A Mad Tea Party and an Enormous Family

.…Lundi…Mardi…Mercredi…Jeudi…Vendredi…Samedi…Dimanche. As I was walking down the hall past Oren’s room I heard the sound of someone reciting the days of the week in French. I knew the voice to be Oren's, only what I heard was not the accent of an American child reciting the words, it was the sound of a French or Belgian child with a perfect French accent saying the days of the week. It is an interesting breakthrough for 2 reasons. First, it is a series of words that I have never practiced with him in French, and second, it is a capacity he has in French that he does not yet have in English. That is, he cannot recite the days of the week in English at this point, to my knowledge. Apparently he learned it at school as part of a chasing game not unlike duck, duck, goose.

Oren has made more than one thing this week worthy of note in this blog, but I will save that for later.
(The photo is of him at his swimming lesson. He and some friends are doing that this month.)

It was a very full week with both Grandparents here, Thanksgiving, and a lot of networking with partners and other NGOs around election preparations.

But I have to also say that several of my work days were spent in a kind of fruitless effort to get our DSL (high speed internet connection) working. There is a book by Franz Kafka called “The Castle” that captures the experience perfectly, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know what a French-colonized African bureaucracy is like. In the book, a young man of some status is charged to deliver a letter to the occupant of a castle in a neighboring town. When he tries to do so, he finds it is not a straightforward matter. Despite his relative lack of interest in the task, he becomes more and more intrigued by the complexity of steps, and small successes and setbacks he experiences along the way. He eventually finds himself obsessed with succeeding in the task against a seemingly obdurate and infinitely complex bureaucracy.

My experience with the phone company has been quite similar to this, especially in the way that small steps forward tend to reveal even more steps that always seem to draw me nearer but never to my goal. Three weeks ago, after 6 months of waiting, we were permitted to pay for our DSL service. We celebrated this major victory of patience. Once I did pay, I went back and proudly presented my receipt to the customer service agent which we had 'befriended' because of our many prior visits. She told me that ‘activation’ would happen in the next 2 days. We waited the normal 2 weeks before I returned to find out what was wrong. Instead of going to our normal ‘friend’ though, I sought out someone in the internet department deep in the bowels of the building. There, in a tiny office, I met a very friendly man who told me that for activation, all I needed was a ‘dsl router’. I could go out and buy one, then bring it to him and he would configure it and I could take it home to use.

I was excited about the prospect of being in control of finishing this and after a 2 day search of every computer store in town, I found such a router. I was excite to go back to get this finished and virtually ran to the building and back to the office where I met this man. When I got there, I was surprised that I had a very hard time refinding the internet office. When I did, I went in and there were two different men in there. (They seemed to know nothing about my ‘helpful friend’ who was there 2 days ago.) I showed them the router and told them what I wanted. They looked at me utterly perplexed, then went into a large account book to look up something. They asked for my name and phone number. After about 10 minutes of looking they told me that our account did not exist according to their records and that not only did they not have any evidence that we had a dsl account, but that we did not even have a phone, according to them! They could do nothing for me and said I needed to start again.

I was sent back to my friend at customer service. She spent about 30 minutes on the phone talking to various technicians, then told me that there was a ‘technical problem’ with our line and that it would be resolved Monday and we could proceed with our activation. That is where we are now, I will let you know if this actually ever completes. At this point we have paid our original installment a month ago and now we are receiving a bill for the second month of our still unactivated DSL service. I don’t want to pay, but I know that if I don’t they will a good reason not to continue to make steps toward completion.


That was a long aside, but I am a big fan of Franz Kafka. But that was not the only surreal encounter we had this week of an early 20th century ‘modernist’ variety. The second one involved my parents this past Monday.

There is an eccentric elderly woman who lives here, she is a Russian pediatrician who used to have a clinic in town, which was closed (because of corruption) many years ago and its equipment sold by a govt. official who seized it. Why she remains, is unclear. She seems to be hoping for some sort of justice to eventually emerge. (Apparently she is waiting for a judgment at an ongoing trial—10 years—to get some money back. Just to keep in the theme of Kafka.)

She invited my parents and our family to ‘tea’ Monday evening. We got there around 5 to find that ‘tea’ was a 4 course meal, but not one like I have ever seen before. The food was odd, old mangoes and bananas, popcorn, something that resembled a stack of pancakes, all cooked on charcoal by her. She had no housestaff, no furniture except a table and chairs, no gardener, no electricity, no running water, and lived in the very large house that had once been the clinic.

We stayed for several hours and as the sun went down the house became pitch black and we gathered around a single candle. Conversation was awkward and difficult as she spoke no English and limited French, and my parent spoke no French. Rebecca and I translate as best we could. Nonetheless the doctor remained charming and gracious throughout, saying with her hospitality that she was a person of limited means, but with a great heart.

