Another Goodbye and a Very Wet Fete

Hippos I saw driving back from my meeting in Cyangugu.  This was in Bujumbura near Ubuntu restaurant.

I think enough time has elapsed to leave everyone hanging after the announcement last week of a computer theft.  Unfortunately no news is not really good news.  We hold out hope that our connections to the thieves network here will disseminate information about a large reward to the right people.  Since neither computer has a cord and Macs are not supported in any way in Burundi, we are hoping the thieves will see the good sense in trying to sell them back to us.  I have put out a notice on a Bujumbura Professionals website to be on the lookout for someone trying to fence 2 Macbooks.

So we wait and hope, but we have not really slowed down.  I am happy to see that in comparison to Monday, the rest of the week seemed pretty good.  We received a lot of sympathy from friends and even many acquaintances who have heard through the grapevine. 

We were able to borrow a small netbook so we are able to work together with 2 computers and have been able to keep up with work and emails.  I mentioned that I had delayed a trip to Rwanda I was supposed to go on Monday, but did go on Tuesday.  Actually it was not as far as Kigali as I was helping convene a meeting between MCC Rwanda and MCC DRC partners on the border between the two countries near Bukavu.  The town was called Cyangugu and it is about a 3 hour drive from Bujumbura.

I left after school on Tuesday and got to the guest house by 5 pm  (This is Peace Guesthouse in Cyangugu run by the Anglicans, excellent!).   I only had a bit of trouble crossing the border because I realized my car insurance had expired the day before.  The Rwanda police harassed me but amazingly let me go on if I promised to buy some temporary insurance in the next town.  (I did promise but never got the insurance.) 

I was the first to arrive and enjoyed an hour of sitting on the balcony of the restaurant overlooking Lake Kivu.  Our Rwanda partners arrived about 8pm.  We had dinner and went to bed.  The plan was to meet the Congo partners the next morning when they crossed the border and take them to the guest house when they arrived.   Michael Sharp and 3 members of a partner organization of MCC came over.  We met for about 4 hours and discussed a refugee repatriation project being implemented in DRC that needed some follow-up in Rwanda.  There was interest in seeing whether our partners could work in collaboration with each other across this border, especially with the tension between Rwanda and DRC.  There did seem to be a sincere interest in mutual collaboration so we will see if this project will take off in the next year.

 I will say briefly that the gist of the project is to use testimonials from returnees in Rwanda to entice ex-combatants from the FDLR to lay down their weapons voluntarily and agree to be repatriated.  (If not the combatants themselves, their families and relatives that have been in forest with them.)

I headed back to Bujumbura right after lunch on Wednesday and was back home in 24 hours.  It was a short trip but quite valuable.  I was glad it did not require me to be away all week.  I met Rebecca at soccer where I found she and Jeanette practicing guitar near the soccer field and David and Isabel playing together.  Isabel, (Tim and Jeanette’s daughter) is David’s best friend these days.

Getting back into the swimming routine Thursday morning was great and helped take my mind off the loss of the computers.

 

Rebecca was a home with the kids and is contributing a bit about her activities this week:

This is Rebecca chiming in with a few mundane details to dispel the murky mood of post-theft reality. I don't think we've mentioned anything in this blog about David, our prolific artist. The poor second child never gets much notice when he starts doing all the things that were so captivating in the first child. Well, when David started his second year of preschool, he could hardly even color in a coloring book. But at this point in his school career, drawing is his favorite thing. When he gets to school, he ignores all the other interesting activities on other tables, laid out by his teacher. He gives me a kiss and a hug and then gets to work coloring. He happily produces 6 to 8 well-colored-in Christmas pictures a day in school. He can draw freehand a perfectly recognizable, very kindly Saint Nicolas. And when he gets home, he empties out the drawer of scrap paper and goes to work again. There is always a 10 square foot area in the corner of the living room littered with his drawings: a christmas tree and a dinosaur, a rabbit, 5 guinea pigs, a dinosaur peeing on St Nicolas. He is getting pretty good with the scissors, too. I won't bore you with my grumbling about cleaning up those creative efforts. ;-)

And Oren's news...last week he and I were having an interesting conversation. He finally told me that he loved school! I asked, what changed? And he said, well, I probably just got better at school. I'm good at it now. I love school. Take me to school right now! He claimed to love school more than karate or soccer. But he actually seems pretty motivated about those as well. Last week, there were competitions and tests in karate. And Oren actually passed, getting his third yellow stripe. What's more, he cared about it. He came home saying, “Mommy, I got my third yellow stripe. And you know what comes after that? A yellow belt!”

