Papa Dave's Visit Part 2: Sliding From Kigali to Bujumbura

Kids at Hope School  for the Batwa (kindergarten) opening letters from American penpals, brought by David Sack during his visit.



Rebecca and I are both sitting with macbooks in our laps in our bedroom.  She is trying to get some last-minute work items sent, and I am doing my best to get over the urge to procrastinate further on writing this blog.  Actually her letters are important.  We need to get some letters of invitation out to folks who are visiting in the near future.  There is always a low level of anxiety about travel and getting all documents necessary for obtaining a visa prior to the depature of one's plane.  It is a genuine concern as many of our colleagues have actually had situations where a delay in visa processing caused them to miss a flight completely.

I am currently in that state of anxiety as I am scheduled to drive up to Bukavu, Eastern DRC on Friday and I do not have a letter of invitation to include with my visa application yet.  Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow.

As far as the blog, I should be enthusiastic about writing it as we had quite an exciting week and there is a lot to share.  The past week we have been hosting Rebecca's dad Dr. David Sack, who stopped by for a visit to us on his way to a conference on cholera vaccine trials in Zanzibar.  (Zanzibar is not too far from here so he went there via Bujumbura.)

Jodi's house.

He landed, as mentioned last week in Kigali where our family was together for some work and play.  The kids had no school and Rebecca and I had business with several partners to do.  I mentioned some of it last week, but we did manage to finish on Tuesday and had a nice Indian dinner at Zaffron with our team, before heading out of town Wednesday morning.  (Dinner at Zaffron with the MCC team is rapidly becoming an MCC tradition.)

We left town mid-morning on Wednesday.  To be precise, I dropped Felix at the bus stop so he could go directly to Buja while our family and 'Papa Dave' took a scenic route back with plans to pass through Burasira to stay the night at the Seminary there and see the Hope School for the Batwa as well as Jodi Mikalashki who still lives there.

The trip started out quite well even though we did not leave until early afternoon, but once on the road we made good time to the town of Ngozi.  It was evident that there had been a fairly heavy rain recently and from there, when we got on the dirt road to Burasira we could tell it was going to be a challenge.  Actually the problem was that they were fixing and widening the road and had scooped off most of the hard packed dirt and rock on the top leaving a lot of fresh soil that had turned to very slippery mud in the rain.  I had to use my 4 WD nearly the whole way and on the first long down hill I still had trouble keeping in  control of the vehicle as it slid down the hill, narrowly avoiding some bicyclists and pedestrians on the road.  I don't know how anyone going the other way could have possibly ascended the hill.

We did make it to the seminary though where Oren and David immediately jumped out and ran to visit the farm animals that are kept there in nearby stables.  (Cows, pigs, rabbits, goats).  Since Jodi is no longer our service worker, we do not get up here very often as a family, yet even after nearly a year away, the kids remembered every nook and cranny of the seminary and the lane to Jodi's house.  After visiting the animals, they ran directly to her house to forage through her collection of childrens books, before we all headed down for a scenic walk along the Ruvubu river.

The challenge of taking a walk in a rural area of Burundi with children is that they are like magnets passing over iron filings.  Within 10 minutes we had throngs of kids, many from the Hope School, following us around.  Oren seemed to enjoy entertaining them with peculiar antics that made the kids laugh.  But we did cut our trip short to enjoy the privacy of Jodi's home where we sat around talking before enjoying a dinner of beef bourguignon and pasta prepared by Jodi.

We left Jodi's and returned to the seminary for the night where we were welcomed by the sisters who were delighted to see that Rebecca and family had accompanied me this time.  Oren took the opportunity to ride his razor scooter around the smooth outdoor corridors surrounding the main courtyard.  David enjoyed visiting the pet monkey.

The next morning we had breakfast with Jodi then headed up to the Hope School where we met Innocent (head of our partner organization) and the principles of the school.   We came up in our car as we had a large steamer trunk in tow with many more books and goodies for the library brought by David Sack from the US.  We also had a special surprise for the students--more than 500 letters sent to them by students from the US.  These were responses solicited by Jean Sack who had been up at the school the month before organizing the library.  She had asked the kids at Hope to write thank you notes and these were 'you're welcomes' from kids in the US who had helped collect books to send them.

We decided the best way to distribute all the cards was to go as a group, class by class to each grade from 10th down to the 3 levels of preschool.  We had at least one letter for each kid and they were thrilled and quite shocked to receive them.  They were asked to write a note in response which Dave took back in his suitcase for his trip home.  I admit that doing these deliveries was a bit like playing the role of Santa Claus and I was sorry that the many letter-writers could not enjoy the thrill of distributing the letters.

