Strange Fruit

Say Awwwh!  Cutting open a jackfruit I found on the road by our house.  They are not native to Burundi, but someone apparently has one in our neighborhood. 


I feel somewhat remiss this week in not bringing my camera around to take pictures during the week.  Although we were in town most of the week, it was not uneventful.  I do have to admit that the fact that we were not traveling almost made it feel like we had a week of vacation.  Just to be back in our normal routine is quite refreshing.  When we have it, the week looks something like this:
Monday, Wed, Friday--
6:00 wake up
7:15 kids to school
8-9 swim
9-12 work together
12 pick up kids and go home for lunch
2-5 one of us goes back to work the other stays home with the kids
6 dinner
8 kids in bed asleep

On Wednesday's I teach ballet in the 2-5 slot to kids at the Ecole Belge.

On Tuesday and Thursday Oren goes to karate in the afternoons.

The routine has a rhythm to it of work and renewal activites that keep us balanced. (I did not mention the women's Bible Study and the men's prayer group that meet weekly as well.)  It is also really nice to not be on the road for a long trip with the stresses that accompany that--bad drivers, bad roads.

So we savored the week even though we were working very hard to prepare the logistics for an evaluation team that was arriving on the weekend.

The weekend itself was very busy but did have some high points.  One for me was the addition of an adult ballet class on Saturday afternoon.  I had been encouraged by several women who are here working with various NGOs to try one.  I had my doubts about whether there were any interested adults, but was shocked when at 1 pm, just through email and word of mouth about 10 students showed up another 5 expressed interest in coming in the future.  I will plan to do this every week until Christmas and then decide what to do after that.  It was inspiring to teach a class of people who were really interested in dance, and at most had previous dance experience.

Saturday was also the day that 3 of our 4 evaluators came.  Two were coming from Kinshasa, both Congolese, Jimmy Juma and Toss Mukwa.  Jimmy works for MCC in South Africa and Toss is part of the Mennonite Church leadership.  The other two evaluators are coming from Rwanda and Burundi respectively.  They seem to be an able team and we had dinner with them Saturday night at our house.

This make the work week feel like it had been extended a day, but it was interesting to be with them and share some of our thoughts.  They will be here for 2 weeks and will interview all of our partners and service workers.  They will be going up country and to Rwanda.  Fortunately we do not have to go with them on all these visits.

On Sunday we took them to church with us.  It was good to be back after a missing last week because of our retreat.  It is definitely a part of our routine we do not like to miss.  David is still not old enough for Sunday school and has trouble sitting through the service though.

Rebecca's Sunday school is enormous now, but she is getting some volunteers that are helping her split the class.

One of the mother's who has helped voluntarily is our new friend Danika ( of Scott and Danika fame), who are here with Food for the Hungry.  She is a family doctor and has been volunteering at the the large public hospital where she has been working in the maternity ward.  She recently related a harrowing story that I am directing you to here by this link.  It is about her experience of saving a life of a woman about to give birth who needed a C section.  It is truly by her actions that this woman survived, but does point out just how substandard maternal healthcare is here  (my-scariest-day-at-work-ever/).  We have had several colleagues lose their wives in childbirth and just today Rebecca was talking to one of our partners who said they lost a nurse in their clinic this past week when she gave birth to twins then had some problem with her C section several days later in the hospital.  Despite her cries of agony, no doctor was available to see what was wrong and she died of 'unknown' causes shortly thereafter.  (no relation to the person in Danika's story.)

I do admit that this and other stories does give us an understandable anxiety about needing medical care here.  What seems to prevail in many of the horror stories we hear is this sense of fatalism--like whether one lives or dies has little or nothing to do with medical care, it is all just fate.  I think that explains why, in Danika's story there was such a lack of urgency, even in an emergency.

I will relate one last story just because it is so bizarre.  A relative of one of our partners was in a car accident here.  It was serious and the spinal injury could not be treated in Burundi.  Her family was wealthy enough to send her by air ambulance to Kenya's Aga Kahn hospital where she was operated on successfully.  Unbelievably, though, on the way from surgery to recovery she had to be transported to another floor by elevator.  On the way down though, the elevator cable broke and it fell more than a floor to the bottom of the shaft while she was in it on a bed.  The attendants were not seriously injured but her spinal injury is now far worse than when she arrived.  And this is in one of the best hospitals in the sub-continent.   (Of course in all of these incidents there is no legal recourse as far as hospital or doctor liability.)

I think I will leave the topic of health care at this point and return to the happier subject of Sunday after church.

We did take the evaluation team out to lunch at one of the local beaches.  It was not one we usually go to.  We had a nice conversation and when our guests left Oren and David ran down to the lake for a swim.  We all enjoyed playing in the waves for about 2 hours before we were chased to shelter by a huge thunderstorm.  We drove home and sat on the porch and watched a gorgeous sunset over the mountains of Eastern Congo.  It is good to remember we have such a nice view from our porch.  (Which we tend not to use since the birth of puppies last Christmas.)  But now that Noel, the young dog is more mature, we can sit out there without being attacked to friskily.

We also enjoyed several other activities including carving up a jackfruit that I found on the road in our neighborhood (it had fallen off of a neighbor's tree.)  I tried drying it to make some kind of dried fruit for museli, but I have to admit, it does not taste that good.  (Like a smelly overripe banana.)

Oren has learned to play chess and we did play a few games during David's nap.  It is amazing how fast he is growing.  He can even beat mommy (with a bit of help from dad.)  Oren and Rebecca also constructed a T-rex puzzle out of wood.  Since Oren is fully in his dinosaur infatuation phase, he really loved it.  (Thanks Grandparents!)

On Sunday evening we gave both kids buzz cuts and they do look really cute.  (And are alot less itchy.)

Although all the fun was crammed into one afternoon and evening, it did really feel like a weekend.  Next week, more travel.