Phases of 50 part 5: 54 Last Birthday in Burundi

Truck that fell off the road in a ditch while negotiating a detour because of flooding.

I have had 6 Birthdays in Burundi.  Another landmark to contemplate.  Time is not a continuum, at least in my life.  There are times that have been more significant than others.  I can almost look back and see my past in terms of lifetimes, like some kind of reincarnation.  Although we can’t go back in time, there have been periods where ‘who I am’ has not significantly changed by circumstances over many years.  This has not been the case in the past six.  I don’t even feel like the same person who came here six years ago.  Whatever motivated me to come here belonged to the mindset of someone quite different.  But I do not regret who I have become.  It is indeed a metamorphosis of sorts.  I can never ‘go back’ to who I was.  This is interesting because we will be ‘going back’ to the US in July.  But it will be a going forward.  I might look the same on the outside if you see me again, but I am different on the inside.

The fifties are great though. It is like your senior year.  It really feels like I am in the right place and I know what I am doing.  Hopefully this will sustain me through any period of unemployment we might face upon our return.

I celebrated my Birthday modestly this past Tuesday.  The kids were very excited about it and had prepared a kind of surprise party. They had decorated the living room when I came home from work, and had some presents and a cake on the coffee table.  The biggest surprise though was when we went to open the door to let Rebecca in and in about 10 seconds Bella jumped up and devoured about half of the cake.   The kids were sobbing about this, but I did cut away the part that was eaten and we enjoyed the rest.

I got a very tasty gift that we all enjoyed.  It was chocolate from Switzerland in the shape of 5 Swiss army knives.  I thought they were real knives at first. 

Rebecca and I also had a double date night with Simon and Lizzie Guillebaud.  They are missionary friends from the UK who have been here longer than us.  Simon is an author as well, check out his blog here.  (Simon Guillebaud).  I did not know that Simon was at least as much as an Indian food connoisseur as I am.  We all went to Kohinoor (which is the current best Indian food restaurant in Buja no matter what anyone might say about Taj Mahal.)  We concluded that the chili garlic tawa chicken (extra spicy) is the best dish there.  It was a really nice evening with the two of them, and it seems like the first time in many years that we have been out as a couple with other adults.  I hope we can do that again before my next Birthday. 

The end of last week was occupied with assessing and deciding upon an appropriate MCC response to the disaster that happened.  I had written about the floods last week, and I had a chance last Monday to go up and see the damage in some areas.  We have decided to work on doing relief with a church that is at the epicenter of the area where the flood came down the mountain.  There is a link to the blog here written by one of the missionaries who works with this church.  (Joy and Jesse Johnson). 

Jesse took me up to the church and I had a much better idea of what had happened.  I have to say, I would have never imagined, before seeing this, how much damage rushing water can do.  During a torrential downpour water coming down the mountain backed up behind a culvert through which a river past.  The river flooded its banks and went over a road and came down the mountain like a tsunami.  I was standing in what looked like a dry rocky riverbed that was nearly a kilometer wide and went straight down the hillside for several miles.  This was not a riverbed at all, but at one time a hillside with houses, trees, walls, fields, etc.  It was completely gone.  Apparently the water was 10 feet high as it crashed down the mountain pushing boulders the size of elephants and trees down with it.  I could not believe the amount of damage.  I asked a local how long the torrential ran lasted that did this.  He said only about one hour.  It came like one giant wave.  There were the remains of some houses that were strategically located or at the edges of the torrent of water.  One house was sheered in half by a boulder.  On an inner wall, now completely exposed is a picture of the Blessed Mother.  I don’t know if the family inside survived.

It was a bit surreal to see the Emmanuel church in the middle of the rubble, standing fully with no damage to the walls.  I could see that the water had come up about 5 feet around it.  Apparently many people fled to it and were saved inside when they locked the front doors (which faced up the hill)  It was a miracle. 

I also took a picture of a deep gorge that was the road until the flood.  I can’t believe the water carved out such a long deep trench where the road had been.  I don’t know how that could ever be restored without a tremendous amount of earth moving.  I have a picture of a house beside what was the road.  It had porch extending in front of it onto the road.  Now it is on the edge of the gorge with no porch.

that was the road

When I talked to Jesse he told me that the immediate need is cookware and some supplies like clothes for the survivors who lost everything.  Secondarily there will need to be some supplies to rebuild—cement and tin for roofs.  I am glad to say that MCC was able to respond very immediately with financial assistance because we are on the ground here.  At this point it is estimated that over one hundred died, but up to 40,000 were affected by the flood because of the damage.  The exact number of casualties is difficult to know because there are still many unaccounted for whose bodies may never be found.

