‘time of lasts’.  That is to say, that every day that passes from here on will represent our ‘last’ such day on the calendar year, in Burundi.  (At least as MCC reps.)  MCC’s work is very cyclical on an annual schedule, and it is hard to believe we have done this 5 times already. 

The one good thing I will say about a job that has a very regular cycle of activities, is that, like the movie Groundhog Day, one theoretically gets better and better at it each time through.  Truth be told, I can say with some confidence that Rebecca and I understand the Rep. job here quite well. 

While some may imagine feeling antsy about being stuck in a fairly routine cycle of administrative tasks, my experience of doing this work is anything but routine.  In fact, the work has required an almost super-human capacity to improvise, adapt, and be extremely flexible.  It is exciting, unpredictable, and the thought of going through it for the last time is a bit sad.  (Not that we have a lot of time to process lots of feelings when we are in the throes of doing it.)

We had decided several years ago that 6 years would be the length of our commitment, after which we would return to the US so our kids (and us) could spend a couple years closer to grandparents before we go out again. 

But the thought of this coming to an end is daunting even though it is planned.  I did not expect to feel quite so fulfilled, significant, and a vital part of a vital community as I have in this extra-cultural context.  We have a good, meaningful life here and the thought of bringing it to a close is difficult.

This may all sound a bit premature with a full year remaining in our term, but 12 months goes by quickly and we will be needing to think about ending all the time as we will be preparing a turn-over manual for the next reps.  Everything we do this time needs to be recorded in a way that makes it comprehensible for the following year when we are not here.

Other things are making us aware of the end as well.  While we were in the US this last time we did do a bit of what was meant to be casual looking at houses in neighborhoods near our families.  As it turned out, we did find a house that we have put a bid on.  It is several blocks from Rebecca’s brother and my parents.  I don’t know if we will get it, but at this writing, our offer has been accepted.  Here is a picture. 

While this action might threaten to make us more antsy to leave, the surprising feeling is some fear about how on earth we could recreate the close community and significant work we have here.  We will be trusting God to open our eyes and hearts to embrace the opportunities of a new place when the time to leave comes. 

As I said earlier, our work here gives us mercifully little time to reflect of become self absorbed in melancholia.  We returned back into the maelstrom fairly quickly.

I last wrote in the wee hours before our departure from Dulles airport.  We took Ethiopian back which is two flights.  The first is 13 hours long without landing.  It is a strange feeling flight because of how rapidly we cross through time zones.  We start in the morning and land 12 hours later the following mornings.  The night is so short that neither Rebecca and I nor the kids had even fallen asleep before we landed.  But about the time we touched down we were dead tired and spent several hours in the crowded Addis Abeba airport trying to sleep on one small unoccupied lounging seat.  The last leg of the flight was shorter, Nairobi to Bujumbura, we did sleep a bit on that and arrived in the mid afternoon.  We were met by Felix who brought us back home.

Our house had been left in great condition by our house sitter and our dogs were thrilled to see us.  I remember little about the next two days except we spent a lot of them sleeping at very odd hours.  The kids were pretty mixed up but the fact that the sun goes down here at 6pm was a great help in getting them back to a regular schedule.

Two days after our arrival the recuperation period was over.  We had a lot to catch up on with Felix, but also, our three new one year service workers, the SALTers arrived on the Thursday Ethiopian flight.  (SALT stands for Serving and Learning Together)  This is the fourth year we have participated in the program so we have some familiarity with the drill.  Even so, it is a lot of prep work and even more when they actually arrive.

We need to find host families for them before they arrive as well as assignments.  When they get here we need to orient, get them set up with phones, internet modems, monetary advances, and many hours of orientation to the program, the culture, their host families, and their assignments. 

They come with a good attitude because those who choose to do this program know they are committing to a year of deep cultural immersion in language, lifestyle, and in their work setting with a local organization.  It is not a program for the faint of heart.   They know they will be stretched beyond most of their past life experiences and they have chosen to take it on.

Because of this, I do feel some excitement about seeing just who steps off the plane.  I also have done this enough to know that who steps back on the plane a year from now will be someone quite different and I have always been a bit awed by the change. 

