A Field Visit in the Shadow of Volcanoes

Helene, a widow living in Rwanda near the Ugandan border who is a recipient of a goat from one of our partners' self-help projects.



If I were to try to report all the things that happened this week this entry would be quite long so I will try to synthesize a bit and hit the high and low points.  This week was a big one for us here because we were preparing for a visit from our Area Director Mark Sprunger.  He actually arrived last Sunday evening on schedule and we had an extensive week of field visits planned in both Rwanda and Burundi.  Rebecca had done a lot of prep. work scheduling visits to some remote projects in both countries and we had planned to start with conversation with partners and volunteers in Bujumbura on Monday, then head upcountry on Wednesday and continue into Rwanda to eventually leave him off at the Congolese border in Goma on Sunday morning and make our way back home the rest of the day.

It was a very ambitious schedule and one that was going to create a lot of challenges with regard to keeping the children well behaved as we planned to stay in different guest houses each night along the route.  But we were up for it and I even promised Rebecca that she could go to most of the actual sights with Mark while I watched the kids.

The early warning signs of our best laid plans going awry came on Monday morning when David woke up with fever and a lot of drooling.  It was obvious he could not go to pre school, (only his second week.)  We were disappointed as we had looked forward to maintaining our new routine of working together in the morning and then splitting child care in the afternoons.  Now we would have to go back to tag teaming.

We did do some work at home on Monday with Mark, had some meetings with him and brought volunteers over to meet with him.  On Tuesday David was no better and by now we had started on antibiotics at the recommendation of our pediatrician.   Rebecca watched David at home again while I took Mark to visit a project run by Help Channel.  MCC had donated some canned turkey meat and AIDS care kits (which included sheets and towels, rubber gloves, etc) to Help Channel and Help Channel in turn had distributed them to a nursing home in Bujumbura.

This was a bit of a novelty, in fact really unheard of.  Nursing homes really do no exist in Burundi as elderly people are normally cared for in their families.  But because of the war, this system has broken down some and, in fact, there are quite a number of 'abandonned' elderly people left to wander about on their own. 

The nursing home is run by a Catholic nun and Cassien, the director of Help Channel brought Mark and I over to meet them during the delivery of the goods MCC had donated.

To say the nursing home was modest by US standard is a huge understatement.  I worked as an emergency medical technician (ambulance driver) in the 80s and had seen my share of poorly maintained nursing homes, but this was far below anything we had in the US.  The home had about 60 residents who were kept in about 4 rooms.  Basically a line of beds in each room with a bathroom at the end of the hall.  The beds barely had spaces between them for a nurse to pass.  The elderly folks there possessed nothing really.  

When they were not in bed, there was a courtyard where they could sit around.  There were no games, books or other things for them to do.  They could pretty much just chat.  

The home was staffed almost entirely by volunteers and much of their work was spent doing laundry by hand.  This was a true mission of mercy as many of the elderly there were incontinent.  I saw the laundry area where women worked tirelessly before a mountain of soiled sheets and clothes.  

We were given a tour of the place, and greeted the elderly residents in the courtyard.  There was a small formal presentation of the boxes of goods we sent (the rubber gloves were particularly welcomed by the volunteers who did the laundry and cleaning).  There was generally a great appreciation of the items received and Mark and I were pleased to see the goods distributed to this nursing home.  

One of our concerns about giving sheets in the kits was that sheets have great commodity value here and we were concerned that they would simply be taken out and sold by a clinic (or the staff) for the money.  Hospitals rarely supply any kind of bedding for patients that have to stay the night.  It is expected that people bring their own stuff or do without.  But we felt very confident that the nuns who ran this home would use the sheets for the elderly in the facility.

By Tuesday afternoon, when we returned, we found that Oren had a fever as well.  We did not send him to school in the afternoon and I stayed at home with the kids while Rebecca took Mark on some errands. The bigger concern was what we would do about Wednesday if the kids were not better.  We did not think it would be wise to travel with sick kids (and Oren began vomiting as well by evening) but the idea of splitting up for 5 days seemed an equally difficult challenge.  

By Wednesday morning it was obvious that neither child was going to school.  I stayed home with them in the morning while Rebecca took Mark to meet another partner.  We had planned to head upcountry around noon.  When Rebecca got back home close to lunch it was obvious that we would have to make a quick decision to completely change our plan.  She would stay home with the sick children and I would take Mark upcountry and to Rwanda.  But before leaving, we would find her a car so she could get around, especially in an emergency.  Luckily Help Channel had a car for her to borrow.

We left about 2pm, 2 hours behind schedule.  Mark, Felix (our new program assistant) and I headed off up into the hills while Rebecca and the kids stayed back.  Unfortunately all of this put us a bit behind schedule so by the time we did leave I had to cut a visit to Gitega off the schedule to see partners there because we would not have been able to stop there and arrive at our second stop Burasira (the remote village where Jodi works) by dark.  

We got to Burasira in the evening and had a nice visit with Jodi as well as Yolanda who was up there for language immersion lessons.  We talked a lot about farming because Jodi had bought a small plot of land there and was cultivating it.  One thing that came up was the changing face of MCC missionaries.  Historically MCCers were young people who grew up on farms and came to do a few years of service overseas.  They were often placed in rural assignments and probably felt empowered to contribute there because of their own experience as farmers.  Nowadays, many young MCCers are College grads who have never set foot on a farm and may have some theoretical development or other 'expertise' but have little by way of practical agricultural experience.  (That includes me.)  

We lamented a bit this trend, but also realized that it is reflective of the general move away from the family farm model of American agriculture toward agribusiness. I know from personal experience that my grandparents were farmers and my mother had been raised on a farm, as well as many of my cousins, but I do not think any of my generation own a farm at this time.  (Cousins reading this, please correct me if I am wrong.)  But I would also wonder if going and doing mission work would appeal to rural folk in the US as much as it did in the past.  It seems that those who are drawn to do overseas mission work are of a more liberal/intellectual bent rather than a rural/'salt of the earth' type.  I would say that if there are any farmers out there reading this, please consider sharing some of your experience in an overseas assignment, we could use your experience out here.