The rest of the last week was fairly normal.  We are in the reporting period of the year so time at the office has been spent doing end of year things, entering reports (mainly Rebecca’s job) and communicating with partners and service workers. 

The weekend was good, especially Sunday when Emmanual Ndkumana preached a powerful sermon about being salt and light in Burundi as Christians.  He asked this in the context of the current political crisis and flood.  He is a person who feels that Christians must be politically engaged and aware of what happens around us.  We can’t spend all of our time in the church praying and ignorant of current events, be they political, natural, social.   His critique of Christian’s in Burundi in the past was their dis-engagement from the events that were happening around them, very spiritually concerned but not able to be a prophetic voice in the time of the ethnic crisis here because they were not well informed.  He described a time he heard a tutsi praying for the destruction of the hutus, and later that day a hutu praying for a judgement on hutus. 

He said that God is waiting for a time when we can pray ‘in agreement’ it is in those prayers when he is in our midst.  His sermon is timely as the political situation continues to deteriorate here.   In the latest somewhat bizarre turn of events, it appears that the President has been able to name the new head of the opposition party.  (It would be like Obama claiming to have legal authority to pick the head of the Republican party.)  This is all aimed at him getting a third term, which I am certain he will succeed in doing, but am wont to know how.

We went for icecream on Sunday afternoon.  We usually go once per week to Ice World where you can get real (McDonalds style) softserve icecream, which is the best one can do here in Bujumbura.  I think I will miss especially the moral dilemma one must negotiate to enjoy this small pleasure.  In the photo you can see David enjoying his small scoop while two hungry street kids look through the window at us.   I don’t know if I will ever be able to go to Coldstone Creamery again because there is no one to remind me, as I eat, that there are those who cannot.  Justice isn't a world where no one has ice cream, justice is a world where everyone has it.

The weekend was spent partially in preparation for teaching I did on Monday and Tuesday for a group called YWAM (Youth with a Mission)  They do a 3 month training school followed by 3 months of practicum on mission work.  I was asked to teach on reconciliation and the Father heart of God.

I had two days about five hours each day so I had to have enough to say.  There were 6 students, 4 Burundian and 2 bazungu.  It was a very interested group and I felt like I made a good case for the fact that the Apostle Paul did not feel that reconciliation to God could be separated in any way with reconciliation to one another, particularly across ethnic lines. (Jews and Gentiles).   He was really hardcore about this and had many disputes with fellow jewish believers on this point. 

I did try to convince them that one of the failures of early evangelism in Burundi was the separation of sharing the gospel from ethnic reconciliation.  When the war started Christians divided ethnically and killed each other in great numbers.

One notable exception to this was in Buta (a town in the South) where there is a Catholic seminary.  In 1997 they were the only school in the country that remained ethnically mixed while all others were divided.  When rebels attacked them, the older seminarians (high schoolers) were asked to separate by ethnicity so the rebels could kill the tutsis only.  The students refused and 37 were martyred when they interlocked arms and stood together.   One dying survivor had a beatific smile on his face as he told the rector “Father, we won, they told us to separate and we didn’t”  Since that day the Father, Zachary Bukuru has built a memorial and tells the story to any who come to hear it.

I felt this story was worth hearing in person during the week of teaching.  I was actually splitting the teaching days over the week with Simon Guillebaud so on Thursday we drove 2 cars with the students up to Buta.

Father Zachary and Simon

The drive up was no small ordeal.  The rainy season has been terrible and about an hour down the road we came upon an impassable avalanche.  We were forced to find another route which took us several hours longer than our time planned for the journey.  Nonetheless we got there in the early afternoon and met Father Zackary.  It was an honor for me to bring all of these students, including Simon and the YWAM staff here for the first time.  They were quite overwhelmed by the man and his story.  I am especially glad to be getting Burundians to hear it.  It is sadly not well known, but as the Father says, God prepared this ground as a place of healing and reconciliation for Burundi.  It does stand as a memorial, not of a massacre, but as a martyrdom of boys who stood as brothers in Christ against ethnicism in the hope for a better future.

