A Pilgrimage, a Birthday, a Graduation, and a Theft

The Graduate.  David at his Maternelle commencement ceremony.

Paul really wants to squeeze in one more blog entry in the month of June. I agreed to write the beginning, and he will finish it. As he posted last week, I was up-country visiting Buta with Oren, and he promised that I would say more about that visit.

In fact, I found myself leading this pilgrimage to a site that has defined our time in Burundi: Paul made his first trip to Buta within the first month of our assignment, and have made our last trip within our final month here. This time, I was guiding people involved with the Great Lakes Initiative, a movement of Christian leaders seeking reconciliation, from Tanzania, Rwanda and the USA. In addition, the Stoner-Eby family came along to experience Buta for the first time.

I had initially envisioned our entire family joining the pilgrimage. But frankly, the vicious sibling rivalry between Oren and David reached a new level of intensity the past two weeks. And Oren had been acting distressed, angry and unloved. It seemed wiser to make this a special trip just for the two of us. Truly, he was not very excited about going, but he submitted in the end and got in the car.

We arrived in time for lunch and chanted prayers with the Benedictine monks. Then we joined Father Zacharie in the sanctuary of the martyrs. Quietly, he told us the story again: of his sense of foreboding, the outbreak of civil war, his preparation of his students to be one body in Christ, their healing from ethnic hatred, the attack by rebels, the students refusing to separate, the bloodbath in the dormitory, the forgiveness poured into his heart directly by God, in his moment of greatest fear and despair, the courage to open the school again after only one month.

This time, I was translating Fr Zacharie’s French to our Anglophone visitors. So I couldn’t be on top of Oren monitoring his behavior. I just had to watch out of the corner of my eye as he wandered around the sanctuary, contemplating the huge mural, depicting the life-like faces of the 40 young martyrs who gave their lives for the sake of Christian fraternity. He even wanted to touch what he could reach, and then go outside to look at the tombstones. He had no patience to listen to Fr. Zacharie, but I know he knew the story; I had recounted it in Sunday school.

Before supper, we spent some time together, just in the room talking and snacking and doing what Oren likes best (watching a little movie on the iPod). But he did really want to go down to the sanctuary again in the dark. We spent a little time inside, me praying for him; and then time outside thinking about how young those students were when they made the choice to die.

In the morning, on Sunday, we all climbed the hill behind the seminary, up to the place where the rebel troops had looked down at the school, and planned the killing. We took some time to pray for those guilty people who had stood on that spot, some of whom are in powerful positions now, to pray that they might know and accept both forgiveness from God and justice before men. It was a beautiful spot from which to reflect on what we had heard and seen and learned. When the boys got tired of being near praying, they went to throw rocks and hack down bushes – it worked for them, too. ;-)

Back down the mountain, we all prepared to attend the 11 am mass at the sanctuary. Oren declared that this church was not “his type” and went outside to explore and be alone. But I wasn’t prepared for what an amazing experience that mass was. In the past, I’ve always experienced the sanctuary as a quiet, empty place, just the faces of those 40 teenagers silently observing those who come and pray. But on Sunday morning, the church was already half full as we arrived. From off in the distance, we heard the sounds of singing as the seminary students processed from their school grounds. Soon the column of students flooded into the chapel, all wearing white t-shirts, and the volume of the singing rose and rose. Finally, the group of acolytes and altar boys entered with the priest, all wearing white robes, bearing the cross before them, and filling the front rows.

I was thunderstruck, as they began singing another Kirundi worship song, waving incense over the congregation. We were worshipping in the round. The living students in white robes singing and clapping around me, the martyred students in white robes, surrounding the throne of grace, worshipping in heaven. You have to see the photo to understand the visual effect of heaven touching earth. I could look at the painted faces of the dead, and find an almost identical face among the living boys around me. Humanity and sanctity were brought together. I know in the week before they died, those boys started to ask Fr. Zacharie about heaven, some even had glimpses of it. In the dancing song of thanksgiving following communion, I found myself terribly moved by the thought that I probably won’t see these martyrs’ faces again until we meet in person in paradise.