We left Burasira early Thursday morning and headed to Rwanda.  The drive was not too long as Burasira is about half way there.  We arrived around lunch and met Ruth and Krystan and their new daughter Micha at our guesthouse.   It was good to see them and this was their first opportunity to meet Mark as well as Felix.  We went to visit our partner Friends Peace House in the afternoon and had a long afternoon of meetings with them and a visit to their new Peace Library as well as Mwana Nshuti, the job training program they run for street kids in Kigali.  We did some shopping with Ruth and Krystan in the late afternoon then joined the FPH people for dinner in the evening.  (Sharing food is an extremely important ritual in Burundi and Rwanda, especially when an honored guest arrives.)  There was another long exchange of formal expressions of gratitude, new requests, and responses from us followed by the presentation of gifts.  (I admit that I am not one to stand on ceremony and often find these kinds of events a bit trying.  I was relieved that the kids were not with us at that moment as they would have been very antsy.  Occasionally I have used them as excuses to get out of such ceremonies.)

Friday we planned to head up north to see some projects FPH and some other partners were doing close to the Ugandan border.  It is actually quite a spectacular part of the country (and world) as it is the near the home of the mountain gorillas as well as a long row of active volcanoes that extend along the Ugandan and Congolese border.  We got there in the late afternoon and settled into our guest house for the night.  There are several nice hotels in the area for tourists on safari, but generally as missionaries we stay in the more modest church run guest houses during field visits.   This one actually had running water (but no toilet seats.)  There were several of us in tow by now as we brought some of our partners up to show us around (2 of them).

On Saturday morning we got up late as it was community service time in the morning and no one is really allowed to travel around except to do work.  But by 11am we went to visit some sights.  Our partner called CAPR had some impressive self-help projects.  This group receives virtually no money from us, but by charging small monthly dues to its members, it is able to make loans and collect back interest in the community.  At this point they have raised enough money to buy all the members in the organization a goat which they use for fertilizer.  They also raise the goats to be able to give goats to others.  They had several high producing milk cows as well and even ran an informal feeding program for very vulnerable children in the commune by providing them milk twice per week.

What I like about the work of this group is that it is not really donor driven and makes good use of the assets in a community to help people help themselves. Often donor money is not used nearly as effectively, and even microfinance loans are rarely repaid as effectively as when people are borrowing and repaying money from their own community.

We shared food with the governing committee of the organization as well as 'fantas' again part of the ritual of being in solidarity with people.

I will pause for an aside here to say that eating on these trips is a bit of a challenge.   Generally food on these visits up county consists of goat briochettes (shish kabobs) and french fries with a coke.  Add the fact that despite the short walk to a sight, most of our time is spent sitting on our butts in a car, or in a meeting room.  

I have found that mission work can be very unhealthy from a physical/dietary standpoint.  The fact that vegetables are rarely an option and declining a meal is seen as an insult, I quite look forward to the 2 days of fasting each week at home as the only dietary corrective to these forays.  

We actually had field visits with FPH the same day so we were obliged to repeat the whole ritual again.  We were mercifully saved though by the fact that we were way behind schedule and needed to get to Gasenyi, the town at the Congolese border before dark.  (We did not have a reservation at a place to stay and I had not been there before and had no guides going with us.)

We bid our partners good bye and headed to the West near the Ugandan border to Lake Kivu.  We found Gasenyi and the border crossing in Congo at the city of Goma.  We could see the large active volcano above Goma that had rained lava down on and destroyed much of the city less than a decade ago.  But the area around Lake Kivu is very beautiful and there were quite a few big hotels on the Rwanda side.

We found a small Catholic Maison de Passage to stay the night.  ($8 per person).  We spent the night there then left Mark at the border at 8am Sunday morning to start the 10 hour trip across Rwanda and Burundi back to Bujumbura.  Mark was to meet the MCC Congo rep in Goma that day.

Felix and I spent most of the drive in silence.  Both of us completely worn out.  He had had a real baptism by fire as he did a lot of translating for us from kinyarwanda into French.  

I was anxious to get home because of the kids.  I had called Rebecca about 3 times a day to check on them (luckily my Burundi cell worked everywhere in Rwanda).  I don't know all the details but I do know that Rebecca took the kids to the doctor on Wednesday where they were both diagnosed with strep.  The pediatrician started them both on injectable antibiotics.  I know how painful these are as I had to get 5 in my buttocks.  I could not imagine Rebecca trying to take Oren and David for these daily alone.

She did tell me that on day 2 for Oren she, the doctor, and a waiting patient had to pin Oren down so he could get his shot.  They were both out of school all week.  Luckily Yolanda came back to Buj on Thursday and was able to help out  a bit but it was a rough week for her.

As hard as it is to travel and do field visits with the kids, it is harder when we are apart because of the very disparate experience Rebecca and I have.  She is worn out from being home bound and stuck with constant childcare, and I am worn out from work and travel and am missing the kids terribly.  Getting back in sych is hard.  

It was good to get home Sunday evening although all of us fell into bed exhausted around 9 pm.  We are hoping the kids will be well enough to go to school this morning.  I am really looking forward to a swim!

Rebecca's Missions of Mercy

Jal and Oren at Ubuntu (a restaurant by the lake) following the resident tortoise around.


I am finding that this blog actually has some utility and is not just a chronicle of our time here in Burundi.  This past week I was contacted by someone who arrived in town recently with her family.  Her husband has a 2 year assignment here.  She wanted to get information about how to connect with other families and what to do with young children here.  She had done some research on the internet on Burundi and this blog popped up.  Rebecca and I were very happy to give her and her children a brief orientation to Burundi and introduce her to some of our friends.  She and her kids even went to church with us this morning.

I know I have been admonished by friends about making this post a public forum, and the potential dangers of making it searchable on the internet.  But I think if we spend too much time trying to prevent bad things from happening, we may also prevent any good things from happening.

The other good thing about this week was it was one that did not involve any travel for us.  This is probably the last week before November that will not involve travel and it was good to enjoy what we pretend is our routine--take both kids to school at 8am, swim, work until noon, pick the kids up and have lunch.  Having David in school has been a real novelty for us and a very necessary change in routine.  For the last year and a half we have not really had any time to be in the office together.  We are always tag teaming to get the work done.  But now we can spend the morning together in the office, which means we do not have to work so late at night in order to have time to make decisions together. We have also enjoyed going to the swimming pool at the same time in the morning and doing our laps together.