The trip back home was even worse than the way up, we had some bad sections of slow decent and Simon’s brakes actually failed completely by the time we got down the mountain.  Miraculously they did not fail before. 

It was, still, more than worthwhile and all who went up were deeply, deeply appreciative of the experience. 

Friday was ballet day and we are now hard at work preparing a suite of Swan Lake dances.  I am even planning to order some little white tutus from China.  This is my last year so I want to make it good.  I will miss this when I am gone.

No rest for the weary, I am supposed to go back up country to preach on Sunday than stay on for a field visit at the Hope School.  Keep me in prayers and thanks to all who sent me Birthday wishes.

Disaster Strikes--Burundi in the News

Funerals for those lost in the floods on Sunday night--most of them children.

Burundi has been in the news quite a bit in the past month.  Actually four times at last count which seems like more times than I remember in the past six years.  Usually when a country like Burundi is in the news, it is for a bad reason.  The last time was during the fire in the Central market. 

The most recent, and most tragic story is about the flooding.  I did not know when I fell asleep on Sunday listening to a steady downpour, that not 5 kilometers away on the other side of town, a number of mountain fed rivers running down the hills into the several popular quarters, including, Kamenge, Gasenyi and Butere, would explode into cascading landslides of mud, rock, trees, and a tsunami like deluge which ripped through neighborhoods demolishing houses in its path like a tornado.  Families were trapped in their houses with water rising with an impossible choice between running out into the current or waiting inside for the water to collapse the roof.  More than 70 people have been counted as dead from drowning and many are still missing.  Many hundreds are injured and hundreds of houses were swept away.  Most of the dead are children who could not wade through the current in trying to get to safety. 

road upcountry note huge culvert on side

The first clue Rebecca and I had that something this bad had happened was when she tried to head up country on Monday morning to bring a new service worker to Gitega.  The road we heard was closed because of landslides and she was forced to take a different much longer route to Gitega. 

Reports started filing in through the day, especially as friends who were reading the International news began calling to ask us how we were. 

Mama Sese's house across from Marceline's

MCC will be making a contribution toward disaster relief in a particularly hard hit area.  There is a church in the midst which is capable of doing some disaster management and is handling some immediate needs for shelter, food, clothing, and eventually reconstruction of some houses.

The International Red Cross is also on the scene and has set up several hundred tents as temporary shelters .  (Sadly they do not provide cooking supplies.)

Other news stories include Burundi’s involvement in peacekeeping in the Central African Republic.  Burundi has extensive experience in peacekeeping through its participation in peacekeeping with the Africa Union in Somalia.  Now several thousand Burundian troops are being deployed to the CAR.  Related to this story is the award of a large US Dept. of Defense contract to Burundi to set up a training base to train Burundian soldiers. 

Although I work for a pacifist organization I do not feel altogether bad about this.  The CAR is in serious need of stability as it is threatening to degenerate into an interfaith bloodbath.  Burundi’s army is well trained and professional,  they are also ethnically integrated by law, thanks to the Arusha accords, so they are not particularly partisan to a political party or ethnic group.

With elections getting closer, I think it is better for a country to have a downsized, professional, independent army that is not beholden to one political party rather than one that has its interest directly connected to one group.  For this reason, I am not opposed to its professionalization despite the slight dis-ease I feel about Burundi's chief export being Africa Union peacekeeping forces.

This brings us to the fourth piece of news.  In the latest machinations by the ruling party to get their President a third term the President fired one of his two vice-Presidents.  The problem was that the First Vice President, a member of the opposition party, was opposing the move by the ruling party to change the Constitution so the President could run again.  The President chose someone who was more favorable to him to take control of the opposition party (and be VP).  But then, the new VP suddenly resigned on his own accord as a protest.  Now the govt. is in a sort of institutional crisis.  And I am curious how the ruling party is going to pull off its Constitution change if this hardball technique does not work.

So that is the news from Burundi, where usually nothing very newsworthy happens on an international scale anyway.

In personal news, we have some exciting updates to share as well.  Probably the most significant is the much anticipated of our newest MCC arrival, Sata.  Sata comes to us from Florida.  We are thrilled she comes already fluent in French having spent some years in Paris growing up.  We have been wating for her for several months because of MCC orientation and she got here this past Saturday with some difficulty because of weather in the US.

