A trip to Rwanda and A Parable in Action

Oren, taking a rest between breakers at Lak Tanganyika


Wow 10 pm Sunday evening and the power just went out. I wish I had started this earlier because I have a lot to say. This was a busy week all in all, and I have to admit that my nerves feel a bit shot from all that happened.

Monday through Wednesday was pretty much business as usual. We have been continuing to follow our 'splitting up of work and childcare' routine with me dropping off Oren, going swimming, and then to work in the mornings, and Rebecca going in the afternoon. While this is working, the thing that is, quite frankly, wearing about the job is the number of people that stop by the office daily to ask for money. Occasionally it is someone looking for a partnership with MCC, but most often it is someone with a sad story that wants a handout. It is hard because many people have very sad stories. It is really hard to know when to say yes and when to say no.

Jodi was in town as well last Sunday and Monday. It was good to have her here and with Robyn still with us, it meant we had another full house. (Which we like.)

Another brief moment of respite was a ‘date night’ on Monday evening. After the kids went to bed, Robyn stayed with them while Rebecca and I snuck out to a very nice local restaurant on the hill (The Belvedere) for a chocolate sundae (or Dame Noire as they call it there). It was really good, and the view of Bujumbura from the hill is really quite lovely (even at night).

On Thursday our family headed up to Kigali after a frantic morning of running around trying to get 2 days worth o things done in two hours before we left. We picked up Oren from school at about 10:40 am and headed for the mountains. We are definitely becoming veterans of this route and we made it to Kigali in a record 5 hours including the border. At this point we also know all of the border guards on both sides of the border, so going through continues to get easier.

When we arrived, we went right to the Africa New Life Guesthouse, where we normally stay, so the kids could get out and run around while I went into town to some banking. We needed to cram a lot into our time because we are trying to cut down on time spent in Kigali (for budget reasons.) We arrived Thursday, and were planning to leave Saturday.

Kigali and the ANLM guesthouse are very familiar stomping ground for Oren and he was particularly glad to see Miss Cindy and ‘Gerry Monster’ the proprietors of the establishment. (Oren mentioned several times on the trip up, his excitement about going to go to the guesthouse and help Miss Cindy pick up trash in the yard.) The feeling is mutual, fortunately, and all were glad to see the kids and us when we arrived.

That evening we went and had dinner with Ruth and Krystan, and Bridget (Zachee’s wife) who was passing through town on her way to Goma. Bridget’s organization works with several partners in Goma (DRCongo) as well as with our partner Friends Peace House in Rwanda. Having dinner together gave us a chance to talk about some strategic planning as donors to help build the capacity of Friends Peace House. Ruth and Krystan are really good cooks and made a fabulous vegetarian Indian meal for us.

On Friday we had some meetings with Friends Peace House in the morning and then took Ruth and Krystan shopping in the afternoon. All seemed to go well and we were able to get many supplies (although no computer back up batteries for when we have no power).
Friday evening we went out to dinner with Ruth and Krystan to a new restaurant in Kigali called The New Cactus. It sounds Mexican, but it is actually kind of Italian. We had a very nice time. Here is a picture of Oren and David at the table. (notice the portable high-chair we picked up in Nairobi from someone who did not need it anymore!)

We left Kigali fairly early on Saturday morning. It was the last Saturday of the month, which is community work day. No one is supposed to be out driving, but despite the intimidating Rwandese police, we went on through and did not get stopped once.

I continue to be impressed but leary of the progress I see in Kigali. It is being modernized so quickly and the government seems so earnest to bring about change. They have huge anti-aids, anti-prostitution, and pro family planning campaigns going on. (They are planning to charge a tax every child beyond a family size of three.)

Actually, it seems that every good idea is turned into law in Rwanda. For instance it is illegal to: Have a wall around your house without openings, posses plastic bags, wear flip flops in town, give money to pan handlers, have an unpainted house, or drive over 40mph. Also, there is universal health care, social security, and primary education. They have also laid fiber optic cable throughout the entire country.

The problem is that as progressive as these policies are, they are very coercive. I think the verdict about whether these changes are affecting the vast majority of the rural populaton is still out.

We got home Saturday around 4pm and we decided to head to the Club du Lac T. to refresh ourselves after the long drive. Oren was very happy to try his skill at riding waves and David was delighted to go into the kiddie pool.

After dinner we went over to Astrud and Travis’ house (our missionary friends from California/Netherlands) They have a family movie night every Saturday. They have 5 girls, three of their own and 2 adopted. The story of their faithfulness through some very challenging times in Rwanda is a real testimony of faith. They feel strongly called to be working with children and are trying to set up an association here to provide foster care and mentorship for orphans and street kids.

Last Tuesday at Bible study Travis shared with us a testimony which was a real parable in action.. We were studying Ephesians chapter 2 where Paul talks about us, though we are 'children of wrath', being ADOPTED into God’s family. We were marveling over this description of our inheritance and sonship as a result of adoption, and not natural birth as God’s children. God selects us and adopts us--not because we deserve it, but because he loves us.

Travis described the amazing testimony the adoption of their Rwandese daughter Yaya was. When they adopted her, Astrud had a 3 month old daughter of her own (Jasmine). She was breast-feeding her at the time. When she was adopting Yaya, she began breastfeeding her as well. Often women in Rwanda breastfeed publicly and many Rwandese saw her doing so with both children simoultaneously. When they saw her doing this, Travis described scenes where Rwandese women would fall at her feet sobbing and thanking her.

They were perplexed and asked a Rwandese friend why there was such an emotional reaction. Their friend said: “You don’t understand. Here, there are many orphans that families take in. Often orphans are minimally cared for, they might not eat at the family table, they are not always sent to a good school, or any school, they may be forced to be a family slave or worker, sometimes they are even sold for sex to earn income for the household. An orphan is not often treated as a full family member! When those women saw you feeding your own child and the orphan, both at the breast, they were shocked because you were treating the orphan exactly like your own daughter!!”

Travis said that the sight of seeing a white woman treating a Rwandese child as such was for many Rwandese, a living parable tantamount to the Good Samaritan—a non-Rwandese treating a Rwandese orphan as her very own child in the most intimate way. Their friend said that they were probably changing the way many Rwandese viewed care of orphaned children.

For me, it illustrated once again the amazing ministry of reconciliation offered through Christ about which John proclaimed: “O what manner of love is this that we should be called sons of God!”

For me, Travis and Astrud are a true testimony to people living out their faith on the edge. They have been willing to take risks in putting themselves out there in ways that really challenge me. With MCC we work through very established local partners, and I think that is good, but Travis and Astrud’s whole family does things like going out to the market to hug street kids (who are often pick-pockets) and share God’s love with them. We are very thankful to have them as friends who push us in our own faith.

