SALTers Julia and Teresa---first sunset in Kigali, their new home for a year.
I hope the weeks do not continue to pass as quickly as this
one did. Actually the time is rushing
by, but at the same time, I cannot believe we have only been here for a week
and a half. It seems like we got off the
plane months ago.
This is probably due to the rapidity with which we have
entered back into our regular routines of life.
At this writing the kids are back in school for the second day. Oren is in troisieme primaire (third grade)
and David is in troisieme maternelle (kindergarten) Actually it is hard to believe that this year
is David’s 4th year of school, but they start with a crèche at the
age of 2 in the French system.
They both seemed to enter readily back into the familiar
routine of going back to school. I would dare say there was even some
excitement to get back. Both of the kids
have fairly new teachers (to Burundi), Mdme Celine for David and M. Bernard for
Oren. They both seem very competent and
the kids came back with a positive report the first day about their new
teachers.
We are praying that Oren’s French continues to be adequate
to succeed in the now higher grade level.
He has been there for 6 years, but his French is still not ‘fameux’ as
they say in French. David still does not
speak but frankly seems to understand everything that is said to him.
We have added a home school routine this year of English
grammar and reading. While Oren is
reading at his grade level in French, his English reading is several years
behind and he will need to be ready for his return to the US next year.
We still have not decided on what extra-curriculars the kids
will do this year. Oren is not keen on
returning to karate for a third year, soccer and maybe tennis are being
considered as well.
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| SALTers being presented to Rwanda partners. |
We spent the week prior to school traveling to Rwanda. We were taking the two SALT volunteers
(Teresa and Julia) to their host families and get them set in in their
assignments. We left on Monday morning,
but not before getting Matt, set up with his host family in Bujumbura. Matt will be serving in Burundi while the
other two are in Rwanda.
We arrived in Kigali on Monday late afternoon and spent the
night at the Amani guesthouse. We did
meet Matt Gates and talked to him about meeting we had coming up. We had planned to introduce SALTers to partners
on Tuesday and their host families as well.
We also met up with Melody and Jennifer, our two Burundi service workers
who had come for some dental work in Kigali.
We all had dinner together on Wednesday evening at the Indian restaurant
Zaffron.
We also did quite a bit of shopping and set them up with
phones, internet, and various supplies and meds like the cure for malaria and
treatments for various parasites associated with drinking the water in
Kigali. (They were needed within the
first 24 hours.)
Rebecca and I also had a number of meetings and shopping
errands of our own. Among the good
things that happened was having an old mac computer brought back to life by a
technician in Kigali. (Let me know
ex-pats if you need that contact.)
Since the kids were with us on this trip, we did a lot of
tag-teaming with each of us taking turns watching them while the other went out
to work. Amani guesthouse is a good home
base, as they are able to entertain themselves quite easily in its
multi-leveled gardens and yards.
Thursday was the day of reckoning for our SALTers as we took
each one to their respective homes. They
are with some really excellent families who we do know. Sadly they are not geographically close to
each other or their jobs, so using public transport will be a very regular part
of their life.
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| dinner with MCC team at Zaffron |
We left them that night, our last in Kigali with just a bit
of anxiety as we had been hearing regular news reports of the heating up
tensions between the Rwandese Govt. and the DRC. On the day we before we left, the Rwandan
army had been mobilized to the border town of Gisenyi in response to shells
that had fallen in the area from fighting across the border in the city of
Goma. There were threats from the Rwandese
of responding to this action militarily.
At this writing, things have cooled somewhat with the
withdrawal of the M-23 rebels from strategic positions around Goma in DRC, but I did
sense some tension among our partners over whether Rwanda would enter into a
war with its neighbor.
We had meetings right up until our departure on Friday
afternoon. Melody and Jennifer caught a
ride with us on the way back to Bujumbura.
We left late because we were planning to stop half way in Mutaho to
visit the Hope School and stay the night. But on the way
down we got a call from Innocent the director of our partner there who told us
he would not be there. We made a quick
decision to postpone the visit and continue on to Bujumbura that same day.
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| Julia and host family. |
The sun had set while we still had an hour and a half of
traveling. There are no street lights so
the road is pitch black. The problem is,
it is far from deserted. There are many
trucks zipping up and down at this time with their brights on and making wide
turns on the winding roads. It did feel
considerably more dangerous than day driving.
But it was also somewhat fascinating. I felt a bit like a deep sea diver
discovering the denizens of the Burundi night, our car the bathoscaph with our
headlights giving us a tiny glimpse of the outside environment. The most fascinating phenomenon I discovered
was that the bicyclists who load themselves down with 300 or more pounds of
charcoal and go screaming down the hills by day, do the same thing in the inky
blackness of the night. I could not
figure out at all how they could see a thing, then noted in my rearview mirror
that one of them held his cell phone in his teeth with the tiny flashlight beam
aimed out at the pot-holed road in front of him. I could not believe how much risk they take
to make a few extra francs. Life is tough
here.
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| Teresa and host family. |
We got back to Bujumbura before 9pm. It was a hard drive and I cannot endorse
it. As I said before, the problem is
that it is used heavily at night and everyone has their brights on as they hurtle
towards you all the way down.
Melody stayed the night with us on Friday before heading up
to Gitega on Saturday. We had a nice
family day on Saturday including going back to our local zoo, a place the kids
love. The chimpanzee Kita was very happy
to see them and she played a game of ‘keep away’ with them by holding a plastic
bottle on the ground outside the cage.
When they tried to grab it she would flip it one way or the other and recover it before they could get it. The other animals seemed well although I
think a few Gaboon vipers were missing.
Hopefully not escaped.
We went to Cercle Nautique afterwards for some fishing and
had a wonderful display of a family of hippos frolicking in the shallows very
near us. They were chasing each other
around in the water (parents and children) and having a great time. Don’t get me wrong, they still look extremely
dangerous and scary by their sheer size, even when they are having fun.
Sunday was a nice return to our normal routine with Rebecca
teaching Sunday School to the kids and then a reunion of our small group in the
afternoon. It was good to share and pray
together and it reminds me of the importance of having these relationships to
keep ourselves spiritually strong in our work here.
It is nice to be back to work in Burundi, at the office for the next two weeks. We have been anticipating a return to our normal routine of swimming and devotionals after dropping the kids at school and heading off to work. Monday we did take a half-comp day after our very long intense week. I hope we can continue the pacing of work and rest to sustain through the month ahead.
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