A Normal Week Sans Mommy

I think after last week, I can safely say I do not have a lot more to add this week. Going back to our routine may not be as exciting to describe, but it is nice to get back into our patterns again, at least for the first half of the week.

Oren was back in school Monday morning, much to his delight I might add. He was glad to get together with his buddies and his teacher M. Christophe. Jal, (Nathan and Lara’s son) also started school this week, although he is 6, so not in Oren’s class, he is going to the same school. Although I only saw him briefly several times, he seemed to be doing OK with it.

We have also decided to add some extra remedial French tutoring sessions for Oren on Monday Wednesday and Friday afternoons from 3-5. These are offered at the school. This is primarily due to the fact that he really has not made any progress at learning French in the past year. He is atypical in this as other classmates who started out like him are all to the point where they speak it quite well. Oren has pretty much refused to speak. When Rebecca asked him why he did not speak French he told her he was scared that if he spoke French he would forget English.

Anyway his teacher is Mdm. Florid, one of the assistants in his class last year whom he really liked, so he actually does not object to going at all as he does seem to like to do things at his school.

Work has been heating up a bit as we have several deadlines for requesting new personnel for next year. (Primarily SALT volunteers.) We are trying to make some wise choices about this but have not been able to really crank out any job descriptions without meeting with some of our partners.

We also have a major conference next week that we are participating in. This is the Duke gathering, a conference that we participated in last year as well at this time of year. (It seems like a decade ago though.) Although we are not running the conference, we are being depended upon for many logistical matters, like booking hotels, getting people at the airport, etc. It is a lot of extra work for us this week and next.

As part of this event, there is a 3 day pre-gathering upcountry. It is at a place called Maison-Shalom, run by a most extraordinary woman. I have no doubt Rebecca will fill you in on this next week. Normally I am the one to go on these upcountry visits, as Rebecca needs to stay with the kids, particularly David because he is still breast feeding. This was to be the week of weaning though as Rebecca requested being the one to go on this trip. I did not object and was excited by the challenge of having sole responsibility for the boys from Saturday – Tuesday. All would have been well if David would not have started rasping and coughing on Thursday night and all day Friday. We took him to the doctor on Saturday morning before Rebecca left. The doctor prescribed an antibiotic for respiratory infection. This of course meant that I was left now with one sick and one healthy child alone for the better part of 4 days and 3 nights.

It is now Monday morning and David is still under the weather. He had 2 wrestless nights, but at no time was he inconsolable. Ibuprofen kept the fever down and he was content to receive a bottle of milk from me when he was hungry. Oren has actually been on his best behavior as far as I am concerned, and seems to want to help me as much as possible. We were not able to go to church on Sunday as I did not think I could supervise Oren while tending to David in his current condition. Instead, we had Sunday School at home with a lesson about Joseph and his many colored coat. We sung quite a few Sunday School songs, prayed, and colored a picture as well.

Sunday afternoon Jodi stopped by to get some money. She was in town bringing a group of her batwa students to the ‘big city’ of Bujumbura to be fitted for eye glasses. She has discovered that most of the students have bad eye sight but no means of improving it. She has been raising money from friends to make a visit to the eye doctor with a large group of them twice per year. For many it is the first time they have ever been to a city like Bujumbura, or even in a vehicle for that matter. Jodi described the experience on the bus of at least 25 of them throwing up from car sickness on the way down. (Luckily she had the foresight from past experience to put plastic bags in the car for each of them.) It is a rough windy road if you are not used to riding in a vehicle.

An eye doctor appointment, and glasses costs about $8 altogether, so the trip with bus fare and fitting 25 of them with glasses is only a few hundred dollars. As part of the whole experience the bus driver took them down to Lake Tanganyika before they headed back upcountry. Most had never seen the Lake before and were overcome by awe at the sight of so much water. For them, despite the motion sickness, it was one of the most exciting days of their lives. (Here is a photo of some of them sporting their new glasses.)

Sunday evening Zachee and Bridget invited the SALTers, Jodi, me and the kids to their house for dinner. It was a very nice evening at their house with a great meal. We left late for a school night but before the start of the Africa Cup games which many around here seem to be getting excited about.

I am posting this a bit late on Monday morning because of internet connection problems. As a rejoinder to an earlier post about trying to get ASDSL, I was finally able to get a confidential explanation from a technician (who was a friend of Zachee’s) about why the wait has been interminably long even though we have paid for it. He told Zachee that our neighborhood’s lines are not capable of providing DSL at all and would probably not be changed anytime soon. As sad as it was, it was good to find out the truth instead of hearing, for 6 solid months, a customer service rep. (who knew the real reason) tell me “You should have it tomorrow or early next week.”

When I told this person that as a westerner I preferred an unpleasant truth to a lie that I wanted hear. She was genuinely surprised and her response to me was, “Well, I tell you maybe tomorrow or next week, so you can always have hope.” Her reasoning was quite surprising in that she said it with out a bit of guile.

...I wanted to say to her that as a Christian I did Hope and would not stop Hoping. I Hoped for God’s justice for orphans, widows and the prisoners in Burundi. I Hoped for a non-violent electoral process and an end to corruption. BUT I was not Hoping for DSL. I was not counting on God to provide me with DSL miraculously. I had chosen to make a contract with the phone company whom I had paid to provide the service.

But now, I am thinking that a reliable internet connection certainly will not happen for us without divine intervention. …I guess we can always hope.