Sunday we did something a bit out of the ordinary, we went to Marcelline’s church to hear her sing. We took Yolanda and Robin with us. It was a very nice service which was a modest 2 hours long. (I was grateful it was not 5.) She did very well and it was great to have a chance to test out my Kirundi in a church service.

We had a short break for lunch then went to the English service at the Rainbow Center where Rebecca taught Sunday school We were fairly tired when we came back and ready for bed. When we arrived home we found we had some unexpected drop-in visitors who stayed until about 8pm. This is typical visiting hours in Burundi and dinner is usually after 9pm.

This put our whole schedule off for the evening and we ended up getting the kids to bed too late. I am finishing and posting this blog at 6pm the next morning, ready for another week.

Rainy Season, A Community of Missionaries, and a Milestone for Oren

In case I had not mentioned it, rainy season began last Tuesday at 1:15 in the afternoon. It is a pleasant change here—like summer into fall in the US. The nights are cooler, the house is not getting dusty as fast, and the mountains of Congo became visible again from our front porch yesterday evening.

It is a welcome change, and our garden is really appreciating it. Our mango tree is already providing us with some fruit and we expect to see some really big ones coming soon. Rebecca and Oren planted a kitchen garden in some of our planters around the porch, and we anticipate harvesting a fairly large crop of lettuce soon as well. When I focus on the blessings of being here, one thing I do appreciate is the amount of fresh produce available here year around, especially tomatoes. I remember those brief summer seasons at home where we could enjoy eating vine-ripened tomatoes. Here in Burundi, they are the only kind you get, 12 months per year. There are no cans of anything here so all of our tomato sauce, pasta sauce, salsa, etc, is made fresh every week. This goes for pretty much everything from avocadoes to herbs like basil, cilantro, garlic and ginger, lemons, limes, orange juice etc.

It is a good time to count blessings because electrical power is not in that number. We are now down to an inconsistent 4 hours every 24 max. We have bought some rechargeable battery operated flashlights, etc. We are also looking into some alternative energy supplements including a solar panel to charge a battery. I was surprised to find how widespread the use of solar energy is outside the US. It is intriguing to me, the idea that creating electrical power could be so decentralized. What if every household in the US, for instance, had its own solar panel to charge batteries and ran their household off of that power. It would be far cheaper in the long run than paying electric bills. My own idea is to create an exercise bike that one could ride to charge a battery while watching TV, than you could run the lights or TV off of the battery the rest of the evening while relaxing.

One thing that surprised me as an American is that absolutely NO one I talk to knows what is going on. There is speculation and rumor that Burundi owes money to Rwanda, the Lake is low, machines in Congo broke down, etc. But no facts, no investigative reporting, etc. For all we might like to complain about the tabloid style muckraking of the US press, I can assure that the truth would have been long exposed by now if this was happening there, and if heads needed to roll, they would have long rolled by now. Here it seems that suppression of facts to avoid embarrassment, etc. is still quite possible by some ( I am not going to speculate in this blog!).

What I have been told by one of my partners who is well connected is that this is the new Bujumbura. It is not seasonal, this is the new reality!

OK, enough of a diversion. I am sorry this has been so much on my mind of late, but we do spend a lot of time sitting around in the dark without much to do.

This week had its ups and downs, mostly ups. It was a second full week of being able to live in our newly established daily routine. Since our Kenya vacation we have tried to establish better habits of work, exercise and parenting. David is far too mobile to take to the office, so the new routine involves me taking to Oren to school at 7:30 am, then swimming from about 8-9, then working at the office from 9-12 or running errands in town. Rebecca takes care of David at that time. We all come home for lunch and on Monday and Wednesday we swap off doing language lessons in the afternoon. On Tuesday and Thursday and Fridays Rebecca goes to work in the afternoons and swims as well. We also have Marcelline put David on her back while she is working on Friday mornings so we can work together at home and coordinate our independent efforts. It is working OK right now, definitely better than before.

We continue to have our Tuesday evening Bible study although it is honestly not very well attended these days. I think the limitation is that it is in English, and there are just not a lot of English speakers in our church who can get to it on a school night evening. Most of the Anglophone missionaries we know have families with young kids and cannot come.

The good news on that front is that we are developing a group of friends, who are in a similar situation to us and are able to get together on a Saturday. We have now had a gathering of the some 4 to 6 families in the last two Saturdays. These are all long term missionaries,
one family is working with the Anglican church, (they are German and have 3 boys)
a second family is here to work with World Relief in their AIDS awareness in churches program. (They are Danish and have a boy and girl)
The third is an American family who come from 4 generations of missionaries to Burundi. They support a local church that was planted by their grandparents. They also have 2 boys.
Our other good friends are Zachee, Bridget and Tim, and Astrud and Travis’ family (who have 5 girls, two adopted from Rwanda.)

What I find somewhat amusing is spending so much time together in a group with Europeans from Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands who only share English as a common language. It is also interesting being a novelty as Americans.

This Saturday we had the group over to our house along with the 3 SALTers and a few other friends. It was an afternoon gathering and the type of thing our house if perfect for. We opened all the doors, took the extra furniture out on the porch, which created large play areas for kids. We also had the trampoline of course. We served Mexican food and salad. It was a lot of fun, especially for all the kids there. It was really good to feel there is a community for us here that took a while to find.

I will try to say a bit about them individually in the future. For me it is interesting to see what impulse brings missionaries out here. One thing that is not surprising is that we share some sense of call in common. I do remember working as a dancer in New York City and finding myself in classes surrounded by hundreds of people who were driven in just the way I was. It was a bit unnerving. I feel that sense a bit here as well. Our desire to do this was somewhat out of the ordinary back home, but here, we are surrounded by the exact same type of out-of-the-ordinary folks.

Apropos to this, we have been going to the English fellowship on Sunday afternoon at the Rainbow center. We have been doing this in addition to the Sunday morning service we attend. We are doing this to give Oren a good Sunday school class. Rebecca taught the class last week and I assisted this week. It seems to be going quite well and many of the aforementioned kids are part of it.

Oren and David:

David has generally been doing well although this week he was sick with a very high fever. On the second night we decided to take him to get tested for malaria. He is the only person in our family still on antimalarials, but we missed a dose last week so there was a window for him to get it. The test was negative, which was only slightly encouraging because everyone always seems to get a negative test whether they have it or not. But he did get better by this morning and seems to be fine. The doctor did prescribe bactrim for some diarrhea. This seems to have helped also. We were told that chicken pox are also going around here, and David is teething as well.

