Open Letter To Mom - Part III

As far as daily life goes, we get up around 6 every day. It kinda blows my mind that we get up so early, but the sun sets at 6, so we’ve been going to bed pretty early. We get up and have breakfast, which usually looks like fruit salad, toast, and coffee. We’ve found a pretty good bean to use a local coffee shop, so our habit is still nursed here in Africa. Sometimes I knock up a tasty egg concoction with onions, peppers, and salsa. You just have to clean up quickly, or the ants will get breakfast as well.

We get picked up by our offices at between 7 and 8. Karri’s been keeping really busy with Turame. They’re giving her some human resources work, story writing, and other documentation, and Wendy shares some of her massive workload with Karri, also. I get to the office and have some quiet time, read, practice French, and prepare for whatever gathering I have to prepare for. Sometimes it’s a talk for the kids on Tuesday, sometimes it’s picking music for the team at PTI (our church), sometimes it’s translating Kirundi hymns for the staff devotionals here at the office. My boss, Sophonie, has been away quite a bit, so it was pretty slow starting off, with not a lot of direction. But now we’ve got a bit of momentum, and I’ve got a better sense of how I can serve here. I’m gonna put together a guitar workshop and take it to some of the upcountry locations, start working with the musicians here in Bujumbura, and help formulate a vision for the staff devotional time. I’ve had the sense that the more available I am, the more opportunities I will have, so I’m not really running around just to get busy. I think that would be a waste, and I’d end up doing a bunch of stuff that I can’t say no to when the things God really wants me to do come around. Now I think those things are starting to develop.

Lunches are always a highlight of our day. We sometimes go to a little café, just the two of us. But most days, Isaac, Jillian, Wendy, Karri and I head over to this place just fifty meters (metric, you know!) from the World Relief office. It’s called (creatively, as are all shop names here in Burundi) “Coffee Shop.” This isn’t the coffee shop we buy our bean from. In fact, the “Coffee Shop’s” coffee isn’t all that great. Go figure. But their food is really good and really cheap. So we’ll get brochettes, (which are kebabs in french), omelettes, or croissants, and sit in the open air dining room, chatting about life, politics, work, and weird topics you wouldn’t think could occupy an entire conversation.

We head back to work, more of the same, meetings and study, and head home around 5 or 6. Sometimes, I head home a bit early and study or read at home. This is partly because I’m more comfortable there and partly because I like to be around for Enock in case he needs anything. SO I usually take a mototaxi, which is just a guy on a motorcycle that I flag down. They wear bright orange vests so you can tell the taxis from the regular Joes like Isaac who just own a motorcycle. I negotiate a price, which is necessary because, as a white man, I’m overcharged by over 100% initially. You’re expected to bargain, which means walking away sometimes. I’ve never actually walked away and had the driver just give up. He always drives up to me again and tries another price. I can get a ride for between 500 and 700 francs, which is between fifty to seventy-five cents. That’s still probably two to three hundred francs more than a Burundian would pay, but hey, I’m a muzungu! Then I hop on the back of his bike and hang on! It’s a great way to travel in the city if you’re alone, partly for the cost, and partly because you get a great breeze to cool you off. Karri opts for the Mutatu buses, which I mentioned in an earlier blog. That costs right around a quarter, and the price doesn’t change for us white folk, which is nice.

We get home and figure out our evenings doings, which normally involves some lovely meal from Enock and maybe a night out with friends. Sometimes Karri has homework to do, sometimes we just watch some movies, sometimes we walk over to a friend’s house house and chill there. It’s always different, but we’re normally in bed by 11 or 12. Then starts a new day! It’s the little things that make us love it here, though. It’s rain storms in the evening, or discovering a great new cultural event to participate in. It’s listening to Burundian drummers, or the trilling of birds that I’ve never heard before. It’s finding that one connection with someone who speaks a different language, that one wisecrack that passes through the cultural limbo and causes you both to guffaw in pleasure and approval. It’s being with the poor every day and wrestling with where we fit in the scope of the kingdom with them, being forced to decide if the banknote you’re about to pass will actually be a just a fish rather than a fishing pole, and whether that’s ok for today. It’s greetings with kisses, handshakes, half-hugs and whole hugs, learning new words in Kirundi and seeing delight in someone’s eyes when you make your feeble Western attempt to repeat. It’s eating real food, fish caught by fishermen in Nyanza Lac, beef raised by herders in Gitega, mangoes from our neighbor’s tree. It’s remembering that God can be in two places at once, moving with the sun from the church in Ruziba to the activity center in Fort Wayne.

So that’s life for the present in Bujumbura! We’re living a full life here, and know that Christ has seen fit to graft us into his body here. Still, we miss home, then smell of fallen leaves, the quick inhale of that November morning air that gives you a shiver, and that instinctive hum that comes out like a reflex when you hear those words, “How about a fire in the fireplace tonight?” Give all our love to the family, and know that our hearts are still with you, and you with us. Love you!!!

Jim