I was thankful to have some closing words with Fr. Zacharie before we headed down the mountain back to Bujumbura. It has been a precious gift to me to get to know him and to receive his trust and goodwill. I won’t mention too much about driving our group down the mountain from Bururi, except to say that it is actually possible to get a case of shivering vertigo, even when you are behind the wheel. That is one extreme mountain road!!

Monday through Thursday we had GLI related meetings of the core partners. It was a really wonderful and productive time – I have gotten to know these amazing men and women over years of working and ministering together, working to bring together and reconcile Christians leaders who could make a difference in their contexts. We are at the verge of hiring a regional coordinator who will take on tasks that have formerly been done by a staff person at Duke Divinity school, and a Board is being formed to run the Initiative. It’s great to see things reach this point right before I have to leave. I felt so grateful that Anne Marie was there in the meetings with me, and has been able to catch the potential of GLI at such an early stage in her term as new Rep. We even had the moment to bring together local GLI leaders from Burundi with the regional group, and there was good sharing and encouragement. So, for me, I felt I was working hard, but doing it in the company of friends.

However, there was a lot of work involved in hosting, arranging ground transport for some very complicated and varied arrivals and departures, and then going home each night to sleep (at least a few hours!). And meanwhile, Paul was have a completely different, though equally challenging experience of the week. He had to hold down the fort at the office, and home, do all our normal rep work alone, and plan Oren’s 9^th birthday party, all without any support from me. I’ll let him take it from there…

This is Paul continuing…  It was a hard week to ‘hold down the fort’ with Oren in finals week and his Birthday on Friday.  I was relieved to have it over.  Nonetheless, the Birthday preparations did not go badly.  Oren wanted the theme to be Hawks, Condors, and other birds of prey.  We started to think up some games for this theme and I fashioned some elastic slings to shoot tennis balls at some large building blocks.  Putting faces on the tennis balls made it a pretty good Angry Birds game. 

Oren and I also built a hawk piniata together.  He wanted it carrying some prey so attached a stuffed monkey to his talons (made of darning needles.)  It was all coming together well, although in his excitement 10 minutes before the party Oren shot a tennis ball at the ceiling and broke one of the light fixtures, then pulled on the piniata string and knocked it down as well.  Fortunately we got it all back together before everyone had arrived.

The coup de grace was the cake.  I decided that I had neither time nor energy to make a cake which gave me the perfect excuse to order a black forest cake from Café Gourmand.  I took a photo here, but it is probably the best cake I have ever had in my life.  I noticed that the adults were all hanging around for a piece once the candles were blown out.  (Oren did make a cake later in the week for his class mates at school and brought it on Wednesday.)

Oren had a modest group of friends as many have already left.  The Guillebaud kids, the Carlsons, Luke Stoner-Eby, and about 4 classmates as well.  I will miss these international birthdays which looked like a gathering of World Cup fans.  There were Burundians, Americans, Brits, and Germans.

They had fun with the games, presents, trampoline, etc.  It was great to host it, but also a relief to have it over.  It was the culmination of one of the hardest weeks of our term.

The weekend was fairly relaxing by contrast.  We did nothing all day, then went to a good bye party for one of Oren’s friends.  He decided he wanted a ‘grown up’ party in the evening, and invited parents as well.  It was our German friend Nicola who was the mom and we had a very nice evening with her and most of the other parents of Oren’s class.  (The kids ran around outside in the dark while the adults chatted.)

Sunday we visited our Ethiopian friends for lunch.  (Always great to have a meal with them!) and followed that with our small group.

This week has been full of transition activities with the new reps.  We have been getting them up to speed and they will officially take over next week.  David has been sick the past 3 days which is making this difficult.

Despite his illness we did take him to his ‘graduation’ from maternelle.  They had a little ceremony at the Ecole Belge complete with caps, gowns, and diplomas.  They even threw their hats up in the air at the end.  It was very fun, but David was pretty out of it the whole time.

