The Shortcut and Home Alone

“The longest distance between two points is a shortcut.” --Corollary to Murphy's Law

Most of us have a shortcut story and this one deserves a good recounting: As you may know, Rebecca'a Mom has been here this week visiting. She is here to take Rebecca and Oren back to the USA ahead of me for the birth of our son. So our scene opens in a crowded Landcruiser on the way to a remote village called Burasera. The players are:
1)Grandma Jean (my Mother-in-law)
2)Rebecca (the pregnant wife)
3)Oren (the cantankerous 3 year old)
4)Jodi (the intrepid missionary ready to spend 3 years teaching in a remote village)
5)Our fearless (not) leader--(that's me)

The landcruiser is packed to the gills and roofrack with stuff for Jodi's new home in Burasera. It has just finished raining and we are heading into the mountains ready for adventure. It is exciting to be able to take Grandma Jean on this trip to see one of our projects and show her the beauty of the high country. Although I have only been to Burasera four times, I feel competent enough about the route to risk a shortcut that I noticed on the map and seemed to cut a considerable number of kilometers off of our trip. The road would not be paved but we trusted the Landcruiser could handle it. We turned off the main road near a genocide memorial in Kabimba and headed down a small rough road. It looked bad, but the map indicated that our destination was only a short 16K away. As we drove the road continued to get worse. Often it ran close to a drop off, other times it climbed at a grade that is made for burro travel, not cars, and some of the bumps were more akin to bouldering than driving.

When we came to a fork in the road we had to make a choice. We asked a passing bicyclist and he told us (in Kirundi) that both prongs went to Burasera. We asked which was shorter and he said the left one, BUT he volunteered that the right one was 'neza' (good). We weighed the options and decided on the shorter one.

Very quickly I realized this was going to be very difficult. The road quickly dwindled to little more than a footpath, and branched often to different villages making the main route difficult to discern. The road also dipped and rose with the terrain. In my mind, I had the idea that if it ever got to a point where I did not feel I could continue, I would turn around (or back up) and go back the other way. …

Scene 2: The Slippery Slope
There are different types of paths we take in life. Some you can try and then change your mind, reverse course and take a new way. But many, at a certain place have a 'point of no return.' beyond which a reversal of course is impossible. At about the 4 km mark we hit a 'slippery slope'. (Not a metaphor!) This was a downhill that looked fairly promising. The road seemed a bit wider and less bumpy. As soon as we started down I realized the problem. The road was mud. Soon our wheels were caked and the vehicle began sliding right no matter how I steered. To engage the 4wd you have to stop and get out of the vehicle to turn a lock on the hub of the front wheels. We did this (and got muddy feet). This helped us control the direction of our descent somewhat, but at the bottom of the hill the road arrived at what could best be described as a tdouble width foot bridge. I knew at this point, that we could not go back up the hill so our only hope was to cross. For the safety of all, everyone got out while I drove across. Here are some pictures of the bridge and Rebecca and Oren crossing after the landcruiser.

We only hoped we had seen the worst of the 16k shortcut, and by the grace of God, the other side of the valley was more rocky than muddy. We climbed out and within a short distance rejoined the wider road to Burasera.

I wanted to show my mother-in -law the intriguing aspects of our work, but it was more of an adventure than I had bargained for. The seminary at Burasera never looked better (see picture). It is quite a place, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where they generate their own electricity, and have orchards, a dairy, chickens and eggs, a vineyard, make their own furniture from their own trees that they replant as well. They also run a guest house. It is like a self contained little world, and the Diocesan Priests who work there are incredibly hospitable, and got a big kick out of Jean and Oren (who loves their pet monkey.)

The trip went very well and Jodi is now living there and began teaching school this past Monday. We returned to Bujumbura with minimal incidents except a race against time to beat the 5pm military roadblocks on the way down the mountain.

The rest of the week is somewhat of a blur. We crammed in too much that all needed to be done before Rebecca left. We had many friends visit and wish us well. I did my best to have enough time with Oren (more for me than him). I did not succeed. I can only describe the experience of packing them up and putting them on a plane this morning as agonizing. I can say that this next month will be harder than any I have had here thus far, because I am here alone. I do not feel up to the task either--professionally or emotionally. Nonetheless, 3 hours after they left, I was on a plane to Rwanda, and I am currently writing this blog from an internet cafe in Kigali. (I am putting it up Thursday because I might be in a very remote place tomorrow to visit a project of one of our partners.) I will get back to Bujumbura Sunday, then I will be off to Ghana next Thursday. I am hoping that the travel will take my mind off the feeling of having my right hand and heart ripped out (emotionally).

