Focus on the Family and More Cross-cultural Recipes

The boys have 2 matching shirts that look great together.  Here they are sitting on our docile, very pregnant dog Bella. (dsiclaimer: No animals were harmed during the writing of this blog.)

Mango season is coming to an end, as far as our trees go.  I don’t think I have said much about mango season and the number of buckets of fruit we got off our trees.  Since this is our third mango season here in Burundi, having fruit trees that produce this tropical delicacy does not seem as remarkable as it did when we first moved to this house.  

Actually it is not all good to have such a ‘resource rich’ yard.  We do answer knocks on our gates on average 3 times a day as passing school children ask for some of the fruit.  We don’t want to be miserly and we were giving it out regularly last year, but we discovered that that brought a ten fold increase in the number of people asking.  Once I invited a group of 3 kids to come in to pick some for themselves.  Before I realized what was happening they and 10 of their friends bolted in the gate, scaled the tree and made off with about 100 in less than a minute.  My bourgeois sense of generosity and gratitude was certainly affronted in the face of such poverty and privation.  Since then, I hand them out at the gate but more frequently ignore the incessant knocking around midday.  

Speaking of mangoes, I want to mention another great recipe substitute we heard about and tried out with relative success.  Rebecca used some of the green mangoes that had fallen off of our tree this year as a substitute for apples in an apple cobbler.  A very green mango has much the same texture and taste of a granny smith apple.  She did discover that a mango is much dryer though and does not get very juicy when cooked.  She added a bit of water to the mixture about part way through but I think next time we will try precooking the mangoes in water sugar and cinnamon before putting them in the recipe.  Anyway, any expats in Burundi who want to give this a try, let us know how it works for you.

This was definitely a week of enjoying a ‘normal’ work routine in Bujumbura.  No trips upcountry and only 2 visitors staying over a night.  One of the visitors was Dina, the wife of Jimmy Juma (the Congolese couple working for MCC South Africa who had been waiting for visas and stayed with us for a while.)  They did finally get their visas and Dina was on her way to Johannesburg.  She stayed the night with us Wednesday, then I took her to the airport Thursday night.  We were very happy that they were finally able to be successful in receiving the visa so Jimmy can start his work as regional peace officer down there.

The second visitor was Yolanda, who was down from Gitega over the weekend to get some supplies and to have a meeting with the American Friends Service Committee and the partner she is seconded to this Monday.

Because this was a relatively calm week with regard to work, it meant that Rebecca and I had time to be more intentional about doing things with the kids.  I made a real effort to play with them, and involve them in projects at home.  One of the things they have really loved is getting prepared for Christmas and we were able to finish trimming the tree with lights we bought at the Chinese version of Walmart.  (called T2000).  

The other project we launched, as threatened, was to begin painting the house.  Although hiring a painter is quite cheap here, I was interested in experimenting with some accent walls so I wanted to go and look at colors myself.  A foray for construction materials and hardware are always interesting because they usually involve a trip in the the Quartier Asiatique (Asian Quarter).  The odd angularity of roads that seem to go every which way reminds me a bit of the West Village in New York City, compared to the relatively grid-like layout of the rest of Bujumubura.  It seems like just about anything you could want can be found there, but it takes quite a bit of hunting.  There are numerous hardware stores that all seem to sell different seemingly random things.  One I went to sold mainly safes and shower heads, while another had printer ink cartridges and cement.  I found many paint stores that sold just paint, but I had to go to a completely different store to buy brushes and rollers.  For anyone who likes to complain about trouble finding things at Home Depot, one day in the Asian Quarter here will quickly remedy that indulgence.

I might add that at Home Depot you can buy many ready-made items like framed-out doors and windows, and, of course, sheet rock.  Here in Buja if you build you start with cement, sand, gravel, bricks, and if you want to splurge for stability--rebar  (most don’t bother if the building is under 3 stories).  Finishing walls is all about smoothing out concrete. Windows are all made of iron bars.  Virtually nothing is constructed out of wood here (termites).   

I did succeed in finding the items I wanted and bought 4 colors of paint varying from a deep rust to harvest gold, cream, and white.  Oren was very excited about helping me paint a wall and we finally got around to painting one panel of our living room on Saturday afternoon.  He actually did very well.  He is a fairly compulsive child and did his best to cover all the white spots and not go outside the border.  It was fun to have a father-son project and Rebecca did her best to keep David preoccupied as he does not share his brother’s predilection for meticulous neatness.  (He is actually in a particularly impish phase of scribbling a bit on all the uncolored pages of Oren’s favorite coloring books.)

The weekend was fairly eventful beginning Friday evening when Rebecca went to a 3+ hour elders meeting at our church.  I stayed home with the kids and played.  Marcelline, the cook, was sick again so I made dinner.  It was a Thai orange fish curry. It was my own invention and a bit of genius if I do say so myself—taste was exquisite.  (Rebecca and I loved it, but so did Oren.)

Thai Orange Fish Curry Recipe:

I sautéed broccoli, onion, and eggplant in sesame oil then added coconut milk (a full can), fish sauce, and Thai yellow curry paste and simmered them about 20 minutes.  Then I added about a half cup of some very bitter orange marmalade that is made here, and finally added cut up filet of a mild white fish (like perch--about a pound).  The taste of the Thai spices with the bittersweet orange was the perfect combination with fish.  I served it on rice.