One thing I will say about raising a baby in the 3rd world is that we save a lot on baby food. There is none to buy. We just break up whatever we are having on our plates into small pieces and he eats it. He is a good eater and loves rice, bananas, mangoes, french-fries, fish, and anything he can get his hands on. He is also still breast-feeding. (There is no affordable formula here either.) For those of you with babies, I just want to let you know that you don’t have to buy expensive baby food or a food processor to provide food to your baby. They don’t in much of the world.


I will close with Oren. He is doing really well in school these days and actually enjoys going. (Many friends now.) He even says a bit in French now. I am including a picture of him in his class.

The picture I am missing though would have been taken during a midday swim at Club du Lac T. Oren really wanted to go wade in the water. I was a bit leery because he is still not grasping the idea of holding one’s breath underwater. The Lac has a chop and a surf like the ocean. Oren played a bit letting his feet get wet but decided to go in deeper. I stayed very close, but he began to get braver and let himself be hit and knocked over by the breakers close to shore. In short order he was basically body surfing with the waves crashing over him (no waterwings). He TOTALLY understood at that moment how to hold his breath and had a great time. When we got back to the kids pool he jumped in a went right underwater to kick along the bottom. It was a major milestone and an exciting day for him.

The Social Life of Oren

Oren occasionally finds the camera and goes around the house taking pictures, most are not great, but this one of David is pretty good!


Some weeks I feel I am belaboring a point, and I am sorry about that, but the power situation here is getting worse and worse. We have been averaging about 4-6 hours of power every 24 hours. What is particularly frustrating is there is no predictability about when this will be. Sometimes it is on from midnight to 5 in the morning, other days it is in the mid afternoon, morning or evening. It makes me yearn for the good old days when it reliably was off from midnight until 6 am. It is also baffling that some areas have virtually no problems (particularly rich areas like the quartiers where the President and ministers of parliament live). We are not in a ‘privileged’ quartier so we seem to have it the worst.

The prevailing rumor now is that this is an infrastructure problem and not a water shortage or anything else. They just do not have enough power to cover all of the rapidly growing Bujumbura. They expect to solve it in the next four years. (the length of our term) Sadly, it does not appear to me that infrastructure has changed much since colonialism, but I am probably wrong about that. I have also heard that Burundi, despite these shortages, continues to sell electricity to neighboring Rwanda and Congo. I don’t know if this is true, but it would not surprise me if it was, and that someone in the government is making a lot of money off of it.

It is honestly making working at home, doing laundry etc. very difficult. We can barely keep our computer batteries charged. Once again, tonight, I am racing against time finish this blog before I run out of batteries. (Sorry no proofing until later in the week.)

While this was not a traveling week, it was not without significant events. Oren completed another week of school without incident, and in fact, I am happy to report that he seems to be moving again into a more positive phase. He has been acting out a bit due to missing home and misbehaving around us, but once school began and he has been able to be with friends again, he really seems more happy and well adjusted. He has several friends including a neighborhood kid who drops by almost daily after school and they play together, either climbing trees or jumping on the tramp. (His name is Cedric.)

The other exciting news for Oren is that TIMMY is back!! Yes, Zachee, Bridget and Timmy got back early Thursday morning. Oren saw Timmy at school on Friday and was quite excited to see him back. Catching up with Zachee after his 3 months in Canada was really great. It was interesting to see a person experiencing reverse culture shock so fully. Zachee has lived his whole life in Burundi, but coming back after such a long absence seemed to be a bit disorienting for him. The other big surprise is that Timmy is not an English speaker! He apparently practiced English intensely the whole time there and came back able to carry on a decent conversation with us when he arrived. It was honestly a bit shocking for us since we are so used to speaking to him in French and to have he and Oren communicate with yelling. Now Zachee and Bridget are encouraging us to speak English to him so he won’t lose it. It is great for Oren, but there goes another francophone friend who could help him improve his French.

Actually, I had, until recently, thought he had really learned no French, but I think I am wrong now. I can give him instructions in French and he understands them, so there seems to be some progress.

If there is anything that has defined this week, it is a return to routines. I am happy for the rhythm that a school year provides and it is good to be back in that routine. Many of our friends and Oren’s have returned from long vacations, many new faces have replaced the old that left during the summer. Rebecca and I are back into our language lessons and work routine. Two big changes, one is that David is not too old to take to the office so we now go one at a time for the beginning of the week. We meet at home for lunch then switch off or do language lessons. On Thursday and Friday, Marcelline does less cooking and takes care of David while we do work together (usually at home on the computer.) This seems to be working pretty well for now.

The other big change is building in some habits of renewal, to wit: regular exercise. We have included in our rotation, the opportunity for each of us to go separately for a daily swim before we work. We have recently discovered a really good 35 meter pool right near our office. I find I have it almost entirely to myself from 8-9 each morning. The workout is really transforming my capacity to deal with the many frustrations and challenges of work here. I am really thanking God for this small blessing.

I am also happy to say that I went to capoeira again this past Thursday, as the teacher is back in town. (Just a reminder, he is the principle of the school Oren goes to, The Ecole Belge.) It is great to be able to this again as it seems to keep me agile and flexible a good counter to the backbreaking driving routine upcountry and to Rwanda.

Our SALTers are still doing quite well and are learning language intensively as well as working. We still have Robyn at our house as her host family are still dealing with some unexpected ‘drop in’ relatives that they need to let stay for a bit. (Refusing hospitality to relatives is a faux-pas here, no matter how much it may inconvenience or even impoverish you.) We anticipate her being here about 2 more weeks before she moves in. She has been anxious about being immersed in language so last week we invited Francine to come over and have dinner and stay the nights with us until Robyn moves out. She did stay several times last week and that was really fun. She is such a dear person and a really good cultural attaché.

On Friday we also had Onesphore drop in with his wife Innocente and children, Jim and Deborah. It was a very nice visit and David was very happy to play with Deborah. Onesphore did drop one small bomb on us though when he told us Innocente would have to go to France for 2 years to finish her medical residency in gynecology. (They do 3 years in Burundi and 2 in France to complete.) I can’t even say how much my heart went out to them. She will only be able to visit once in the 2 years she is gone (because of money) and of course Onesphore going out to visit her with the kids would be impossible as far as getting a visa. (Their children, Jim and Deborah are the same ages as Oren and David.)

I honestly cannot imagine such a sacrifice to finish one’s degree, yet I have seen this happen a lot here, particularly for anyone who wants to get ahead. I am hoping we can find ways to support Onesphore and his children emotionally while she is gone. (his sister will help with childcare as well, but I cannot imagine how she will be able to cope without seeing her kids for that long.)