Here is a picture from Grandma's Jean's repertoire of Oren and Pacifique our gardner. I think Pacifique will really miss Oren as Pacifique enjoyed hosing Oren down as he ran around in the yard almost as much as Oren enjoyed it.

I again leave you with a small character portrait. Before leaving, Rebecca asked our guard, Gaspar if he was going to go home to visit his family over the next 2 months. He said he probably would not, because travel is expensive and he was saving his money to buy his 4 children a mattress to sleep on. (I think he was working up the courage to ask for a loan to buy one.) When I heard this, I was truly convicted—living comfortably in the four bedroom house he guards, where most of the rooms are empty much of time. I went out and told him that when I get back we would go out and shop for mattresses for his children. I don't know if there was a more 'capacity building' way of helping him out, but his need was a harsh reminder of what the disparity between rich and poor looks like outside the USA.

Au Marche--Mw’Isoko--At the Market

For those of you who have been praying for the safe arrival of Gramma Jean’s suitcases, your prayers have been answered! They did arrive about two days after she did. Picking them up was an interesting experience. The lost luggage section in the Bujumbura airport customs warehouse is not a place that inspires confidence. When you walk in, it looks like a very likely place to lose a piece of luggage hopelessly. Nonetheless, we presented our lost luggage fiche to the douniare and after disappearing behind several hills of luggage, he emerged, to our amazement, with her bags--completely intact and unopened. It was quite a relief, and Oren was delighted to get the Cheerios and plastic animals that were stashed inside.

This has been a week of errands for us here. Today we head up country with Jodi and her luggage to install her in Burasira where she will spend the next 3 years. It is quite a challenge to get someone set up from scratch in a new household when you do not have a Walmart nearby. Nearly every item has to be bought at a separate place, and it is all so expensive (and must be negotiated vigorously). A can opener runs about $15. Rebecca braved the market with her mom and Jodi and a Burundian friend, Francine. They spent hours haggling over the price of pillows and sheets, and made several trips to different tailors to have pillowcases and couch covers made. (There is no Martha Stewart section of window dressings in the market either!) Here is a picture of Rebecca bargaining for some storage baskets.

There are other unusual shopping risks here. For example: Among the purchases we made was a large pressurized gas container for the stove we bought her. I was driving it home in the land cruiser (alone) on a particularly bumpy road in town. The gas bottle tipped over and hit the spigot. Within seconds the entire car was filled with gas. I stopped, jumped out of the car and ran around back to open the back end doors. Fortunately the spigot was not broken and I was able to shut the gas off and air the car out. None of this was accomplished without creating a considerable traffic jam and scene in the crowded street when I stopped in the middle of the road, and dove out of the car yelling “Il y’a du Gaz!!” The smell in the car was awful, and our night guard Gaspar had a lot of cleaning to do when I got home. It is better now. (Here is a picture of Gaspar with us out in our yard. He is a great help to us at home. Not just guarding the house at night, but doing our ironing, cleaning the car, feeding the dog, minding the front gate, and running various errands.)

Grandma Jean has been keeping herself very busy here as well. She has made some connections with the University Medical Library and even met with the Dean of the medical school to alert him to the availability of online medical publications, and suggest ways they might get access to some computers to be available in the library for faculty and students. She has also been teaching some new recipes to our cook Marcelline. Cinnamon rolls were an addition to her repertoire this week. Here is a picture of Oren getting in on the act during the lesson. I am putting in a picture of Marcelline as well. She has also been a big part of the marketing for items for Jodie to take up country this week. She is very good at driving a hard bargain, and always gets a better price than us bazungus.

I am trying to include a story of the power of faith in the life of remarkable individuals we have met here. What is amazing is that it seems that no one in Burundi is untouched by the crisis of violence and civil war that ripped this country apart the past 15 years. This past Wednesday, in our prayer and share group, our pastor Immanuel Ndikoumana was talking about having a confidence in God’s love and purposes that even transcends our natural fear of death. (We were reading Romans 8 for those of you are Biblically inclined .) In his own case this was tested many times, but once when he was sitting in a car at the market and a militia surrounded him with the intention of killing him. He recounted to us how he had been meditating right at that time on Romans 8:18 where it says: “I consider that our present suffering are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” He described a sense of profound serenity that came over him as the men approached, and when they looked in the car he smiled at them and began to laugh. The leader was incredulous and demanded to know why he was so happy. Immanuel told him and the leader of the gang said: “We cannot kill this man.” And let him go.