Still, it was all a bit creepy and I was looking forward to the end of the encounter, but Oren and David were not complaining so we stayed a bit longer. Then the doctor asked us if we liked to tango? She took an old lantern flashlight that had a small cassette player in it and turned it on. The sound of WWII cabaret sounding tango music wafted out of a tiny speaker and she invited Rebecca to dance with her. She got us all up to dance to this winsome, eerie, music for about half an hour. We swayed slowly in couples, kind of like waltzing, in total darkness in an empty house that had not been dusted for years, I felt as if we were in a WWII movie, making the best of life during a blackout in an air raid. It was a scene that could not have been directed better by Francis Ford Coppola. Eventually Oren started to complain and we made our excuses and went home, not before inviting her to our house for Thanksgiving the following Thursday. It was an evening I will not soon forget, and I don’t think my parents will either. I am aware the line between eccentricity and madness is fine, and I am not sure which side of it we were that evening.

Tuesday was an important work day as we gathered together all of our Burundian partners to discuss strategic planning next year around the elections. I have mentioned before that next year is a critical year for the country as the elections are happening. As most of our partners are involved in peace and reconciliation work, planning for interventions and conflict prevention even at this stage is crucial. We are trying to mobilize some of them to be election monitors, and do some training in educating their communities on the electoral process. It was a good meeting, facilitated by Zachee and our partners were all planning to be part of many activities related to keeping peace during the elections. We ended with lunch for everyone at our house, for which Marcelline, with Enoch’s help, prepared an enormous African meal that was very tasty.

As part of this as well, Rebecca and I have been networking with other Christian NGOs including the American Friends Service Committee and World Relief. It is good to connect with them. Often it seems like everyone is out here doing their own thing.

I was very impressed with World Relief’s efforts in that they, in collaboration with World Vision, have gathered all the leaders of every denomination in the country to meet together and discuss the role of the church in maintaining peace during the campaign. They have formed a committee of leaders from these churches who have agreed to cooperate.

Among the things they have counseled is the necessity of all pastors of all churches to be politically neutral!! That is, a pastor is not to bring his personal political preferences for a particular candidate into the church. (He should still vote confidentially of course.) This seems like good advice for our country as well, but here, where differences of opinion have often led to murder and massacres, it is essential. Your party and candidate are not worth killing for, or stirring up old ethnic rivalries, suspicion, and paranoia to win.

The other work related activity we did was to look for a house for our new service workers that are arriving this week! Our search has not been terribly fruitful, although we have seen a lot of interesting houses here--most out of the range of our budget. Prayers for this search would be helpful.


The week was not all work and no play though. We had several major social events. The biggest one was Thanksgiving dinner. Although we did not have a turkey, we did buy some rotisserie chickens, garnished with stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and other ‘fixins’ (cranberry sauce conspicuously absent) and did our best to create an American Thanksgiving meal. We invited Onesphore and his kids over, and Zenon (another partner in charge of Intervarsity in Burundi) with his wife and kids, as well as Zachee and Tim (Bridget was out of town) and the Russian doctor of course.

It was a nice event to share and we told the story of the American Thanksgiving tradition, complete with pilgrims and Indians. They enjoyed hearing about it and said they would find us a turkey for next year.

Friday, my mom and dad, and Rebecca and David and I picked up Oren from school, ate lunch, and headed up to Ijenda. I have written about this place before. It is where we had our team retreat and has the feel of being in Switzerland. We wanted my parents to see some parts of Burundi other than Bujumbura. It was raining when we arrived and quite cold. I was glad we had counseled them to bring warm clothes. We did have some good fellowship together and sat around a very nice fire in the dinning area to tell stories of Christmas when my parents were young to Oren.

Oren said one interesting thing that evening: Rebecca asked him if he enjoyed being up here with his whole family? He answered, “This isn’t my whole family, where is Timmy, and papa and mama Tim, and Robyn and Yolanda and Brandon and Ruth and Krystan and Jodi? I want to come here with my ENORMOUS FAMILY!

Saturday morning was gorgeous and we did a nice hike in the hills. Oren did quite well and actually walked the whole way! For most of the hike we were alone and only picked up a few curious children in the last 15 minutes. We headed back to Buj around noon, stopping for tea at another lodge on a colonial tea plantation. We finished just as it began to pour again and made our way back down the mountain in a torrential downpour. (We were glad to be dry in the car though.)

We got back to Buj and spent the rest of Saturday resting at home until evening. Since it was my Dad’s last night, we took them out to Khana Kazana, the Indian restaurant. We had a fabulous meal. I always marvel at the fact that we can get such good Indian food here.

Sunday morning we went to church then took Dad directly to the airport. He should be in Baltimore soon. I think that David got the most out of his visit as grandpa and him spent a lot of time together playing and watching Baby Einstein videos while Rebecca and I were at work. The time really seemed to go too fast though and we miss him already.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the English fellowship where Rebecca preached on a rainy afternoon, to a small group. She is leading off the advent series. It is hard believe we are getting close to Christmas, especially since we do not have any change of season here.

I did find an old Christmas tree in our garage and hosed it off yesterday. It needs some work, but I think we will get it to be able to stand up today and decorate before Grammy leaves tomorrow.

Personal note: Happy belated Birthday Jonathan, we thought of you while we ate at Khanna Kazana on Saturday. We would have called but don’t have your Nashville # memorized.