T Minus Two Hours to Departure

7/6/13

     It’s almost poetic how our first and last nights were spent in the same beds.  I went to the THARS office last night to write while everyone else went to a market for souveniers, so our next stop (from the THARS office again; there’s wifi here) is for a reprise shopping trip that I will be attending.  Our plane takes off at half past noon.  There’s not much more to say.  We’ll be home soon.

The Road Back

7/5/13

     Unbelievable.  It’s all just unbelievable.  Unbelievable that our time is up.  Unbelievable that we’ve seen the things we’ve seen.  Unbelievable that the world as we knew it is just the same as we left it, and yet everything will seem different.

     We woke up this morning for breakfast, and afterwards, we had a meeting with our whole team, David’s whole family who was still in Gitega, and Robert and his wife Salome.  We talked about what went well, what went poorly, what we could do better next time, and what we definitely need to do next time.  After we’d finished that, all of the Africans who served us during our time here were given a gift and a short speech of thanks.  After that, the teens were dismissed to write letters of thanks to our sponsors while the adults talked about “other things,” I was never told what.  When they were finished, we packed all of our bags and had lunch.  After lunch, we loaded up the vans and drove back to Bujumbura.  On the way, there was a semi that had overturned on a curve, and later, we stopped very suddenly for Felicité to fill up a jug with water.  It’s hot in Bujumbura compared to Gitega.  Our plane leaves at two thirty tomorrow.  Part of me wants to go back to Gitega.  Not all of me, though.  I just can’t believe it’s over so soon.

Culmination

7/4/13

     What a day.  I was unaware so many memorable things could happen all in one day, and I’m anxious to get them all down, lest they fall out of the back of my mind.  The first big change, for me, from every other day was that I did not stay behind and write when the rest of the teens went up the hill to work on the wall.  I went up with them, and gained new respect for what they had been doing.  The sun was hot, the work was difficult, and it was amazing how quickly my arms got tired.  There was also a noticeable difference between the work that I had done and the work that people who had been doing this for the last two weeks.  In case I forgot to mention what it was that the teens had been doing or you’ve forgotten, they have been repairing the mortar between the bricks of the walls around the campus.  They were originally mortared with mud, and it has begun to erode away, quite a bit in some places.  We were going over the original mortar with cement.  If you’ve ever seen my handwriting, you’ll have perspective for what the portion I mortared looks like.  While everyone else’s portions were smooth and even, mine were rough and nowhere near even.  It was almost humorous to see the difference between where they were working and where I was working; you could tell from one brick to another.

     It had become a running joke that James, David’s younger son (who turned twenty while we were here), would only believe that the Holy Spirit was trying to tell him something through people if three different people who hadn’t already communicated said the same thing.  During his time on the wall, two different people had told him that his work was excellent, that he should consider a career in wall work.  They were half joking, of course, but at the beginning of work on the wall he decided that it hadn’t been the Holy Spirit, as only two people had said anything.  After the adults finished the training, J.D. came outside and started making jokes at us, as is his way, and eventually remarked that James was doing an excellent job on his portion of the wall.  Everyone burst out laughing, because he made three.  Later, it came to light that he had been a plant and that someone tall and pale had set that event up to happen.  The look on James’s face was priceless.

     After lunch, we washed dishes as usual, for the last time, and planned the skit for the kids, about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  Once it was planned, we had about an hour-long break, as the adults went back into the training early so that they would finish early to help us with the kids.

     Each day that kids came, we had about thirty, and there were roughly three groups that came, with overlap and some kids that only came once.  They were all invited to come back today, and when they had all been let in, there were over seventy kids that we were in charge of.  The skit went extraordinarily well, and when Christopher, our narrator, described Jesus dying, the kids all let out a sad and surprised “yohhhh!” “Yoh” is a Kirundi exclamation that denotes surprise, excitement, or shock.  I only hope that the message we were trying to convey reached them.

     After the skit, we invited them to have us wash their feet.  I’ve been a part of a foot washing service before, but never as the person doing the washing.  It’s truly an amazing experience to humble yourself just as Jesus did to wash the feet that it would be natural to see as below you.  Naturally, it’s also powerful to be the person who is being washed, as the whole purpose is that someone you perceive to be above you is humbling themselves to appear below you.  The purpose was not lost on the kids, and it was evident in their faces.  I’d look up from their feet to make eye contact with them, and they’d become aware, look up from their feet, and look away from my face and cover their huge smiles with their hands.  After their feet were washed, they were given a t-shirt or pants if they didn’t have any, and sat down.  After the last child was given a shirt, we (the adults, teens, trainees, and kids) were given a private show by a group of ceremonial drummers, the kind that performed at the Independence Day parade, though not the same ones.  Ginger, Julia, Lydia, and I even got a chance to join them.  After the drummers, we said a teary good-bye to the kids for the final time and they left.   After the last kids had left, a couple of women from the Twa village across the valley came with their children, who had been coming to play with us, and presented us with gifts of the pots that they make for a living as thanks for the work that we’d done with their kids.  One woman had her daughter, Hakizimana, and her son, Jagisoni, help her make the pots and etch their names into them.  Hakizimana and Jagisoni had been coming to play with us, almost every day.  My eyes teared up at how grateful they were for such a small thing we’d done: playing with their children.  Burundi is truly an amazing place.