What is particularly disturbing to me, an American who has been quite well protected from danger in my life, is that stories like this are not atypical in the Burundian context. Learning to deal with fear and the threat of violence is a part of the lives of most people here. I am becoming aware of the dire choices that individuals and communities must make in response to this experience. Either they will succumb to fear, and continue the cycle of retribution in the name of security and survival, or they must be able to transcend it, forgive, and look with HOPE at the ‘current sufferings’ as something that can be overcome. This hope is only possible through a radical love, that reconciles us to our most feared enemies. The encouragement I have is that I am meeting a cadre of courageous individuals who are willing to risk standing up in their communities, against the tide of fear and ignorance, and say that--despite all they have suffered--there is the hope of a good future, that is worth living and dying for. I have found that such courage comes from their commitment to emulate the example of the Lord they serve.

“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.”
Romans 8:24

This is a picture of our Bible study group. Immanuel is in the back in the middle. His wife Azele is in the front. The others are Val and Charles from Scotland, Fidel from Chicago, and Suzie from Timonium, MD.

Grandma Jean!

I am beginning this entry a bit late today because we just came back from the airport. We picked up 'Grandma Jean' or 'Mama Rebecca' as she is known in Kirundi. Oren was thrilled, although sadly, all of her baggage is currently at large—apparently disappearing in Nairobi. We are less than optimistically awaiting news about it.

This has been a 'capacity building' week for me as I spent several days upcountry, where I had akazi-kenshi (many things to do). As I mentioned in a previous entry, we are setting up our service worker Jodie to teach at a Batwa school in Burasira. It is quite remote. I drove her up then came back alone. This is the first time I have driven in rural Burundi alone. Several hours of the trip were on very rough dirt roads. I did stay a night at the Catholic seminary again. I felt a real sense of accomplishment about not getting lost and beat a torrential downpour on my way down the mountain by about 5 minutes. ALSO I am able to ask for directions in simple Kirundi now. (Although I did not need to.) This is a trip I will be making monthly so it is good to feel competent.

On the way up, we stopped in Gitega where we have several partners I needed to meet. As part of the work I had to conduct a two hour interview with three of them in french by myself, then translate and write up a report. It was exhausting but I did manage to do fairly well.

Among the other highlights of the week was a conversation with Delphine, a partner of ours who directs the World Outreach Initiative, a local NGO. Again, what is striking about her story is the personal commitment to the development, peace and reconciliation work they do. The work with displaced people during the time of the 'crisis' (app. 1994-2004) along the border in Tanzania cost her husband his life. He was shot in the process of a reconciliation project. For her, her faith has sustained her as she continues their work. She does not consider the mission of development, peace and reconciliation to be separable from evangelism. One cannot evangelize without providing care for immediate needs, but one cannot change deeply marred values and generational hatred without grace, and a love that offers reconciliation to God and neighbor. Without a transformation at the personal and societal level, development is simply not possible. The sad tragedy of Burundi is the number of years it has spent in limbo, entrenched in a civil war which goes back 40 years, but has stagnated the country for the past 15.

BUT in the people I meet, I do have hope that a 'righteous generation' is emerging. Many young people do not want to perpetuate the mistakes of the generations before them. Delphine is just one of several of our visionary young partners who inspires hope for the future and affirms my faith as well.

On the homefront: Grandma Jean's arrival means that Rebecca and Oren are two short weeks away from leaving the country for their soujourn in Maryland. They will be leaving me here for another month, before I join them for the birth of our child at the end of October. I am not looking forward to the month alone here, but there is much to do in our work. Here is a photo of a us with a quilt we were given from our church in New York. We just put it up in preparation for Grandma's arrival.

This week has been hard in several ways: One of our colleagues continues to have an ongoing battle with malaria, and our night guard has amoebic dysentery. Rebecca and our cook were also both sick last week. Illness seems to be a fairly regular part of life here.

A few words from Rebecca: Much of this week has involved acquiring household items for Jodi's new house up-country. On Monday, we took a trip to the main market with a young Burundian woman who is great at bargaining. Under one big roof, you can buy anything from second hand clothes to liquor to mangoes to plastic washbasins -- but you need to bargain with each of a thousand vendors separately for each item. There are no shopping carts. Instead, as you go, you employ a young person to carry your purchases while you keep shopping. And you have to make sure you don't step on a mother and child begging on the floor of the narrow aisles.

I have been used to buying everyday items cheaply in other underdeveloped countries, but the situation is different here. Sometimes you can get items at prices comparable to the US. But most things are very, very expensive because they are shipped from other places and the price of transport is so high right now. When you consider that a drinking glass or a kilo of beans costs $1 and that most people make $50 or less in a month, you can see why people struggle so terribly with poverty.

