Last Week for SALTers and a Birthday for Rebecca

Oren and David seeing and playing with a puppy for the first time.  The Horst's gardener brought one for them to help guard the house when it grows up.  I brought the kids over to play with it while they are out of town.


Wow, I completely failed to start this Sunday evening because of a late dinner we had.  The dinner was in celebration of the final day that our SALTers spent with their host families.  After church I went and picked up Robin and Yolanda at their respective homes and brought them and their things to our house.  (They will spend their lat 2 nights with us so we can debrief before they leave.)  Then we spent the afternoon cleaning the house to get ready for the families to have dinner with us.  (We have no staff working on the weekends so I was down on my knees scrubbing the floors prior to their arrival.)

We decided to prepare them a spaghetti dinner.  They arrived and we had a lovely evening together reminiscing over the touching and funny times they spent together.  Jodi was serendipitously with us as well as she was returning from vacation in Uganda that day and passing through Bujumbura.

Among the things said was my mentioning that this SALT program has taught me much about what it means to be a donor organization.  I explained that it is usually the mentality of those of us who give foreign aid, that we are the givers and those in other countries are the receivers.  There is nothing that receipients in poor countries have that we need, so the relationship is very one way. 

This has, I believe, a psychological impact on countries who receive as well as donors who give, and it is unhealthy.  SALT, I explained, changed that mentality for me.  We had, by requirements of the program, find families in Burundi to accept volunteers, and care for them as family members for a year.  This is not the same as renting a room, in fact there was an expectation that the families would, for the most part take care of all the SALTers needs, and they would not pay rent. 

I admitted to the families that I was dubious about the possibility of finding such families in Burundi and was not even very comfortable with asking a Burundian family to make a sacrificial committment to care for a rich mzungu.  But I am glad we did this.  It was quite amazing to find that there were families who were willing to do this.  I think it helped to humble me, but also raise the self-esteem of some here who saw themselves as being able to really give to us, and not just be recipients of aid.  (Granted, I think it was more of a mental shift for me, but it was good to share this.  It is something that I admire about MCC, our philosophy of accompaniment rather than 'giving aid' I think, builds the self esteem of those we work with.  That is probably the only really sustainable thing we do.)

 Here is a picture of the cake we had for the dinner.  Fortunately what you can't see in the photos were the thousands of ants that were covering it when we brought it out.  (It is a pain that we get so many in our kitchen.)  But we ate it any way.  The story behind the cake, though is interesting.  It was actually meant to be for Rebecca's Birthday the day before.  We had arranged to have a small gathering with some or our missionary friends at Ubuntu restaurant as well as Zachee, Bridget, and Tim.  I had asked a baker to make a small cake.  (I said 15,000 fbu) on the phone (about $12).  He misunderstood me and made a 3 layer 50,000 fbu cake!  It was like a giant colorful wedding cake and way to big to bring to the restaurant for a small gathering.  So we decided to save it for the party with the SALTers which had a lot more people.  There was also plenty left over to pass on to the families of our staff.  (Not to mention the bits that were enjoyed by the ants.)

Last night we had a fairly crowded house as Jodi, Robyn, and Yolanda stayed the night with us.  (Brandon is still staying at the Horsts.)

So that was Sunday.  The rest of the week was fairly normal, although many of our activities were related to preparing for leaving town for 4 weeks.  Yes, it is finally here, vacation for us begins this Wednesday.  I have not really allowed myself to think about or even anticipate it.  One reason is because we have had to do so much traveling and programming the past 3 weeks, that it would have been a distraction.  But now we have passed our final Thursday through Sunday here and I can begin to get excited about seeing family and friends in the US. 

I am also going to glad to have a short break from Burundi given the security concerns.  Although the US embassy sent out notification that grenade attacks have dropped significantly, we have a new threat.  Al Shabob, the Alqaida connected Somalian rebel group blew up several suicide bombs in Kampala Uganda that killed 60 world cup fans watching the final game.  What is scary for us, is that they warned Uganda and Burundi that they would be attacking the two countries.  This is because these two countries have security forces in Somalia.  So now people are sitting very uneasily in Buj. waiting for a terrorist attack on Burundi.   Despite this, I do have to say that having officially crossed the 2 year mark of living here, I do feel that Burundi is home.  I will enjoy a visit back the US but I am already aware of things and people I will miss while we are away.

I need to leave this morning to drop Oren off at summer school and take a swim before a debriefing meeting with the SALTers.  I am very happy to report that it seems something has changed for him psychologically.  He is speaking french to his little Burundian friends.  (He is the only mzungu in summer school and it makes us feel like pretty hard core missionaries to still be here while most of the other mzungus have cleared out for the summer.)  Oren loves school though and likes to go there and play.  But he was also a gracious host with the Burundian kids from the SALTers families who were over here last night.

I hope he can retain his French over the break.  That it is for now, the next blog I post will be sent from Baltimore!!

Postscript:  I wanted to share an amusing anecdote that definitely falls in the "Africa wins again" category.  It has been an unfolding saga that we have been watching outside our front gate.  They are apparently grading (and maybe eventually cobblestoning) our road.  It has been a cause of some consternation because it has stirred up a lot of dust in an already dry season.  But what I am finding most perplexing and amusing in terms of strategy is this ongoing competition between ditch digging and road grading. 

The process began when about 50 ditch diggers came with shovels and cleared out the large gutter that runs next to our road for the flood waters of the rainy season.  (Most roads have a 2 to 6 foot deep 3 foot wide trench on one or both sides here.)  The ditch diggers cleared the ditch and put all the dirt, several feet high all down the road, on the road.  3 days later a roadgrader came and graded the road and pushed it back in the ditch.  3 days later the ditch diggers dug it out and 3 days after that the grader pushed it back in.  This has happened for about 5 or 6 times.  The grader seems to be winning because the road gets lower and lower and now our concrete driveway is about a one foot drop-off above the road. 

I don't know how this will end or whether it will be done by the time we get back.  But I do not understand what the strategy is beyond employing a lot of people to dig ditches and fill them back in.  Maybe it is because the road graders, donated by some country no doubt, look like they are being driven by people who are learning to use them on-the-job.  I am going to be optimistic that we will come back to our house and find a new road and an empty ditch.