Missing Easter

  David waiting for our flight back to Addis in Abuja.  Oren just gave him an M&M.  He sat there for several  minutes repeating the word "Yum!"



Happy Easter everyone.  I wish I could say that that is how it went down for us today, but probably 'Relieving Easter' would be the more appropriate expression.  Rebecca and I did make a vow that this would be the last time we schedule travel over Holy Week.  We have grown quite comfortable with the liturgical calendar, fasted for Lent, the whole 9 yards, but last week was really hard because it was almost entirely absorbed by work and travel.

We did get back into Bujumbura this afternoon after our 9 day journey to west Africa.  4 of those days alone were travel to get to and from Nigeria.  (It is amazing to think that we could get to Dulles Airport in the US faster than we can get to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, from Burundi.)  Last week when I wrote we were in Jos, where we had about 3 full days of meetings with reps the central west African region.  The meetings were interesting, especially hearing about the work MCC is doing in Nigeria.  We met several of their partners as well in the course of the meetings. (Although we did no field trips.)

The most memorable partner is a local group called ERT.  It is an interfaith group made up of several Christians and Muslims who have committed to work together to relieve tension by working in their respective neighborhoods to prevent rumors from inciting violence.  (They contact each other and security forces by phone whenever they hear of a violent attack or threat of one from Muslims or Christians.)  They also go and distribute relief materials TOGETHER in areas where massacres against one group or another have left communities devastated.  Sonnie, one of the leaders (a muslim) described going into a Christian area with the group which posed a serious risk.  When he gave a young man a blanket he asked him, "Can you accept this knowing that I am a muslim?"  (Members of the man's familly had been killed the past week by muslims.)  The man said he would and they exchanged phone numbers and agreed to stay in touch with each other.

This kind of work is dangerous right now in Jos.  All of them admitted that the polarization of Jos is on the rise and that fanning this fire is in the political interest of politicians wanting to win an election in 2011.  (As we are seeing in our own society in the US, there are far more political points to be gained by being and uncompromising polarizer than a moderate.)  It was sad to hear that this is happening in Jos though.  I know that in Burundi, once the ethnic groups had been displaced and isolated themselves from each other, the civil war raged for 14 years.  I am praying for a miracle in Nigeria right now.

In fact, at the end of our meeting with ERT, we prayed together for their work.  One of us prayed as Christians and then Sonnie prayed as a Muslim.  It was interesting to hear him pray and ask God that those who please him would be revealed in their 'conduct' no matter who they are.  I was reminded of Christ's admonishment in Matthew 7 that a tree is known by its fruit, and a good tree produces good fruit, while a bad tree produces bad fruit. 

We finished the meetings on Thursday and the reps from Chad, Burkina Faso, and our family took the 3 hour car ride back to Abuja so we could return home.  Our flight did not leave until Saturday though, because it only went twice weekly in our direction, so we spent 2 days in Abuja.  We stayed at the home of our area director Mark Sprunger with his wife Angela.  We had to chase one of their son's out of his room which our family shared.  They were extremely gracious to us.

I can say, after being there 2 days, I have to say I am really, really, really, happy to be living in Bujumbura.  For whatever I complained about here over the past months, they have it worse.  To begin with, the weather is really hot!  The city is very big and you can get just about anything there, but many of the basic necessities are missing.  Case in point: Nigeria is an oil producing country that actually sells electricity to 2 of its neighbors.  But people in the city are lucky to have 2-4 hours of power per day.  There is also no water to speak of.  The Sprungers have to rely on a noisy generator to run air conditioners to keep the house barely tolerably cool.

Another thing that was shocking was the highway system.  This is a city that was planned as a new capital so it was built with the idea of having a planned infrastructure.  All of the highways are huge 6 lane monstrosities which allow drivers to have spectacular devastating wrecks.  But there is really no place for pedestrians, so as a driver, one is constantly trying to avoid killing people who are trying to dash across these enormous highways to get from one neighborhood to another.

The last thing is that it is clear that oil money is not being distributed in any just way.  There could not be a wider gap between poor and rich here.  As a result, crime is an incredibly serious problem and one can almost count on being robbed at sometime in one's life there.

There are a few redeeming features though.  They had a few big malls that were interesting to see after being in Burundi for so long.  There was also a zoo that we took the kids too.  Oren and David loved it, and it was not bad for a third world zoo.  The animals had plenty of room to run around, but like most such zoos, the human animal contact safety features are not in place, so Oren and David could feed the camel, giraffe, and ostrich who stuck there heads over the cages for a handful of grass.

There was also a really fun playground with a zipline and a kind of obstacle course, as well a rope jungle gym that went up about 30 feet.  The kids had a great time there.

As far as leaving the reps from Burkina Faso and Chad had a far worse time than us.  They were slated to leave Thursday afternoon but due to a truck wreck on the highway to the airport that bloced all lanes, they missed their flights and spent 5 hours stuck in traffic to get there and back.  They left the next day.  We left on Saturday without incident.

The trip back was OK.  Not great.  I am beginning to realize how tiring it is to travel for over 30 hours with two small children.  They were generally good, but the long lines in immigration and security at the airports took their toll.  We stayed the night again in Ethiopia which was really cool.  We got there Saturday evening and could see many Christians (coptic I think) holding vigils all night outside of the large churches. (I think since Friday night.)   We could hear them chanting and singing all night as they waited for Easter Sunday.

We began our trip back to Bujumbura through Nairobi on Easter Sunday and got to our house around 3pm.  The last leg of the trip was particularly hard as the kids had really had it.  Robyn, was here with the car to pick us up.  Robyn and Yolanda had been staying here as house sitters and Yolanda had  prepared us some vegetarian fajitas for dinner as well as avocado banana smoothie in the freezer.  It was really good to be home.  Tired, but a bit more grateful for the wonderful place we have to serve and live in here.

Bonus photo:  Here is a bird we saw in Jos that we were not able to identify.  Any ideas what it might be?