Finding the New Rhythm of Life

Oren and David showing off their bags on the first day of school.  Oren has a Buzz Lightyear jet-pack! Thanks Kate Hicks.


I have to say, this was a great week!

What made it great was the fact that we were really able to test out whether the new rhythms we have established with regard to routine will truly bring about the results we had hoped for:
1) more productive time together
2) more quality time with children
3) more quality time as a couple
4) a regular regimen of exercise
Definitely sounds like an ideal no?  And perhaps I am not quite ready to write a book on good time management, but I do think that our routine this week really did accomplish all of the above even with a fairly regular flow of guests and illness that kept 2 of our 3 staff home all week.  (the cook and the nightguard)

I feel like some of the changes were small but have made a fairly big difference.  The first is the fact that David  is old enough to begin premiere maternelle which means he can go to the same school as Oren.  (The Ecole Belge).  He is on the young end of the class at 2, but will have a Birthday in October.

Oren is in Premier Primaire (first grade).  This will be his 4th year at the Ecole Belge (seems hard to believe.)  School begins for the kids at 7:30 am which is better for Rebecca and I than last year when it began at 8 and we had to do two drop-offs at different schools and then 2 pick-ups at noon.  This left little time to work together.

The extra 30 minutes allows us time for a morning swim, prayer and we arrive at the office at 9 to work together for 3 hours.  In the afternoons we alternate days between parenting and working.  The simplified morning routine was a great success this week.

One of the not unimportant reasons for success was the ability of the children to habituate themselves to the school routine again.  I was especially worried about Oren going into the first grade.  It is somewhat intimidating because it is at this level that children learn to read and write french.  Oren still struggles with speaking and verbal comprehension.  He brought home about 6 workbooks of math, language, spelling, and even writing cursive.  (kids write cursive right from the beginning in Europe apparently.)  But Oren did not seem intimidated.  Indeed he knows most everyone in his class from the previous 3 years and has been going with little or no complaining.

David was a bit less enthusiastic as he misses his old school with the virtual menagerie of birds, rabbits, fish, turtles, etc.  He cried the first several days off and on according to his teacher.  But he seems to be getting used to it.

The other end of the day, the evening routine, has also been adjusted.  We have committed to feeding the kids at 6pm bathing them by 7 and having them asleep by 8.  It is not too hard because it is dark here by 6 and they are usually quite worn out by 8.

This gives the evening for Rebecca and I to chat.  We have created a small space with 2 chairs and table in our bedroom for conversation and reading.  Computers are not allowed in this area!  We usually go to bed by 11 at the latest.

This is more or less the weekly routine we want to maintain, and felt very sustainable this first week.  True, one of us will have to travel still about 8 days per month, but when we are home this really works.

To say the week was good is a true endorsement of the routine because there were many things that made it difficult.  As this is the end of dry season we have had unusually long water shortages which makes bathing, flushing, laundry and dishes very difficult.

To add to the problem, Burundi's power is hydroelectric so have had bad electricity shortages, sometimes off 3 days at a time and rarely on for more than about 8 hours per day on a good day.  (I know people in the East Coast US can sympathize after Irene.)  This will probably last for several more months for us at least.  We do have a back up solar powered battery, but it is not strong enough to endure the periosds of outages we have.  We have spent a lot of nights in the dark.

The lack of staff is no small matter either.  We have had several guests this week and had all 3 guestrooms filled for about half the week with Janelle our SALTer still waiting placement in her host family and Jodi coming down for a visit as well as Yolanda.  It is nice to have company, but without a cook and the absence of any quick microwavable meals here, or someone to even clean up, work is very hard.  Marcelline has typhoid now and it is just another reminder of the toll illness takes on productivity around here.  (Recently a cholera outbreak has been added to the list of maladies that people are suffering with.)