Rebecca picked her up Saturday afternoon while I took the kids to the zoo.  (Note picture of leopard who lets me pet her).  We all had dinner together and Sata went to bed early.

On Sunday she accompanied us to church and then we went to the beach where we met Matt (the SALTer) and Jennifer.  They were very welcoming to her and we shared a nice lunch together while the kids played in the Tanganyika waves. 

Monday morning was the day scheduled to take Sata up to Gitega to meet Melody (her roommate) as well as the partner she will be seconded to (UCPD) and to go on a field visit. 

Felix and Rebecca went up with her while I stayed behind with the kids.  She was to be gone three days, and the first clue I had that something was amiss was when Marceline our cook did not come to work.  When I called her, I found out that she was at her house that had been flooded and an outer wall had been knocked down.  She told me later that many houses in her area had collapsed and that there were many stories from her friends of people being swept away or drowned.  The man down the street from her was a well to do butcher who lost  70 pigs and his two cars washed away into the raging stream behind his house.

Later that day I talked on the phone to Gaspard, our night guard who was upcountry visiting family.  He told me he could not get down to Bujumbura.  The last straw was Odifax’s wife getting sick leaving me with no staff to help in Rebecca’s absence. (I don’t want to sound like I need staff to take care of kids, but here where our system includes someone going to the market to shop and do othe preparation, it is difficult.)

peering into crocodile cage

So the kids and I were together Monday through Wednesday eating sandwiches and Ramen soup for most meals.  Despite this they were very cooperative and good sports about it.  Oren had to recite a poem for homework on Tuesday so we did a lot of work to help him learn it.

I did all of the normal activities on Monday like tennis and reading club, so it was not an altogether bad couple of days.

Rebecca came back Wednesday and told me that the trip went well despite the difficulty getting out of Bujumbura.  The rest of the country had not suffered the flooding that we had here.  She did introduce Sata to Melody and the partners and took her on a field visit to Bukirasazi, the commune where UCPD does most of its work.  They were able to meet three of the women’s collectives there and see some of the trade school activities that are supported there.

Rebecca left Sata for a two week stay with a Burundian host family which is part of the cultural experience we encourage people to have before beginning their assignment.

It was good to see Rebecca back on Wednesday morning and I was relieved that they did not have any driving issues during the 3 days.

Sata and Colleagues

When Rebecca returned, we took a trip up to Marceline’s house to see how she was.  We were able to see the damage around her house.  I took some pictures of broken down walls in the area.  Marceline had wisely invested in putting up some cement walls around her house.  Most of the brick houses in her neighborhood are made with mud rather than cement to hold the bricks together.  You can imagine what happens when they are hit but a rush of water.  The cement brick houses fared much better in my observation.

doing watercolors at Ijenda

One last reflection:  We have been in the process of trying to intentionally say goodbye to certain people and places.  It may seem like starting soon, but the end will be getting very crowded.  The kids had a school holiday last Wednesday so we went up to Ijenda on Tuesday night.  It was fun to stay there in the cold and sit by a fire roasting marshmallows.  On Wednesday we took a hike on the nearby hills.  Our friend Ben Carlson joined us with his two kids.  We had a great time hiking although it was a bit odd because the hills we hiked had just been cleared of a massive eucalyptus forest.  It was like the whole mountain had gotten a crew cut.  You could see a lot further, but we really missed the shade.  A bit of an odd way to remember the place for the last time.

Postscript:  For those of you who follow the blog regularly and remember my report on A's story in this post:  Ruthless Clarity in Bujumbura.  I saw A yesterday when he came by my office to tell me that his restaurant, which is beside the road where the flood hit, was completely wiped out.  The building is still there but all the chairs, tables, plates, silverware etc. were swept away.  The fridge was filled with 3 feet of water and ruined.  He is looking for capital again to restart.  Another chapter in his ongoing saga.

Parables of Development in Kigali

A spider with a very cool web that David found in our back yard.

And as they were riding to another town, Paul turned to his faithful colleague Felix and speaking in parables said: “the Kingdom of Hell is like unto a sower who goeth out in the field to till.  On turning over the soil he findeth a golden nugget therein.  After that he ceaseth to sow and toileth endlessly in his field digging for gold.  At the end of the season he hath neither gold nor a harvest and is worse off than he was before he started.  He who has ears let him hear!”