The weekend had it share of interesting social events as well. We went to a birthday party that Oren was invited to by one of his school friends. We did not know the family, but knew they were part of the European secular NGO community. It is a very different gathering than a missionary event. The kids had many things to do in the yard like swim or jump in an air house, while the adults would sit around drinking Amstels and smoking while chatting about life here, the lack of power, upcoming elections, etc. Nonetheless, Oren seemed to have a good time, and we like to have him get opportunities to socialize with his school friends outside of school.

On Saturday evening we went over to watch a movie with Astrud and Travis’ family. I mentioned them last week. They have 4 girls and are trying to adopt a fifth. They are definitely becoming good friends and they have a family movie night on Saturday’s where the kids bring all the mattresses out into the living room and watch a kids movie projected from a computer on the wall. This week as the movie Underdog!

Sunday was also fairly busy. After church we went right to the beach because we had plans to go to the recently restarted English fellowship in the afternoon. We were going to a second service because Rebecca is committed to find or create a good Sunday school situation for Oren, which he has not had until this point (At our own church, all Sunday school is in Kirundi). Rebecca was the teacher this week. I think it went pretty well from what she said, although she came home feeling a bit like she had the flu.

I made dinner for us in the dark and finally got the kids to bed about 8:30. So it light’s out for now, (Oh, the lights are already out.)

Living in Darkness and a Trip Down South

David representing MCC on our visit to Nyanza Lac.


I am glad to say that living here is starting to change my sense of entitlement somewhat. I realize, for instance, how much I have taken electricity for granted my whole life. Well, no more. I have noted the in the last few blogs the time of the power outage, and I am noticing now that I probably have less than a half hour before we lose it. We had been on a fairly regular regimen of 18 hours on and six hours off, (at night) but that has been slowly changing, with the electricity being off earlier and earlier each night.

I do know that all of Bujumbura’s power is hydroelectric, which may explain this shortage in the dry season, but I don’t know if it will be better in the rainy season or not. What I do know, is that I am getting used to it, and it does not bother me so much anymore. True, we do have candles and flashlights, and I can still get two hours of battery power out of my computer. (Oh my, the lights just poetically went off to make my point right here, so the rest of this entry will be written in a race against battery-life time.)

This last week was the beginning of school again for Oren, and not a moment too soon for us. We really value the four hours of work time in the morning while he is there. But also, he is really much less wild in the evenings when he has had a day at school. He was definitely nervous about going. He knew he would be in a new class, and expressed some anxiety about having a new teacher. When we took him on Tuesday we met Christophe, his new teacher. He seemed like a very nice man and Oren went in on day one without any complaints. On day 2 (Wednesday) he cried hysterically when we dropped him off, but he was fine when we picked him up. Thursday he was quite content to go, and when I told him we would be going out of town Friday, he said he was very sad that he would have to miss school.

As Rebecca noted last week, it seems that being in Burundi poses the biggest challenge for Oren. I am still amazed that a 3 year old could have had such a strong attachment to place. He has had some behavior problems with us, that I know are related to his sense of loss of his past life and friends in the US. He pines for New York and Baltimore often and asks when Grandparents are going to come and visit. He does do much better when he has friends and he is fortunately making quite a few good ones now. It is nice to see this. It is also nice to see that there are about as many Francophones as Anglophones and he enjoys playing with all of them, and does try to say a few words in French to those who do not speak English. I would still say that language is not coming quickly though.

I mentioned not being in town Friday, and that is probably going to be the climax of this week’s entry. Rebecca and I decided that it was time we did a visite sur terraine to the project of one of our partner’s doing income generating work with vulnerable individuals in Nyanza Lac. Nyanza Lac is at the bottom Southern tip of Burundi, right at the Tanzanian border. It is next to the Lake and in fact, the entire drive is along the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

It is a picturesque drive, if you don’t mind the frequent bone jarring potholes. It is a lot of fertile land once cultivated extensively with cotton and oil palms. I was told that Burundi had, at one time an enormous cotton industry and export business. The war, and inundation of dumping of good-will clothes wiped out the entire industry, sadly.

Our guide was a man named Jean Bosco, who coordinates the work of our partner association called FEHV (Famille Espoir pour l’humanite Vulnerable.) They are helping repatriated refugees from Tanzania make some money through a cooperative farming project and brick making. This is a very desperate and vulnerable group, people who are returning after fleeing their homes during the war, some as early as 1972. Coming back has been complex and conflict ridden as many have found that their land was sold off, by the government, to other families. Our contribution is small, but it does support some income generating projects and encourages cooperation in that the farming is done cooperatively. We visited a tomato growing project and a brick making project.

The trip from Bujumbura takes about three hours and it gave us a chance to talk to Jean Bosco a bit more about his own life. He is originally from the Nyanza Lac region, and like most everyone we know, has a tragic and story to tell about his youth.

He is currently finishing his PhD in anthropology, though, and he loves to talk about politics, current events, history and other topics. He gave us a good summary of some of Burundi’s history, especially the more prosperous periods when the country was doing fairly well (before the 1993 crisis). The most telling conversation came when we began talking about ‘transitional justice’ the troubling topic about how or if, one goes back to try those guilty of past war crimes. I have written in earlier blogs that the current government policy is to pursue Amnesty. This is basically an acceptance of the fact that the attacks and counter-attacks between the ethnic groups is so tangled and complex, that the best course is to leave the past behind and move on.

I asked him if this was something he felt was the best course, and whether it would succeed. He answered an emphatic NO, and when I asked why, he told me that his father, his brother, grandfather, and several uncles were all murdered in the 1972 massacre of Hutu intellectuals. All of their family’s property was also confiscated by the perpetrators.

(The 1972 massacre was a particularly horrible event in which the tutsi army murdered every educated hutu in the entire country, (right down to children in primary school). The only survivors were the ones who fled.)

Jean Bosco told me that no one has ever had to answer for these crimes against his family, and everyone in the area even knows who did it, as the perpetrators had all of his family's cows and household items. He is still waiting for justice and said that nothing short of a trial and confession, with full details would satisfy him. He certainly does not see amnesty or even a group pardon as an acceptable solution to this injustice.

I asked him if he thought this would ever be possible given the fact that one of those in government now are implicated in these crimes or others against the other ethnic group, the tutsi. He did not think it is really easy or possible at this time. This did make me think of Moses and the 40 years in the wilderness with the Israelites. A time God set to allow for a generation to die off, before a new one would enter the promised land. I am not advocating this, but I am beginning to understand more the extent to which hope may not lie in the current generation, but the next. What I am finding is a deep respect for someone like Moses who had the patience to care for the ‘lost generation’ and await the maturation of the next.