Other highlights of the week fell most heavily on the weekend, although I did go, one evening, to a parent teacher conference to meet the kids' teachers and the new faculty and administration at the school.  (I also put in a plug for my ballet classes which will begin in October.)  Both the children's teachers seem great.  Mlle. Mayviolaine is Oren's teacher, and I found that there were other anglophones in his class from her.  She said this was an excellent level to be learning french.  
Mme, Marie is David's teacher and she seems great as well.  (Less coloring technique and more work on vocabulary is her focus.)

We also had several meetings at our church here which has recently taken steps to consolidate its status.  We selected a new pastor and with Rebecca on the Commitee des Anciens and me on the Commitee de Communite (It is like she is in the Senate and I am in the House of Representatives), we had several meetings each to confirm this decision.

As an aside, I will say that I am getting better but am not perfect at accurately translating the African meaning of time into Western equivalents.  In this case, I was told to be at a Saturday morning meeting at 8:30 am.  Since it was on a Saturday I knew it would start at least an hour late so I did not even show up until 9:30.  But I had misjudged as the chairman actually arrived and began the meeting at 10:30 am!  The one other mzungu (who actually did show up at 8:30 had to leave before it began.)  But it was good to see the church choose a good pastor to continue to lead it, and it feels good to be part of a local church community here.  Our church is now officially called the Burundi International Christian Church. (BICC)

Saturday afternoon we spent at the beach with the kids (Club du Lac T).  We went with Yolanda, Jodi, and Janelle.  Oren and David had a great time in the waves of Lake Tanganyika.  In the late afternoon as we got some dinner (fish briochettes) under an awning we watched a spectacular thunderstorm, a sign that the dry season is coming to an end.

We got home about 6pm and Rebecca went out as our representative at the wedding of Zachee's sister Ina.  We have finally decided it is not worth it to drag the kids to all of these events.

Sunday, Rebecca began teaching Sunday school again and even got a bigger room (as the number of english and french speaking kids is exceeding 30 now.)  Still no chairs of tables though.

Sunday afternoon I went to a town hall meeting at the US Ambassador's residence.  Most of the embassy staff has turned over in the last 3 months so it was a chance to see the new faces.  We do rely on the embassy for security information so it is good to be in touch with them.  I wish I could say that things continue to improve here and in some ways they are.  But there is a lot of criminal activity as demobilized rebels turn to banditry.  There is also the problem of active rebel groups like the FNL who have left the political process and gone back to the bush.

Last week, for example, while I was at home with the kids, I had heard a firefight that went on for 15 mintutes with several spates of machine gun fire.  I found out later that the head of the FNL leader's body guards was chased in a jeep and gunned down by the police not far from our house.  This probably sounds really bad from the outside, but as the embassy security officer assured us, expats. are not the targets of these attacks and what is important is not to "be in the wrong place at the wrong time."  As we have lived here for 3 years I think we have a better feeling for what that means. Still, we do ask for prayers of protection on our family as I know that there is little in life we are truly in control of, both here and even in the US.

Sunday evening we invited our friends the Withrows: (Astrid and Travis with kids Nani, Zoey, Davine, Yaya, Jazzy as well as Stella and Astrid's mother who was visiting).  They are an awesome family who are establishing a children's village in the interior.  They have been in the region for 7 years and several of their daughters are adopted.  These are people who truly give testimony to what it means to be 'called by God'.  They are not people who are here with their return ticket in their back pocket.  I imagine extricating themselves from this place where they are committed to work would be exceeding difficult with the family ties they have here.

They are always positive though, in the face of often crushing obstacles and continually bring us testimony of how God is working to transform the lives of the children they minister to on the ground, despite the challenges they face at other levels.  (for more info. about them check out their website:  http://sozoministriesafrica.org/

I am always encouraged by others who have made a long term committment to be here, and often people like us do not find a lot of time to get together (everyone is so busy in their ministry) but when we do it is always a special time.

We shared mexican food with tortillas made by our substitute cook Enoch.  We finished at 9pm and the kids were asleep on the couch before everyone even got out the door.  Just as well since there was no water to bathe them.  We all went to bed early to begin another week.