While we were distributing, David and Oren played outside and generally had a very good time entertaining the Hope School children at recess.  Oren who recoils at being stared at by adults seems to love the attention from chidren his age and at one point was teaching a group of them the song "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" with gestures.

The other pleasant surprise was to see the 10th grade class under construction when the mission team from Hope for Africa Foundation was here, is now done!  And kids are using it this week.

When we finished by mid-afernoon we packed up and continued our journey to Bujumbura.  Not wanting to go back the way we came we decided to go back via Gitega, although we heard the road was even worse.  But we also had heard rumor of a circuitous route that went by a town called Karuzi.  We decided to go that way since Innocent was going part way in his car and said he could guide us.   We followed him to Karuzi then continued on to Gitega which we reached by 3pm.

That gave us just enough time to say HI to Yolanda in her new flat, which is quite charming.  We stayed for about half an hour, introduced her to Dave, then continued to head down to Bujubumbura.  We made it home about 6pm and had a dinner Marceline had left prepared for us earlier in the day (spinach quiche).

On Friday, Rebecca and I took a comp. time day after 10 straight days of work.  We took Papa Dave and the kids to the beach at Club du Lac T. where we swam in the pool and ate fish briochettes and french fries.  It was nice to show him that we do have a place to relax when we need it.

On Saturday we started the day with yoga where we had several newcomers.  It is a great group and we usually do brunch together (so there is really no hope of weight loss :-)  In the afternoon the kids really wanted to take Papa Dave out to their favorite place, Musee Vivant, our local zoo.

We took a guide along at the entrance, which meant there was even more opportunity to interact with the animals.  He gave us fruit to hand to the chimp and in the snake house, he gave David and Oren several snakes to handle.  It definitely became too much for Papa Dave when, after asking a quesion about the Gabon viper, the guide took it out of the cage and set it on the floor to show how docile it was.  We implored him to put it back in with Oren and David running around as we did not want to risk them stepping on it.  (I am sure he would have let us jump in the crocodile cage as well if we wanted to as some of our friends have done.)

That evening we had a potluck at our house with some of our missionary friends including Thomas and Naja's family, Tim and Jeanette's family, Tanya and Stephan's family, and Jodi who was down from upcountry.  It was a delicious meal of soup followed by some amazing desserts (in honor of my Birthday again I think).  They included Jeanette's lemon meringue pie, Rebecca's bread pudding, and the piece de resistance, Naja's walnut buttercream cake.

On Sunday, we went to church with Dave but when the kids went to Sunday school with Rebecca, I took him to the airport as he had a noon flight on to Zanzibar.  Despite the shortness of the visit, we felt we were really able to show him quite a bit, especially many of our friends.

Sunday afternoon was another highlight for the week as we had a plan to restart our small group that afternoon after nearly a year.  Although we have had disappointing results in the past we were encouraged by our pastor to re-form cell groups that had become inactive.  This time we were pleasantly surprised to find many who were willing to commit to join ours, and a great cross cultural mix.  We had Tim and Jeanette (south Africa), Philip and Estelle, he is Kenyan and head of Food for the Hungry here, Scott and Danica (Canadian), Rebecca and I, as well as Marie Goretti and her 2 daughters (Burundian).

We had an interesting discussion on the passage that was preached that day, Acts 6.  It was the story of the neglected Greek widows.  It is impressive to see how the early church resolved an ethnic conflict and seemed particularly relevant to this context.  Even as a mzungu I was impressed by the very inclusive solution the leaders devised, in asking the congregation to take responsibility for appointing 7 overseers.  They seemed to have done a good job in having a good mix of greeks in the group.

I confessed that as a mzungu, I would have, as a leader, simply delegated the task to 7 people of my choosing who I felt would do a good job and foregone the inclusive process of having the group choose the delegates.  But having worked in this context for nearly 4 years now, I appreciate the fact that a participatory process is always more important than expediency for its own sake.  During the evening we sang together, studied the Bible then prayed for each other, it was a real blessing and a great surprise for us.   We look forward to continuing in the weeks ahead. 

It was good to be back into a routine on Monday, kids back in school, refreshing morning swim and a productive day at work.  We will enjoy that for the next 4 days before I have to head off again on Friday to Bukavu.


Bonus photos for the Hope for Africa Foundation team.  Here is the finished classroom inside and out: