Preparing for Christmas and Business as Usual in Kigali

The fact that I am starting this blog entry at 10:30 pm this Sunday, is indicative of how busy we have been this past week. Today was a travel day, returning to Bujumbura from Kigali. It was a long trip because we made a stop by the genocide memorial at Nyamatta, AND then we met a bus at the border, which slowed our crossing, going through customs and immigration considerably.

There were 8 of us traveling in our jam-packed Land Cruiser. The three SALTers, Brandon, Robyn, and Yolanda, along with our family, and Travis Withrow (of Astrud and Travis) were all in the car. The SALTers were going to have a chance to see Kigali, and Travis tagged along to do some Christmas shopping for his 5 daughters.

Coming back we were loaded down with the roof-rack piled high with Christmas presents. The car probably bore some likeness to Santa’s sleigh in the book “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.

We arrived in Bujumbura at 4 pm, just in time for the beginning of the English fellowship and Oren’s Sunday school. The timing was particularly important because we were meeting our Area Director Mark Sprunger there. He had arrived earlier in the day and Zachee brought him to the fellowship. We are hosting Mark here this week so he can see what our program is doing in Burundi.

That was the culmination of what was a very busy week, and next week promises to be no easier. But it was not all work and no play. We have been getting ready for Christmas here, and unlike Halloween, we have been making a real effort to prepare the house in some ways for the event. There has also been reflected in complementary activities by Oren’s school, our church, and even some places where we shop, where Christmas trees are appearing,

None of this comes close to the feeling of the post-Thanksgiving Christmas season in the US, but it is nice to be able to experience some of the preparation that typifies my experience of this time of year. I think what is most conspicuously missing is cold weather and snow. I thought I would ever say I miss it, but I really do miss the change of the season, and decorating a pine tree feels a bit strange in warm weather.

Oren is getting excited about all of this and really loved decorating the Christmas tree. (I mentioned last week that I had found an artificial tree left by our predecessors that I had cleaned up.) I was glad to find that we had brought enough of a small collection of ornaments to decorate it, and I even got some lights from the Chinese import store here.

Last week St. Nicolas came to Oren’s school. (that should be read with a French accent.) St. Nicolas has a white beard but is considerably thinner than Santa, he wears a cardinals mitre hat, and travels with a companion wielding a large Bible. Oren also told me that he speaks only French. There was a large celebration at Oren’s school for his arrival, then St. Nicolas went and visited the classes of the preschoolers and gave out candy.

Apparently, from the description of one of the parents, the distribution was quite interesting. St. Nicolas had a big list of all the kids (naughty and nice) and called them up 1 by 1. He read the name from the list and the child would come up, then he would read something about the child’s behavior, like “You are very helpful with the teacher.” Or “You color well, but you fight to much with your classmates.” Everyone received candy, but apparently the naughty and nice stuff is taken pretty seriously by St. Nicolas.
Besides preparing for Christmas, we have been trying, without much success to find a good housing situation for the Ressler-Horsts, our new service workers. We spent some time looking on Monday through Wednesday but did not find anything good that would work for a permanent situation. We did find a house-sitting opportunity that looks promising for a month, and I think they will take it for the time being (beginning this Wednesday). The problem, I think, is that in the last 6 months there has been a large influx in the expatriate community that is renting houses and pushing up the cost of rental property considerably beyond our planned budget.

Nathan and Lara’s family were able to enjoy a bit of time to themselves this past week, though, because our family was out of town in Rwanda from Thursday through Sunday, as I mentioned earlier.

We had a car full going up because the SALTers asked to have an opportunity to go up and see Kigali, and Travis hitched a ride as well to do Christmas shopping for his 5 daughters. The trip up was smooth and uncomplicated none-the-less. We left at the end of Oren’s school and got up there by about 5 pm.

The SALTers stayed with Ruth and Krystan, Travis stayed with friends, and our family stayed at our favorite haunt, the Africa New Life guesthouse. The staff there is always happy to welcome and keep an eye on, Oren and David.

Our purpose for going up this time was to have a round table discussion with our partner, Friends Peace House, as well as other donors that support their programs. We are making an effort to coordinate our support more effectively. It was an interesting discussion and I hope, helpful for the way we do our funding next year. For us this is a particularly crucial issue because, with the Global Financial crisis, our funding has continued to drop and we need, once again, to be looking at way in which we can strategically pare down, rather than expand our programming. This prospect is not appealing, but it is a reality. We are hoping that things will change sometime after next year.

Our time in Kigali was generally pretty tightly scheduled. We had the meeting, banking, visiting partners, and spending some time supporting Ruth and Krystan. So it was not exactly a restful week. The one evening we had nothing scheduled in Kigali was Friday. We finished our day about 5:30 pm and were at the guest house deciding what we would like to do. We were considering our different dinner options while Oren and David played in the living room. We had about decided on pizza and getting the kids to bed early so we could have time to talk, when Oren, who was playing on the couch, suddenly fell forward onto the coffee table and let out a scream. I looked and saw he had struck his head on the edge. As I expected, when I picked him up, was that he was bleeding profusely out of a large gash in his forehead, something that would definitely need stitches.

Rebecca and I looked at each other and new immediately that the decision about our family outing that evening had been made. We would be spending it at the King Faisal hospital emergency room. We held a towel on Oren’s head and loaded him in the car. We were fairly calm because we knew the drill very well after the experience 8 months ago with his broken arm in Kigali. We drove to the hospital and took him into the emergency room. I saw that it was quite crowded so I carried him in making his blood covered face and hair obvious so he could be helped first. He did get right into a room.

The whole process from start to finish still took about 3 hours, and we returned home about 10pm. Oren had 3 stitches in his forehead under a dressing. I had had to hold him down for the stitches as the anesthetic was just something that was sprayed on, not injected. He could definitely feel the needle going in and out for each suture. He was very brave through it all though, and did get ice cream after we were done, so it was not all bad for him in his estimation. He also seemed excited about the chance to show off his big bandage to everyone he met, and to his friends at school this week. I was pleased that an ER visit in Kigali still runs about $12.

We are anticipating another busy week with Mark Sprunger here and I will probably be doing a lot of driving in rural Burundi between Tuesday and Thursday. I am looking forward to some time off during Christmas week.