Jodi Mikalachki came over in the evening as well.  We had dinner and wished her well on her new job working for MCC in Nairobi.  She said it would be hard to leave Burundi after all of these years.

We are aware that time is running out for us.  We are less than a month from our departure date.  Transition is stressful because there is a lot more work at this time.  But it is stressful in other ways, to wit, we are getting numerous ‘requests’.  Some are from acquantances but others from friends.  They range from asking for a sum of money to asking if we would take one of their children with us to educate him in the US.  In between there are requests for plane tickets, visas, jobs in the US, etc.

Oren and his teacher M. Bernard on last day of school.

There is a saying here:  “There is no harm in asking.” The worse that can happen is to say no.  But that is not always true in my view.  Asking does change a relationship and it has been disappointing to be approached by so many people.  The worst is that a refusal is always understood as a lack of will rather than capacity.  Saying I can’t get someone a visa speaks more to my interest rather than my ability to do so in their view.

But worst of all are those who see the end as a chance to take something.  One of our houseworkers got into a safe in our house and stole a large amount of money.  It was done in a way to appear that nothing was missing.  I almost wish they would have taken it all and ran.  The way it was done makes it impossible to know who did it and puts everyone in the house under a cloud of suspicion.  Our approaching departure definitely contributed to this person’s decision to get into the safe.

Endings are sad, and at this point we are ready to be done.  We have 2 more trips to Rwanda, one tomorrow, before we go.  I want to put all of this down because if this blog might serve as a guide for other ex pats. who are leaving in the future, I hope it helps.  In my experience thus far, leaving is hard in many more ways than one.

Bonus video:  A bit of footage from the Mass Rebecca attended at

the Martyr's shrine in Buta

The Last Dance

Oren preparing his two best toys, Alfie his spelling robot, and Cruncher his robot dinosaur, for our big moving sale.

Sunday afternoon.  Rebecca and Oren are upcountry on a trip to Buta.  This is a sight where a group of Catholic seminarians, Hutus and Tutsis, being educated together in a theology of unity made the choice to die together rather than be separated ethnically by a rebel group that attacked and ordered them to do so.

Rebecca will add a bit more on that next week, particularly our decision to have her go up there with Oren (while she led a pilgrimage with partners of the Great Lakes Initiative.)  We felt it was important for him to see this since he is old enough to understand what had happened and why.

This leaves David and I at home and for the first time in what seems like weeks, we are actually alone in the house.  He is watching a movie which has finally given me time to get a few reflections down about the past week.

These last several weeks are as intense as we have ever experienced in terms of being overburdened with responsibility along with some very exciting arrivals of friends and others we want to see.  Trying to sit down and write can seem oppressive when you are trying sneak in a moment right before bed in which you crash without so much as bathing, thoroughly exhausted.  

It probably began this past Friday when we had a huge moving sale to get rid of much of our furniture and other items.  Oren and David had helped organize this, and each had their own table of their toys to sell.  (They were going to be able to keep their money and buy stuff in the US)  Oren was definitely a hard-core salesman.  It was however, hard on them and we had a few meltdowns in the process, but that is to be understood I suppose as the try to process what is happening.

Last Saturday, though must be preserved for posterity.  It was officially the last folk dance we were hosting during our tenure here.  We did four this year and since we arrived we have usually hosted about one per quarter.  They have become very popular, particularly in the ex pat. missionary community and we wanted to be sure that the word got out well in advance of our plan to host one. 

This one did not disappoint and we had a very large number in attendance including most of our service workers, the new Reps, a majority of our expat. friends, with newcomers to boot.  We especially happy to have some our Burundian members of our small group there as well. 

The dances went well, and it is interesting to even see an evolution of skill over time.  We have settled into a routing of alternating line dances with different folk dances, mainly squares and cotillions.  But we did have a new hora and ceilidh (the Dashing White Sargeant).