Another challenge of this week was to learn more about public transportation while our Jeep was in the garage. Our cook Marcelline graciously indoctrinated me into the world of riding in the minibus taxis one afternoon. Every one of these vehicles carries up to 20 people and, I swear, has a smashed front windscreen, rickety seats and a sliding door that must be manually reattached every time it's opened. Marcelline even paid my fare (25 cents for a trip to the center of town). Good thing because I had to do it again by myself yesterday while Paul was upcountry! People definitely stare when a white woman gets into one of those vehicles. And I don't know much Kirundi but there is one phrase that I'm really getting the sense of, a shouted exclamation something like, "Look, a pregnant white woman!!" I guess that very few foreigners choose to stay here to deliver babies.

I am sending some pictures of some local sights. This shot was taken from an outdoor restaurant club near Lake Tanganyika. The birds are crested cranes. There is also a giant turtle that roams the grounds. Oren loves that.

Innocente, Jodie, and the Batwa

Amahoro. Urakomeye? Sinzi ikirundi neza. Ariko, ndagerageza!

En Français, ce la veut dire: Paix. Comment ça va? Je ne connais pas bien le Kirundi, mais j'essais!

In English: Peace. How are you? I don?t know Kirundi well, but I am trying!

The rainy season has brought out some new features of the Burundian landscape. On the macro-level, we can see that there is a huge mountain range right across Lake Tanganyika, in Congo, which until now, we have not been able to see due to haze. This really means that Bujumbura is surrounded by mountains on all sides, a bit like Seattle Washington. On the micro-level, our house has been a millipede sanctuary. They are all over the floor and hard to avoid when walking about in the dark. They particularly fancy an afternoon siesta under any dirty clothes left carelessly on the floor.

This has been a busy week for us and the jobs have involved a steep, but interesting learning curve. On Sunday we picked up one of our new 'service workers' Jodie, from the airport (returning from a visit to Kenya). She is Canadian, but has come from Massachusetts where she taught at Wellesley. She will be stationed in Bugasera, a remote town in central Burundi where she will teach at a Batwa (pygmy) school. She will be living next to a Catholic seminary that is up there. The Batwa are a very marginalized people in Burundi and generally looked down upon by other ethnic groups in the country. Setting up a home for a missionary is challenging. Finding a suitable, secure homestead, getting furniture, appliances, cooking utensils, access to water, curtains, etc. all needs to be considered. We were fortunate that the Abbey at the seminary was able to help us quite a bit. Oren, Rebecca, Jodie and I drove upcountry on Tuesday and stayed the night at the seminary. It was a very rough ride (several hours on dirt roads), but the dorms at the seminary were comfortable. Oren was delighted to find that the priests kept a pet monkey there. We ordered furniture and made other arrangements for her 3 year stay, then returned to Bujumbura with her on Wednesday. We will go up again next week to finish the preparations and leave her there.

It is probably worth saying something about our local partner who runs the Batwa school up there. The group is called UCEDD, but the founders are a couple, named Innocente and Beatrice. Innocente and Beatrice are batwa themselves, and Innocente related to us his harrowing tale of fleeing from Mbutu's Congo (Zaire) when he (Mbutu) was sending the soldiers to round up and capture the 'forest people' to be conscripted into the army. Innocente was separated from his family and fled to Burundi. He had the opportunity to get an education, and then, years later did an extensive search for his parents. He eventually found them in Congo after not seeing them for years. While in Burundi, however, he saw how terribly and shamefully his own people were treated, and in fact, did not even tell his hosts that he was Batwa because of his own shame about their wretched existence. From what I understand though, he eventually did feel convicted, as one who had the opportunity for education during his exile, to champion the cause of his people.

He and his wife founded UCEDD and have done amazing work in helping the Batwa in development and education projects. The school is one of the centerpieces of their work. It is supported by MCC but the Batwa themselves pay a small tuition fee to send their children, which gives them a real sense of ownership and investment in education. It is great to support them in this. Placing Jodie, an MCCer there, affords great opportunity to help build their capacity. She can teach English and French, as well as help develop curriculum and teaching methodologies with the local staff. We are also hoping she will be able to help build the capacity of UCEDD as well through assisting with grant writing, strategic planning, etc.

We are aware of the great challenges this will put on Jodie. She is moving from an academic career in an Ivy League School, to live as the only 'mzungu' (white person) in a remote village in the heart of central Africa. The sacrifice and cultural challenges are daunting, but she feels called by her faith to this work. Rebecca and I, as team leaders will have responsibility for making sure that she feels supported in this role, and I imagine we will be making trips, at least monthly, to Bugasera to visit. (The consolation, is that Oren seems to like the seminary and monkey.)
Right now, however, the rough roads up there are hard on Rebecca as she enters her seventh month of pregnancy. She has been doing quite well, in general, although today she is sick with a stomach flu that our cook had this past week. Please pray for her speedy recovery, as we need to make another trip up country next week.

