Giving Thanks Amidst Shortages

The family decorating the tree to herald the Christmas season here.

I have not written much recently about the change in season and how we experience it.  Last year around this time I think I had a picture of a bucket of mangoes which was about a daily yield for our trees in November.  We are indeed in the height of mango season again and while they are readily available in the market, our trees seem to have suffered from a blight that has rendered them all but fruitless this year.

I comment on this only because it is just one of several cases where we are experiencing shortages.  The others however are not nearly as innocuous as a mango virus which one can hardly blame on some ethical shortfall by the government.  

The other two items that seem to be in an ever-shortening supply are sugar and electricity.  We are now well out of the dry season, a time when hydro-electric power is down, and we seem to have less than ever. We are blessed to have a solar back-up system but there are times we have no electricity for 3 days at a time.  

The more insidious shortage we have experienced recently is the complete disappearance of sugar from the market and in fact anywhere in Bujumbura.  Since Burundi has large sugar cane plantations and is self sufficient in sugar, we can only presume that someone in the government has found a way to profit personally from some manipulation of the market or perhaps selling it off as export to other countries.

The same is true of ARV drugs which are provided for free by several countries but seem to not be available at HIV clinics or hospitals anywhere in recent months.

It is in these ways that corruption is experienced in countries like Burundi.  Whenever something is not available, no matter how valuable or ubiquitous, you can be sure that someone is benefitting (profiting) massively from the inconvenience or suffering inflicted on a large number of people.

Seeing the stately mango trees in our yard that are bearing no fruit, reminds me of the story of Jesus' encounter with the fig tree out of season which was bearing no fruit.  I think that more and more the international community and the local populace here are getting fed up with the current government and its lack of 'fruitfulness' since it won the elections last summer.

Although we do not eat a lot of sugar ourselves, the lack this year did have some disappointing consequences at Thanksgving.  Last year Rebecca found a very good substitute for cranberry sauce using locally available Japanese plums instead of cranberries.  It was a very tasty alternative, here is a link to the recipe. (cranberry sauce recipe).  

However, as we were not able to find sugar she made the sauce without it.  It was unfortunately, extremely bitter and not very tasty as a garnish.  The pumpkin pie was OK because we had received as a gift a jug of Rwandan honey which was an acceptable substitute in the pie.

I should probably back up a bit and talk about what we did for Thanksgiving.  We have been fortunate to have had an interesting gathering to share this traditional American feast every year that we have been in Burundi.  We have chosen this meal as one to share with Burundian friends and this year we invited the family of Normand Ndayizeye (him, his wife and 3 kids) to sup with us.  Normand's family is in fact the host family for our SALTer Janelle.  So she joined us as well as Jodi Mikalashki who happened to be in Bujumbura for car repairs and two other young women Safi and Helene (from UK and Sweden respectively) who are here working in various capacities with the Friends Church.  

It was a very enjoyable gathering and we did savor some traditional favorites including succotash and mashed potatoes and stuffing, but had to substitue rotisserie chicken for turkey.  We celebrated on Friday night rather than Thursday as the latter was the last day of the visit of our evaluation team.  In fact Thursday was one of the longest work days of the year as the team debriefed us a bit on their findings on Thursday evening after a long day's work.  Since Toss had to be on a flight out of Burundi at midnight we ate dinner together and then talked over the finding until about 11:30 pm.   We were pleased with how thorough they were in their work, but were completely exhausted by the time they left.

We did not take the day off on Friday as we had other work that had been set aside, but did take the afternoon off to prepare for our Thanksgiving guests.

The weekend was the real day of rest and family time, and we had felt that the children had been somewhat neglected during the time the evaluation team was here, or at least relegated to watching movies in the backroom while we talked.

But Oren was up bright and early Saturday morning and ready to set up the Christmas tree in the living room.  (We had promised him that we would do this after Thanksgiving but not before.)  He got out the tree and all the decorations and we began the process of decorating the tree and the rest of the living room for Christmas.

Honestly since we do not experience any of the seasonal changes in the year as far as weather, it is nice to create changes to our internal environment to feel like we have entered into the Christmas season.  I can almost feel nostalgic for a touch of Christmas commercialism (Black Friday) because here the and months and years can plod along with little variation.  It is up to us to create the feeling of a new season.

It is nice ot see the season through Oren's eyes who is really into crafts and decorating.  He is dying to make Christmas cookies.  The one thing which we do not have that we managed to bring in last year is a gingerbread house kit.  He would love to have the opportunity to make one of those again which he considers to be a tradition now.

Sunday was another day of rest with church in the morning and an afternoon of laying around the house.  We would have happily gone out swimming or something but Oren really just wanted to spend the day in the house with the Christmas tree.  (we did watch the original Grinch who stole Christmas, Rudolf, and Charlie Brown Christmas on the computer that day.)

We did go out in the evening to visit our friends's Thomas and Naja and their kids.  They are the Danish family (he is here as Director of World Relief).  We stopped by a pizza place on the way to their house and brought the pizza over to share with them.

It is good to see the children playing together and Oren being comfortable speaking french with them.  They spent a good part of the evening drawing a picture of two dinosaurs fighting from a comic book.  (Dinosaurs are Oren's new favorite thing and he has been asking for a dinosaur robot for Christmas,)

Rebecca, our auditor working at our office this week.

Sadly I began getting sick on Sunday might with a fever and went to bed shortly after we returned home.  On Monday I was still sick but did go to work.  We picked up 'Rebecca' (a different one) our auditor who arrived from Canada in the afternoon.  She will be with us for a week

I went to bed early on Monday and Tuesday and am finally getting this blog entry out today (Wednesday).  Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and Happy Belated Birthday Jonathan!