We have been orienting our new program assistant Felix, who we are very happy with.  Zachee, fortunately, has been able to help him with this as much of his work, particularly generating the monthly financial reports, is not well understood by us.

Rebecca piping in here: Perhaps Paul mentioned that our cook Marcelline was sick last week, probably with typhoid, and her brother was also hospitalized with something serious. On Monday, she still was very weak, so I went to visit her. I found her taking care of her brother at the clinic at her church. She was in so much pain that she couldn't even stand up straight. We sat outside the room on the floor talking for a while, looking out into the courtyard around which these hospital rooms are built. Thinking about other things seemed to help her feel better. She's been attending night courses to try and finish her secondary school degree and she had good news about that: she finished this year 4th in a class of 60 people. This is a very interesting school We didn't know when we sent her there, but apparently her classmates include the mayor of Bujumbura and one of the top people in the national tax office. It's phenomenal that many of the nation's leaders are people who never finished high school -- probably because the war interrupted their possibilities for pursuing education. Marcelline has another year to go before getting her diploma.


I drove Marcelline home to pick up some things, and was stunned once again by the stark contrast between where she lives and where she works (our house). She shares the small 4 room house her father built with at least 6 siblings, 1 niece and 3 other children she's picked up along the way. It's very dark in the house, and very noisy in the neighborhood. It seemed to be a place where it would be hard to rest and become healthy again if one became sick. And yet, the family is made of up well-educated people. While I waited, they offered me a plate of rice with fried bananas and little dried salted fish in tomato sauce. I had such a dilemma, because I was fasting that day (and I knew people in the household had had typhoid...) but I felt like it was impossible to refuse this hospitality. Marcelline's sister had cooked the food and also insisted that I try a piece of lake fish fillet, hot and fried -- it was delicious! 


Marcelline is under thirty and unmarried, but her parents have died and she's the oldest child, and that makes her responsible for everyone in her family. What's remarkable is that she has a twin sister, who just happened to pop out a few minutes after her, but Marcelline is still the absolute responsible one. It's amazing, because you can even see it in their builds. Marcelline is a healthy weight and her twin sister is terribly thin and slight. Even though Marcelline was still sick and in lots of pain, she needed to be the one to return to the clinic in order to be the one to advocate for her little brother when the doctor came by. Now on the weekend, her brother is back home, but not walking yet. Marcelline did come to work on Friday.


Paul has mentioned quite a few dilemmas that face us as we are asked to help with people's urgent needs. Here's a new one: a man we are in relationship with asked us if we would help him send his young wife back to secondary school to try to finish her diploma. That is a request that we would like to take seriously and honor. We really believe that an educated woman and mother can make a huge difference in the life of her family. But here's the problem. This young lady of 18 is already a mother, and her child is only three months old.  There's a real danger that this infant will end up being weaned far too early, something that does not bode well for her long term health--even her survival. (Actually the request was for school fees and money to buy milk to give the child so she can be fed while the mother is at school.) So many young children get seriously ill here already and nursing for a full year or more is the best protection a parent can offer.  On the other hand, a better educated mother could be a very good thing for the longterm health of the child and future children.  


So what to do?  Do we tell our friend that we'll help with his wife's education next year when the child is a year old and after it is weaned? And what are the chances that the young lady won't have a second child on the way by that time? Maybe the mother would never get to finish her education if she waited.  This may be the only time.  In retrospect, a little family planning advice before the wedding might have been the best gift we could have given their future family, but it's too late for that now, and there is so much pressure here in Burundi for couples to have children immediately after marriage that it probably would have fallen on deaf ears.  

The low point of the week hit on Thursday. Though it was far less serious than the illnesses of the people I'd been to see Monday, both Paul and I felt really sick and weak by the afternoon. Unfortunately (!) both of our kids were energetic and needed lots of attention, we had not had a cook for a week to do food shopping, and even our day cleaner had needed to spend the day doing government paperwork, so the house was a mess. There should be a law preventing both parents from getting sick at the same time! Somehow we made it through, convincing the kids that 7 pm was a good time to go to bed. 


Today, I taught Sunday School again (3rd week) and it was an interesting group of English-speakers, including 5 Ethiopian kids, 3 Burundians,  2 Americans, and 1 Kenyan. We considered the story of how Jesus stooped to wash his disciples' feet. As an Anabaptist, I've heard and thought about the story countless times, but it's amazing and wonderful to tell it to children, who may be hearing it for the first time. I asked the kids who they thought Jesus was like: the president or their house cleaner? Obviously, everyone felt that Jesus was much more like the president! But who could imagine the president washing any of our feet? This is what I love about Jesus: servant leadership was not just a theory to him. He physically, actually stooped down and loved his friends to the uttermost. Here in a country where we do have servants do the dirty work, it's good to constantly be challenged not to take privilege for granted, to look out for the ways we're called to serve, not just in theory, but in reality. 

Paul back again:  I am awake again at 3am now.  Unfortunately it is because the week of illness has not really ended.  By the time Rebecca and I got over our stomach flu, David began to get sick with a respiratory and sinus infection.  He has fever for the second night in a row and is sleeping fitfully.  I have been up with him for the last hour now.  We are keeping a weary eye out for malaria or typhoid symptoms, but it seems to be more of a flu virus at this time.  He did just start school this past week so we are anticipating a month or two of such illnesses that will be shared between his classmates.

Mark Sprunger, our Area Director and the Horsts at Ubuntu.

The week was not all bad, despite the illness.  We did gather with our missionary friends on Saturday and had a very nice potluck, and on Friday we paid a visit to Cercle Hippique to see the horses.

Sunday afternoon was really the beginning of the adventures of the coming week as we picked up Mark Sprunger, our area director for Central West Africa.  We will be taking him on a whirlwind tour of Burundi and northern Rwanda before leaving him off in Goma, Congo.  So we will be on the road from Wednesday through Sunday this week.  Pray for good health, no breakdowns and well-behaved children on field visits in remote places where they may have to tolerate being 'the center of attention' for large groups of gaping adults and children.

A Mzungu's Dilemma

David, Oren and Daddy playing in the surf at Lake Tanganyika.

I will take a break from discussing the ongoing construction outside our house (or lack thereof) and get right to the week. Actually I can't resist mentioning that most of the people doing the heavy labor of ditchdigging are women.  Women generally do the heavy manual labor around here and probably use the money they receive for working more wisely than their male counterparts.  But that is for another blog.

