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.