I will take a break from discussing the ongoing construction outside our house (or lack thereof) and get right to the week. Actually I can't resist mentioning that most of the people doing the heavy labor of ditchdigging are women. Women generally do the heavy manual labor around here and probably use the money they receive for working more wisely than their male counterparts. But that is for another blog.
This was to be a very important week that began with interviews on Monday for someone to replace Zachee. Anyone who hires staff knows the great challenge of trying to find the right person. This is only magnified cross-culturally, especially when we only have one national staff person working with MCC. Besides qualifications there are numerous other considerations including gender, ethnicity, etc. all of which WILL be factors in the way this person is perceived and will be able to relate to other Burundians.
The question of language is also important. How much English should we insist upon?
We interviewed about 5 individuals from the applications we recieved. The choice was very difficult as all were qualified and brought different strengths, but we did finally pick one of them who I will be writing more about in future posts. (We will sign a contract tomorrow.)
We felt under a lot of pressure to complete all the interviews by Tuesday because I had plans to go upcountry with Yolanda on Wednesday to spend a couple days there to help find her a place to live, and then take her up to Burasira to stay with Jodi for a couple weeks in Kirundi language intensive. All of this was complicated by the fact that our cook Marcelline who does some babysitting when we need it, was sick with typhoid all last week and unavailable to help us out with David.
Marcelline is feeling better at this writing, and after this week David will be less of an issue as Tuesday he begins preschool at a Montessori school here. He will be at school the same times as Oren, which means that Rebecca and I will have mornings to work together in the near future.
So despite all of the setbacks, we did manage to finish our interviews and I was off with Yolanda on Wednesday morning after a couple hours of frantic errands to try and pick up some things for Jodi.
We got to Gitega in the afternoon and met the leaders of the partner organization Yolanda will be working with. The first day of hunting was quite fruitless. They had not done much prep. work so they did not really know of any houses available. The second more difficult problem, though was a cultural gap between what they believed a mzungu would be willing to live in, and what Yolanda was wanting.
Yolanda is fairly 'hard core' culturally. She had just spent a year living with a Burundian family in SALT and felt she could live in a small house (2 bedroom) somewhere in the 'popular quarter', which is also a Swahili (Islamic) area where many of the average Burundian urban dwellers live. Our partner's perception is that a mzungu lives in a large 4 bedroom house with a garden in the neighborhood where UN folks live.
On Thursday we continued the search and she rejected several of the latter, large, UN style houses we were shown. Whenever she suggested looking in the popular quarter they would litterally laugh at the idea. Feeling a bit frustrated by the impasse, I asked the 3 of them to show us their own houses where they live.
I have to say, it was quite sobering to see the kind of dwellings these folks live in. Fidelle (a single woman) lived in a tiny room that was part of a larger enclosure of such rooms, There was a dirt courtyard in the middle, tons of kids, an outdoor charcoal grill for a kitchen and a latrine for a bathroom.
Jean Pierre, lived in a tiny 4 room house with no wall around it with his wife and 5 kids. When we arrived, the living room had a couch and some chairs with naked wooden slats and no cushions. They quickly ran to the backroom to bring us some cushions to sit on, they had about 6 but were missing about 10. They told us that bandits came in and stole them at one time. There was very little else in the place to steal, frankly. There were no pictures or anything else on the walls, and again no kitchen or bathroom in the house.
Willy also showed us the house of his brother who is a baker. It was again very tiny, but walled with a courtyard in the middle about the size of a small living room, his 5 children were running around in it. He did, to our surprise, have a small set of rooms for rent within the enclosure and wanted about $70 per month. It had no electricity, or interior bathroom or indoor kitchen, but the idea intrigued Yolanda of renting it.
We were also shown another possibility by a nun who had a place for rent. We had met her when we stayed the night at a Catholic guesthouse that was very nice. The first house she showed us was way too big, but we noticed there was a smaller attached house on the back of it, actually 4 rooms and a small separate outside kitchen in a small house (like a small brick tool shed.) It had a separate entrance and was very private (not in the popular quarter). It was roughly the same size as Willy's brothers' house. Rent was about $150 per month.
We now felt we had two choices that she could consider. They represented 2 radically different experiences. One was really living 'with the people' the other was almost like living in a private cloister.
We left town Thursday afternoon not having made a decision, and we talked about it on the way to Burasira. Although, I think she would have liked to make the 'popular' choice, the big problem that concerned her was not the lack of ammenities, but what would become a complete lack of privacy.
The sad truth is that our Burundian friends who laughed at the very idea of a mzungu in the popular quarter were wrong about their premises, but right about the consequences. (in the words of sociologist Max Weber "That which is perceived to be true, is true in its consequences.) That is: Burundians believe that a mzungu could not live in that area because mzungus are rich and live in huge houses and drive in big cars so they could not live in poor conditions. --this is true of some but not all of us who come here.
BUT because of this perception, seeing a mzungu living in the quarter would cause such astoundment that we realized she would be endlessly surrounded by people who would come to stare, gawk, and pursue her for money and other types of assistance. It would probably be impossible to be out of the gaze of the many children even in the back recesses of her small rooms. Yolanda had to face the fact that this would probably become intolerable. The sad truth was, our partners were right in that their concern was a self-fulfilling prophesy. We decided on the more conservative house where she would be more alone, especially given that her much of her work would be concentrated in a cross cultural poor village context.
Seeing Jodi was good and she affirmed our decision. She has been living in a village for 2 years now, but has a private, walled house and still feels quite invaded at times. She said that having some private space was very important, particularly when one is out of one's own culture.
We had arrived in Burasira in the afternoon and spent the evening talking with Jodi. I left fairly early on Friday morning to try to get back home in time to pick up Oren from school (I did not make it.) Yolanda stayed with Jodi to work on language.
Rebecca, all this time had been in Buj with the boys and had had to take Oren to school by taxi with David in tow as Marcelline was sick all week. Spencer (our housesitter) left to go back to college on Thursday night, so by the time I got back the house was empty of all staff and guests. It was actually kind of nice to be alone as a family for the first time since returning from the US.
It has been raining daily, but Saturday afternoon we did go to Lake Tanganyika to swim, and I have put the pictures from the outing on the blog this week. (sorry for the lack of pictures from Gitega, I forgot my camera, but will send some pictures of Yolanda's place once we get her installed.)
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