This was to be a very important week that began with interviews on Monday for someone to replace Zachee.  Anyone who hires staff knows the great challenge of trying to find the right person.  This is only magnified cross-culturally, especially when we only have one national staff person working with MCC.  Besides qualifications there are numerous other considerations including gender, ethnicity, etc. all of which WILL be factors in the way this person is perceived and will be able to relate to other Burundians.  

The question of language is also important.  How much English should we insist upon?  

We interviewed about 5 individuals from the applications we recieved.  The choice was very difficult as all were qualified and brought different strengths, but we did finally pick one of them who I will be writing more about in future posts.  (We will sign a contract tomorrow.)

We felt under a lot of pressure to complete all the interviews by Tuesday because I had plans to go upcountry with Yolanda on Wednesday to spend a couple days there to help find her a place to live, and then take her up to Burasira to stay with Jodi for a couple weeks in Kirundi language intensive.  All of this was complicated by the fact that our cook Marcelline who does some babysitting when we need it, was sick with typhoid all last week and unavailable to help us out with David.

Marcelline is feeling better at this writing, and after this week David will be less of an issue as Tuesday he begins preschool at a Montessori school here.   He will be at school the same times as Oren, which means that Rebecca and I will have mornings to work together in the near future.

So despite all of the setbacks, we did manage to finish our interviews and I was off with Yolanda on Wednesday morning after a couple hours of frantic errands to try and pick up some things for Jodi.

We got to Gitega in the afternoon and met the leaders of the partner organization Yolanda will be working with. The first day of hunting was quite fruitless.  They had not done much prep. work so they did not really know of any houses available.  The second more difficult problem, though was a cultural gap between what they believed a mzungu would be willing to live in, and what Yolanda was wanting.

Yolanda is fairly 'hard core' culturally.  She had just spent a year living with a Burundian family in SALT and felt she could live in a small house (2 bedroom) somewhere in the 'popular quarter', which is also a Swahili (Islamic) area where many of the average Burundian urban dwellers live.  Our partner's perception is that a  mzungu lives in a large 4 bedroom house with a garden in the neighborhood where UN folks live.  

On Thursday we continued the search and she rejected several of the latter, large, UN style houses we were shown.  Whenever she suggested looking in the popular quarter they would litterally laugh at the idea.  Feeling a bit frustrated by the impasse, I asked the 3 of them to show us their own houses where they live.  

I have to say, it was quite sobering to see the kind of dwellings these folks live in.   Fidelle (a single woman) lived in a tiny room that was part of a larger enclosure of such rooms,  There was a dirt courtyard in the middle, tons of kids, an outdoor charcoal grill for a kitchen and a latrine for a bathroom.

Jean Pierre, lived in a tiny 4 room house with no wall around it with his wife and 5 kids.  When we arrived, the living room had a couch and some chairs with naked wooden slats and no cushions.  They quickly ran to the backroom to bring us some cushions to sit on, they had about 6 but were missing about 10.  They told us that bandits came in and stole them at one time.  There was very little else in the place to steal, frankly.  There were no pictures or anything else on the walls, and again no kitchen or bathroom in the house.

Willy also showed us the house of his brother who is a baker.  It was again very tiny, but walled with a courtyard in the middle about the size of a small living room, his 5 children were running around in it.  He did, to our surprise, have a small set of rooms for rent within the enclosure and wanted about $70 per month.  It had no electricity, or interior bathroom or indoor kitchen, but the idea intrigued Yolanda of renting it.

We were also shown another possibility by a nun who had a place for rent.  We had met her when we stayed the night at a Catholic guesthouse that was very nice.  The first house she showed us was way too big, but we noticed there was a smaller attached house on the back of it, actually 4 rooms and a small separate outside kitchen in a small house (like a small brick tool shed.)  It had a separate entrance and was very private (not in the popular quarter).  It was roughly the same size as Willy's brothers' house.  Rent was about $150 per month.

We now felt we had two choices that she could consider.  They represented 2 radically different experiences.  One was really living 'with the people' the other was almost like living in a private cloister.

We left town Thursday afternoon not having made a decision, and we talked about it on the way to Burasira.  Although, I think she would have liked to make the 'popular' choice, the big problem that concerned her was not the lack of ammenities, but what would become a complete lack of privacy.

The sad truth is that our Burundian friends who laughed at the very idea of a mzungu in the popular quarter were wrong about their premises, but right about the consequences.  (in the words of sociologist Max Weber "That which is perceived to be true, is true in its consequences.)  That is:  Burundians believe that a mzungu could not live in that area because mzungus are rich and live in huge houses and drive in big cars so they could not live in poor conditions.  --this is true of some but not all of us who come here.

BUT because of this perception, seeing a mzungu living in the quarter would cause such astoundment that we realized she would be endlessly surrounded by people who would come to stare, gawk, and pursue her for money and other types of assistance.  It would probably be impossible to be out of the gaze of the many children even in the back recesses of her small rooms.  Yolanda had to face the fact that this would probably become intolerable.  The sad truth was, our partners were right in that their concern was a self-fulfilling prophesy.  We decided on the more conservative house where she would be more alone, especially given that her much of her work would be concentrated in a cross cultural poor village context.

Seeing Jodi was good and she affirmed our decision.  She has been living in a village for 2 years now, but has a private, walled house and still feels quite invaded at times.  She said that having some private space was very important, particularly when one is out of one's own culture.

We had arrived in Burasira in the afternoon and spent the evening talking with Jodi.  I left fairly early on Friday morning to try to get back home in time to pick up Oren from school (I did not make it.)  Yolanda stayed with Jodi to work on language.  

Rebecca, all this time had been in Buj with the boys and had had to take Oren to school by taxi with David in tow as Marcelline was sick all week.  Spencer (our housesitter) left to go back to college on Thursday night, so by the time I got back the house was empty of all staff and guests.  It was actually kind of nice to be alone as a family for the first time since returning from the US.

It has been raining daily, but Saturday afternoon we did go to Lake Tanganyika to swim, and I have put the pictures from the outing on the blog this week. (sorry for the lack of pictures from Gitega, I forgot my camera, but will send some pictures of Yolanda's place once we get her installed.)

