A Bus Ride from Kigali and Carnaval at the Ecole Belge

 Oren got a hold of the camera again.  Here is one of his better efforts.


Recipe for secret ingredient banana smoothie:

Here is something you can do with old bananas that is great.  Before they get too old, freeze them then try this:
Mix in Blender:
2-3 bananas
3-4 cups of cold milk
1 tbsp sugar
1tsp vanilla
1tsp cinnamon
1/2 tray of icecubes
1 whole avocado (with no skin or seed of course)

Blend it well then enjoy.  We love it here, it is the closest homemade thing we can make to a milkshake.  (We use powdered milk and water though.)

Maybe I am being a bit insensitive, describing a cold tropical drink when many of you are still sitting under deep snow.  For us, we are getting avocados from our trees in the backyard and bananas are always available for vitually nothing.  But hey, there is not much else to brag about here in terms of luxury.  In fact I have no doubt that Rebecca and Oren would trade this all away for a visit to a Coldstone Cremery, or even Baskin Robbins.

We will probably be up late tonight as this is the night reckoning for the MCC program.  That is, all of our final reports from last year, and budgets for this year are due tomorrow.  Finishing is not entirely realistic as we have not even received everything from our partners, but we will do our best to get most of it on the database for our directors in Akron, PA.

Working was a challenge this week because we had to split up again.  I went to Rwanda this Thursday without Rebecca, Oren and David.  This was our second trip  to Rwanda in less than a month and we decided we really wanted Oren to be in school for the end of the week.  Particularly since this coming week is  a school holiday.  We are also aware that he will miss another week of school in a month when our family makes a trip to Nigeria for some regional meetings.

All that to say that it was decided I would go without the family.  I was not alone, however, Zachee, Bridget and Timmy were with me on our trip up there.  It is very convenient to share many of the same partners with Bridget's organization, CAPP.  It means we see each other frequently in meetings, but also carpooling to Rwanda is a possibility from time to time.  We left just before the end of school on Thursday, so Timmy would miss as little as possible,  and so I could get a swim in, then raced up to Kigali to try and make a 5pm meeting that Zachee and I were having at Friends Peace House.

We had no trouble getting there on time as the new route between the cities takes less than 5 hours, and the border can take as little as 10-15 minutes.  By now I am definitely on a first name basis with all of the customs officials and border guards, and several of them asked me where Rebecca, Oren and David were.

We arrived in Kigali about 4 and went directly to our accommodations, Peace Guest House, which is run by the  Friends church. It is not where I stay with the family, but it is run by the Friends church and is fairly near Friends Peace House.  It is not a bad place to stay in many ways, as long as you consider running water a luxury you can do without.  (I bathed in what amounted a glass of water each morning.)

The meeting at 5pm went well, then we had an all day meeting on Friday.  It involved Friends Peace House as well as several donors.  Ruth and Krystan were there as well, as they are seconded to FPH.  All in all it went well.  They are restructuring the organization and letting us know what they were doing.  I was able to offer little more than moral encouragement from MCC as we have been forced to cut many of our grants to our partners due to budget cuts at home.  The meeting began at 9am and ended around 4pm.  (That is typical of meetings in this part of the world.)

I had several errands to do in town after that and ended the evening over dinner (pizza) with Zachee, Bridget and Tim.  Among other things we made plans for the next day, Saturday.  There was a wedding of one of the Peace House staff who had many friends about 3 hours West on Lake Kivu.  I considered going, but Rebecca felt she really needed me back on Saturday as we still had a lot of work to do.  Zachee and Bridget wanted to go to the wedding with some others.

Since they were in the majority, I decided it would be best if they took the car and I returned to Burundi by bus.  So on Saturday morning they dropped me off at the Belvedere Lines bus stop where I caught a bus to Bujumbura.

I am happy to report that the bus was small and quite comfortable.  They even had a television running rap videos for our viewing and listening pleasure.  The border crossing also went quite smoothly.  In fact it would have been a good trip overall if we would not have come to a serious accident on the way into Bujumbura that had stopped all traffic.

Sadly  have seen more accidents here in a year and a half than I have seen in my whole life in the US.  This one involved a large open truck, carrying about 2 dozen policemen standing and riding in the back, and a taxi mini-van loaded with people.  They seem to have glanced off each other.  Both were upside-down completely blocking the road.  The carnage was quite horrific.  I am guessing we arrived about 15 minutes after it happened because when the bus stopped we could see the accident and walk up to it.  What was strange about it was how quiet it all was despite the number of people.  Many were helping to do by hand what the jaws-of-life would do in our country.  There is no urgent care here, no firetrucks or rescue vehicles.  The dead and injured had been taken out of the vehicles and were laying on the ground beside the road.  I saw about nine or ten mortally wounded and dead policemen piled into a pick-up truck to be taken down the mountain to Bujumbura.

As the vehicles were pushed out of the way and our bus was able to get through, we took on two injured people.  They were laid out on the floor in the aisle of the bus.  I was glad we could do something as I had a real feeling of helplessness there.  I was even trained as an EMT many years ago, but there was not even much available to do the most basic first aid. 

The injured did not cry out on the what must have been a very bumpy and painful ride down the mountain.  I gave the policeman my water who was lying in the aisle next to me.  He could really barely drink it. 

When we got to the bottom of the mountain, at the edge of the city, our bus popped a tire.  We stopped and waited for another bus.   I called Rebecca to pick me up as we were quite near the city.  I was going to offer to drive the injured to the hospital as well, but a rudimentary ambulance arrived and took them to a hospital before Rebecca got there. 

I was struck, as I said above, by the 'stoicness' of all involved, the bystanders and the victims, as well as survivors. Perhaps from years of trauma, there is a kind of fatalism, or at least 'realism' about the fragility of life.  In a place like this, if something happens you either die or survive.  There is really no life-saving advanced life support that can bring one back from the point of death.  Maybe I am reading too much into this, but there is something about the way people behaved that seemed, after years of war and other trauma, to reflect a kind of solemn recognition that life is not an entitlement.



I don't want to end on a sad note, and fortunately there is some good news to report.  While I was gone I missed Carnival (Mardi Gras parade) at Oren's school.  I mentioned last week that all of the nursery school classes have been doing an extended units on American Indians.  On Carnaval day this past Friday, parents were invited to come and see the fruition of their labor.  All of the kids had Indian costumes and feather headdresses.  There were teepees as well.  Oren's class wore white pants and the boys were bare chested and looked like young braves, with their teacher as chief.  They had warpaint on their faces and chests and carried spears.  I do not know what tribe they were supposed to be, some kind of plains Indians I suppose, maybe Navaho or Cherokee, but they did look quite cute.  So much for political correctness at the nursery school level.  At least there were no cowboys.

Oren seemed to really enjoy the whole activity and got to keep his Indian costume that he helped make.  He still likes to wear his headress and carry his spear, and even took it to church this past Sunday.

Rebecca also had a parent-teacher conference on Thursday evening while I was gone.  She did get a good report that Oren is very smart in all the crafts and activities they do, but it was confirmed that his French is progressing very slowly.  Nonetheless, I will say that he still loves to go to school and even looks forward to the extra French tutorials on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 

This week, while he has no school we will be heading upcountry again to visit Jodi and our partners in Gitega.  Please pray that we do not meet any more serious accidents on our way up.  Frankly I am worried that this is another 'peace dividend' as the number of vehicles on the road in the city and coming from upcountry has increased considerably even since we have been here.