The visit itself was not terribly long and probably far more interesting for the people there than for us. It is not everyday that a family of mzungus shows up to look around. They especially enjoyed seeing Rebecca carrying David around on her back. Oren was actually on pretty good behavior, despite the trial of being followed by many many children, everywhere he went.

We visited the tomato field first, then the brick making area. These bricks are made of mud, and it was interesting seeing the workers filling wooden molds by the river bank and putting them out on a flat area to dry. They are stacked into a sort of furnace shape and fired for several hours as a final step. They still look like hard mud though.

I did the expected official address, then listened to their thanks and long list of requests for many things they need. It is always a bit disheartening to realize what a small drop our efforts are in the ocean of needs.

We left after spending about an hour and a half there and did some exploration of local hotels as places for future team retreats. We did not find any that really fit the bill, but the whole trip was pleasant in general.

Saturday we did have a chance to go swimming and then went to a potluck in the evening with some other missionaries with kids. It was a very nice evening and Oren really enjoyed playing with some of his friends from school. We are slowly but surely finding a community of long-term folks who we are hoping can be a support community for us. I will try to say a bit more about them in a future email.

I would end by saying that while we have been adjusting well this last year although I am finding the constant requests for money to be a struggle. It is something that has been building up over time, and is probably because we do try to be generous, but we are developing a cadre of people who regularly come to us for handouts. I am aware of the need, but also of the culture of dependency that is so evident here. There are many people I want to help, both personally and as an organization, but it is hard to know how with integrity.

As an example, I was recently talking to an agronomist friend here about giving seeds to help peasant farmers grow food. He told me that the problem with giving out seeds is that if you do that, they won’t save any for the next year. They will sell all of their crop expecting to be able to get more from you. In other words, it seems that every thing one does to ‘help’ has the risk of becoming a source of dependency in the future.

I feel that is often the case with our income generating projects which do not really seem to be promoting entrepreneurship. That is, there is a tendency to have our beneficiaries expect to receive raw materials from us, but not reinvesting in their own production in the next cycle. How to get them to take ownership is a real challenge.

I think I should stop here, but I want to give a shout out to the faculty and students in the Dance Department at Vassar who just did the VRDT audition. I miss you all!

And also a little tribute to Isaac Barnes, a World Relief volunteer (and my roommate last Oct. while Rebecca was in the US). He has finished his year and is headed back to the states on Wednesday. When he moved into my house he bought a motorcycle for transportation. I asked if he had ever driven one and he said no. I am thankful God protected him in Buj. the past year. This is not a place I would come to learn to ride one!

Splitting Up Before a Wedding

I am currently numbering writing this blog among my rapidly diminishing spiritual disciplines. I have mentioned it before, but I will say again, that having 2 children makes much regularly scheduled personal time, a luxury. The kids are both in bed at this point and …(30 minute break here to rock David back to sleep.)… now where was I, oh yes, personal time.

This week was a bit out of the ordinary because Rebecca and I decided to split up. That is, we decided to have one of us be the full time parent and the other do the MCC work. The MCC work this week involved driving our 3 SALTers up to Burasira to meet Jodi and do a week of intensive Kirundi with a teacher at the Hope School for the Batwa. I planned to spend the night at the seminary with them, then continue on to Rwanda to meet with partners in Kigali for a few days, before returning Friday to pick them up and coming back to Buj.

Basically the week went as planned. We left on Monday after lunch. I spent the morning getting the car tire repaired, oil changed, etc. We also had numerous emails to answer that were all extremely urgent before we left. We did get everything done and headed into the hills on schedule. The trip was uneventful, and the SALTers, I think found the ride fascinating, even with the 16 kilometers of very rough ‘off road’ driving on the short cut that bypasses the town of Gitega and saves us about an hour of time.

I got them set up in the seminary and we had dinner with Jodi and the priests. The priests are always delighted to have foreign visitors and took great sport in teaching them some Kirundi and plying them to sample the locally produced pineapple wine, and traditional banana beer.

The next morning, Tuesday, I delayed my trip to Kigali by several hours because Jodi’s night guard was sick with something that did not respond to malaria treatment. (She suspected typhoid.) The local clinic was quite far away so I offered to drive. It was very remote and the road was more of a bike path, really. When we got there Jodi asked the sister (it was run by Colombian nuns from the order of St. Vincent de Paul) if we could have a tour, as one of SALTers, Robyn, was a nurse.

It was quite a lesson in public health and what you can do with a little, and just how little health care there is. The sisters are very committed and there are only a few of them and some other lab technicians that run the clinic for a population of 15,000. There is no doctor! About 90 percent of cases that they see are malaria. (2-3000 cases per month). Other less frequent illnesses include typhoid, tb, and a few cases of AIDS but not much. They also run a prenatal clinic and maternity ward. (Again, no doctor) They have an amazingly low incidence of women dying in childbirth, which they attribute to excellent prenatal care. They focus heavily and following their patients, and teach mothers about good nutrition for children.

I did ask about a mosquito net campaign, but Sister Anna explained to me that it is very hard to get them to use the nets correctly because of the extreme poverty in the area. People sleep 8 to a room with no beds, many outside, etc. A mosquito net presumes a certain lifestyle involving beds and ceilings. Also, many of the people are more concerned about their next meal than whether they are bitten by mosquitos. She said an improvement in life conditions for the community would need to preceed such a campaign. I did understand her point.

I was very impressed with their dedication and commitment, the way they work, the apostolic call they have is truly remarkable. I often find that Catholic religious orders provide the best models of what ‘walking with’ the poor really means. I think we ‘evangelicals’ could stand to learn a bit from their witness. They are trees that bear fruit, and most often anonymously.

At noon I left the SALTers and Jodi, and I continued on to Kigali. I went on the very difficult road from Burasira to a town to Ngozi and then up to Kigali. I can only say that the road was so appallingly bad, I had to leave it and drive through the brush in several places just to make progress. But I did get through without incident.

I got to Kigali in the evening and went directly to a local pool called Cercle Sportif, to do some laps and provide some therapy for my aching discs (from the bumps on the road.) I checked in to a local guest house and then met our service workers, Ruth and Krystan for dinner. (Ruth’s parents were visiting and we had a nice evening together.)

I spent Wednesday and Thursday doing business and meeting with partners. It was a lot of relational work, but not unpleasant. People were pleased to see me, but disappointed to be missing Rebecca. While I was able to find time to take a swim everyday, the truth is, I did find myself pining for my family. Ever since getting married, I cannot stand to be away from them for more than one day. That is probably because I was single for so many years before getting married.