Open the Floodgates of Heaven

 David enjoying the first gullywasher of rainy season.

Rebecca rightly predicted that the first rain of the season would be a 'gully washer'.  It has actually threatened several times this week, but the clouds did not burst until this evening (Sunday) at about 5pm.  Yolanda, Spencer, Rebecca, the kids, and I were all sitting on the porch looking at the dust covered mango trees wishing it would rain, when it did.  Oren and David immediately ran out into it, eventually shedding their clothes and splashed around the house in the rapidly filling rain gutters.

Rebecca and I have mixed feelings about the arrival of rainy season as we are dying to be out of the oppressive dustiness of dry season, but are very concerned about the still uncompleted ditch in the front of our house which is a trench but without cement walls yet, so the erosion of the ground underneath the entire front wall of our house is only a matter of time.

The 5pm rain shower is the only precipitation we have had for months, and the past week was spent in dust and grit as well until now.  But it was not a week that past slowly for lack of things to do.  

I have been doing construction updates and I am including, on the bottom of the page, a picture of our new bridge which was built this past Tuesday.  We had given up on trying to get the work crew to put back the rocks they had taken out on Monday.  The solution of our neighbors was to hire carpenters to build a wooden bridge across the ditch.  We hired a carpenter that confidently assured us that he could build such a bridge for about $100.  He came with lumber, a saw and a hammer and nails.  Several hours later he had completed the BSO (bridge shaped object) in the photo below.  I was doubtful that it would hold a truck  (I did not see any civil engineer managing this project.) but on trying it, I found it did on the first run.  It has since begun to fall apart in subsequent crossings, and we will probably have to have it rebuilt before our permanent bridge is ready.  (Hopefully we won't fall in before we get it reinforced.)

Tuesday evening we were pleased to host some friends who work upcountry, a couple named Isaiah and Samantha who came here to do work with children in a small town called Muramvia.  They just had a baby (Malachi) and are doing well.  I have to say I admire their courage for coming here in faith to share God's love in very difficult circumstances.  They are basically pioneering as a new mission organization here and they shared some of their successes and failures in trying to work with local pastors and churches in the area. (The take home lesson was 'don't trust everyone who says they are a Christian with your money'.)  We did spend a very nice evening together visiting for an evening.

Wedneday was the climax of the week as it was Oren's first day back to school AND the day our former SALTer Yolanda was arriving back in Burundi to begin her 2 year term as a continuing service worker.  

Oren was quite happy to go back to school the first day, did not seem at all nervous and went directly to his new class and teacher and greeted her in French.  Madame Crystalle was Timmy's teacher last year and does not speak any English, so Oren will be challenged even more this year to speak well.  Many of his friends were in the class as well as Zack, Joy and Jesse's son, who is starting this year.  I think he is the only other anglophone in the class.  One change we will have in troisieme maternelle (kindergarten) is that he will go to school every day from 8-12, but also return on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for 2 more hours of class.  (He also has to pick a language to study: Flemish or English.  We decided on English as we could not imagine him trying to learn another language being taught in a language he still does not know.  He will be like a genius in english :-)

Taking Oren to school was kind of fun as I enjoy minor celebrity status as the dance teacher because of the class I taught last year.  Many children ran up to me and hugged me and asked when I would be restarting.  I think I will do it again this year, but will not start until October.

Yolanda returned on Kenya Air about midday.  It was very good to see her and remember the same trip I made almost exactly a year ago to pick up her Robyn and Brandon.  She seemed very at home this time in Burundi.  She has been staying with us this week and I will take her up to Gitega this coming Wednesday to look for a house then she will spend 2 weeks in Burasira with Jodi doing intensive language study for 2 weeks.

We have had a full house this week as Spencer, our housesitter is still here and is scheduled to go back to Scotland for school (St. Andrews) this coming Thursday.  It has been interesting to have here as he is studying theoogy and was doing some training with Moisson Pour Christ (one of our partners).  He enjoys engaging in exchanges about the need for discipleship in churches here that have had extensive exposure to Evangelism but not much else.  (He says he preached at churches where hundreds of people come forward week after week at every alter call to be saved, because that is all they ever here by way of sermons.)

Saturday I did begin teaching the exercise/stretch class (formerly known as yoga).  Spencer, Yolanda, and Naia (one of our Danish friends) came over for it.  It was good to get back into it, but it was hard and I sort of wrenched my back on day one.  But I am reminded of the need for exercise to keep down the feeling of stress in working here and enduring some of the difficult parts of living here.  I was very happy to have been able to swim every day this week as we did not have to travel anywhere this week.  (This will not be true again for about 2 months as we have things to do upcountry and in other countries every week through mid October.)

Rebecca and I have continued as well, to faithfully fast two days a week, although we changed it to Monday and Tuesday from Friday-Saturday.   Strangely, it does give a sense of well-being, even though we feel quite hungry.  Rebecca did observe and I concur that fasting during our time in the US was far harder than here because of all the incredible food there is to eat there.  Giving up a lunch of rice and beans is far easier than passing on a salad with fresth apples, salmon, and toasted almonds.  I do miss the food in the US but I am thankful at times for the lack of temptation we experience here.

The weekend was enjoyable, spent with friends.  We had our German, Danish, and South African missionary families over along with Bridget, Zachee and Tim (Bridget and Tim just returned from Canada) over to our house.  Everyone had come back from a vacation home and had about the same feeling about returning to dry dusty Bujumbura.  

Sunday we went to church where Rebecca began a french/english Sunday school class this past week.  There are a few kids who do not speak kirundi and tend to run around the church property during church time (ours included) and Rebecca decided to begin teaching there.  (This replace the Sunday School we were doing at the afternoon English fellowship last spring.)

The rain on Sunday feels like a Godsend and the mountains of Congo were in full splendid view from our veranda this morning.  We have a busy day--interviews of candidates to replace Zachee, so I had better get back to work.

The Replacement bridge for last week's rock bridge.  Definitely weaker!

Driving Back Into it with a Visit Upcountry

Our driveway as we found it when we returned from the US, it is very narrow as well.

The discipline of writing comes from doing out on a schedule rather than when I 'feel' like it.  Sunday night is getting late, we are home from a birthday party for Ella, the 2 year old daughter of our service workers Nate and Lara.  It was a nice party and we saw several people we don't get to see to often.  Kids are now in bed and Rebecca, Spencer and I are having a 'mac party' sitting around our back room all in our own private computer world.