Saturday, besides house painting and morning exercises, we went as a family to a Birthday party for one of Oren’s friends, a Belgian kid named Timeo.  Most of the children in his class were there and it was a good opportunity to meet some of the parents as well.  Among his classmates is the daughter of the new director of the primary school at the Ecole Belge so we have come to know them. Her daughter also takes my ballet class.

After the party we passed by the beach to watch the sunset over the mountains, then joined Zachee and Timmy for dinner at Ubuntu, the restaurant on the Lake.  

Sunday was quite a busy day as well.  We went to chuch as usual but stayed an extra hour because Rebecca did some training of other Sunday school teachers on some Advent lessons.

After that, we picked up Rachel, one of our friends who babysits for us from time to time, to watch the kids as we had a special event that evening.  We were invited by J.B. a friend who works in one of our partnerships, to come and speak to a group of 50 couples who meet monthly at his church to talk about how to be better parents and spouses as Christians, AND to discuss the many issues facing them as parents of children in a rapidly changing urban context.

I had had a chance earlier in the week to meet the pastor and talk about what we might share.  My initial impulse was to give some Biblical foundation for family planning.  (Burundian families are huge and often education is sacrificed for children because of lack of money for school fees.)  But as I worked I changed the focus more generally to what we hope for with regard to our children’s future and what things we as parents do to help bring it into being, and what things we do that might work against our aspirations.  

It was interesting because I feel like I had as many insights into our own challenges of raising children in our culture as the other couples did about raising their children here in Burundi.

I asked the question:  What do we hope for, for our childrens’ future?  I had used the passage, again, of Moses on Mt. Nebo, looking into the Promised Land, to which he led his people for over 40 years, but did not set foot in himself.  But for him, the promise of what was to come for his descendants, was sufficient for him, I believe, to die a happy man--knowing his efforts were not in vain, even if they were not for his own personal gain.

Many of the parents had high aspirations for their children, education, good jobs, wealth, but always with the idea that they would be raised to be followers of Christ--compassionate, selfless, honest and committed to working for the improvement of the country. I was glad to hear them talk about values and not just material ends that they wanted their children to achieve.

I asked the couples to share in small groups the following questions:

1) their birth order in their own families and how many siblings they had.

2) what responsibilities they had for other siblings and parents (school fees, housing, etc.)

3) how many children they had.

4) what they feel are their responsibilities to their own children.

5) what they feel their children’s responsibilities are to them (ex. support parents or other siblings)

I was hoping this would open up some reflection on the ways some choices we make as parent will affect the opportunities we create for our children or prevent them from having.  I was affirmed in this as some of the men I was with shared about the struggle of trying to find school fees for so many children.  (One young man had 4 children, the oldest of whom was 5!)

But I also realized something for myself about my own children and children in our culture. I appreciate the fact that we do not feel it is ethically right to make our children work as ‘slaves’ for the family.  Generally, as parents (and a Nation), we feel we are financially responsible for their educations, often through College.   We give our children, compared to most of the world, an unprecedented amount of freedom to allow them to maximize their potential and often ask little in terms of them having responsibility, while they are young, beyond token chores and tasks.  But there is a downside to this.  We are raising, and many of us were raised, as a generation of hedonists—concerned entirely with ourselves and our own self-actualization.  I think the Global Financial Crisis is the apotheosis of the values of this generation

Here in Burundi, as I said, older children may be financially responsible for younger siblings and for aging parents.  School is not an entitlement and parents may make choices about sending some and leaving others at home to work to help pay for the ones in school, or to feed themselves.  Children here are by and large very polite, respectful, and have a very mature sense of responsibility at an early age.  But so frequently I want to weep when I see potentially brilliant minds which are not permitted to expand. I find a stultifying lack of creativity here and an incapacity for people to think for themselves.  (Independent thinking is not a virtue here--blind obedience is.)

So I find that to raise a child well means living in a dialectical tension between freedom and responsibility.  Too much freedom, leads to selfish nihilism, but too much responsibility will snuff out any chance for developing, intelligent, adaptive, thinking, individuals who can respond creatively to the challenges of the future (obedient robots). 

As parents I see that in my own culture we may err one way while those here err the other way, but no one has a monopoly, or maybe the secret recipe to successful parenting.  We do, though, have a chance to learn from each other.

Rebecca also had a fascinating exchange with the women in her group.  (Seemingly women have even more responsibility in their families of origin than men did.)  Many of them also confronted the fact that if they were wanting to instill their values in their children, they would probably have to spend more time with them and not hand them off to the nanny, which is the normal thing that Burundian families do here as both parents are often working.  (Nannies are usually girls between 11 and 18 who are poor relatives or orphans that can’t afford to go to school.)

Rebecca and I came home feeling very fulfilled from the time we spent with the group.  As a reward to Rachel for watching the kids, we went out to Khana Kazana (Indian food) with her and Yolanda when we got home.  The weather was perfect and the food was excellent, it was a great ending to a very satisfying week.