Before the last dance we took some time to do some speeches to say farewell and explain the significance of the dances to us in terms of knitting together our community.  I read something I had written in a blog 2 years ago (May 2012), to describe the experience we have had of dancing together here.  I am putting that quote in below: 

David doing Cotton-Eyed Joe

It is at the time of milestones that one feels inclined to reflect on the passage of time, or in the case of living here, the passage of community.  I can say now as an International worker who has been in the same place for 4 years, the meaning of the word 'community' has evolved for me.  Rebecca and I are very intentional about creating community around us.  We did so in Poughkeepsie and Baltimore and we have done so here as well.  The difference is that an expat community is somewhat unique.  It sometimes seems like a very intensely-colored fabric---a scarf or stole that is being woven together at one end as rapidly as it is fraying and disappearing at the other.  At any moment it will be the same length as any other moment, but the pattern will be entirely different.  

And so it is with our communities here.  I marvel at how fast they have changed over the years and yet seem at every moment to be in some way stable.  There is on the front end of the scarf the continual welcoming and inclusion of newcomers and simultaneous heart-felt Adieux for friends who are leaving for good at the back end.

One is only a newcomer until someone else newer arrives, then the first newcomer begins to take on roles of responsibility in the community and its sustenance.  At nearly 4 years Rebecca and I find ourselves in the company of a very few people who have been here longer than us.  There are a few 'senior statesmen' life-time generational missionary families and a few expats who have married Burundians and now call this home, but by and large we are the oldtimers here.  I realize that as time passes we will near and eventually find ourselves at the unraveling end of the scarf and the threads of our lives here will fray away leaving a continually mutating communal pattern making and unmaking itself here in Burundi as people come and go.

The tradition of doing a folk dance was one we inherited from a missionary family named the Carrs.  They hosted a Scottich Ceilidh from time to time which was a lot of fun.  We inherited the house and the tradition of holding dances here.  Their particular favorite was “Strip the Willow” which for us Americans became the “Virginia Reel”.  We usually end our parties with this one, and it seems to fit aptly the community I described above that makes and unmakes itself--continually progressing forward and unraveling at the end.

There is also something unique and mysterious about a community that dances together, especially this kind of structured social dance based on dancing figures and interacting with almost everyone.  It goes beyond what happens in conversation or sharing food.  I wish I could say what it is that is special, but it seems to be such a ritual expression of what community is--a vibrant changing, evolving pattern of relationships that create and dissolve themselves in the perpetual rhythm of living in the moment---the present experienced, instant by instant.  The steps don't change in the Virginia Reel but new dancers join each time we dance it here, often barely able to keep up with the unexpected shift of unfamiliar patterns, while the more experienced ones encourage them along in the routines that are as comfortable and instinctive to them as a well worn path.

Needless to say, we did end with the Virginia Reel after our speeches (and counter speech in the Burundian style- delivered aptly by Simon Guillebaud, one of the ‘mutamas’ of the ex pat. Community.)

Afterward we did dance the Virginia Reel together and it felt particularly significant dancing with Rebecca as my partner down the line of people and back off the end.  Each lead couple finishes by making a sort of bridge which everyone passes under leaving the leaders at the very end and a new lead couple to take control of the dance. 

 

We had a feast together and at the end, many of the missionary families and service workers stayed around to pray for us.  As usual, the dance ended and everyone was gone by 9pm leaving us time to clean up before bed.  I admit, I like parties that do not go too late into the night these days.

Because of the dance, we have had many service workers around.  Melody was down from Gitega and Julia and Teresa were down from Kigali.  We had a full house.  Jennifer and Matt were also around quite a bit with them as well.  Our service workers are very easy to host though so there were no complaints.

Sunday was a surprisingly quiet day and Rebecca and I were actually able to take a nap in the afternoon while the kids played.  We needed the rest after the party the day before.

Stoner-Ebys meeting UCEDD in Gitega

The week was a continuation of orienting the Stoner-Ebys and we took some time to introduce them to partners in Bujumbura, and give them some history of our work in the region.  The previous week I had taken them to Gitega where we had met our 3 partners and two service workers there.