The parable was one that came to mind as I drove back from Rwanda with Felix.  We had been there this past week, leaving on Monday and returning Thursday.  I do like to go to Rwanda as much as I make these monthly trips sound like a bit of a hardship in the blog.  Our programming there is very interesting and our three service workers, Matt, Teresa, and Julia are very competent.

What is especially gratifying to see in the last year is the way our Rwanda partners have begun collaborating together and even formed a partners network to execute larger projects together as a collective.

One such project is our Conservation Agriculture project.  This is a project whose objective is to encourage adoption of a low tillage, high mulching system of cultivation.  It promises to increase yields with less inputs and help improve soil structure and reduce erosion over time.  We are nearing the end of the first growing season and are already seeing positive results in most groups.

CA on right, traditional cultivation on left.

The challenge has been one aspect of the project, the provision of some credit, to help farmers buy inputs without taking too much of a risk if the method fails.  (In which case they would not have to reimburse.)  The groups we are working with already have a history of farming together on small collective fields and were happy to try the method on their collective fields so all could learn the technique.

But the credit has created some conflict and ‘misunderstandings'.  In fact as soon as the word credit was mentioned the immediate next question was what was the maximum amount.  Many groups wanted to leverage themselves out for $1000 immediately eventhough their .5 hectare fields would never return that much.  Others claimed that without the credit they would not be able to buy seeds or sow at all eventhough the year before they had been doing this collectively without any inputs from outside donors at all.

What we found is that the access to credit became such a preoccupation to many, once they heard that it would be available, that all other aspect of the project became nearly irrelevant.  Suddenly the project was seen as a way to access money rather than a way to improve farming.

It was an interesting lesson for us and when we saw the number of requests we lowered the maximum amount to between $50 and $100 depending on the size of the field and what was cultivated.  People were disappointed but then got down to the business of cultivation again.

We learned the perpetual lesson that we learn in the development world.  Foreign aid of any kind is seen as a kind of natural resource around here and people try to mine it whenever they come across a small vein in hopes of getting more.

I am happy to say that despite this we are really happy with the results we are seeing and have even seen a number of individuals trying the method in their private fields as a result of working in the fields in the first season.

Matt Gates, our service worker is becoming in very high demand for his technical expertise and has been invited to conferences in Zambia and Burkina Faso after hosting a gathering in Kigali in a week.  We are also pretty jazzed about the fact that MCC is about the only NGO doing an extensive CA project in Rwanda at this time.

Despite all of the good news, we are still struggling with our registration, a project that has been occupying our local program assistant in Rwanda for the last 8 months. 

Other news in Rwanda, our service workers are doing well, we went out for Indian food on Tuesday night.  I am pleased to report that one of our SALTers (one year volunteers) will be renewing for another year to work with one of our partners at the Friends Church.

Felix and I had two travel days and spent two full days in Kigali and it felt at times like one long continuous meeting.  Since we only go up once per month, it tends to be packed if I am to see everyone, do banking, shopping, worker care, etc.  I usually try to finish by Thursday morning so I can get back to Buja that day.  Friday is the day I teach ballet and I like to be home on time for that and to be with the family for the weekend.  It is a routine that I have come to accept as a not altogether unpleasant variation on the ‘normal’ week.  Although I miss the two days of swimming.  This time I drove directly to a pool in Bujumbura on the way home and took a dip in the afternoon to sooth the muscles after the 5 hour drive.

We also did stop in and do a field visit to a rural trade school we are supporting in Southern Rwanda near the Burundi border.  It was interesting to watch two students demonstrate what they have learned by measuring, then cutting out a shirt for us.  Marie-Antoinette, and Jean de Dieu were the two students who showed us how to measure and sew.  Another student was ironing clothes using a real charcoal iron.  It is a good reminder of the things we take for granted when I see such technology—like electricity.

It was good to be home on the weekend.  Friday I taught ballet as usual and I am starting to teach the little girls some modified variations from Swan Lake that they will perform for their parents at the end of March.

