Driving Back Into it with a Visit Upcountry

Our driveway as we found it when we returned from the US, it is very narrow as well.

The discipline of writing comes from doing out on a schedule rather than when I 'feel' like it.  Sunday night is getting late, we are home from a birthday party for Ella, the 2 year old daughter of our service workers Nate and Lara.  It was a nice party and we saw several people we don't get to see to often.  Kids are now in bed and Rebecca, Spencer and I are having a 'mac party' sitting around our back room all in our own private computer world.

This was definitely a week to shake off any cobwebs of vacation lethargy and tackle some of the urgencies left untended during our absence.   Monday through Wednesday was calm enough, primarily spent in relational work--making phone calls, visiting and receiving friends, reconnecting with service workers, etc.  We met Zachee Monday and had dinner with him.  Among the things we discussed in this meeting was his plan to step down from his position at MCC and the plan for hiring a replacement.  (He has been with MCC for 10 years and wants to go back to his civil engineering career.)  It will be sad for us to see him go, but I understand that it is the right thing for him to do professionally.  I have no doubt that Oren and Timmy will remain friends and I hope we will see Bridget and Zachee as regularly even when he does not work with MCC. 

On Tuesday the climax of the day was dinner, when we hosted a group of short term missionaries from Scotland led by none other than our dear friends Val and Charles Carr!!  They have been the subject of past blogs but had left Burundi about a year and a half ago.  (We are forever indebted to them for helping us move into the house they were renting and leaving a trampoline in it.)  We had a smashing evening together and in some ways it felt like they had never left.  (Although they were not making this trip with their children.)  They had come to check up on the orphanage project they had worked on when they were here and had brought some other friends and benefactors to see the work.  We had dinner and told stories about the 'good old days'.  It was great to see them again, although it did remind us of how hard it has been for us to create a really good small sharing group here with all the turnover of ex pats.  There are few people here that we have had such a connection with as them.

Wednesday was another work day although I did squeeze in an opportunity to swim as well.  The first time I have done so since being back.  I was sad to add the opaque look of the water to my list of disappointments upon returning.  It seems that their filter broke, they ran out of chlorine, or something else, but I can no longer see the bottom of the pool.  I am going to hope they fix this soon.

Thursday we planned to head upcountry to visit Jodi in Burasira.  I have to admit I was not relishing the idea of the long treacherous drive up the mountain and then the hour or two on the very dusty road that goes from the closest town to the small community where she lives.  To make it even more complicated, Thursday was the Presidential inaguration and we had heard rumors of extensive road closures and delays in the city as well as some security concerns as there was to be a large presence of foreign dignitaries.

Nonetheless we headed up about 10am without incident.  The drive turned out to be a pleasant one as the weather was cool and there was not much traffic on the road up the mountain.  We arrived at Jodi's in the afternoon and I was amused to hear David immediately start shouting "Cows! Cows!" as soon as we could see the seminary next to her house.  I was surprised he remembered our past visits and seeing the barns of the seminary farm which housed cows, pigs and rabbits.  As soon as we let him out of the car, he headed straight down the road to the stables rather than into Jodi's gate, with Oren following close behind.

The kids really enjoy being in Burasira and running around the gardens, the seminary cloisters, and Jodi's yard.  They also like to help dig in the garden.  

Jodi was doing well and the big news for her was the purchase of a tiny parcel of land where she hoped to grow chick peas.  We walked over to it (about 20 mins from her house) to see it with the kids in the late afternoon.  As usual, we were followed by a large group of children, fascinated by David and Oren.  I was not prepared though for the 'culture shock' of meeting the farmer in the plot next to Jodi's.  His family had a small shack where his wife, and 4 children lived.  I could not believe how emaciated the arms and legs of the kids were and their bellies bloated with worms or because of malnutrition.  They smiled at us nonetheless and greeted us politely.   I was struck by the strangeness of the 2 landowners, with roughly the same size parcels of land: a college prof cum missionary and an uneducated peasant with a wife and kids.  

Jodi had some plans to help ammeliorate the situation in the community a bit.  Tilling in Burundi is done with a hoe, so tilling her field involved hiring about a dozen people to work 10 hours a day for a week hoeing.  I asked her how much the going day wage was here and she said 50 cents a day, (although she is planning to pay 75 cents).  She is planning to hire some of the poorer members of the community to help.   She also hoped to hire the poor neighbor to be a guard for her property as stealing crops from a field is a matter of course here.

One concern she had was the problem of fairness.  It has always been our experience that whenever one does something, especially involving opportunity for making money it is often met by more resentment from those who do not benefit directly than gratitude by those who get to earn it.  The saying "no good deed goes unpunished" is certainly applicable here.  Jodi was aware of this, but it is always hard to hear complaints about her efforts to do something positive in the community that is not just a matter of direct charity.

Rebecca made an interesting observation based on the parable Jesus told about the landowner who hired people in the morning, then afternoon, and then evening, and paid them all the same, a day's wage.  In the parable the one's who happily agreed to work in the morning for the wage, were resentful when they found that everyone got the same wage for the work they did no matter when they started.  The master rebuked them for focusing on comparison rather than the generosity of the master whose perogative it was to pay what he chose to whom he chose--after all, all received a full day's wage, no one received less.  

