It has been my experience, as late, that if one child spikes a fever and the other one comes into your bed that same night and begins throwing up, it is a safe bet that the next day is a family travel day.
Many of you know from the last post that we are out of Bujumbura this week in Burkina Faso where we are having our annual regional meetings. I will begin by saying that we are all indeed here, despite the challenges of the voyage, but let me back up again to the beginning of the week since we did not begin our travel until Saturday.
I feel like I need to acknowledge another week, with gratitude, that no child missed a day of school because illness. I cannot say the same thing for our staff. We have in fact, it seems, rarely seen our three workers (Marcelline our cook, Odifax our cleaner, and Gaspard our night guard) all on the same day at all in the past two weeks. This is not only been due to their own illnesses, but in the case of Gaspard and Odifax, their wives and children have been down with malaria as well.) Gaspard has had it particularly hard, with his wife, having just borne their fifth child, sick with malaria. They live up country so we have had to give Gaspard extended days of leave in the past three weeks to go up and care for them. Just when it seems all were getting well, his father died this past week and he had to ask for another week off as he is the oldest son in the family and responsible for all burial arrangements and inheritance settlements.
Odifax usually substitutes for Gaspard at night, for an overtime bonus, but this puts a strain on him when he works both days and nights. (We give him half days off when he does this.)
Marcelline has been down with typhoid, amoeba and other parasites off and on this past month.
All of this is challenging enough on a regular week, but on this week before leaving it came to a real head as we are continuing to host Jimi Juma the South Africa peace rep and his wife Dina who are staying at our house still waiting for a visa. On top of that, our next door neighbor knocked down the wall between our houses to repair some cracks in the foundation, AND Bella our golden retriever, went into heat, and has been escaping out our neighbor’s frequently open gate.
So when Odifax told us that a new family emergency involving a brother in Rwanda necessitated his leaving over the weekend, we really felt like we were being tested to the point of breaking, especially since it was the weekend we were leaving town.
In short, much of our week involved working through the logistics of leaving our home for a week with no staff, 2 guests, a dog in heat and a broken wall. I won’t go into all the deals we made but somehow we did manage to farm Bella out to a friend who is hoping for a puppy when we breed her, and found another friend to do night guard duty for a few days this past weekend. (I should note that Jimmy’s wife Dina did step in to help with the cooking and marketing a few times this past week as well.)
I am hoping that our staff will be back this week we are gone and the wall gets built, God willing things will be less problematic in our absence.
Before our big travel day this past Saturday, I made a trip up to Gitega on Wednesday to check in on Yolanda. I am kicking myself for not bringing my camera because she has really made her little house into a home. She even admits that chartreuse walls have grown on her. She has most rooms up set up for her and I brought her some more chairs and a bed for the guest room. The kitchen looks great, yet simple, and she has a nice dining room. We have ordered her a wicker couch from a local artisans collective which should arrive next week.
The only thing that remains a problem is the water. I knew it might be, and she confirmed that Gitega does not have water at least some part of every day and sometimes there is none several days at a time. I gave her permission to have the sisters arrange for a small water tower to be put up on the property which MCC would pay for.
After visiting her, went to together and had a lunch, actually an official commissioning ceremony for her beginning life in Gitega, with our partner UCPD. There were four of them eating lunch with Yolanda and I at a restaurant. Sharing food and fantas, as I have mentioned is an extremely important way of expressing solidarity.
When we were done, Yolanda and I both realized there were several items in Bujumbura that she needed, so on the spur of the moment we decided she should come back with me, pick them up and take a bus back up the next day. We headed down the mountain that afternoon and arrived in time for dinner. Fortunately Gitega is only 2 hours away on paved roads, so traveling back and forth is not particularly difficult.
Thursday evening was special because Rebecca and I, in the midst of this very hectic week, had actually arranged to have a date night! We have some missionary friends here, an older English couple, who offered to watch the kids at our house. It was really nice to be able to do this, we went out to a restaurant we like in town, which honestly, on the inside feels like a place in Soho, New York City, rather than a third world country. (It is run by a Belgian woman, I believe.)
