Leftover photo from last week in Kenya. Oren feeding a giraffe. Will post some photos of this week as soon as I can get them off the camera.
One of the reasons for the long delay in posting this week was the long weekend. Burundi takes International Workers Day as a holiday and so Monday was a day off. Rebecca and I considered going to work but decided against it. This meant that we really had 3 days off! That is to say, we really did nothing but things with the family on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Actually that is not entirely true, Rebecca did help facilitate a training for Sunday school teachers at our church on Friday evening and Saturday morning. And of course she did teach Sunday school on Sunday, but for the most part we enjoyed time together playing.
Saturday while Rebecca went to the training I took the kids to Entente Sportif, our swimming club. We actually go there rarely with the kids anymore as they seem to enjoy swimming in the Lake more these days. But it was a great change of pace and they played in the water for about 3 straight hours. Oren even got up the nerve to go off the 3 meter platform (with me) 4 times.
After that we went to dinner at Ubuntu and enjoyed the sunset. I should probably add here that Yolanda's father Clarence has been in town the last couple weeks and he joined us, as well as our volunteer Josh at dinner. We ate pizzas and had good conversation. The kids could barely stay awake through the meal from the exhausting day at the pool.
The weather has been just about perfect. A bit warm, but the air at the end of the rainy season is so clear and the views of the mountains in this season are spectacular. It is a nice time to have special guests share the beauty of this country with us.
Sunday was no less beautiful. Marcelline, our cook, had invited Josh to go to her church. He agreed and we dropped him off on the way to our own. It is an interesting church with no less than 9 choirs who all sing in the service every week. (Which makes the worship service go quite long.) He did enjoy it, and met our missionary friends Joy and Jesse Johnson's who serve this church as well.
We debated as I mentioned, taking the day off today (Monday) and decided to do so. We had heard that several of our friends were going down to Blue Bay resort, a nice hotel on the beach about an hour 10 minutes south of Bujumbura. It was a beautiful place and the day was lovely. The surf there is quite high and the kids as well as we, enjoyed splashing and body surfing on the tide.
We had lunch of grilled mukeke on the beach--a local fish only found in Lake Tanganyika. We headed back home about 4:30 pm and got home by dinner time. Since we had no staff on this holiday I made dinner, a ground beef and spinach curry that did not taste bad at all.
The rest of the week prior to the weekend had been relatively busy, especially since we had been in Kenya the week before. There was actually a line of people waiting for an appointment with us when we arrive to the office on Monday. Sadly most are acquaintances that make semi-regular rounds to ask us for money. That is something that comes with the turf here, and brushing them off without being rude is a challenge.
Among the good things was the return of Oren's friend Emily. She and her mom had been in the US for the last month. Oren was very happy to be saying hello rather than goodbye to someone.
Probably the bad news of note was the loss of 25 metric tons of corn (about a container) due to the ineptitude of Burundian customs. In earlier blogs I had mentioned our partner Help Channel that runs a large food security food-for-work program. They import grain regularly that is provided by the Canadian govt. through CFGB. Help Channel had been complaining to us about the increasing difficulty of getting things through customs in the last year. The shipment had been in port for at least 4 months and had not been released because of reams of new paper work the government had begun to demand. Sadly, when the grain was released on Friday, it was unfit for human consumption.
It is extremely frustrating to see so much food aid lost for such a stupid reason. The problem is, as always, that many people have the power to say 'no' but no one has the power to make something happen. Many officials have signature power on various parts of the process and often hold it up to get some kind of a handout (often). In this case it was a few delays to long. Cassien and Nathan are trying to fight this legally to demand some kind of repayment, but I am not confident they will get far with the government here. Please pray that future shipments do not face a similar demise.
I don't want to end on a low note, but it is getting late and I think this will have to be a short one this week. It will be good to finally send both kids back to school tomorrow. David was off for the second week of his spring break last week eventhough Oren was off. I am looking forward to the routine again.
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