I returned to Burundi on Friday, reversing my path and picked up the SALTers in Burasira. They had had a fabulous time with the priests and Anita, their Kirundi teacher from the Batwa school. We left and got home by late Friday afternoon.

At this point I am inserting Rebecca’s story about her time at home alone with the kids:

Ever since I became a mother, I have been working part-time (up to almost full-time) alongside parenting. Much of the time, I’ve found this to be a good balance. The best days have been ones where I could spend half a day with my kid(s) and the other half doing professional work.

Of course, things are rarely perfect. Like many moms, I try to multi-task a lot, checking email and making phone calls in between heating up the soup and playing a round of candy land. Instead of having dedicated time with kids, I’ve often felt distracted from work by them and distracted from them by work. As much as I enjoy writing, I’ve been happy to leave the blogging to Paul because there is always some task to attend to even after the kids are asleep – planning out a menu for the week, based on who is visiting and when Marcelline can get to the market, for example. I rarely feel like I am focused enough to sit and write.

This past week, I experienced something which felt completely new: a week dedicated to parenting. Paul left with our SALTers on Monday and only returned on Friday evening. Ahead of time, we both agreed that he would be the one working this week so that I could give my attention fully to Oren and David.

At this stage, they both need about 100% attention to be safe. For example, the morning after Paul left, I put David in his crib to keep him safe from Oren, while I stepped into the bathroom to hang up some laundry. Ten seconds later: CRASH! Oren sobbing! Big inhale and then David screaming like I’ve never heard. Apparently, David was standing up in his crib, wanting me. Oren wanted to climb into the crib and be the other baby. His weight against the gate pulled it loose and down, landing him on his rear and David on his head. It was a very bad moment for all of us, to say the least. There was a big goose egg on David’s head, but he calmed down after about 30 minutes and started acting normally. Since our doctor is still not back from vacation, I just put ice on his head and watched for concussion. Our crib would never meet any safety specs, so I’ve turned the gate against the wall now and I hope I don’t find out about any other defects any time soon.

Fortunately, that was the low point of the week. We did have many good moments. Oren went to a birthday party and played with a neighbor kid here. We met another child at the playground nearby, and since that kid speaks French, they both resorted to the international language of yelling and chasing each other in circles. It was a good way for them to get their wiggles out. On the home front, Oren began to understand a certain cost-benefit analysis. If he played quietly by himself while I got David down for his nap (instead of climbing on me and David and pretending to be the other baby) then he and I could do things together, just the two of us. We definitely had some good times on the trampoline. We replanted a whole bunch of seeds that he had worked on with my mom (many had sprouted then died while we were away on vacation). We plan to start with an herb garden for right now. As we get time and more rain and more compost soil, we’ll add lettuce and other vegetables. We were able to transplant seedlings for pumpkin and cantaloupe, inspired by Gramma Jean. Oren even got his strong helper hands to work, clearing the table after meals and cleaning up toys in various places.

David is really growing and gets around all over the house, on his fast little hands and feet. He’s getting very expressive and verbal, almost saying things like mama and dada. He’s got a particular babble that almost sounds like the name of our dog Bella, which he says whenever he sees her. He is so delighted by her and tries to climb onto her and become a puppy. He also loves human contact. This week, I have finally learned how to tie David onto my back, Burundian style. He falls asleep within 5 minutes, and then gives me my hands free to do other things with Oren like work on our recipe for homemade ice cream. We haven’t really made ice cream yet, but we’ve tried out a series of sweet milky cold things.

Of course, in this job there is no such thing as completely taking time off from work. Our service worker Jodi came down through Bujumbura and ended up spending two nights here. It was great to have her company, but of course we did find work-related things to discuss. And I did squeeze in two French lessons…But overall, it was quite refreshing to spend the time with Oren and David, focus on their learning and behavior, and not divide my attention from them.

My favorite moments were an on-going conversation with Oren at meals (when we have so many visitors, it’s not really possible to just talk with Oren). We reasoned through a series of questions like this: What if God lived at my house? Where would God sleep? Mommy & Daddy’s bed? Or maybe my bed. What game would you play with God? Pass the pigs. And jump on the trampoline. What would we give God for dinner? Spaghetti. It feels right to work on Oren’s sense of security. His most frequent question when he’s getting lonely and out of sorts is, “When are we moving back to Baltimore? Will I live in New York again in my red house?” It’s hard to hear, and not mourn the loss of the relationships he’s had there.

SATURDAY: Back to Paul

I felt like a real Burundian over the weekend as we found ourselves committed to several social obligations on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was the wedding of Enoch, the trainer who has been teaching Marcelline new recipes for a while. I have reported his story before, a very gentle young man who was a former child soldier and FNL rebel before being demobilized and trained as a cook.

His wedding was to begin at 2pm, and he actually phoned us 3 times during the day to be sure we knew the place and that we would be there. Marcelline actually escorted us. She showed up at our house about 2:45 and we headed out to arrive at 3:15 pm, a full hour and 15 minutes late! The good news is, we were still the first ones to arrive! The wedding party was not even there yet.

Luckily we found that Odifax, one or staff, lived across the street from the church. He invited us over to sit under a tree on some stools. It was nice and many of the women around there were thrilled to hold David. That was good because we did not want to put him on the dirt and get his clothes filthy. Although Odifax’s three children did not have any choice in the matter. In fact I was really struck by just how rude his living situation was. His house was made of mud bricks and was very small. Straw mats served as beds. I had no idea he was so poor. He lived with his wife, 3 children, mother, several brothers and their families in a tiny hut.

Just the other day, he had asked for a loan to pay for school fees for his children. We gave it to him, but now we are trying to figure out what more we could do for him to build his capacity, especially after we leave.

The wedding party eventually arrived, and as usual, we were escorted to the front of the church as guests of honor. We had wisely left Oren home with the SALTers so we only had David to contend with. He was not bad. The ceremony was long, but had some really great singing and dancing by Burundian choirs. We left after about 4 hours, making our excuses. It was a nice event, but I can only sit still without understanding anything for so long.

I am happy to report that the car worked fine this Sunday. After church we got Yolanda installed in her house and Brandon in his, entertained several drop-in visitors, and finally got a few minutes to ourselves.

Robyn is still with us but will be in her house next week.

That is all for now as the power just went off. (It now goes off at 10pm and not midnight. I liked the other way better. Although I won’t complain because I just heard that in Nairobi they are now rationing the power and turn it off all day every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)

Last photo. Here is Rebecca who has now mastered the art of carrying David Burundian style. He likes it. He is tied on with a simple bath towel, although with the right marketing strategy, I am sure she could sell it at Babies R Us as an African baby sling for $50 each.

