Open Letter To Mom - Part I

"You know, sometime when you’ve got time, I’d love to hear about some of your just personal stuff, like...where are you living and what’s it like? How are your jobs going? Are you building relationships with the African staff? Who are the ex-pats you’ve been hanging out with? Your blog gives us great stories, but the mom in me wants to know the mundane stuff too, like...how’s the food? Have you gotten sick at all? How do you get around – primarily by bus, walking, moto? Silly stuff, I guess. Anyway...just curious!" - Email from my mom

Mama –

There’s just so much to say about the details of life here. I’ll do my best to give an adequate description! We’re living right now at Seth and Trina Chase’s house, which is in a more upscale neighborhood, or cartier, of Bujumbura called Kinindo. It’s the World Relief guest house, and it’s really beautiful. The yard is huge, full of trees and plants you’d never see in the States. There’s a volleyball net in the backyard, which the youth group enjoys every Tuesday. The grounds are kept up by Jean Marie, our day guard and gardener. He doesn’t speak English or French, but is extremely friendly and works very hard. Our security system, however, is canine in nature. Jack-Jack, a yellow lab named for (who else) Jack Bauer, and Sam, a golden retriever (makes me miss Alex!) named for Samwise Gamgee, patrol the yard and alert us whenever someone is at the gate. Burundians generally are pretty afraid of dogs, and even though these two guys are more in the “lick-you-to-death” category, many of our guests find them pretty terrifying.

The inside of the house is terrific, with five bedrooms and three bathrooms. There’s a great front porch, where we hold the Bible Studies for the kids and share meals on cooler evenings. There’s lots of room to be private, but we’ve been relishing the chance to live communally with our roommates. We’re living with two girls named Wendy and Jillian. Wendy works at Turame with Karri and Jillian works at World Relief with me. Isaac, another World Relief intern, lived with us for a while. We have had a great time sharing our lives, our food, and a lot of good laughs with these, our new friends, and we’re really seeing how great it can be to open ourselves up to this lifestyle. In the States, it’s easy, almost encouraged, to be isolated and see your house as your “castle.” While I totally get that, I think we may have lost some of the joy of community by retreating too far into that mentality. Just the practice of sharing your meal with someone else, even strangers, is really working on my heart and connecting me with these people on a level that I haven’t experienced in a while.

Our meals are prepared by Enock, our cook and housekeeper. He’s renowned throughout the expat community for his culinary prowess. Some of his specialties are a tremendous salsa, peanut soup (one of Karri’s favorites), fajitas with homemade tortillas, the best scratch bread in the country, and the “Enock Special,” a concoction of sausage and stewed veggies over rice. Enock has really great English, and serves as our Kirundi liaison between us and the two guards, Jean Marie and Andre. It’s really bizarre going from an apartment in West Philly to living in a situation where your meals are prepared, your laundry is done, your bed is changed and made, your bathrooms are cleaned, and anything else you need done is seen to. It feels kinda wrong at first, but it’s expected for expats to employ Burundians in this way. If you don’t, you’re looked down on for keeping your wealth to yourself. Enock is a great guy, and through his job here, he’s been able to begin building a house for his family, begin saving for his wedding, and have the financial freedom to focus on his other job as the pastor of a local Burundian congregation.

- To Be Continued! -