David's 2 year-old Halloween Birthday

Birthday Boy David in his mouse costume for his party on Halloween weekend.


Among the dearly held lies I cling to most fervently, is the one I call 'routine'.  In order to continue to work here in a way that is life giving, I need to believe that there is some pattern to life here, despite all evidence to the contrary.  For me, the routine for the work week involves me waking up at about 5:45 am, making coffee and getting breakfast for the kids ready, getting them ready for school and Rebecca and I ready for work.  We take the kids to school at 8 then go to the pool to swim a mile followed by about 20 minutes of Bible reading and devotional.  By 9:15 I am refreshed and ready for work.  Rebecca and I work to noon then pick up the kids at their schools and share lunch, in the afternoon we split the work shift depending on the day of the week.  We usually have dinner around 6 and then get the kids bathed and to bed by 8:30 giving us about 2 hours of time together after the children are asleep.  There are larger weekly rhythms of fasting Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday morning prayer group, Saturday exercise and Sunday Church and Bible study that give form to the week as well.

In order to believe in this lie, one must ignore the nagging fact that travel and other urgencies continue to disrupt this rhythm more than 50% of the time.  In the last month alone, I don't think I have been in Buj. for more than 1 five day week.  This is hard, but I do persist in professing this routine that gives me joy and resilliancy in the challenging work we do here.  Yes, I do know that there are those who are trapped in rigid, life-sapping routines, unable to escape the rote repetition of endless unaltering days, but that is not my experience here, and a little more regularity would be very welcome.

This week was another exception to the rule although I was in town the whole time.  Last Monday, at last posting, I had returned from Burkina Faso with the boys and was awaiting Rebecca's return.  I did feel blessed that neither child was sick on those two days and I got them to school and went to Entente Sportive to find that the pool had been completely refilled.  I worked in the mornings and it was good to be connected with Felix our program assistant who had abley handled the responsibilities of administering the program in our absence.

I picked up Rebecca on Tuesday after morning school.  I went to the airport about 1pm with David and Oren together since Oren had to return to school by 2.  Rebecca's flight was on time and she was waiting for us in the parking lot when we pulled up.

It was great to be all together again, and we dropped Oren at school on the way home, then I went to teach ballet when we picked him up in the afternoon.  By evening we were happy to be all together and enjoyed family time.  Family included Bella our dog as well, who we picked up that day as well.  She is, thanks to the breeding efforts of Allison our dog sitter, carrying a litter of puppies we expect to be born around Christmas eve.

 Wednesday morning started well, enough, I went to morning prayer.  Rebecca and I were preparing this week to host 2 visitors from MCC Canada and CFGB (Canadian Food Grains Bank).  Their names are Betty and Theresa for future reference.  They are here doing a monitoring visit of one of our parnters, Help Channel, as Help Channel has a large grant with them for a food security program they are running.

We are happy they are here, but it does mean a busy week for us.  They arrived on Sunday and had been upcountry on field visits and we expecting to welcome them to our house on Thursday.  However, we got a call Wednesday evening saying Theresa had sprained her ankle and they were heading back to Buj and could they stay with us then.  We were happy to accept them a day early.

Thursday then began 2 days of all day meetings.  Because MCC administers the grant one of us had to be there to be part of the discussion.  Rebeca opted to stay with the kids in the afternoon while I went to the meetings.  Friday was the same thing only David had no school so she had to watch him all day while I was in meetings from 8 to about 6pm.

It was difficult, but good to have the program officers at CFGB and MCC Canada meet our partner and put faces with the project names.  We have a lot of confidence in the integrity of our partners and I think Help Channel and Cassien made a very good impression.  It was also a chance for Betty and Theresa to explain what CFGB is and how farmers and other small contributers pool grain and money to provide food to those in need of food relief or food security.  CFGB grants are matched by CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) so they are able to make fairly large grants.  This does mean there is a greater responsibility for us here in the field to see that these resources are not misused.

I was very happy that Help Channel made a good impression on them by the end of our Friday meetings.  We all went home fairly beat from looking at budgets, final reports and crunching numbers all day.

It was good to get the weekend, finally.  Theresa's flight left Saturday around noon, but Betty stayed until Sunday which meant she became an automatic guest to David's 2nd Birthday party!

The Birthday Party was Saturday afternoon.  I am glad that Rebecca had been thinking ahead enough to invite some people before we left for Burkina Faso.  This year we planned to remedy the fact that there is no Halloween in Burundi by having David's party be a costume party.  It sounded like a good idea in theory, but as the day approached, we realized that any costume the kids would have would have to be home-made from scratch as there are no pre made costumes here.

We asked Oren what he wanted to be, an he said an elephant. Rebecca worked to make an elephant head out of some cardboard cereal boxes and a pair of old gray socks of mine.  She actually did a very good job.  I worked on making a mouse costume for David complete with ears and tail.

They both looked very cute and did very well in the costume contest.  The other popular costume was a pirate and several of the kids (boys and girls as well as adults) were dressed as bucaneers.

I also made a very nice piniata that could be raised and lowered to make hitting it a greater challenge.  We had bobbing for mangoes as one of the activities as well as our mango trees are producing mangoes by the bucket this week.

We had a very nice cake, and lots of fun with our ex-pat. and Burundian friends.  (It was interesting to note that the Burundians all arrived about 2 hours later than the mzungus)  This should not have been surprising based on the announced time and actual start time that most Burundian events usually experience.  No one seemed to have a bad time though.

Sunday was a church day led by Ethiopians in the congregation.  The service was followed by a very tasty Ethiopian lunch afterward.  We took the opportunity to go to the beach after the service and I played in the waves with Oren for several hours.  We dropped Betty off at the airport before our evening Bible study.

We do not quite have the house to ourselves as Yolanda is down here to pick up her couch.  She will ride up with us to Gitega on Tuesday as we make our way back up to Rwanda---another week of having to pretend that this is just a break from the normal routine.

Oops, gotta go, Oren just threw up in the bed, there is a virus going around, David had it Friday and Saturday.  I guess it is Oren's turn now.

Bonus photo:  A crowned crane who came in close for a bite to eat off our table during meeings at Club du Lac Tanganyika.