Friday we did our best to tie up all the lose ends left at work, made sure all of our service workers had enough money for the week, and began packing for our trip on Saturday. (You know you are getting to be an expert traveler when you don’t begin packing for a 10 day trip until the night before you leave.)
Saturday: Our flight was leaving at 2:30 which means we we going to head to the airport at noon, we decided to go ahead and invite our friends over for morning exercise and brunch. I though it would be good to be able to some stretching before 2 days of flying. We had a big group as several couples with kids in Oren’s school came as well as some Danish students here doing a short term internship.
Felix picked us up at our house at noon and we headed to the airport.
I should say a bit about the geography of flying to Burkina Faso and you may want to look at a map to follow along. It is in West Africa, and like most countries over there, it is nearly impossible to fly there in any direct way, even if you are in a contiguous country. We chose to take Ethiopian airlines from Bujumbura to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) which means heading East to go West, then take a 9 hour flight from there the next morning across the continent to Oagadugu (the capital of Burkina Faso).
The nice thing about Ethiopian is that they put you up for a night free in a hotel between the two legs of the trip.
I was a bit surprised to see, on our arrival, that the plane were would take from Bujumbura to Addis was a turbo-prop and not a jet. I am not unaccustomed to smaller planes, but not usually to travel a distance between two points that I can actually distinguish on a map of the world. I wondered how long it would take.
As it turned out it was a brand new generation of smaller (60 passenger planes) that is really not bad, cramped, but the engines are extremely quiet. The flight took 3 hours and would have been comfortable had we bought a ticket for David and not had to have him sit in our laps.
When we got to Addis we met the Hartman-Sauders, one of the other families on the way to CWARM (the name of the meeting—Central West Africa Regional Meetings). I felt really sorry for them because they were coming from Nigeria which is very close to Burkina Faso, but had to fly across the entire continent to Addis and fly back across, over Nigeria to go West to Burkina Faso (like going LA to San Francisco via New York). Brenda, Mark, with their kids Valerie and Greg seemed no worse for the wear as they are quite used to traveling having been out on the mission field with MCC for the past 5 years or so.
We all stayed at the same hotel in Addis, but did not visit much as we were all pretty beat and went to bed right after dinner. (about 9:30 Addis time)
Oren and David are definitely getting used to travel. Oren is almost completely self-sufficient, packing his little wheeled flight bag with small treasures and coloring books to play with on the plane. David still wants to run up and down the aisles whenever possible and does not really watch any movies if they are available. He was notably disappointed to not have his own seat on this trip, but he does not cry or throw tantrums when we are in the plane and usually takes at least one long nap.
Sunday: The leg to Burkina Faso was long! We stopped briefly in Togo on the way. But we did get there, fairly exhausted, but this is where the real challenge began. I should note that on the flight besides us and the Hartman-Sauders, were Gopar the West Africa Peace rep, and Suzanne Lind the MCC Congo rep. (Addis is one of two hubs to West Africa destinations.) So we were 9 in all heading to this conference on this flight.
Without meaning to offend, I would say that on first impression, coming into the airport, that what Burkina Faso lacks in charm it seems to makes up for in heat.
This is a very flat, dry country, one of the least developed in the entire world. The airport does not make a great impression, at least at this time while it is under construction. Essentially we arrived and were processed in a warehouse with a dirt floor. We had to spend about an hour filling out paper work for visas for which they wanted extensive documentation, $200 per person, 2 photos, and then kept our passports for which we must return to pick up 2 days later.
The kids were beginning to lose it at this point. To add to the challenge there was no access to a bathroom until one passed through the immigration process. (Another long story short, Oren peeed into an empty water bottle at one point in the ordeal.)
It was a marginal improvement to emerge from the crowded makeshift airport into the blazing heat of Oagadugu, but we did get to ride an airconditioned car to our retreat site.
The place is called Lambila Beach Hotel, and while there is a reservoir in the area, there was nothing resembling a beach. In fact, like everything here, the grounds are mainly comprised of dry dirt. Despite this there were several redeeming features: a small pool, and airconditioned rooms as well as some playground-like features.
One thing that we did discover is that there is no internet access so posting this will have to wait a week, at least. Hopefully no one has been too worried about the late posting.
More about the Burkina trip in the next entry.
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