Oren is doing extremely well. It is interesting to me to see him adapting to a new diet. He really does like food and does not seem to mind shifting from ice cream, cookies, cheerios, chicken, apples, and other American food, to a diet of rice and beans. He does like rice and beans, and we have it for lunch every day, so that is good. Yesterday we had fish for dinner and he ate almost half a kilo by himself. Although there is much I miss, I am also refreshed by the more utilitarian place food has taken in our lives. I have often felt that we have too many choices at home. It is a good proscriptive to see alternative lifestyles where less is more.

I am trying to send an interesting picture with each entry, so here is a photo of Rebecca (looking very pregnant) and Oren, in our 3rd world office. The windows are permanently open as there is no AC anywhere, and the technology is minimal, although we do have our computers and a printer. Photocopying is done at a nearby store, one page at a time, at about 30 cents per copy. What is hard to see is all the dust which collects daily. The floor is concrete. The walls are yellow, the closest shade to white available, and the furniture is all cushionless. The bamboo couch and chairs on the left is our conference room.

You might be interested in hearing the type of work we do in the office. Sometimes the work is game like in the challenges we are presented with. Here is an example. I need to travel, with 3 of our partners to Ghana, in Oct. for a 3 day meeting. I am American, 2 partners are Burundian, and one is Rwandan. We all live quite far from each other (a day trip). Ghana requires Visas for travel. There are no Ghanaian consulates in Burundi. For visas, Ghana requires our passports, and quadruplicate copies of an application, our plane tickets, our health cards, and 4 photos of each of us. So Rebecca and I have to get everyone?s passport, health cards, and photos, buy plane tickets for everyone, fill out all the applications, send them to Kenya (the nearest consulate), get them back and redistribute them to everyone. Needless to say, it is a complicated process and can take a long time. Consider also the fact that virtually nothing can be done on the internet, and never with a credit card.

I have really enjoyed the many comments you all have been writing. Shout out to the Vassar crew who started the semester this week. I did feel a real pang of sadness as I thought of the beginning of a new semester that I will miss for the first time in 8 years.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO KILL EACH OTHER, START WITH US!”

The rainy season began in Burundi at about 6:37 pm this past Tuesday. It came in the form of a torrential downpour and high winds. We woke to find all the gutters around our house and along the roads full, but no break from the heat. (We did mark our first power failure.) That was OK though, because we headed for the high country Wednesday, on the road to Kigali, Rwanda. This promised to be an adventure, my first time driving the 8 hours, crossing the border, and with 2 kids (Timmy, our program officer Zachee’s 3yo son, and Oren.) They are becoming good friends and it was nice to have them together. Zachee, Rebecca and I were the other 3 passengers.

The road to Kigali would certainly fall in the category of treacherous by any measure. Not so much in terms of security, (although detachments of armed soldiers every 2 or 3 miles takes some getting used to), but the road is narrow, winds along the contours of steep hills, and is frequented by large fuel trucks making a journey south from a port in Dar-Es-Salem. They take up a lot of the road and are hard to pass. They also provide a thrill for Burundian taxi drivers who seem to love to take their chances passing around blind corners. The trucks also usually have in tow 4 or 5 bicyclists who would otherwise have to pedal up the hills on their own power. Here is a picture of a truck with bicyclists hanging on. They like to swing out for a look around the corners.

But it is nice to go to Kigali. The development in Rwanda is a striking contrast to Burundi, and evident as soon as one crosses the border. The roads are better, cleaner, speed limit monitored, etc. The whole trip takes about 6 hours of driving time and anywhere from 30 mins to 3 hours at the border. We got to Kigali a bit after dark and found our way to the missionary guest house where we were staying. It was a nice place, although a group of 25 students from the University of Oregon were there for 10 days doing mission work, so it was a bit loud (Brought back fond memories of youth ministry for Rebecca). The couple running it had picked up their lives to do mission work after raising a family in Idaho. They really did seem to take to life in Kigali and offered a nice place to stay. They did have pet rabbits in the yard which were a big hit with Timmy and Oren.

One reason we were there was to do some strategic planning with some of our partners from the Evangelical Friends Church. They have a peace and reconciliation ministry here called Friends Peace House. They do quite a few projects related to peace and development. The planning we did involved a meeting where we interviewed them using an ‘affirmative inquiry’ approach to evaluating our relationship. It has been really amazing to hear some of the stories of the people who lead the organizations we partner with. I cannot tell you how courageous they are, and all have a story of overcoming fear that has led them to a life of sacrificial service, and commitment to a Christian witness. As an example, I would mention ‘Onesphore’. (Actually he is a partner here in Burundi.. We interviewed his as well last week). We asked him to share how his work in his organization was connected to his core values. He said it began with a faith commitment that he had had since birth. In his first weeks of life he was dying of fever and about to be abandoned by his parents who were fleeing their home during the war. They decided to keep him one more day, and he lived. When he was told about the miracle as a young boy, he felt his life was not his own, and gave it then to Christ.

