Jetlagged in London, Nairobi, Bujumbura

Jetlagged, David was up at 2am stomping around the Nairobi guesthouse room in my sneakers and brushing his teeth.  Luckily the rest of us were already awake as well. 

As I sit here at 11:30 pm in our family room in Bujumbura, I find it hard to believe that I spent at least half the week in my parents' house in Baltimore.  It already seems like so long ago.  We came back from dinner with Zachee at Khana Kazana the Indian restaurant here about 2 hours ago, and we have been trying to come up with a good plan to get two very jetlagged boys to bed when they feel like it is midafternoon.  They just finished watching a movie and now they are brushing teeth and chasing each other around the bedroom, not promising as far as settling down.

The last two days of our time in Baltimore are a bit of a blur, but I do remember making time for at least a few important events.  One was another hike with Oren, David, Grandma Jean, and the cousins Miriam and Gabriel.  We went to a park called Oregon Ridge.  It was a fairly hot and sticky, but hiking relatively alone through the woods was one of the last events worth savoring.  On Tuesday we went once more to the pool where Miriam and Gabriel's family are members.  Despite the threat of rain, it turned out to be a fine day to swim.

We also squeezed in trips to playgrounds, constructing and deconstructing Granny's trainsets and tinkertoys, driving and peddling the various kids vehicles, and watching family videos like Winnie the Pooh and Pinnochio.

Tuesday night we had a plan for closure, we dropped the kids at Aunt Gwendolyn and Uncle Paul's so they could play with Miriam and Gabriel, while Rebecca and I had dinner with our parents (Bunny and Henry and Dave and Jean).  We had salmon, corn on the cob, and swiss chard, for the meal, then we sat together afterward to reflect on the best and most memorable moments of the time together.  Afterward we prayed in turn.  It was very good to be able to try and say things that one always wants to make sure are said before separating for a long time.  

As a benediction to our time together, my mother shared a psalm #126.  The last verse says this:

5 Those who sow in tears
       will reap with songs of joy.

 6 He who goes out weeping,
       carrying seed to sow,
       will return with songs of joy,
       carrying sheaves with him.

The passage spoke to her, I think because of releasing us to go back, but it spoke to me as I thought about what working in what seems to be in such a desperate context.  I was beginning to feel the clammy, anxious feeling of powerless creeping over me even before we had left the US.  But the image of assistance which does not pretend to be able dry all tears and end the present sorrows, but might offer seeds for a future harvest of joy, is a thought-provoking metaphor.  "He who goes out weeping CARRYING SEEDS TO SOW will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him."

Wednesday was a scripted day to leave.  I had planned to get up very early and do a last run through the woods or perhaps even around a nearby lake,  but when I looked out the window at 7 am it was cold, pouring rain, and looked like it had not started recently, nor would end soon.

Rebecca and I finished packing all of our bags.  We were fully loaded bringing double the number back we had come with.  The grandmothers had their last moments with the kids, then Dave and Jean drove us to Dulles airport, about 3 hours away.  

The trip was gloomy, weather-wise, but without event.  We said our goodbyes to Dave and Jean in the afternoon and headed to our gate for a flight that would depart to London at 7pm.  We got on board the BA 747, watching the rain pelting the windows and took off into the sunset.  

It was a short night as the flight was 6 hours long, but we arrived at Heathrow at 6am the next day.  We had a 5 hour layover in Heathrow where the kids enjoyed running around the transit lounge.  The real exhaustion hit, mercifully as we boarded the second 8 hour flight to Nairobi around noon.  Although it was 8 hours long, we stayed in daylight for most of it.  Despite that, the kids and us slept for a lot of it.  

We got to Nairobi and our guesthouse about 9pm.  By this time, of course the kids were wide awake again.  We struggled to get them and us to try to sleep by 11pm, but we all found ourselves awake at 2 and watched movies, read, and played for several hours before falling asleep just before daybreak.  We all slept in until late morning.  Luckily we had a 2 day layover in Nairobi.

We were treated to a visit in the afternoon by Ruth and Krystan, our service workers in Rwanda who were in Nairobi for the birth of their first baby, a girl, Misha.  They are planning to return to Rwanda as soon as they can get through the paperwork including getting a birth certificate in Kenya so she can get her Canadian passport.  With the speed of Kenyan bureaucracy, my sense is they will be tied up there for some time yet.  (Luckily Ruth's parents work for World Relief in Nairobi so they can stay with them.)