The weekend was relaxing with the kids.  We went to a pool party at a friend’s house who works with the embassy.  It was fun despite a bit of rain. We watched movies together as a family on Friday and Saturday.  (We also got a copy of season 4 of Downton Abbey and Rebecca and I started watching that this week.)

Rebecca has a few notes to add about her time with the kids while I was in Rwanda.  Here are her reflections:

Paul left on Monday at midday, but the kids and I still had a busy day ahead of us. We went to tennis as usual with our little group of friends, and then on to English club. It has been an wonderful and encouraging experience to be working on Oren’s English, especially. We have a long way to go, for him to be ready for fourth grade English reading and writing, but at least we’re working towards it. And one mom plans extraordinary activities for David’s age group, to help them express themselves in English. It’s a good community effort, and I’m really thankful for the family who hosts us each week.

When we got home, I needed to do some cooking because Marceline was sick. I was a little worried that the kids would be tempted by screen time, but when I walked in the living room to check on them, I heard their two little voices in the corner of the living room, by the metal door where we have attached all our magnet letters. There I found Oren eagerly teaching David how to spell words with the “—at” sound… c-at, b-at, r-at, th-at…What a joy that they 1) weren’t fighting! And 2) were doing something really constructive!

On Tuesday afternoon, we went to visit Courtney and her kids. It was a spectacular afternoon – one of those which makes you feel like Burundi is the most blessed place on earth. Clear, cool, mighty clouds building over the mountains behind us, but a clear view over the lake to Congo. The older kids cooperated well, and I enjoyed catching up with my friend, while we chased her 2 year old around the yard. We left just as the heavens opened and drove home in one of those gully-washers that are the classic experience of the Burundian rainy season. I was drenched just opening the gate. The kids decided it was time for a rain dance. They love it when our backyard floods and they can’t even see the rain canals that theoretically carry the water away from our yard. This time, they discovered that our former garbage hole made a really great kiddie swimming pool. (Note: in Burundi, everyone has a garbage hole, either for being emptied by the garbage guys who walk into your yard with big baskets and pitchforks and carry it out to their truck; or you just burn what’s in the hole. We’d filled this old hole up 2 years ago and planted grass over it because it was causing drainage problems. But it seems to have, well, subsided just a little.)

Finally, on Wednesday, we had sandwiches because Marceline was just getting back on track. Oren has watched a few Scooby-Doo episodes and has now developed this idealized picture of the most awesome sandwich imaginable. It took him about 20 minutes to assemble this sandwich so that it stayed up-right. I took a photo to convince him that now it was on record and he could eat the thing, and if stuff fell out if it, well, that was OK. Along with salami and cheese, it also includes cucumber, lettuce, tomato, and curly pasta.

Paul again:  I will just add few final notes for the record.  First, we did have a short visit from some old friends, one was Jean Claude who just finished his masters at Eastern Mennonite, and the other was former MCC Rep. Doug Hiebert.  They came over for dinner to our house one night last week.  Doug's family are planning to move back to Burundi with another couple shortly before we leave.  It is interesting to see this odd symmetry between our arrival and departure.

And lastly I want to mention that, Rebecca and I were asked by our church to lead a marriage retreat the weekend before my departure.  It was once again a good lesson in Burundian planning.  (Which tends to be fairly last-minute).  I was told the week before that it was to be an 8 hour retreat, for instance and people were only really invited about 3 days before.  Despite that, we had about 50!  It was an interesting day.  We had a plenary session in the morning then broke into men’s and women’s groups just before lunch.  In the afternoon we had couples sit across from each other and share based on what they learned and pray for each other.  That session lasted an hour which is more than most of us spend in intentional conversation with our spouses in a month.

It all went fairly well but I did learn that African women have had it up to here with any teachings on submission.  Indeed it is a challenge to talk on this sensitive topic in a context where women are pretty much treate  I did remind men that there is absolutely no Biblical precedent for wife beating or ‘disciplining’ a wife in any way.  Despite this, the feedback from the women really ran home the point home that teachings about women taking a submissive role fits too comfortably with a cultural precedent that puts them down, and harms them.  I think we men left feeling pretty contrite about the way women are treated in this context. 

d like cattle in the family they marry into.

As a whole though, the retreat was a real opportunity to have couples sit down and talk honestly to each other.  Rebecca and I personally felt blessed to have the time to do that and affirm each other as partners.  Who knows, maybe we will write a book.