Other unusual news: a yoga friend and I learned that we both enjoy singing early music in small ensembles. At least, we'd enjoyed it when we were younger! After much talk and little action we finally found a bass and soprano to join us. And on Thursday night when the kids were in bed, the four of us got together for some very fun quartet singing. The Christmas carols (“Quem Pastores” and “In dulci jubilo”) sounded lovely right off. We started tackling a few more challenging pieces which will be fun to work on more in the new year. But's it's really a delightful surprise to get to sing with a quartet again, with singers who have a lot of experience.

Finally, me and the kids were able to join friends for some nice baking projects during this past week. Joy Johnson invited us to join her for her family tradition of making gingerbread houses. She has really perfected the method of gluing her gingerbread pieces together with melted sugar—foolproof, even in humidity! She had created enough gingerbread houses for many families to come together and decorate. Different folks brought candy decorations (not easy to find in Burundi!) and we worked under a tent in the yard for a while. The boys were briefly interested – long enough to plaster the roofs with bubblegum and hard candies. The girls pulled off some beautiful designs. The conversation was fun – just good to be together. And on Friday afternoon, friends from our cell group came over to help me make sugar cookies and gingersnaps to bring to our church Christmas celebration on Sunday. Again, it was good to work together on a Christmas-y feeling project.I'll sign off with that...

Paul Again…

The week, as busy as it was seemed to be building up to a grand finale at the weekend.  To begin, Teri-Lynn Jordan, our SALTer who is teaching at the Hope School was down for the weekend.  I did not teach ballet on Friday because the school was using the studio to prepare for the Marche de Noel.  This is the annual Christmas event at the school that serves as a fundraiser as well as a craft bazaar for local merchants who want to offer their wares to Christmas shoppers.  It is usually a lot of fun and features tons of food, the requisite bouncy castle, and many interesting shopping opportunities.  It is outdoors however and thus risks being negatively affected by rain.

 On Saturday we had one of those rare ‘all day rain’ kind of days.  It was cold and clammy and felt more like London than Bujumbura.  We did brave the elements about 3pm to participate in the Marche, but it was very wet.  Rebecca had agreed to work at a booth for the Mom’s prayer group so we stayed around about 2 hours.  David took advantage of the mud puddles to get himself completely filthy and all the kids seemed to enjoy the bouncy castle even in the rain.

We did do some Christmas shopping while we were there, but it was definitely a bit of a let down because of weather.  Nonetheless, I did see just about every ex-patriate I know in the country at this event.  Definitely a place to be seen.

It is hard to believe this was to be topped on Sunday, but this was a huge day for us.  It began with a youth and kids service at church.  Sort of like a Christmas pageant although it was a week early because many will be on vacation next week.  It was a huge event where the kids ran much of the service and it was organized for them.  The chairs were put in a large circle with mats laid on the floor in the center of the room.  There were many children’s songs led by Andy Wisdom, the older son of a missionary family who is here working at the King’s School. 

The service was as full of people as I have ever seen.  We went about 2 and a half hours but it was really awesome.  Afterwards we shared a giant potluck then played some crazy competitive games led by Simon Guillebaud.  The favorite by far was tug-of-war and we played off some National rivalries in a kind of tournament.  We have enough different nations represented at our church to have a mini Olympics or a World Cup.

It was a great morning although Rebecca was so exhausted afterwards she fell into a deep sleep until late afternoon. 

There were things planned for the evening.  One of the sadder events was going over to say goodbye to Saffy, our short term volunteer at the UCEDD (who sponsors the Hope School).  Saffy has been a great addition to our team, but even before she was with MCC we have known her in Bujumbura.  She, like me, had a dance career before going into International Development and she was a regular attendee at my adult ballet class.  She also taught classes here as well.

Saffy at our house with Jennifer and Teri-Lynn (and St. Nicolas)

We went over to Jennifer Price’s flat (which they share) and took about half an hour to say goodbye.  She is returning to the UK from whence she came.  Her next plan is Grad. School at this point.

After saying goodbye to Saffy, our family drove over to some friends of our from Ethiopia.  He works for Catholic Relief Services and they are in our small group.  Since we did not have small group this week they invited us over.  Although we were completely beat we could not resist the offer of a traditional Ethiopian meal.  I love Ethiopian food and this was the best I have had.  Like a restaurant but even better.  They even ended the meal with Ethiopian coffee made in the traditional way.  (They even roast the beans themselves.)

Oren and David amused themselves thoroughly with our friends’ children watching satellite TV which had every channel in the world.  They caught up a few episodes of Sponge Bob among other things.  It was a real treat for them.

Although our weekend completely wore us out, we could not have had a more enjoyable time to end it.  Next Sunday is our big Christmas Dance and Offering of the Arts Party.  If you live in Buja and did not get an invite, send us a note.