Burkina Faso Part 2: Going Home

Some chickens we were given as a gift during a field visit to an irrigation project.

For those of you who have been waiting to hear from us, we have emerged out of ‘radio silence’ and are back online again.  This is the first week I was actually unable to get to an interconnection at all for more than 7 days.  This was not due to the fact that there is no internet in Burkina Faso, but not at the place we were staying, which was not very close to town.  Our schedule of meetings did not really permit any time to go off to the city to download or upload.

So now I am back in Burundi with Oren and David, Rebecca is still in Burkina, and that is the tale I will tell now.

I left off on the last entry explaining that we had ended the week by traveling to Burkina Faso for Central West Africa regional meetings.  Like most places out here, getting to it entails making an overnight stop in either Nairobi or Addis Ababa depending on whether you want to fly Kenya or Ethiopian Airlines. 

Burkina is more or less a desert, although it does remind me of places I have been in Mexico, only much less developed.  Oagadugu, the capital city is large, although it is does not seem really well planned.  There are more things available here than in Bujumbura, but I would not trade the climate in Burundi for anything Burkina Faso might have to offer.

By Sunday evening we had all arrived, reps from Burkina Faso, Congo, Chad, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, as well as area director Mark Sprunger and Africa Director Bruce Campbell-Jantz.  We had several days of productive meetings and even did a field visit to an irrigation project in a nearby commune.

What I have been most struck by here, is the fact that this country is so desperately poor and low on the UN Human Development Index, eventhough they have not had any kind of war for at least 3 decades.  Literacy, for example, is about 21%.  Even more remarkable is that Burkina Faso is a country with large Christian, Muslim and traditional belief populations who live together peacefully.  In fact, in a single family, people of different beliefs will live together in harmony.  This is quite a contrast to neighboring Nigeria where inter-religious tension and violent conflict is on the rise. 

It is a bit perplexing to me that a country that has enjoyed peace and stability for several decades can be so desperately poor.  Even the AIDS rate is quite low, but again, it does not seem to help much as far as life expectancy.  Probably the biggest problem is the very arid climate.

I have to admit after spending 5 days in this flat, dry desert country, I was feeling grateful to be working in the relatively cool, lush climate of Burundi.

The CWARM meetings ended Thursday and Friday morning people were starting to head back to their countries.  However, prior to arriving, Virginia Lepp, the Country Rep. for Burkina Faso and Chad, asked us if we might be able to stay a few extra days and lead a team retreat for their team.

We thought about it and realized it would mean Oren would miss part of another week of school.  After some consideration, we decided that Rebecca with her pastoral experience would stay and lead most of it, while I would return home with the kids to start school.  I would get home Sunday, and she would get back by Tuesday.

We had considered other scenarios including leaving David with her, but realized that this would complicate leading a retreat with one child in tow.  On top of that, David has not been very well, as far as sinus infections and other bronchial issues and did not seem to be improving in the Burkina climate.

On Friday, we met the Chad team who had arrived for the retreat and learned that Chad is basically a hotter, more arid, poorer version of Burkina Faso mired in conflict.  It sounded like a very tough assignment.

I was happy to be part of the retreat the first day, and in fact, introduced the topic, which was based on some sermon ideas Rebecca and I have been working with.  In brief, we took the four ideas:

Poverty is a spiritual problem

Evangelism must be holistic, considering soul AND body,

Transformation of a society must begin with the individual

Our Lord is a God of hope for a future generation

And worked them into opportunities for personal reflection on one’s assignment.  There were 3 SALTers and several other service workers.  I also led an exercise class (in an airconditioned conference room) for the group which they really loved on Friday evening.

Saturday morning we said goodbye to Rebecca and the boys and I headed to the airport.  I began to really think hard about what I had committed myself to—about 36 hours of travel with 2 young children in tow.  I had David in our travel backpack with all of his bottles, diapers, etc, a briefcase with laptop, and Oren was pulling has travel toy bag.  We checked everything else.

I am glad Burkina is a francophone country so I can communicate easily at the airport.  I got through immigration and customs with little problem.  The first day of air travel was very, very, very long.  We spent several hours in Togo on the ground on the first leg waiting for people to join our plane.  Then we had the long flight back to Addis Ababa.  We flew from midday into late night, which was quite surreal, sitting in the last row of the dark plane, cramped in with Oren and David, trying to keep them entertained or getting them to sleep.  

The small but essential mercy was that there was one extra seat in the plane and the person assigned to share the 3 seat row with us was able to move and give us all the seats.  Otherwise I would have had to go about 12 hours the first day with David in my lap, crammed in the middle seat of the Boeing 737.  (I had forgotten, when I volunteered to do this, that we had not bought David a ticket.)

I must say, no matter how modern travel becomes, riding a plane, especially in these circumstances, always reminds me vaguely of stories of crossing the ocean stuffed into the hull of some steam ship-maybe riding 3^rd class in the Titanic.  A crowded plane in coach is small, and at night you feel you are in some kind of bouncy tube hurtling through the invisible night sky.  There was a melancholic adult movie about a middle aged woman, whose husband worked too much for the UN, came close to having an affair with one of his Syrian colleagues,  It was set in Cairo and had a heavy sort of Michael Nyman piano score  (Cairo Time).  It added to the disjunctional weirdness of it all.

We arrived in Addis about 10 pm and I think out of sympathy, airport officials helped me get through the transit process quickly and to a hotel for the short overnight.  (I like that Ethiopian Airlines gives you a free hotel when you stay overnight.)  The boys were actually very good but fell asleep right when we got to the hotel at 11pm, so we missed dinner.  The night was a bit restless as we shared a bed, and I noticed David was running a low fever.  But no one woke up until morning.

The night was too short as we had to have breakfast at 6am (4am Burkina time) and head back to the airport.  We arrived there quite early and spent 3 more hours at the gate but finally boarded the plane to Bujumbura.  We did make a stopover in Kigali, but got back to Burundi by about 2pm Burundi time.  We breezed through the airport thanks to our resident visas.

Felix was there to pick us up at the airport.  I was wiped out.  We went home and after bidding goodbye to several friends who stopped in to greet us, the boys and I settled in to play, jump on the trampoline, have dinner, and unpack a bit.

I started David on antibiotics, and the boys are sleeping comfortably in my bed tonight.  It is good to be home and through that ordeal.  Rebecca gets back on Tuesday so I will need to get the boys off to and back from school for 2 days, but that will seem like a piece of cake compared to traveling with them for 2 days.

The house was in good condition when I came back, the wall is back up, and the friend we left Bella with, was able to successfully breed her, so we are hoping to have puppies here in a couple months.  

Thanks all who have kept us in prayer, hopefully even more so when you hadn’t heard from us for a week.  I will ask Rebecca give her report when she gets back in the next entry.