An Entente in Abyssinia

Ethiopian Airlines arriving in Bujumbura on Wednesday afternoon to take us to Addis Ababa.



A Challenge:  You are charged with bringing together representatives from several countries in West Africa-- Chad, Burkina Faso, Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Rwanda, and Burundi.  You want to minimize travel time for each one, so where could one meet that would allow everyone to arrive in 1 travel day?

The answer would be Paris, France or Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

It would seem reasonable that a common meeting place would be more centrally located in Africa rather than the far east edge of the continent or in Europe, but not when you consider travel routes available for these countries.  (West Africa is not particularly well served by airlines, particularly between countries.)

So once again the MCC Reps. from the Central West Africa region (CWARM) gathered together for our semiannual meetings, this time, for reasons stated above in Addis Ababa.  For all of us, the travel time was to be reasonable.  (about 5 hours from us counting a stop-over in Nairobi)  But as usual, Africa did offer up some frustrating logistical hi-jinx's for several of us that completely undermined our best laid plans.

For the Rwanda Burundi crew (our family) we had bought tickets to leave on Tuesday, only to be told on Monday that our flight had been cancelled.  We rebooked for Wednesday but that meant we would miss the first day of meetings.  Gopar, our regional peace rep, who is from Nigeria but was with us in Burundi last week was virtually assured a visa up until the moment we were to leave on Wednesday and then was told he could not have an Ethiopian entry visa.  (He was able to obtain a transit visa and was with us for 1 day.)

The worst situation were the Nigeria reps, our good friends the H_____n-S_____s (names omitted).  They live in the North, in Jos, and had to make a 4 hour dangerous trip down to Abuja to catch a flight to Addis. They were having trouble getting exit visas, but had been assured by their lawyer the night before that the papers were signed. They made the trip down only to find, as we so often do, that this assurance was in fact a 'false hope' and their exit visas were not granted after all because of some small irregularity discovered at the last minute.  So their trip to Abuja was completely in vain and since they had to miss the Wednesday flight they were not able to get to us for the meetings at all.

This was a big disappointment for all of us at the meeting, even for our kids as they have an older son and daughter that Oren really likes to play with.

The good news is that we were joined by 2 new families as Chad and Burkina Faso both have new representatives.  The Burkina Faso reps, (Chad and Isa) have 2 kids about the ages of our kids and Oren and Conner hit it off extremely well the whole time.  (They share a common interest in trains.)

The Chad reps Doug and Naomi have an older daughter Hannah (college age) who was with them and graciously offered to do childcare with one of the MCC Ethiopia service workers.  All the kids seemed very satisfied with this arrangement and had a good time playing together in the hotel garden in the morning and watching a movie while the little ones napped in the afternoon.  Oren and Conner also produced reams of drawings of trains, dinosaurs, hotels, volcanoes and other things.

So despite all of the aforementioned snafus we did have a good set of meetings.  As the more senior members of the group now, Rebecca and I did feel we had a share of good advice based on our experience in the field.

We were also able to have some good conversations with our Area Director Mark Sprunger as well as Tim Lind the DRC rep. with whom we share some common interests being so close to Eastern Congo.

I will say though, it is humbling to hear the challenges that the other countries in our region face.  Even with the incresased instability here, our life in Burundi is far less complicated and difficult than say our colleagues in Nigeria who, in Jos, live with a civil war on their doorstep.  The insecurity is palpable, there are parts of the city where a Christian even passing through without stopping would be killed immediately (and vice  versa).  The school their children attend is closed frequently because of bomb scares or other threats of terrorism.

DRC (Congo) is a challenge because of the daily assault of corruption which one must confront daily even driving to work.  Tim Lind described doing programming there like "setting up a fine china tea service on a boat in a hurricane."  (the things that will go wrong are completely out of one's control).

N'djamena Chad, where our reps live face temperatures that soar up to 120 degrees fahrenheit.  To make matters worse, they have electricity at best a couple hours a day.  So they live in this climate without airconditioning.  (They do have fans that run on solar power.)

Burkina Faso, is also terribly hot although enjoys more political stability than some of its neighbors.

As I said, when we look at what other reps in our region face, I feel I have no right to complain when we arrived home and have been here for 48 straight hours with no electricity.