SALTers Matt, Julia, Teresa, making a good impression by helping
around the kitchen on their first day!

So this year’s SALTers are Teresa, Julia, and Matt.  Teresa and Matt are Canadian, and Julia is American.  Matt will be working with a campus ministry partner in Burundi (UGBB-connected with Intervarsity).  Teresa and Julia will be working in Rwanda with several partners on a variety of projects.  They will all be doing the work of capacity building.  A job that becomes more and more defined the longer one is here. 

I picked them up from the airport and brought them home.

I have to take an aside here to talk about the latest ‘improvement’ at the airport:

We used to pay 300 bif (20cents) to enter the airport to park. We paid as we went in and got a receipt.  We showed the receipt when we left.  It was all done manually.  A guy handed me the receipt at the gate when I gave him money.  There was another person employed at the exit to look at the receipts as we left.  The whole process took about 30 seconds on each end.)

I think in the interest of increasing revenue (and efficiency) they have put in an automatic system in the month we were away, so it was quite a surprise to me.  The entrance is more or less the same, but instead of paying we get a ticket.  When we exit we put it in an automatic slot and pay the amount to go out the gate.

The problem is that the new automated system has some bugs.  The first one is that the place one inserts the ticket is about 25 feet off the road, so everyone has to exit the vehicle to enter the slot.  The second problem is that the amounts are all different and there needs to be a person in the booth giving change to everyone.   The third problem is that there is only one exit lane.    The fourth problem is that cars tend to trickle in to the airport but tend to leave en masse. 

The result is a level of chaos I can only describe as remarkable.  It took me about an hour to exit when we picked up the SALTers.  Cars were backed up at the gate quite far.  People would get out and make a line to pay, but it did not correspond in any way to the cars that were in line.  The person in the front of the line whose car was blocking the way was not often the first in the line to pay.  So this compounded the slowness.  The hour wait was honestly for less than 20 cars.  I was glad I had not had to pick them up from the crowded Brussels airlines flight which would have had one more passengers.

On top of this, in order to control the chaos, the airport had had to hire at least a half dozen more people.  Even exiting once you had a ticket was complicated because the place it had to be put to open the gat was also out of reach of the car on the other side of the road.  Someone had to help you do that part.

I try to so hard to not let the cynical tongue clicking side of me react to this scene.  But sitting in a hot car while drivers are doing their best to cut in front of you and the whole thing seems entirely pointless and avoidable if some thought had been applied, tries me.  I will say, this kind of inappropriate technology can usually be traced back to some great idea by a foreign donor like the World Bank or IMF.  I don’t know who suggested this be implemented, but I would be happy if someone would shed some light in a comment.

I do have some smug satisfaction in the expectation that when the automatic payment machine breaks down in the next month, the whole thing will be abandoned and we will be able to pay a person who will give us a chit when we enter.  (I would happily pay much more going in to avoid the current catastrophe).

Whew, a lengthy diversion, but I think being able to write about it helps me  to let it go more easily.  I may not be a genius, but I do hope that I can help our local partners not make similar kinds of mistakes in planning that I witnessed at the airport exit boondoggle. 

We have spent several days in Bujumbura with the SALTers and got Matt set up with his host family.  The SALTers did have a chance to meet our other Burundi service workers, Melody, and Jennifer, during their few days in Bujumbura as they were both in town on the weekend.  We even celebrated Melody's Birthday with her on Saturday.  

I am finishing this blog in Kigali as we are now here bringing the Rwanda SALTers to meet their supervisors and host families as well.  We will be here getting them set up and taking care of business until Friday.  We will drive home through Mutaho and see the Hope School on the way home.  Our whole family came this time as the kids do not have school until Monday.  It can be challenging to travel together, but our partners like to see the family.

We got here in the evening and did see Matt Gates who is looking well.  He has been working hard in training groups to do conservation agriculture and gave us a very good report on the progress of the project that we began in July.  At this writing it is under-budget and ahead of schedule!! (I hope I haven’t jinxed it.)