The real test came in Secondary School. In 1994 during a time of upheaval, there was great fear among hutu students of violence against them. (Their fears were well founded.) Onusphore, saw their concern and challenged his fellow Christian students to refuse to become involved in the ethnic tensions and in fact to stand in solidarity with the victimized students. He said that as Christians they were neither Tutsi, nor Hutu, but a new ethnicity in Christ. When the tensions were rising to the point of a murderous confrontation he stood before fellow students and said, “IF YOU ARE GOING TO KILL EACH OTHER, START WITH US!” His Christian fellowship group refused to be ethnically divided and committed to stand by anyone who was under threat, regardless of what tribe they were from. Their courage and commitment to solidarity changed the entire mindset of the campus, and they resisted ethnic division in that school through the time of crisis.

One thing that I have learned as Rebecca and I have been supporting local partners in doing development work, is the real impact a Christian witness can have, and the opportunity to heal a marred identity where a secular approach would fail. Here where tribal loyalty has created such division, the call to unity and love of one’s brother as a tenet of Christian faith is a powerful critique of the social norms. I am also particularly appreciative of the Anabaptist, commitment to pacifism espoused by MCC. It is such important work in places like Rwanda and Burundi where ethnic hatred has had such a crippling effect on the nation, and traumatic effect on so many individuals. One thing we found in interviewing our dedicated partners--not one of them was left untouched by the war. All lost loved ones, usually spouses and children. Yet there desire to bring a message of grace, and an example of forgiveness, modeled after Christ, is unwavering.

We drove back to Kigali today (Saturday). It was quicker coming back. I will say the air is cooler in Kigali, and it is really a clean city. We also enjoyed a quick fix of high speed internet to Skype Grammy. She enjoyed seeing Oren. Here is a picture of Oren and Timmy at Club T last Saturday.

Rebecca is definitely looking pregnant and we agreed that she would not be making that trip by road again before the baby is born. It was good to travel as a family though, and I will miss them when she goes back ahead of me to Baltimore to deliver. In true Mennonite fashion, she does not complain about the obvious discomfort she must have experienced bouncing the 300 miles to Kigali we journeyed this week. Keep her health in your prayers in these last 2 crucial months.

Life in Burundi Part 2: Food, Work, Play

I am noticing that we are beginning to find a rhythm to life here and I thought I would share some of the ordinary routines that we have established. It is Saturday morning, and I have chosen this time to write and post my weekly blog entry. The timing is good because Bujumbura has a sort of community service curfew on Saturday from 7am to 10am. No one is allowed to go out or drive around during this time. Everyone is to be involved in community service projects, like cleaning the neighborhood.

This week I am happy to say that I have returned to my morning running routine I have not had the chance to restart this since I left the USA and it is good to get back into it. (Burundians run for exercise but seeing a Mzungu—white man, run is definitely a curiosity.) Generally our weekly routine looks like this:

Oren and I usually get up around 6 am. I make coffee for Rebecca and I, and peanut butter (nutella) toast for Oren. He watches a video (on my computer) while I read the Bible, at 6:30 am I go for a run and Rebecca gets up and bathes ( I am happy to say we have running hot water in tub, but not in the sinks). When I get back we make breakfast for ourselves, (usually fruit—mango, papaya, banana), and eggs or oatmeal. (Kellogs Cornflakes are available here for about $15 per box, so we do not have cereal.) Our cook Marcelline arrives around 8:30 am and does the breakfast dishes, if we haven’t managed to do them. At the beginning of the week, Rebecca makes a week’s schedule of meals for her to prepare. So, Marcelline often has come from the market with food for a few days. The marketing part of cooking is complicated and expensive (for a white person) and so getting food for the household is an important part of the cook’s duties.

Food here is really in raw form. The selection is also quite limited. We can generally get the following: UHT (long-life) milk, sugar, eggs, cheese (one kind only), tomatoes, beef (ground), potatoes, red beans, rice, cassava, onion, garlic, flour, and some baked bread. Fruit includes bananas, mangoes, papaya, passion fruit, avocado, and Japanese plums (little egg shaped purple fruits – you remove the top and squeeze out seeds and sweet & sour purple juice to add to fruit salad). Vegetables include carrots, green beans, cucumbers, peas and spinach. We can also get local coffee and tea. Burundian coffee is grown here and quite good. Other food that is available is quite expensive, especially anything prepackaged. (APPLES ARE NONEXISTANT.) So, if we want anything, like spaghetti sauce or tortillas, we have to make it from scratch. That is why a cook is so essential. There are literally hours of work to do in the kitchen everyday. We generally eat simply. We have fruit and toast for breakfast (sometimes an egg or oatmeal), rice and beans for lunch, and usually a salad and something with ground beef and potatoes, or rice, or tortillas for dinner. A side dish of green beans and carrots or peas is pretty standard. Variety is really a luxury here so we don’t change our menu much.