The car is broken down so it must be Sunday morning

I have to say, it is starting to feel a bit eerie that every incident of car trouble we have had, has fallen on Sunday morning. This has happened 4 times, and last month it occurred on two cars simultaneously (both batteries died). Each time, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the cars the night before.

So this morning, we all went out (the usual frantic Sunday morning rush to get to church before the end of worship music) only to find the front driver’s tire completely flat. There was no problem the night before, so we were quite stunned. This could have been a problem that would have prevented us from arriving at church altogether, but fortunately we still have Zachee’s car in our driveway, and it worked fine. We all piled in and went to church with the kids on our laps.

We had a big car load because… The SALTers have arrived!! They actually got here this past Monday, and have been living with us and getting oriented to Burundi this week.

They are Brandon (a different one than the one who left recently), Robin, and Yolanda. Brandon is a radio technician and will be working with one of our partners who runs a Christian radio station that is very popular in Bujumbura. Robin is a nurse, and will be serving at an AIDS clinic run by the same partner (World Outreach Initiative). Yolanda is a peace worker and will be building capacity and helping with the peace programming of our partner, Moisson Pour Christ.

The week has been spent orienting them to life in Burundi. It began with me picking them up at the airport on Monday afternoon. They had flown from Dulles, to Addis Ababa to Bujumbura on Ethiopian Air. When I saw them emerge with all they were going to have of personal possessions for the entire year, carried on their backs and hand-carrys, I was reminded of the arrival of our family just over a year ago, with everything we had in 2 suitcases for each of us.

It is an interesting kind of paring process, getting down to the bare essentials, and comfort objects you need to decide on bringing for such an assignment.

Spending the week with them in our house has been demanding, but also a great opportunity to get to know them. They seem to be excited about the work, being in a new culture, and willing to try anything. On Monday afternoon we took them out for tea with the two directors of the partnerships they will be working with.

On Wednesday evening we invited their host families to an evening gathering at our house so they could all meet. I must say, I am very pleased for the answered prayer with regard to families who are glad to welcome them. We all met together, and, not surprisingly, all the families found out that they knew each other. (I swear, everyone in Bujumbura knows each other.).

I think the placements will provide an interesting and varied experience. Yolanda and Robyn are going to be staying with two neighbors (next to each other) who are close to our house. They are very good friends of Zachee. They are Catholic, and while the Catholic/Protestant division can be intense among certain denominations in Burundi, these families were happy to accept our SALTers.
Brandon will be staying with two single young adults who share a house. They are brother and sister of a family that had 13 children by one mother and father! (Burundian families are typically large.) She is a coach on the national junior women’s tennis team.

We also took them to their workplaces where they were introduced and had a chance to see their workspaces. Typically introductions of this type involve sharing food, and we were all obliged to eat several extra meals at various times during the week as part of the ritual of hospitality and welcome.

For dinner on Thursday we had their language teachers over to meet them. We have hired two, one to teach French to Robyn and Brandon, and another to teach Yolanda Kirundi (as she already speaks French.) Our feeling on the matter is that French is far easier to get conversationally adept at than Kirundi, and most people in Bujumbura speak it. The SALTers will do a one month intensive of language study and then continue less intensively as needed after that.

Oren had a final week of summer school, and will be off for a week before the fall semester begins. It is amazing to me to think that we are already at the end of summer (in the US). Another school year is beginning. As one who has lived most of his life on the academic calendar, I am keenly aware of the shifts in the academic year that a change in season means. There is something a bit sad about being in a job now that does not have quite the same ebb and flow of an academic year, and being in a country where the change in seasons is really quite subtle. It does not get really hot here, and it definitely does not get cold either. I would love to have the sensation of taking a run on a cold fall day. I never thought I would ever say this, but I will miss the snow this year.

On the good hand, there is the tropical fruit here. I am looking at our mango tree right now, which should be bearing fruit in about a month. There are over 1000 mangoes on one of three. We also have been getting far more lemons, limes, oranges, and avocadoes off of our trees in the yard than we could possibly eat. In addition, we have some other interesting fruits that are less prolific, to wit: I ate a guava and a stick of sugar cane from our garden just yesterday.

We had our first visit to Club du Lak Tanganyika on Saturday since we have been back from break. We wanted the SALTers to see a place they could rest and relax from time to time. It was interesting to see Oren, now, so willing to go into the big pool with his water wings. He also showed his ability to hold his breath underwater. He had a great time. We stayed for dinner and ate fish briochettes.

David continues to be a delight. He smiles constantly at the sight of new people and visitors and is becoming more and more adept at locomotion in his relentless pursuit of abilities possessed by his older brother (and following him around). Oren can be very sweet to him as evidenced by the picture of them in the crib, but more often than not he is excessively rough when they play and David ends up in tears. I am not sure how long this phase will last.

Next week will be a bit hard as I am going to take the SALTers up to visit Jodi in Burasira for a week of cultural immersion and language study beginning Monday. While they are there, I will continue on up to Rwanda to do some business there and visit partners. I will come back and pick up SALTers and proceed to Bujumbura Friday if all goes according to plan. It will mean a week of Rebecca with the boys and me away from the family. I am not looking forward to that, but it seems like the best thing for this trip. I will let you know how it all goes next week.

Fixing a spare on a Sunday afternoon might seem like a curse, especially given the uncanny number of car problems we encounter on Sundays, but I prefer to see the blessing in it. First, we have not had to change a car tire until now, so it was good to see that all the necessary tools are in the jeep to do so, and they all work. We also discovered that there is a key lock on the spare, which is attached to the back door. After some diligent searching, we realized that it is the ignition key that unlocks the spare. I changed it without too much problem. So now I know, that if it it ever happens on the road, I will be able to make the necessary repairs. I am going to be thankful for the dress rehearsal, rather than complain about my bad luck.

Homecoming

David, Oren, and I at the Kenya National Museum.

I apologize for any haste in writing this entry and delay in getting it on line, but it is late now and I am dead tired. We had a line of visitors today, some making social calls to welcome us back after a long vacation, and others to help pull together last minute plans for our SALTers who are arriving tomorrow (Monday)!

As we are coming to terms with the reality that 3 new workers doubles the size of our team, and consequently our responsibility as well. At this point all of our host families are in place but we still have 3 sets of orientation guides to print and copy, as well as some shopping for food.

Jodi was with us this weekend and suggested that they do a 4 day Kirundi intensive and cultural dive-in at Burasira, so we may be there early next week. A trip to Kigali in the near future is on the docket as well.