The last leg of our trip was scheduled for a 4am departure from the guesthouse by taxi to catch an 8am plane.  The flight is short, about an hour twenty minutes, but we feared that this particular leg would test us as parents more than the others.  It began well enough: since everyone woke up again at 3am, we were readily to leave easily by 4.

But by the time we got to the airport the testiness of sleepless nights began to set in and Oren's contrariness became especially hard for us to deal with patiently.  We were relieved to get on the plane, but getting off and into the Bujumbura airport was not to easy either in terms of testiness.

Luckily we have resident visas and the processing did not take long.  The sight of Zachee at the other end of the gate was extremely welcoming.  Oren even perked up a bit at seeing Papa Tim.  (Sadly Timmy was not there as he and Bridget are in Canada right now for a short vacation.)

I have to say something here about my anxiety and anticipation about returning:  I am used to the fact that when one returns 'home' to Burundi, and one's domicile, things have always suffered a bit from a far more savage entropy than what we are accustomed to in the US.  Even after short weekend trips upcountry, I wonder what I will come back and find broken or mysteriously 'no longer working.'

When we walked out of the airport with Zachee and found his small toyota waiting to take us home rather than our spacious landcruiser, I did not take it as a good omen.  Between Zachee, me and 2 porters we managed to stuff all of us and our luggage into the car and headed home.  Zachee told me that the battery in my care died the day before and he could not get it fixed before he came.

We had not gone far before we hit a police blockade where we were inspected carefully, then another, then another.  It might have been more intimidating if the police would not break into peals of laughter at seeing a carload of mzungus stuffed together with luggage like a matatu (taxi bus) of Burundians coming from Congo.  They made many cracks about abazungu abakene  (poor white folk).  

The multiple police stops though was a new thing and Zachee told me that the security situation in Burundi is deteriorating as at least one opposition party has fled to the hills and is beginning to train a rebel army.  The threat of an Al Shabbob attack has also seems to be more imminent than ever. 

With no car and a deteriorating security situation, I was wondering if the worst of unpleasant surprises on  our return had about ended.  But it hadn't.  We were surprised to find that the culmination of the battle between the ditch diggers and road graders on our road which had started about a month before we left had now come to the point where there was literally a 4 foot deep moat around the front of our house, our driveway had been demolished and a tree next to our gate pulled out.  The day before our staff had had some help filling in with stones and boulders a makeshift driveway across the ditch so we could even enter with a car, but it was pretty unbelievable.

The repair on this will not be happening soon. Here in Burundi, the department of interior does things one step at a time.  They plan to do all the ditch digging and demolish every driveway in the entire quartier before beginning rebuilding.  So they have weeks of work to do.  The bad thing about this way of working is that if and when they run out of money, they stop working, no matter where in the project they are.  It appears they ran out this past week.  

By comparison, the further disappointments of finding our electricity out, our internet not working and our cell phones and landlines all nonfunctional seemed like small stuff.  Fortunately our house sitter Spencer was fine and the house seemed in good repair otherwise.  

(Trust me, all the things mentioned above were not the fault of anyone's incompetence, Things Fall Apart here and just about everything requires maintenance at least once a month.  Everything that happened all happened in the last couple of days.)

Despite our thorough exhaustion, we did need to put on a short act of hospitality and politeness for a few well wishers who had come over to greet us as we drove in the driveway.  (A Burundian tradition I am not crazy about).  We spent Saturday sleeping and unpacking, feeling somewhere between lethargic and numb most of the rest of the day and night.  

We spent another sleepless night with kids getting up but not on the same schedule.  But we did not want to miss church.  Zachee had been able to deliver our car back to us, but when we loaded in and tried to drive, it did not start.  So we called a cab and went to church.  Fortunately arriving a bit late to a 3 hour service is not too problematic.

It was really good to see our church friends!  I am glad we are part of that faith community and they were happy to see us too.  We were also thrilled to see Charles and Val Carr, our Scottish friends of yore who were bringing a mission team to Burundi.  We will have dinner with them on Tuesday.

We finished off the day with Zachee taking us to Club du Lac T for a swim then, as I said at the beginning, dinner at Khanna Kazana.

Well the kids fell asleep, finally, with Rebecca in our bed while I was finishing this.  I am looking forward to tomorrow when we can begin to solve the problems that greeted us on our return.  My goal is to have a car and phone that work by the end of the day.  I am glad I took time to reflect and savor the moments while we were vacationing with our families, but now the time for resolve and action is again at hand!