So meeting together is also an opportunity for us to encourage each other.  I will say that Mennonites as a rule are not very verbose evangelists, or comfortable in the victorious Spirit-filled language of Charismatic Christians, but their witness of service in these very challenging places speaks volumes about their faith and what it means to serve Christ in the world.  I come away from these meetings feeling a sense of awe and pride that our family is able to be part of this witness, however cushy our assignment is by comparison.

The days were mostly but not all work and no play.  Although we did not get to go out on any extensive field trips, we did get to go out one evening for Ethiopian food.  For any of you who love it (the injera bread with those incredible spicy sauces) imagine having that in Ethiopia!  It was awesome!  I admit I get a craving for it every time I think of it.

A group of us also did go out one evening to get some Gelato.  This was a real treat for the kids who love icecream.  As you can see from the picture, Oren, David, and Conner enjoyed it thoroughly.

We did go out one evening for a walk in the neighborhood around the hotel as well.  While the Tegen Hotel was a lovely well appointed place, it was located in a fairly poor neighborhood.  Nonetheless, even in that brief sortie into the neighborhood I could sense a profound cultural difference between Ethiopians and Burundians.  Even as we passed numerous children, none of them were remotely interested in following us.  Those engaged in playing ball on the road would occasionally kick it to Oren to get him to join in, and one little kid came up to kiss David, but there just was not the fascination with 'mzungus' that we experience in Burundi.

There could be a lot of explanations for this but certainly Ethiopia's history is part of it.  An ancient culture with even its Christian roots going back to AD 300.  It was never colonized (except briefly by the Italians during WWII who were then routed by Emperor Haile Selassie who had been in exile.  All that to say, that Ethiopians all seem to exude a cultural pride that does not make them particularly enamored of Europeans.

The other thing worth mentioning is that it was REALLY COLD THERE!! That is to say it was like autumn weather in the US.  We had to wear long sleeved shirts, jackets, etc. and slept under very comfy down duvets.  Despite all the coziness, I did not sleep particularly well as I am now acclimatized to sleeping in fairly warm conditions.  I had a terrible time with a stuffed and runny nose that kept me up at night.

The meetings ended Saturday and we all headed home on Sunday morning.  The flight which stops in Nairobi both ways was not bad.  The plane for this trip was a wide body (boeing 757) and it was full to Nairobi, but only about a dozen of us continued on to Bujumbura.  It is always odd to feel like you have this enormous jet all to yourself.  The kids did enjoy the trip a lot as they like to go on airplanes and have their routines down both in the airport and on the plane.

Oren particularly likes to get meals on the flight and usually keeps his tray in front of him for over an hour to savor it all.

It is quite a contrast to fly on non-US carriers where serving food is standard procedure even for a short flight.  Between Nairobi and Addis which took about 1 hour 10 minutes we had a full meal which even included a free bottle of wine.  (In the US I have flown from Seattle all the way to NYC without hardly a snack.)

We got home Sunday afternoon and made plans to go out with our missionary friends Jesse and Joy Johnson.  Their kids and our kids ran around the grounds of a Chinese restaurant that Rebecca and I had never been to before.  It was not bad, and we had a great visit with Joy and Jesse who will be on a 5 month furlough in a few weeks.  They have not been home in 2 1/2 years so it is really needed and well deserved.

That about wraps up the highlights of the week. 2 milestones worth mentioning:
1) David's potty training seems about at an end.  He regularly gets himself to the potty.  (Oddly he prefers to squat on the seat and not sit.)  So I think we will not be buying anymore disposable diapers when this last bag is done.

2) He misplaced his pacifier on Monday and we told him it ran away.  He was not pleased the first night but has gone 8 days without mentioning it so I think those days are done as well.  It is good not to worry about always having to find it at bedtime, but I do feel a bit sad to see him growing up so quickly.  Next thing I know, he will be driving.

Bonus photo:  The boys with a lizard the dogs caught last Monday.  We brought it into the house and put it into a box thinking it was about dead.  But an hour later it was gone.  We found it the next day in our living room climbing up the screens of one of the windows.  It looks like an iguana with a very blue head.