Our house has a garden around it, inside a high wall, with a wide variety of trees and flowers. It’s a nice place for Oren to play – he loves to run around the house, following the concrete drainage ditch. Apparently, this will be a real asset in the rainy season, keeping our house from flooding. At the moment, it’s the dry season, so the plants need to be watered daily. We have a gardener/day guard who comes three times a week. Honestly, there’s not so much for him to do, so we have him clean up a little kiddie pool for Oren to splash in (left by the previous family). We also have a nightguard who stays up much of the night, keeping an eye out for bandits. He is assisted in his work by Bella, a golden retriever (also left by the previous family). She’s leashed during the day, but is very good at discerning when to bark – only when there is a knock on our gate.

You might wonder why we have so many workers at our house. One perspective is this: in a country when so many people are impoverished or underemployed, it is considered selfish not to have house workers. If you can afford it, you are expected to have at least three people working for you. And this also means you assume responsibility for their health care and for helping them out in family emergencies. It’s actually a lot of work to manage so many people, so there’s definitely a trade-off between the help you receive and the effort you put into keeping all the people busy…That’s mostly Rebecca’s job.

Three days a week we have a babysitter for Oren so Rebecca and I can both go to the office. Her name is Denise and Oren seems to like her. She speaks only French and Kirundi so Oren is getting a crash course. He is resistant to learning it at this point, but does say Bonjour, Ca va? Rebecca and I study language on Mon, Wed, and Fri. afternoon. She does French and I do Kirundi. She seems to be progressing more rapidly than me, but in all fairness, Kirundi is really structurally different than English.

On workdays (M-F) we are at the office where we answer a lot of email from Akron headquarters and other regional offices, and we make a lot of phone calls on our cell phones. Cell phones are the primary means of communication here and text messaging is used far more commonly than email. We are getting good at it now. Much of our work is arranging payments to our partners or planning for travel to visit their projects. We also have to keep meticulous track of every penny we spend and every dollar we change and record it, so that takes some time as well.

One thing that takes getting used to is using cash for EVERYTHING. We have yet to find an establishment in Burundi that takes credit cards (forget about debit cards!). All salaries, grants, rent, shopping, etc. are done in cash. That is a big change from the USA and means we make frequent trips to the bank and money changers.

On the weekend, as I said, we rest at home on Sat. morning and try to do things as a family on Saturday and/or Sunday. We go to a church on Sunday that is presented in French and English, although many of the songs are in Kirundi as well. We have also started a Bible study on Wednesday evening at our house. For entertainment we like to go to Club du Lac Tangayika, a large hotel next to Lake Tanganyika with a swimming pool for adults and kids, as well as some other attractions. It is on the beach so we can go there as well. There is a limited playground there that would never pass American safety standards, but Oren likes it and digs in the sand as well. Here are Oren and I at the beach near Club T. The water is Lake Tanganyika.

I did want to say something about Burundian local cuisine as well: It is quite tasty, and there is some variety. To Oren’s joy, one of the favorite dishes is deep fried potatoes, ie: French fries! They love French fries as a staple. Cooked peas and cooked red beans are the other staple. Usually a salad with tomatoes, avocadoes and raw onions is common at Burundian meals as well. Beef or goat in chops or a broth are common too. If you are wealthy you might have rice instead of potatoes. Most food is sautéed with onion in palm oil. There is a local hot sauce called pili-pili that is very hot, but is a nice addition to the food. There are 3 non-alcoholic cold things to drink here besides water: Coke (only regular in bottles), Fanta (like sprite), and passionfruit juice (sold in a concentrate and diluted with water—Oren is allergic to it). Milk is expensive. We can also get coffee and tea which we put powdered milk and sugar into.

Here is a picture of Burundian fare at a restaurant we were at recently upcountry. It is probably hard to tell what things are. Keep in touch, we will be in Kigali Rwanda next week so will have access to Skype. My Skype name is pamosley. If you have it, find out when we are online and we will talk to you.

