The Patron Saint of School Kids

Patron des Ecoliers

Dans la nuit, je revais

Que tu m’a donné

Un avion qui peut marcher…*

The opening lines to a poem Oren was to memorize last week is about St. Nicolas, the patron saint of school kids and the Belgian version of Santa Claus.  St. Nicolas comes on the night of the 5^th of December and fills shoes set out on the staircase with sweets.  He is accompanied by his sidekick Pere Fouettard “Black Pete” who carries the bag of toys but also a broom for switching naughty children.  St. Nicolas also has a donkey and looks decidedly more Catholic than Santa Claus, quite tall and thin and sporting a Cardinal’s mitre and a long priestly robe.

St. Nicolas came to all the classes in the Ecole Belge last week and brought all the kids candy.  Oren and David both received pictures of themselves on St. Nicolas’ lap.  David also got his own little Cardinal’s hat that he wore for much of the rest of the day. 

It is nice to have some Christmas related events in the season which bears little resemblance here to the hype we are so accustomed to in the US this time of year.  We do have our house decorated with lights, a tree, and keep Christmas carols playing in the evening from our ipod.  It is nice to feel the change in season in the inside of our house at least.

I am considerably late in getting last week’s news up on the web and I am sad to say that the culprit in my delay has been a toothache, a bad one, that has made me strangely tired in the evenings when I usually have time to write.  I have gone to bed early most nights since Sunday.  I am currently in Kigali, Rwanda, making a visit to partners with our Area Director Mark Sprunger, and had a chance to visit a dentist here to get it attended to.  She found a cavity in a back molar and will fill it this afternoon.  I am looking forward to not suffering.  The family is still back in Buja as the kids have had school this week.

There were a few significant events from the past week worth recapping.  Probably the most notable was the purchase of a new(er) vehicle to replace our landcruiser.  This is a plan we have had for several months as the “Prado” landcruiser (1994) which has over 200,000 kilometers is definitely beginning to show its age.  It has been very reliable, but has required a considerable amount of repair.

A trustworthy car is important, especially in Burundi these days for trips upcountry.  We do visit several places off-road fairly regularly.  We have also been aware of increasing insecurity at night on upcountry road.  Getting stranded in the late afternoon from a stalled vehicle could be dangerous.  All said, we felt this was the year to improve our ride.

Finding a newer car here for a reasonable price is not a small matter.  There are numerous options to buying but all have a down side.  Some of our friends encouraged us to order one from Japan.  It is fairly cheap to find a vehicle newer than 2000 online and to ship it for a few thousand dollars.  The problem though is that duty to import a car is 50%, so that makes the car quite expensive by the time you get it.  (a $12,000 car would end up costing about $22,000 with shipping and duty)

But it is hard to find a car for sale in country that has not been driven to death.  I was shown a lot of cars as people spread by word of mouth my interest in buying.  (There are really no car dealerships here I would trust to buy a used car.)  Among the things I was shown were many used UN landcruisers complete with reinforced land-mine proof flooring.  A feature I did not think would be particularly useful at this point in Burundian history.  (This added quite a bit to the cost and detracted from fuel efficency.)

I was about to give up hope when I talked to our mechanic about the matter and found he is quite well connected and had an interest in making sure we got a reliable car.  He found a 2006 Toyota “Fortuner” which had about 70,000 km on it.  We got it for about the cost of importing an older car from Japan.  Here is a picture of it.  Decidedly less boxy and ‘missionary’ looking than the Prado we had, but has pretty much all the same features (4WD). 

We are now in the process of selling the Prado.  Hopefully that will go well.  We do have a lot of interest but most want it for less than we feel we can sell it for.  We are hoping another Christian NGO might take it from us.  We had done our best to keep it in good condition and it has some years of life in it.

The final step in the purchase, after payment was the process of registration.  This involves going to the Burundian equivalent of the DMV (far more bureaucratic) with the original owner and getting the title switched into my name.  I am glad he was with me because I would have never been able to figure out what to do.  I am honestly amazed that this only took 2 days as the look of the building which housed thousands and thousands of horizontally stacked manilla folders (a file for every car in Burundi).  They had to find our car’s file and check to make sure all documentation was in order before transferring the title.  I could not believe they could even find it.  (On the other hand the former owner was a former Minister of Parliament so maybe as a big-man there was cause to move this quickly without the help of a bribe.)  It was a relief to get the process done and I was happy to find there was only one minor  misspelling of my name on the title Paul MOSLEV.  On the Prado I am actually listed as Paul MOSLOY.  So I really can’t complain.

I wish the visit to the DMV was the only encounter I had with Burundian bureaucracy.  But in fact I had another that I was not expecting.  For the ballet class I teach, I usually oreder the kids some ballet shoes from China, where they can be bought for about $3.00 each.  Shipping costs about $60.  I had bought about $100 worth of shoes for the kids who buy them from me.  I have done this in the past and had them DHLed to me from China without problem.

This year, for no apparent reason, the very small box (about the size of a shoe box) was stopped in customs at the airport and I had to retrieve it.  I thought this would be a fairly quick procedure and was only a bit annoyed that now I would have to add the duty cost to the cost of the shoes.  What I did not know was that getting a package out of customs involves a bureaucratic set of procedures that dwarfs any I have experienced to date.  I also ended up paying 50% duty on the shoes. 

It actually took me half a day and I think I was lucky because I had gone on a Friday afternoon when there were not many people there, but fortunately all the important signatories were in their offices.  I was also lucky to find a person who does the work of getting merchandise through customs professionally for regular importers.  For a small fee he walked me through the entire process which I would have never, never, figured out on my own.  It took a visit to 9 offices in different building to fill out different forms, collect various receipts.  Some people, especially the director had to sign every form at each step along the way, so I had to return to his office after each step to have him sign off (instead of once at the end.)  Several others had to sign off 2-3 times at various stages along the way.  I have to say I have never seen a set of bureaucratic processes that could not have been simplified more easily.  I have no doubt that keeping people employed is the only reason this system remains in place today.  It is also another indication of why Burundi will continue to lag behind many of its economic partners in the East African region as they seem to not be able to let go of their beloved idiotic French colonial bureaucratic heritage.

The rest of the week went fairly normally (not counting the toothache which came on Sunday.)  We did go to one early Christmas party at the house of our friend Olivia on Saturday evening.  She is working here with a mission called GLO (Great Lakes Outreach) and does many things including managing a large conference center.  She had a themed costume party based on things found at the market.  There were prizes for different categories including:

African King and Queen

Best Bargain

Most Outrageous

Worst Misspellings

I think there was another, but you get the idea.  Our whole family was invited and Rebecca had gone out with Jeanette (South African friend) to buy us clothes from the market. 

It was a fun party with lots of great food and a good opportunity to catch up with fellow missionary friends.  I have some pictures of some of the costumes.  My favorites in the outrageous category were Olivia who was the Bujumbura Sugar Plum Fairy, and Shiela who had made an outfit out of palm tree leaves. 

This week, which is well underway really began Sunday with the arrival of our Area Director Mark Sprunger.  We have been debriefing with him on Monday and Tuesday and are now on a visit to partners in Kigali.  More details about this next week.

Bonus Photo:  Oren in Karate class.  Although he claims not to like it much, he said last week, "Oh well, I guess I'll stop when I get my black belt."

*Father of School children

In the night I dreamed

That you brought me

An airplane that could walk…