Culmination

7/4/13

     What a day.  I was unaware so many memorable things could happen all in one day, and I’m anxious to get them all down, lest they fall out of the back of my mind.  The first big change, for me, from every other day was that I did not stay behind and write when the rest of the teens went up the hill to work on the wall.  I went up with them, and gained new respect for what they had been doing.  The sun was hot, the work was difficult, and it was amazing how quickly my arms got tired.  There was also a noticeable difference between the work that I had done and the work that people who had been doing this for the last two weeks.  In case I forgot to mention what it was that the teens had been doing or you’ve forgotten, they have been repairing the mortar between the bricks of the walls around the campus.  They were originally mortared with mud, and it has begun to erode away, quite a bit in some places.  We were going over the original mortar with cement.  If you’ve ever seen my handwriting, you’ll have perspective for what the portion I mortared looks like.  While everyone else’s portions were smooth and even, mine were rough and nowhere near even.  It was almost humorous to see the difference between where they were working and where I was working; you could tell from one brick to another.

     It had become a running joke that James, David’s younger son (who turned twenty while we were here), would only believe that the Holy Spirit was trying to tell him something through people if three different people who hadn’t already communicated said the same thing.  During his time on the wall, two different people had told him that his work was excellent, that he should consider a career in wall work.  They were half joking, of course, but at the beginning of work on the wall he decided that it hadn’t been the Holy Spirit, as only two people had said anything.  After the adults finished the training, J.D. came outside and started making jokes at us, as is his way, and eventually remarked that James was doing an excellent job on his portion of the wall.  Everyone burst out laughing, because he made three.  Later, it came to light that he had been a plant and that someone tall and pale had set that event up to happen.  The look on James’s face was priceless.

     After lunch, we washed dishes as usual, for the last time, and planned the skit for the kids, about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  Once it was planned, we had about an hour-long break, as the adults went back into the training early so that they would finish early to help us with the kids.

     Each day that kids came, we had about thirty, and there were roughly three groups that came, with overlap and some kids that only came once.  They were all invited to come back today, and when they had all been let in, there were over seventy kids that we were in charge of.  The skit went extraordinarily well, and when Christopher, our narrator, described Jesus dying, the kids all let out a sad and surprised “yohhhh!” “Yoh” is a Kirundi exclamation that denotes surprise, excitement, or shock.  I only hope that the message we were trying to convey reached them.

     After the skit, we invited them to have us wash their feet.  I’ve been a part of a foot washing service before, but never as the person doing the washing.  It’s truly an amazing experience to humble yourself just as Jesus did to wash the feet that it would be natural to see as below you.  Naturally, it’s also powerful to be the person who is being washed, as the whole purpose is that someone you perceive to be above you is humbling themselves to appear below you.  The purpose was not lost on the kids, and it was evident in their faces.  I’d look up from their feet to make eye contact with them, and they’d become aware, look up from their feet, and look away from my face and cover their huge smiles with their hands.  After their feet were washed, they were given a t-shirt or pants if they didn’t have any, and sat down.  After the last child was given a shirt, we (the adults, teens, trainees, and kids) were given a private show by a group of ceremonial drummers, the kind that performed at the Independence Day parade, though not the same ones.  Ginger, Julia, Lydia, and I even got a chance to join them.  After the drummers, we said a teary good-bye to the kids for the final time and they left.   After the last kids had left, a couple of women from the Twa village across the valley came with their children, who had been coming to play with us, and presented us with gifts of the pots that they make for a living as thanks for the work that we’d done with their kids.  One woman had her daughter, Hakizimana, and her son, Jagisoni, help her make the pots and etch their names into them.  Hakizimana and Jagisoni had been coming to play with us, almost every day.  My eyes teared up at how grateful they were for such a small thing we’d done: playing with their children.  Burundi is truly an amazing place.

Kwibuka and Independence Day

 

     Today, I learned that David and Felicité are truly amazing people and that our God is very powerful.  We visited Kwibuka, the village where David was born, married, lived for many years, and where he had three of his four children.  It is also the place where he was fired at and almost killed.  He was teaching at the boarding school in Kwibuka, a class of both Hutus and Tutsis, when a truck of soldiers drove up the road and fired at them.  You can read the whole story in David’s book, Unlocking Horns.

     It was unbelievable to see the real place that it happened, and more unbelievable to hear David and Felicité tell the story.  It was almost as though such horrible things had happened to other people, with the way that they told the story.  I’ve never known Felicité to look troubled, but I was amazed to hear and see her tell us about how she thought that her husband was dead with part of a smile on her face.  You can’t even imagine the joy she expressed when she told us about the moment she found out that he was still alive.  It was truly a magical sight. 

     The true magic, though, was in the way they told us about burying the reeking bodies of David’s dead students with almost the same demeanor as when they showed us their first house or the church where they were married. These are truly people that God has healed, and they are a testament to the true healing that can happen, that they are trying to instill in others.

     That is the true purpose of this trip: to educate Burundian counselors to be able to guide their patients through the same amazing healing process that David and Felicité have undergone, to show them that there is hope for healing, even from something as heartrending as war or genocide.

     Today was also Burundi’s Independence Day, July 1^st.  We went to a stadium in the center of Gitega proper where, it seemed, all of Gitega turned out to walk in the parade, leaving only the city government and special people to watch it.  We qualified as the latter, and we sat for five hours as every child in the school system, public and private, and every professional in the city walked around the soccer field holding a banner that said what organization they belonged to.  It was not the most exciting thing that we’ve done here, but it was a very cool glimpse into the culture of the city that we would not have gotten otherwise.  I was talking to Daniella, David’s eldest daughter, and I asked her if she was in the parade when she was in school.  She said she was, so naturally, I asked her if it’d been fun.  She responded with a prompt and emphatic no, there was too much waiting and rehearsing and such.  I could hardly blame her, in fact, that was the answer I’d expected.  Such is the way of those types of things, I suppose.

 

Kibimba

     Sunday is the Lord’s Day, set aside in my life for church. This Sunday, we attended church in Kibimba, the town where Vickie spent much of her youth.  She goes by her maiden name there, and it was immediately obvious why: her parents are well known, well loved people. Mr. and Mrs. Young, if you’re reading this, I assure you that your friends in Kibimba have forgotten neither you nor your daughter, and many, many people were delighted to see her.  We attended a beautiful cross-shaped church where all of the worship singing and instrument playing and dancing took place in the center, where the four separate ends of the cross meet.  We, as we were with Vickie Young, were treated as honored guests and were seated on the stage directly behind the pulpit. 

     It was a long service.  Despite the ever-present language barrier, it was in many ways a very rich service.  It was also a bit rough in a few ways.  I have not been sleeping as well as I could be, so I have been running on less energy than I am used to having.  Mornings are rough for me when I sleep okay, so when I’m not sleeping okay, they’re even harder.  That fact, partnered with the fact that the service was three and a half hours long made it difficult for me to remain fully alert, and during the sermon, I admit that I dozed off.  My fellow world travelers were eager to suddenly awaken me, though, using any means at their disposal.  This includes the flash on a camera.  Thank you very much, Christopher.

     Don’t think, though, that I didn’t enjoy it.  Sure, it was a bit difficult for me to endure, but trust me when I say that these people have a love for God that is unbelievable.  I only wish that I could show my love as readily as they.  So many groups performed songs of praise with dancing and instrumentation that simply blew me away.  It was truly amazing, and I’d go back in a heartbeat.

     Then we toured the hospital at Kibimba, the second best one in Burundi.  It was very difficult to see people in various states of sickness in a place with no air conditioning or an extraordinary amount of privacy.  What little privacy there was was lessened by the eagerness of Samson, our guide, to show us how much they can do.  I’m told that we didn’t infringe as much on this tour as the group did that went two years ago, but it was still, by American standards, unbelievable. He showed us into a room where a woman was listing her symptoms to a nurse and then spitting up into a Ziploc bag.  Outside of that room, J.D. got an unwanted eyeful from a woman who decided to show him her bandaged-up left breast.  He had wanted to get a picture of the women sitting behind her and was readying his camera, but after she did that, he just let it hang from his neck and avoided eye contact with her.  She stared intently at him, seeming to want something.  None of us, however, speak enough Kirundi to have asked her what she was doing.  By the time anyone who could speak with her was around, we just wanted to move on.

     Around the corner stood an African man whose feet were gray and rough.  They looked like gravel, as though he was petrifying from the feet up.  Daniella, David’s eldest daughter, went over to him and talked to him for a short while.  His voice was high pitched, as though he was speaking in falsetto.  When she rejoined us, we all asked her what the problem was.  She told us that the man said that the doctors didn’t know what was going on with him, but that he was in pain.  I almost cried.  For an infection to look that inhuman, to be in pain, to have come to the second-best hospital in your country and told that the doctors didn’t know how to help you; I can think of nothing more terrifying, and he’s been on my mind since.

     From there, we walked by the maternity wards, where, Samson told us, a baby is born every four minutes.  It was hard to believe that even here the rate is that high.  By the time we got back to where the tour started, we were all very ready to go back to the THARS campus and unwind.  We huddled together and watched How to Train Your Dragon in the yard behind our guest house.  I had left the DVD in my computer from when I decided to watch it a few weeks ago.  It turned out to be just the thing we needed to recover from the day’s stress.