Jesus tells the parable to talk about grace and the fact that all receive it fully, not based on work, but based on God's generosity, no matter when one recieves salvation.  But it does point out the fact that grace is not 'fair'.  And this was something the teachers of the law always struggled with.

But looking at the parable as a lesson for development workers, Rebecca pointed out that when you give something good or generous, that blesses some, it is always impossible to please everyone.  Every action produces some negative and some positive results.  It will please some and displease others EVEN when all receive some net benefit at the end of the day.  That should not be a reason to do nothing, but just an important thing to remember about human nature.

We went back to Jodi's house and spent the night Thursday which featured garden vegetables she has grown including an arugula salad which was delicious.

Friday was going to be a test for Rebecca and me.  We had an important meeting scheduled with Jodi and her supervisors at our partner organization.  The problem was, the meeting was to take place in Gitega, the nearest town an hour and a half away by car on a very difficult road.  We planned to go in the morning, have the meeting, then come back to Burasira in the late afternoon.  The problem was, what to do with the children.  Rebecca and I both needed to be in the meeting so even if we brought Oren and David, they would need child care.

Jodi proposed leaving the children with her very trustworthy cook and gardener, (the cook is a mother so she knows about childcare, the garden is an energetic young man).  After long consideration, weighing the pros and cons, we decided this was the best option.  Oren and David did not seem to mind being left at Jodi's and the farm when we departed.  The cook and gardener planned to take them for walks to see the animals and let them play outdoors, color, etc.  The hard thing for Rebecca and me is that this would be the first time we left the two children alone while we went to do work in another place more than 5 minutes away.

The drive to Gitega went well enough (serious carsickness notwithstanding) and we had an excellent meeting with Innocent and Beatrice, the husband and wife directors of UCEDD, our partner organization that runs the Hope School for the Batwa.  They are such interesting people and always shed new light on many things we are doing.  They did observe, for instance, that the purchase of land had created some tension in the community over who Jodi was buying it 'for'.  (The idea that a mzungu bought it for herself for personal use is not a very comprehensible idea for the community.)  But Beatrice had helped to make them understand that this is what had happened.  

We also talked about what Jodi would be doing for the school this year and it seems she will focus on developing an English curriculum for the primary school and train teachers to teach it.  The discussion was very good and she left feeling very good about her mandate for this year.  

We drove once again down the dusty road to Burasira, anxious to get back, and arrived about 4pm.  We found David playing quietly in the living room with cars and Oren digging in the garden.  They barely looked up at our arrival.  It seems they had amused themselves the whole day and were quite content, even without an excessive amount of high technology, video games, etc. to entertain them.  We asked the cook how they had been and she assured us that they had behaved very well and were quite happy the whole day.

That evening we had dinner at the seminary with the priests.  We have come to know them well over the past 2 years and we wanted to say Hi, especially because 2 of them were going to be return to their diocesse, having completed their 'terms' as teachers there.  Abbe Deo, and the Pere Econome (financial manager) were both leaving.  They had been very helpful in getting Jodi set up at her house (which we rent from the seminary) and we were sorry to hear they would be leaving.)

It was a very nice evening, where we sipped a bit of pineapple wine (preferring that to banana beer) that is made at the seminary by the nuns, and ate a delicious Burundian meal.  Oren was very polite and greeted all the priests in french.  David was a bit more difficult as he constantly tried to escape out the dining room door to run down the hall to the place where they keep a pet monkey.  (David has not ceased to be an animal lover.)

We left Saturday morning for the trip back to Bujumbura.  It was not one of our better journeys.  Rebecca became extremely car sick and the kids were very impatient to be done with the ride.  We arrived exhausted around 2pm.  Unfortunately there were a few urgent errands waiting for us when we got back and I ended up running around for several more hours after that.  By 4pm though we went to the pool for a brief swim then had a pizza dinner at Ubuntu restaurant with our South African missionary friends Tim and Jeanette and their daughter Isabel.  It was good to see them and find out about how they have been doing.

Sunday we went back to church and were blessed to see some friends who had returned from our early times here.  Galen and Delia and their 2 sons were visiting Burundi for some business.  They had left a year and a half ago because she had had a cancer diagnosis.  She is still taking chemo, but she looked well and it was good to hear Galen preach.  Galen and Delia had also been part of our prayer and share group when we were first here in Burundi so it was interesting to see them here the same week we had seen the Carrs.

Sunday evening we went to the Horsts for a Birthday party for their daughter Ella (2).  It was a nice visit and Oren was quite happy to see his friend Jal again (their 7 year old).

I am finishing this blog Monday morning after my swim.  The photo at the top, showing the rocks that were put in the ditch as a makeshift driveway is no longer accurate.  They took the stones after I left, leaving our car, for the time being, stranded outside the house.  It is hard, because I tried to reason with them that it made no sense to destroy the driveways before they were ready to rebuild (and it is weeks before!).  I swear it was liking trying to reason with Oren about putting away his legos before he dumped out all his blocks.  They just stared at the crazy ranting mzungu shaking their heads in glassy-eyed incomprehension then went about their business.
  

Bonus photo:  Here is a family portrait we had done in the US when we were home.  It came out really well in my opinion.