This was definitely a week to shake off any cobwebs of vacation lethargy and tackle some of the urgencies left untended during our absence.   Monday through Wednesday was calm enough, primarily spent in relational work--making phone calls, visiting and receiving friends, reconnecting with service workers, etc.  We met Zachee Monday and had dinner with him.  Among the things we discussed in this meeting was his plan to step down from his position at MCC and the plan for hiring a replacement.  (He has been with MCC for 10 years and wants to go back to his civil engineering career.)  It will be sad for us to see him go, but I understand that it is the right thing for him to do professionally.  I have no doubt that Oren and Timmy will remain friends and I hope we will see Bridget and Zachee as regularly even when he does not work with MCC. 

On Tuesday the climax of the day was dinner, when we hosted a group of short term missionaries from Scotland led by none other than our dear friends Val and Charles Carr!!  They have been the subject of past blogs but had left Burundi about a year and a half ago.  (We are forever indebted to them for helping us move into the house they were renting and leaving a trampoline in it.)  We had a smashing evening together and in some ways it felt like they had never left.  (Although they were not making this trip with their children.)  They had come to check up on the orphanage project they had worked on when they were here and had brought some other friends and benefactors to see the work.  We had dinner and told stories about the 'good old days'.  It was great to see them again, although it did remind us of how hard it has been for us to create a really good small sharing group here with all the turnover of ex pats.  There are few people here that we have had such a connection with as them.

Wednesday was another work day although I did squeeze in an opportunity to swim as well.  The first time I have done so since being back.  I was sad to add the opaque look of the water to my list of disappointments upon returning.  It seems that their filter broke, they ran out of chlorine, or something else, but I can no longer see the bottom of the pool.  I am going to hope they fix this soon.

Thursday we planned to head upcountry to visit Jodi in Burasira.  I have to admit I was not relishing the idea of the long treacherous drive up the mountain and then the hour or two on the very dusty road that goes from the closest town to the small community where she lives.  To make it even more complicated, Thursday was the Presidential inaguration and we had heard rumors of extensive road closures and delays in the city as well as some security concerns as there was to be a large presence of foreign dignitaries.

Nonetheless we headed up about 10am without incident.  The drive turned out to be a pleasant one as the weather was cool and there was not much traffic on the road up the mountain.  We arrived at Jodi's in the afternoon and I was amused to hear David immediately start shouting "Cows! Cows!" as soon as we could see the seminary next to her house.  I was surprised he remembered our past visits and seeing the barns of the seminary farm which housed cows, pigs and rabbits.  As soon as we let him out of the car, he headed straight down the road to the stables rather than into Jodi's gate, with Oren following close behind.

The kids really enjoy being in Burasira and running around the gardens, the seminary cloisters, and Jodi's yard.  They also like to help dig in the garden.  

Jodi was doing well and the big news for her was the purchase of a tiny parcel of land where she hoped to grow chick peas.  We walked over to it (about 20 mins from her house) to see it with the kids in the late afternoon.  As usual, we were followed by a large group of children, fascinated by David and Oren.  I was not prepared though for the 'culture shock' of meeting the farmer in the plot next to Jodi's.  His family had a small shack where his wife, and 4 children lived.  I could not believe how emaciated the arms and legs of the kids were and their bellies bloated with worms or because of malnutrition.  They smiled at us nonetheless and greeted us politely.   I was struck by the strangeness of the 2 landowners, with roughly the same size parcels of land: a college prof cum missionary and an uneducated peasant with a wife and kids.  

Jodi had some plans to help ammeliorate the situation in the community a bit.  Tilling in Burundi is done with a hoe, so tilling her field involved hiring about a dozen people to work 10 hours a day for a week hoeing.  I asked her how much the going day wage was here and she said 50 cents a day, (although she is planning to pay 75 cents).  She is planning to hire some of the poorer members of the community to help.   She also hoped to hire the poor neighbor to be a guard for her property as stealing crops from a field is a matter of course here.

One concern she had was the problem of fairness.  It has always been our experience that whenever one does something, especially involving opportunity for making money it is often met by more resentment from those who do not benefit directly than gratitude by those who get to earn it.  The saying "no good deed goes unpunished" is certainly applicable here.  Jodi was aware of this, but it is always hard to hear complaints about her efforts to do something positive in the community that is not just a matter of direct charity.

Rebecca made an interesting observation based on the parable Jesus told about the landowner who hired people in the morning, then afternoon, and then evening, and paid them all the same, a day's wage.  In the parable the one's who happily agreed to work in the morning for the wage, were resentful when they found that everyone got the same wage for the work they did no matter when they started.  The master rebuked them for focusing on comparison rather than the generosity of the master whose perogative it was to pay what he chose to whom he chose--after all, all received a full day's wage, no one received less.  

Jesus tells the parable to talk about grace and the fact that all receive it fully, not based on work, but based on God's generosity, no matter when one recieves salvation.  But it does point out the fact that grace is not 'fair'.  And this was something the teachers of the law always struggled with.

But looking at the parable as a lesson for development workers, Rebecca pointed out that when you give something good or generous, that blesses some, it is always impossible to please everyone.  Every action produces some negative and some positive results.  It will please some and displease others EVEN when all receive some net benefit at the end of the day.  That should not be a reason to do nothing, but just an important thing to remember about human nature.

We went back to Jodi's house and spent the night Thursday which featured garden vegetables she has grown including an arugula salad which was delicious.

Friday was going to be a test for Rebecca and me.  We had an important meeting scheduled with Jodi and her supervisors at our partner organization.  The problem was, the meeting was to take place in Gitega, the nearest town an hour and a half away by car on a very difficult road.  We planned to go in the morning, have the meeting, then come back to Burasira in the late afternoon.  The problem was, what to do with the children.  Rebecca and I both needed to be in the meeting so even if we brought Oren and David, they would need child care.

Jodi proposed leaving the children with her very trustworthy cook and gardener, (the cook is a mother so she knows about childcare, the garden is an energetic young man).  After long consideration, weighing the pros and cons, we decided this was the best option.  Oren and David did not seem to mind being left at Jodi's and the farm when we departed.  The cook and gardener planned to take them for walks to see the animals and let them play outdoors, color, etc.  The hard thing for Rebecca and me is that this would be the first time we left the two children alone while we went to do work in another place more than 5 minutes away.