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were particularly significant orientation days as a donor named Robin Wilde who heads the Foundation for Hope in Africa, a co-donor to the Hope School, was in town.  He wanted to do some strategic planning at the school, but also meet the new MCC Reps. to see if they could coordinate some of their Hope School projects with MCC.

I know him quite well from previous trips here, but I wanted him to meet the new Reps. so we made arrangements to go up the Hope School together.  We left Tuesday afternoon. Pastor Wilde had brought his associate Roger, and the Stoner-Eby’s brought their youngest son Luke. 

It was exciting to me to be bringing  everyone up together, (the Stoner-Ebys for the first time.)  We stayed the night at the seminary.  The priests and nuns were happy to see us and insisted that Rebecca and the kids make one more trip up before we leave town.  We met Innocent there that night and had some meetings about the possible construction of classrooms for the superior cycle of secondary school.

Wednesday morning we went up to the school and were greeted by drummers, dancers, a drummed skit, and many welcome speeches.  It was a great day.  We inspected the many completed projects, the water catchment system, library, solar power, etc. and found it all in working order.

We heard that there were 20 students sitting that day for the national exam to go on to secondary school.  We met with the teachers and directors and talked about strategic priorities.  (Luke took this opportunity to play football with some of the other kids who were kicking around their plastic bag constructed soccer ball. (They only use the real ones during school hours to protect them.)

We left Wednesday afternoon after having a big meal together at the Seminary.  It is very symbolic here to share food as a sign of solidarity and the gesture, was much appreciated.

We got home on Wednesday evening.  The end of the week has had its share of new challenges as arrivals for a final conference hosted by Rebecca begin to arrive.  We were able, however, to have a meal with Simon and Lizzie Guillebaud this week.  (Can’t remember the day.)  Lizzie made a very tasty curry meal since we were all lamenting the demise of Indian food in Burundi.  (Actually knowing that the good Indian restaurants are closed will make departing a tiny bit easier.)

I also did have a special lunch with Oren at Café Gourmand-the best Belgian patisserie, in the Southern hemisphere.  We have found the kids are starting to act out a bit in strange ways and we are having a lot of conflict between them.  We sense that this is due to some sub-conscious anxiety about all the upheaval they are seeing around them as the house begins to get packed up and sold off.  They are particularly hard on each other, so we are trying to do things separately with them.

Oren finished his first week of exams and has one week left.  He seems to be on top of his reviews and we are praying for the best.

The end of this week has included some visits from special guests including Melody's parents and Yolanda (our service worker from last year)  She is here doing research for her dissertation and joined us for yoga and Saturday morning.  (I will add a picture to this post soon.)

Rebecca will be back in a few hours from her pilgrimage and her return will be welcome.  I am no longer great at the bachelor life and many things are not being done, or missing from the fridge. 

We are nearing the last month of our time here, but will say more about that later.  We still have to survive next week!

Bonus video, excerpt from little girls welcome dance

Retrospective and Transition at a Partners Retreat

Berlin Wall set at the Fete de l'Ecole (20th century theme).

Oren woke up early last Saturday and nearly jumped out of bed.  “Today is the day of the “Fete de L’ecole!”  He said.  Admittedly I was surprised at his enthusiasm for the event.  This is the annual school spring festival which features games, a bouncy castle, the sale of many baked goods, beer (this is a Belgian school) and the ever popular ‘frites’ (better known to us as French fries.)

There is also a presentation of songs and dances by each class of the primary school.  Oren has participated in it every one of the past six years and David in the last 3.  What I do not remember in the past was this amount of anticipation and enthusiasm about performing. 

The theme of the festival was the 20^th century.  I knew Oren’s group was going to do an antiwar song, but little else.  He had been working at trying to memorize it all week and learn the hand gestures. 

On Friday he told me he could not wait until Saturday to do the ‘spectacle’.   The kids had been sent home with instructions about time and place for gathering as well as costume requirements.  Unfortunately Rebecca had to lead a retreat for a peace group (GLI) on Friday evening which extended into Saturday so I had to get them ready and over to school on Saturday afternoon.

