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 9th 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
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