The Duke Pilgrimage

One thing I have learned this week is that if someone invites you to go on a pilgrimage, don’t imagine you can go as a tourist! The opportunity was presented by a Ugandan priest named Emmanuel Katongole, who chairs the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation. He has been leading pilgrimages and peace initiatives in this region for several years. This year he came to Burundi. Among the invitees were 3 bishops from Uganda and Burundi, as well as several other pastors from local churches and representatives from NGOs who work around here, as well as other interested individuals. It was quite an auspicious group.

I wanted to make connections in my role as MCC rep. and agreed to join. It meant leaving Rebecca and Oren for 2 days and an overnight to travel up-country to visit several memorials of genocide, as well as some peace and reconciliation efforts that were happening at various places. Emmanuel prepared us to go by giving us a meditation on Moses at the burning bush. He said that when Moses approached the bush out of curiosity he was commanded to remove his shoes because he was standing on holy ground. Like Moses, Emmanuel described the pilgrimage as an opportunity to ‘take off our shoes and feel the heat.’

As we journeyed, I became aware of the truth of that in several experiences: First, as we visited several memorials to those who died in the genocide effort, I was profoundly aware of the politics of monuments. Who is memorialized is very much a political decision. We visited an official memorial at Kibimba. Here a huge number of Tutsi students were rounded up and burned alive in a gas station. There, however, no one was willing to give an exact number and even an inquiry into the details remains highly suspect. Who wants to know and why? Retribution remains a vague anxiety. We also visited an ‘unsanctioned’ Hutu memorial where many Hutus on a hillside were killed by the army. This is not a government-recognized memorial.

The most significant memorial we visited though was one in which 40 young students (high school) were murdered at a catholic school. What was profound about this memorial however was that it happened in the only school in the country in 1997 where Tutsis and Hutus were being educated together, not segregated. When they were attacked, 40 students in the dorm were asked to separate. In this case, Hutu rebels were attacking. It was typical to demand that a group separate by ethnicity and then to kill all of those from one group. To the amazement of all, the students refused to separate! They were all martyred, Tutsis and Hutus together. But their courageous decision to stand together remains a tribute to a better future. The rector who was there at the time told us the testimony of one of the dying students. His face was beatific as he said, “Victory, we have won! They asked us to separate and we refused.”

Besides visiting memorials, we did meet some individuals involved in peace and reconciliation. Among the testimonies, we heard of a family in which a man killed the husband and sons of a Tutsi woman. After being reconciled many years later, her granddaughter married the guilty man’s son. We visited them on our journey as they had just been married the week before.

We heard many such stories of forgiveness and reconciliation as well as the courageous work of several foreigners, especially a young female, MCCer, who brought enemy groups face to face to negotiate peace with each other. Often she acted almost purely as a human shield and witness to prevent violence from breaking out between these groups. It is an amazing testimony to the power of a peace witness in this place. I have come to really appreciate the power of the Anabaptist pacifist theology MCC espouses.

The real trial of the journey was the driving. I can’t describe how uncomfortable it is to drive through the Burundian hill country on barely passable unpaved roads in a crowded Landcruiser for 12 hours at a time. We also had some uncomfortable encounters with military road blocks and driving later than we had planned in complete darkness through areas that had only recently agreed to a cease fire. Ambushes by FLN rebels and bandits remain a concern at night. But we did make it back on the second evening and I was very happy to back in Bujumbura with Rebecca and Oren.

One thing that gave me great hope in the midst of seeing unspeakable evil was also seeing the incredible courage of many individuals committed to counter it. There is a prophetic voice for peace that I am hearing at the grass roots level, as well as in the church and even in the government now.

It was interesting going on this trip with many church leaders. It was a time to take ownership of both the power of the gospel to transform minds and bring unity, as we saw in the Catholic school I mentioned above in Buta. But we also heard appalling stories about families who worshipped in the same church on Sunday, murdering each other later in the week. It gave me a new perspective on the great failure of churches that build a congregation of ‘nominal Christians’--those whose lives have not been transformed by the love and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. I say this as a warning to all of us in our churches in the west as well. The church can be the agent of change and the bulwark of peace and transforming love…OR it can simply maintain the status quo, and be complicit in the evil that is perpetrated by fear and prejudice. The contradictions are not as dire in our churches at home…YET. But the tribulation will come, on us or our children, and I worry that we may not be preparing their hearts and minds for it.

Here is a picture of the memorial to the 40 Tutsi and Hutu students who refused to separate at the Catholic school in Buta we visited. The man standing in the picture, who recounted the story, was a Benedictine monk who lives there. He knew it well because he was the teacher of these students and had educated them in the importance of unity in Christ and insisted on keeping the school open to both ethnic groups. At the time of the massacre, he was barricaded in his room unable to get out, but he heard it as it was happening. Among the last words the dying student who had told him about their ‘victory’ said, was that the students who were killed had prayed “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.”