A Soujourn in "Switzerland"

MCC Team on retreat in Igenda in the Burundian Interior. David is in the backpack on Zachee. (If you click on the photos they will enlarge.)


I am beginning to realize that while the best things in life may not be free, they are definitely paid for through federal, state, and municipal taxes. Anyone who does not believe me should live here, where there are no taxes, but we do enjoy irregular water and electricity, no road repair, no garbage collection, no sewage system, no well trained police force, no street lights, no park land, no good schools, no libraries, museums, etc. Also, forced community labor every week to do public service projects (like laying pipe or cleaning the public beach) is not my idea of fun.

You might gather from this that we are still having problems with our utilities. I won’t go too much into detail, but suffice it to say we continue to struggle with shortages of electricity and water to mention a few of the problems.

On the good side, our mango trees are giving us about 8-9 mangoes a day. David can happily eat a whole one himself, as can Oren.

This has been a really interesting week. I wish I did not feel so completely exhausted, so I fear I will need to proof this tomorrow and repost it to be sure I have not left anything out.

The week started in Rwanda where I posted the blog last week. We had a brief but good visit with Ruth and Krystan and several of our partners. We also picked up Ruth and Krystan as well as Misha, a friend of theirs who was visiting from Canada, and took them with us back to Bujumbura. There we joined Jodi at our house (we had brought her down the Friday before from Burasira). We were all gathering so we could head up-country to a small town called Ijenda for our annual team retreat.

Oren was off from school for mid-term break, so on Wednesday afternoon, we loaded 2 landcruisers with our supplies and our team including the 3 SALTers and headed up the mountains (the southern route) to Ijenda which is about an hour away. Zachee drove his car with Bridget and Timmy in it, and things went well for the first 10 minutes of the ascent, but then Zachee’s car overheated. We filled the radiator with water and continued on, only to have it overheat again after another 10 minutes. We tried to make the best plan possible and decided to send Zachee back down the mountain alone in his car to get it repaired while the rest of us piled into the remaining two cars.

We got to our guest house, which is actually above the town, and waited to hear from Zachee. He eventually phoned, close to dusk, to see if someone could come down and drive him up, but with the problem of roads closing after 6, we did not think it was possible to get down and back in time. Fortunately he was able to take a local bus and got to us in time for dinner.

I need to try to describe the area around Ijenda to you. In a word, I would say “Switzerland”. Honestly this is a route we rarely take, and have not spent a lot of time in this area, but it is unbelievably beautiful—and cold! We had to have a large fire in the fireplace each night while we ate dinner, and we wore warm underwear and blankets to sleep at night. It is hard to believe it is so close to Bujumbura in terms of driving distance.

We began the retreat with worship Wednesday night after dinner. On Thursday we began with worship then did some discussion with the group about MCC team values. In the afternoon we took a hike.

This is the first time I have gone on a hike in Burundi. The deterrent in the past has been a wariness about going on such an outing with the family and dragging several hundred curious children in our train as we walk along. This has been my experience with walking in the past, and Burundi is so densely populated that I have never seen any part of the country that does not have people all over the place.

But this was different. We hiked up several high ridges that overlooked miles of beautiful farmland and rolling hills. We hiked as a team for several hours, and only met one shy shepherd and one woman who greeted us politely and went on her way. It was really amazing and I am hoping it is something we can come up and do again sometime. I tried to photograph the view, but it is hard to capture.

I think the hike was one of the highpoints of the retreat, but we all contributed to it. Brandon played music, as well as Rebecca, all of us took a turn leading a devotional, I led a yoga-stretch class after the hike, as well as a prayer meditation based on a Kairos prison ministry team-building spiritual exercise I learned. (It involved stones, for those who are reading this from Kairos.) Yolanda and Robyn led a prayer devotional, as did Zachee. Ruth, Krystan and Micha prepared some games and a book-binding workshop! This was very cool and many of us left with a very nice hard back, fabric covered journal to keep notes in. Oren and Timmy were very excited about doing bookbinding and I have a picture of them here gluing the fabric on the covers. (The hard part of the process is sewing the pages into the covers. That part of the project may happen some other month. For four-year olds, they did really well.)

On Friday we had worship time and continued with our values discussion and made a plan for some activities to help us on our weaknesses next year. We had lunch at a nearby tea plantation before returning to the hotel. That night we had the opportunity for some group affirmation, then we packed up and went back to Bujumbura Saturday morning.

All in all the retreat was very good, and I felt we made a really good connection as a team. It seems amazing to me that we were a group of 14 including spouses and children. We are really getting to be a big group. Add to that the fact that we will be getting another family of 4 joining us in December to work at Help Channel.

Rebecca and I are feeling good about the growth of the team at this time. It really seems that human resources are far more effective in helping our partners than the financial support we provide.



We were actually in a bit of rush to get back to Bujumbura because most of us were going to a wedding that day. Yes, the wedding day of our good friends Jean Claude and Francine had arrived. All of us have become friends of theirs, even the SALTers who are fairly new here. Francine is even Brandon and Robyn’s French teacher right now.

The wedding was definitely the place ‘to be seen’ that day, as there were many people I knew from the NGO and missionary community. Among the surprise guests were SIMON Guillebaud, and DOUG Hiebert. If you have read past blogs you should know who Simon “Crocodile Dundee” Guillebaud is. His wife Lizzie had their new baby in the UK recently (a boy, Josiah) and he was here for a short visit to promote a video series he did based on his book, among other things. I will be posting a web link in a future week to this video series, but the book is called For What It’s Worth. I think it will be an excellent series to do in a Sunday School class. Simon will be spending several years with his family in South Carolina before returning to Burundi. (If you hear someone with a British accent in SC, it is probably him.)

Doug Hiebert was the former MCC Rep here (with his wife Deanna). He was actually on a trip to Congo related to work and was in Eastern Congo this week. He took a bus down to Buja just in time for the wedding. It was very interesting to see him, although his schedule was so tight we did not get much of a chance to talk. Now that I have been in this job for a year, I would love to have an opportunity to talk with him again. We did talk briefly at the wedding and he told me, as I imagined, that the whole experience was a bit surreal. This Sunday at church Doug led worship and Simon preached. It was a great service to be at.

I enjoyed being at the wedding, and it was a beautiful ceremony followed by a well-attended reception that featured traditional Burundian drummers. The group of a dozen young men pounded on the huge drums, just two feet away from us, while others took turns leaping, waggling their heads, posturing and dancing before Claude and Francine, before spinning back into the drum circle. It was LOUD and powerful. Oren and David lasted as long as they could, then I took them home with Rebecca and returned to the dinner. I was home at about 10:30 pm.

Among the traditions I find unusual connected to a Burundian wedding (at least one in the Christian context), is the practice of announcing the wedding weekly during church for several weeks prior to the ceremony. Each week they announce the date and time of the event as well the rejoinder that “if anyone knows any reason why these two should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.” In our country, if that question is asked at all, it is very briefly at the ceremony. Here they take the inquest seriously and I have no doubt that weddings have been stopped based on the information obtained from such an inquiry. It does grate a bit, as a westerner, but with the rate of divorce so high in our own country, even among Christians, I wonder if this process might save a lot of heartache down the road, despite its intimidating affect.

It is late, and we have a big day tomorrow. Grammy is coming in the morning. Rebecca and I are already heaving a sigh of relief at the prospect of having some help with the kids for a month. And it will be so special to share our life here with her!

Bonus photo: A frog we caught on our hike in the mountains.