The drive to Gitega went well enough (serious carsickness notwithstanding) and we had an excellent meeting with Innocent and Beatrice, the husband and wife directors of UCEDD, our partner organization that runs the Hope School for the Batwa.  They are such interesting people and always shed new light on many things we are doing.  They did observe, for instance, that the purchase of land had created some tension in the community over who Jodi was buying it 'for'.  (The idea that a mzungu bought it for herself for personal use is not a very comprehensible idea for the community.)  But Beatrice had helped to make them understand that this is what had happened.  

We also talked about what Jodi would be doing for the school this year and it seems she will focus on developing an English curriculum for the primary school and train teachers to teach it.  The discussion was very good and she left feeling very good about her mandate for this year.  

We drove once again down the dusty road to Burasira, anxious to get back, and arrived about 4pm.  We found David playing quietly in the living room with cars and Oren digging in the garden.  They barely looked up at our arrival.  It seems they had amused themselves the whole day and were quite content, even without an excessive amount of high technology, video games, etc. to entertain them.  We asked the cook how they had been and she assured us that they had behaved very well and were quite happy the whole day.

That evening we had dinner at the seminary with the priests.  We have come to know them well over the past 2 years and we wanted to say Hi, especially because 2 of them were going to be return to their diocesse, having completed their 'terms' as teachers there.  Abbe Deo, and the Pere Econome (financial manager) were both leaving.  They had been very helpful in getting Jodi set up at her house (which we rent from the seminary) and we were sorry to hear they would be leaving.)

It was a very nice evening, where we sipped a bit of pineapple wine (preferring that to banana beer) that is made at the seminary by the nuns, and ate a delicious Burundian meal.  Oren was very polite and greeted all the priests in french.  David was a bit more difficult as he constantly tried to escape out the dining room door to run down the hall to the place where they keep a pet monkey.  (David has not ceased to be an animal lover.)

We left Saturday morning for the trip back to Bujumbura.  It was not one of our better journeys.  Rebecca became extremely car sick and the kids were very impatient to be done with the ride.  We arrived exhausted around 2pm.  Unfortunately there were a few urgent errands waiting for us when we got back and I ended up running around for several more hours after that.  By 4pm though we went to the pool for a brief swim then had a pizza dinner at Ubuntu restaurant with our South African missionary friends Tim and Jeanette and their daughter Isabel.  It was good to see them and find out about how they have been doing.

Sunday we went back to church and were blessed to see some friends who had returned from our early times here.  Galen and Delia and their 2 sons were visiting Burundi for some business.  They had left a year and a half ago because she had had a cancer diagnosis.  She is still taking chemo, but she looked well and it was good to hear Galen preach.  Galen and Delia had also been part of our prayer and share group when we were first here in Burundi so it was interesting to see them here the same week we had seen the Carrs.

Sunday evening we went to the Horsts for a Birthday party for their daughter Ella (2).  It was a nice visit and Oren was quite happy to see his friend Jal again (their 7 year old).

I am finishing this blog Monday morning after my swim.  The photo at the top, showing the rocks that were put in the ditch as a makeshift driveway is no longer accurate.  They took the stones after I left, leaving our car, for the time being, stranded outside the house.  It is hard, because I tried to reason with them that it made no sense to destroy the driveways before they were ready to rebuild (and it is weeks before!).  I swear it was liking trying to reason with Oren about putting away his legos before he dumped out all his blocks.  They just stared at the crazy ranting mzungu shaking their heads in glassy-eyed incomprehension then went about their business.
  

Bonus photo:  Here is a family portrait we had done in the US when we were home.  It came out really well in my opinion.

Jetlagged in London, Nairobi, Bujumbura

Jetlagged, David was up at 2am stomping around the Nairobi guesthouse room in my sneakers and brushing his teeth.  Luckily the rest of us were already awake as well. 

As I sit here at 11:30 pm in our family room in Bujumbura, I find it hard to believe that I spent at least half the week in my parents' house in Baltimore.  It already seems like so long ago.  We came back from dinner with Zachee at Khana Kazana the Indian restaurant here about 2 hours ago, and we have been trying to come up with a good plan to get two very jetlagged boys to bed when they feel like it is midafternoon.  They just finished watching a movie and now they are brushing teeth and chasing each other around the bedroom, not promising as far as settling down.

The last two days of our time in Baltimore are a bit of a blur, but I do remember making time for at least a few important events.  One was another hike with Oren, David, Grandma Jean, and the cousins Miriam and Gabriel.  We went to a park called Oregon Ridge.  It was a fairly hot and sticky, but hiking relatively alone through the woods was one of the last events worth savoring.  On Tuesday we went once more to the pool where Miriam and Gabriel's family are members.  Despite the threat of rain, it turned out to be a fine day to swim.

We also squeezed in trips to playgrounds, constructing and deconstructing Granny's trainsets and tinkertoys, driving and peddling the various kids vehicles, and watching family videos like Winnie the Pooh and Pinnochio.

Tuesday night we had a plan for closure, we dropped the kids at Aunt Gwendolyn and Uncle Paul's so they could play with Miriam and Gabriel, while Rebecca and I had dinner with our parents (Bunny and Henry and Dave and Jean).  We had salmon, corn on the cob, and swiss chard, for the meal, then we sat together afterward to reflect on the best and most memorable moments of the time together.  Afterward we prayed in turn.  It was very good to be able to try and say things that one always wants to make sure are said before separating for a long time.  

As a benediction to our time together, my mother shared a psalm #126.  The last verse says this:

5 Those who sow in tears
       will reap with songs of joy.

 6 He who goes out weeping,
       carrying seed to sow,
       will return with songs of joy,
       carrying sheaves with him.

The passage spoke to her, I think because of releasing us to go back, but it spoke to me as I thought about what working in what seems to be in such a desperate context.  I was beginning to feel the clammy, anxious feeling of powerless creeping over me even before we had left the US.  But the image of assistance which does not pretend to be able dry all tears and end the present sorrows, but might offer seeds for a future harvest of joy, is a thought-provoking metaphor.  "He who goes out weeping CARRYING SEEDS TO SOW will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him."