We were there in plenty of time and I dropped David off with his teacher to get ready.  Oren wandered around while I found a seat.  Other parents arrived and I sat and reflected on the familiarity of this.  Looking over the blog in the past six years, I am struck by how similar they look in photos.  Each year feels so completely different, but there is, in fact, a rhythm to life here, daily and yearly that is really easy to observe over time.  There are two major school ‘fetes’ the one at Christmas and the one in the spring.  The ex pat. Community is small and we see many of the familiar faces in different settings: the beach, certain restaurants, at church, and of course at the school fetes.  Sometimes it really strikes me what a small town life we live here in that way. 

But I do find comfort in the rhythm and the fete signals the end of the school year.  In the next month the kids in the primary school start their final exams.  In the Belgian system the final exams count above all else in evaluating a student.  No continuous evaluation here, this is make it or break it and Oren has to study like a med. Student in grade 3 if he is going to pass.

One thing I am struck by at the fete is how many of the girls have passed through my ballet class over the past 5 years.  I know many of the students and have seen them grow up.  I also know the teachers and have certain expectations about what they will present.  The 3^rd grade teacher Madame Krystelle is always the most creative.  M. Christophe is the funniest, and there are others that have a certain reputation for being a bit riské for primary school. 

The fete does not disappoint.  The stage has been set with a reconstruction of the Berlin Wall.  The first group (2^nd graders) do a dance to Pink Floyd’s  The Wall and end with a triumphal tearing it down. I would say that the 20th century perspective presented was decidedly European with the exception of several dances with a Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse theme.

David was an Aristocat from a Disney review in his class. Oren’s class did an impressively well rehearsed anti-war song that the kids sing loudly with much enthusiasm.  He looked thrilled to be doing it.

Oren loved everything about the fete.  Particulary because you can buy tickets that can be exchanged for food.  He waited in line for half an hour for the Belgian ‘frites’ and had other desserts as well. He is familiar with the whole routine as he has been to many in his life here.

Rebecca arrived shortly after the kids performed and hung out there until dark.  Usually we leave earlier but Oren really wanted to stay for the raffle.  (I think he mistakenly thought that since he bought a ticket he would win something.)  What I find really interesting though is how much he likes to just be at the school.  He feels independent and enjoyed doing the games other things on his own.

We headed home after dark and watched a movie together, exhausted. 

Sunday was fairly routine.  We went to church and had our small group in the afternoon.  Prayer requests are always interesting and in earnest there.  We pray often for bureaucratic processes to move.  We have a Burundian friend with a Canadian wife who has been waiting more than a year for his visa process to be completed. His wife and very young son really need him.  At this point the passport is just sitting in the Canadian Consulate in Nairobi with no information why it is being delayed.  This kind of prayer is so typical here.  The experience of no justice for those without means is now something I feel deeply acquainted with.  I had no idea just how unfair life is until I started praying with others here.

Rebecca and I had prayer requests of our own as we were looking with trepidation at the week ahead.  We had two days to prepare for our partners retreat that started on Wednesday.  We were very unprepared and had been distracted by numerous crises.  Our cook’s baby needed some attention since the past week, although was improving.  We got a call out of the blue Sunday from our service worker Jennifer to tell us her passport had been stolen when she went to the airport in Nairobi.  We spent some time communicating with MCC Kenya to get that sorted.  So trying to prepare was hard.

After many false starts though we settled on the theme of retrospective and transition and decided it would be good to look at the past and then talk about the future, the transition and beyond.  We wanted people to talk openly about the opportunities and threats they perceived with the transition.  We were happy that the Stoner-Ebys were with us and could hear this as well.  This retreat for the partners, another annual event, was going to be the opportunity to introduce Scott and Anne Marie formally to the partners.

I spent much of Tuesday on a slide show of our past six years, primarily field visits with partners to give them a chance to remember with us.  I also had photos of all the other service workers that have served during out term.  Rebecca prepared several devotionals on the theme of departure and change.  One using the text 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 was particularly relevant as it talks about how we sow we did not plant and plant what we will not sow. 