Right now, though, it is good to have about a week without any travel. We returned from our vacation and got into Buj late Friday night. We were supposed to land around midday but we had some trouble at the Kenya airport. I will come back to that after I catch you up on the early part of the week.

We returned to Nairobi from the coast on Monday and checked into the Mennonite Guest House there. The guesthouse is simple, but very nice and the large back yard has some great swings for kids as well as opportunity for some excellent bird watching.

We had dinner with some friends of Dave and Jean (from their Bangladesh days) then said our goodbyes as they (Dave and Jean) were going to catch a plane about 5 the next morning.

On Tuesday we had visits to the pediatrician for Oren and David. It was nice to find such modern doctor’s offices that had all the vaccines they needed, and the pediatrician was excellent. We were also a bit taken aback by the price of the visit which was about the same as what we would pay in the US, and not the $5 to $10 doctor visits that we had become accustomed to in Burundi.

Wednesday was dentist day and all of us went to the dentist. This was probably the most modern, high-tech, dental office I have seen anywhere in the world, and was located in a very upscale mall. Again, we were quite shocked by the very high cost of a check up and cleaning for Rebecca, Oren and I, but were glad to see that there are places here where one can get very good dental and even orthodontic care.

We spent the rest of the day shopping for supplies in the Westgate Mall. This mall lacked nothing that could be bought in the US, and it was honestly a bit surreal to remember that we were in Kenya. Just to illustrate my point: we treated ourselves to lunch at a very nice Japanese sushi restaurant, and later had Greek food for dinner at the food court.

On Thursday we took in some sights, namely the Kenya National Museum, which has a ‘snake park’ attached to it. We chose to do the snake park only and had the chance to see many of the venomous snakes that live in East Africa up close. There are some very scary snakes here including, puff adders, Gabon vipers, cobras, and the dreaded green mambas, and black mambas. They also had crocodiles and turtles. (Although unlike Burundi, you can’t jump in the cages with crocodiles and pull their tails or feed them guinea pigs.)

We visited the Kenya MCC office for lunch on Thursday and later had dinner with a young MCC couple, Jonathan and Marti, who have two kids about the age of our own. He is an artisan and works to build the capacity of local artisans in Kenya, especially to help them develop design ideas, and quality control to be competitive in a world market. It was great to meet them, (they were good friends of Zachee, Bridget and Tim, as well as our predecessors Doug and Deanna Hiebert.) We had dinner with them and shared an Ethiopian meal at a restaurant reputed to have the best Ethiopian food in Kenya. I would have to say it is probably true. The food was awesome.

Jonathan also confirmed to us what we had been told by others, that Nairobi was becoming a very dangerous place to live due to banditry. Many expats have been mugged, car jacked or had their houses broken into. The former MCC country rep was even shot in a robbery. This is very sad as, to me, it is indicative of the rapidly growing and expanding upper class, and worsening maldistribution of prosperity in the country. This is a trend that is reflected elsewhere in Africa and much of the rest of the world.

In Nairobi it is quite astonishing to see people desperate in slums and shanty towns in such close proximity to the luxury malls I described above. I just don’t think this type of development is sustainable, even though many would argue that Kenya is a model of the African free-market model. If wealth is not redistributed in some way, I think there will be a continued and worsening trend of violence and rebellion. The first hints of this emerged in the elections a year ago.

I would add, however, that having come from Burundi, I was struck by the pride of the Kenyan people. There is something about them that is evident on a psychological level that I do not see among Burundians. There is a confidence, a spirit of entrepreneurship, hope for the future, and a sense of self worth that I think the years of trauma and civil war has bred out of many in Burundi. I think Kenyans see themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the world. This is reflected in their producing of champion marathoners, their country which is arguably one of the most beautiful and exciting tourist attractions in the world, and even the personal pride they seem to take in Obama’s presidency.

When we talked to Kenyan, be they doctors, or taxi drivers, I really noticed that they were very friendly and polite, but not self effacing. We were not stared at because we were Mzungus, or really seen as anything particularly special in Nairobi. In Burundi, I feel I am treated somewhat differently. There is far more undeserved deference and a sense of awe that I seem to experience in my interactions with many Burundians. I have no doubt that this is due to the different histories of these two countries. Kenya has been a bulwark of stability and peace in the region and Burundi has been mired in violence due to ethnic division.

I am generalizing here as there are certainly exceptions to this rule on both sides, but it was interesting to notice this, having spent time with people in these different countries.

We prepared to leave Nairobi on Friday morning. It was sad to have our vacation end, but we were ready to get back to our home in Bujumbura at this point. We got to the airport with our many bags (including an extra one that Papa Dave and brought with him of supplies for us.) and got through the ticketing process with minimal difficulty, although we were a bit late and only had about 30minutes before the plane took off.

I had a slight pang of suspicion that something was not right when the agent sent us to the gate area but told us they had not announced a gate yet. He did tell me that the plane was not listed as delayed though. We got to the gate area and waited for an announcement or listing for out gate, but as the time for departure came and went, it never appeared.

Not only that, but the departure board subornly did not acknowledge that it was delayed or cancelled. I did notice, however, (it was noon now) that every single flight on Kenya airways since 7 am had been delayed or cancelled. In essence nothing from Kenya airways had taken off at all the entire morning. I looked outside to see if there was a storm or other weather problem--nothing, I speculated that maybe there was a bomb scare, but surmised that there was probably a strike that began that morning that was trying to be kept quiet by the airport authorities.

This was confirmed when Rebecca went up to ask and got a sneak peak a memo to that effect on the info desk. Interestingly enough, no official at the airport ever said a word about it, and seemed to be trying the strategy of keeping everyone in the dark about it as long as possible.

With our flight in limbo it was hard to know how to proceed. It was not delayed or cancelled, but it was not on time either. We waited for several more hours and were trying to see if they could rebook, but they did announce our flight for a later time that day. We had no confidence that it would leave but no choice but to wait and see.

To make a long story short, after many more hours of stall tactics and shunting us around to different places, we did get on our flight that evening and got home about 9pm, 12 hours after we had arrived at the airport in Kenya.

It is sad to have such a great vacation come to an end. One thing I value about a vacation is the opportunity to reset. Even more than the great sites, was the chance to put back into practice, good habits of self care and spiritual discipline. Rebecca and I were able to swim most every morning, read the Bible, and eat healthily. I am coming back renewed and refreshed, and committed to trying to be more wholistic in balancing work, family and self care. This first week back we are already having to break some of those resolutions as we frantically get ready for our new team members arriving.

That said, we are glad to be back, everything here is coated in a thick layer of dust. I am looking forward to the rainy season here!