Wednesday was a scripted day to leave.  I had planned to get up very early and do a last run through the woods or perhaps even around a nearby lake,  but when I looked out the window at 7 am it was cold, pouring rain, and looked like it had not started recently, nor would end soon.

Rebecca and I finished packing all of our bags.  We were fully loaded bringing double the number back we had come with.  The grandmothers had their last moments with the kids, then Dave and Jean drove us to Dulles airport, about 3 hours away.  

The trip was gloomy, weather-wise, but without event.  We said our goodbyes to Dave and Jean in the afternoon and headed to our gate for a flight that would depart to London at 7pm.  We got on board the BA 747, watching the rain pelting the windows and took off into the sunset.  

It was a short night as the flight was 6 hours long, but we arrived at Heathrow at 6am the next day.  We had a 5 hour layover in Heathrow where the kids enjoyed running around the transit lounge.  The real exhaustion hit, mercifully as we boarded the second 8 hour flight to Nairobi around noon.  Although it was 8 hours long, we stayed in daylight for most of it.  Despite that, the kids and us slept for a lot of it.  

We got to Nairobi and our guesthouse about 9pm.  By this time, of course the kids were wide awake again.  We struggled to get them and us to try to sleep by 11pm, but we all found ourselves awake at 2 and watched movies, read, and played for several hours before falling asleep just before daybreak.  We all slept in until late morning.  Luckily we had a 2 day layover in Nairobi.

We were treated to a visit in the afternoon by Ruth and Krystan, our service workers in Rwanda who were in Nairobi for the birth of their first baby, a girl, Misha.  They are planning to return to Rwanda as soon as they can get through the paperwork including getting a birth certificate in Kenya so she can get her Canadian passport.  With the speed of Kenyan bureaucracy, my sense is they will be tied up there for some time yet.  (Luckily Ruth's parents work for World Relief in Nairobi so they can stay with them.)

The last leg of our trip was scheduled for a 4am departure from the guesthouse by taxi to catch an 8am plane.  The flight is short, about an hour twenty minutes, but we feared that this particular leg would test us as parents more than the others.  It began well enough: since everyone woke up again at 3am, we were readily to leave easily by 4.

But by the time we got to the airport the testiness of sleepless nights began to set in and Oren's contrariness became especially hard for us to deal with patiently.  We were relieved to get on the plane, but getting off and into the Bujumbura airport was not to easy either in terms of testiness.

Luckily we have resident visas and the processing did not take long.  The sight of Zachee at the other end of the gate was extremely welcoming.  Oren even perked up a bit at seeing Papa Tim.  (Sadly Timmy was not there as he and Bridget are in Canada right now for a short vacation.)

I have to say something here about my anxiety and anticipation about returning:  I am used to the fact that when one returns 'home' to Burundi, and one's domicile, things have always suffered a bit from a far more savage entropy than what we are accustomed to in the US.  Even after short weekend trips upcountry, I wonder what I will come back and find broken or mysteriously 'no longer working.'

When we walked out of the airport with Zachee and found his small toyota waiting to take us home rather than our spacious landcruiser, I did not take it as a good omen.  Between Zachee, me and 2 porters we managed to stuff all of us and our luggage into the car and headed home.  Zachee told me that the battery in my care died the day before and he could not get it fixed before he came.

We had not gone far before we hit a police blockade where we were inspected carefully, then another, then another.  It might have been more intimidating if the police would not break into peals of laughter at seeing a carload of mzungus stuffed together with luggage like a matatu (taxi bus) of Burundians coming from Congo.  They made many cracks about abazungu abakene  (poor white folk).  

The multiple police stops though was a new thing and Zachee told me that the security situation in Burundi is deteriorating as at least one opposition party has fled to the hills and is beginning to train a rebel army.  The threat of an Al Shabbob attack has also seems to be more imminent than ever. 

With no car and a deteriorating security situation, I was wondering if the worst of unpleasant surprises on  our return had about ended.  But it hadn't.  We were surprised to find that the culmination of the battle between the ditch diggers and road graders on our road which had started about a month before we left had now come to the point where there was literally a 4 foot deep moat around the front of our house, our driveway had been demolished and a tree next to our gate pulled out.  The day before our staff had had some help filling in with stones and boulders a makeshift driveway across the ditch so we could even enter with a car, but it was pretty unbelievable.

The repair on this will not be happening soon. Here in Burundi, the department of interior does things one step at a time.  They plan to do all the ditch digging and demolish every driveway in the entire quartier before beginning rebuilding.  So they have weeks of work to do.  The bad thing about this way of working is that if and when they run out of money, they stop working, no matter where in the project they are.  It appears they ran out this past week.  

By comparison, the further disappointments of finding our electricity out, our internet not working and our cell phones and landlines all nonfunctional seemed like small stuff.  Fortunately our house sitter Spencer was fine and the house seemed in good repair otherwise.  

(Trust me, all the things mentioned above were not the fault of anyone's incompetence, Things Fall Apart here and just about everything requires maintenance at least once a month.  Everything that happened all happened in the last couple of days.)

Despite our thorough exhaustion, we did need to put on a short act of hospitality and politeness for a few well wishers who had come over to greet us as we drove in the driveway.  (A Burundian tradition I am not crazy about).  We spent Saturday sleeping and unpacking, feeling somewhere between lethargic and numb most of the rest of the day and night.  

We spent another sleepless night with kids getting up but not on the same schedule.  But we did not want to miss church.  Zachee had been able to deliver our car back to us, but when we loaded in and tried to drive, it did not start.  So we called a cab and went to church.  Fortunately arriving a bit late to a 3 hour service is not too problematic.

It was really good to see our church friends!  I am glad we are part of that faith community and they were happy to see us too.  We were also thrilled to see Charles and Val Carr, our Scottish friends of yore who were bringing a mission team to Burundi.  We will have dinner with them on Tuesday.

We finished off the day with Zachee taking us to Club du Lac T for a swim then, as I said at the beginning, dinner at Khanna Kazana.

Well the kids fell asleep, finally, with Rebecca in our bed while I was finishing this.  I am looking forward to tomorrow when we can begin to solve the problems that greeted us on our return.  My goal is to have a car and phone that work by the end of the day.  I am glad I took time to reflect and savor the moments while we were vacationing with our families, but now the time for resolve and action is again at hand!