We left after school on Wednesday. (The kids were off for Ascencion day Thursday and Friday- a nice perk of living in a Catholic country.)  We has 3 cars coming from Buja, one from Gitega and 2 from Kigali.  We were going to meet near the town of Butare in Rwanda at a Catholic Benedictine Monastery called Gihindamuyaga.  A very pleasant place where we have stayed for such retreats twice before.

Teresa translating a presentation by Jennifer

All the partners were represented there as well as the Stoner-Ebys, so we had 2 families.  (That gave the kids friends to play with.)  We brought a childcare person as well.

The retreat went well.  We gathered and introduced ourselves Wednesday evening.  We had several sessions and workshops on Thursday as well as devotionals and hymn singing.

One of the most memorable moments for me was watching a movie together.  It is a French film (English subtitles) called Gods and Men.  (Les Dieux et les Hommes).  It is about a group of Franciscan monks who worked in Algeria during the civil war there.  At the time of crisis they were forced to make a decision to leave or stay.  Because they felt called by Christ to be there to care for the people there, many of them were martyred.  It was a very powerful film, slow moving, almost like a meditation.  It was unapolegetically ‘religious’ looking deeply into the theology that motivated these men to make the decision to stay.  One of the best films I have ever seen.

visit with refugees

Saturday we went on a field visit.  We intended to go to talk to the refugees at the refugee camp for an hour.  I asked, one of our partners if we could see a field where they were doing Conservation Agriculture on the way.  I explained we could stop for about 15 minutes to see one.

He assured me there was one almost right next to the main road we were going on.  After 6 years of being here I knew it was a mistake to add something to a program that is not pre-tested, but I took the chance.  As we were leaving, another partner mentioned that the Bishop of the Anglican Diocese would like to greet us at his church next to the refugee camp.  I was not happy about this addition as well, but we set off.

Sure enough, the ‘short detour’ off the main road to see the field took us nearly 45 minutes down one of the most treacherous stretches of roads I have ever driven. I barely made it in the jeep.  The Stoner-Ebys had a smaller car and had a real Baptism by fire into the world of ‘field visits’.

By the time we returned from the field we were nearly 2 hours behind schedule.  We went on to the church where we had kept the Bishop waiting (second faux pas) .  A ‘greeting’ in this context means a reception with fantas, food, sitting down, and several speeches back and forth between him and some of us.  It added another hour to our short visit to the refugees.

We finally saw the refugees at dusk.  We had a very good exchange with them.  Many of the partners had questions for them and were interested in the project.  When we finally left it was dark and we got home for dinner about 8pm.

BICC church and theological school

I can look back at it and laugh now.  I think I will even miss these kinds of fiascos.  Sometimes miscommunication is intentional here, I have come to see how it is used to get some advantage somehow.  The visit to the refugees was still worth it, but I was reminded that it is hard to get and communicate accurate (truthful) information through direct conversation here.  I am almost always told what I want to here, even after this much time.

We left the retreat on Saturday morning and got home mid afternoon.

Basket race

For our family the day was not over as there was a big church picnic and gathering to say good bye to people leaving for the summer.  We were expected to be there because we were leaving soon and were getting honorable mention.  Another couple leaving at the same time as us from the church was Peter and Linda Taylor (who I have blogged about before). 

There were games, a bouncy castle, and briochettes for a snack. We had a nice moment of recognition.  The kids were even pretty good despite having to delay their arrival back at their house.   We did announce our actual leaving date and had a chance to say goodbye to some who will be gone over the summer.

This week is busy with orientation of the Stoner Ebys and I am heading up to Gitega with them.  I have no doubt the month of June will fly by.  We are tiring but relieved to have completed the partners retreat, one of our last big events that needed to be planned and executed well.  I think the open discussion about transition, particularly the relocation of the Rwanda Burundi program office to Kigali (have I mentioned that here?) was able to be explained clearly.  Generally I sense more anticipation than fear about the future from our partners, and that is good.

Bonus Photo of the whole group of parnters and service workers this year at our retreat.  An awesome team!