Matches 3/2/13

This past weekend, I went to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.  I haven't been to Buja since I arrived.  It's hotter than where I live, there are more people, and I don't like traveling on the road to get to Bujumbura.

 

The Residency Director of our school scheduled a basketball and soccer  match.  The Children's Home bus isn't reliable, so we paid for a bus that sat 45 people.  Well, TIA (This is Africa).  The bus had 42 seats, and the bus driver told us 3 people could stand.  Thankfully, the boys squished together, and three sat in a couple rows instead of two.  Every trimester, there is only one match with another school.  Maybe that will change in the future.  Being a boarding school and having tight security, the kids don't leave the school much.  They were really excited for the games, and sang on the way to Bujumbura.  There are two girls that play basketball, and they also came.  The other girls play on their own teams.  The girls may play a match the next trimester.  Most of the staff when to Buja as well.

 

Leaving the school to go to Buja.

The drive is over two hours to Bujumbura.  On Saturday, Burundi has a law that everyone has to stay home, or do community service from about 8am to 10am.  Or maybe it's 11am?  I don't know.  We took our chances, and left school about 7:30am, and drove to Buja.  Unfortunately, when we tried to drive into the city, we were stopped at a road block with a number of other buses and cars.  We had to wait for over an hour before the community service time period had ended.  Perhaps we could have continued if we paid the policeman money, but the organization I work for has a no bribe policy (a good thing).

 

Waiting for the no travel community service period to be over.  Pictures of policemen are illegal.

We were a little late to the match, but that's alright.  The game was held at a country club.  We played against a school with twice as many kids as our school.  The kids at the school also speak English and are taught in English.  The school was founded by an British man fourteen years ago, and has been doing pretty good.  It rained in the middle of the basketball game, but it didn't stop the game.  Jen was recruited to be the time keeper for the game.  Considering our 7th and 8th graders played high schoolers, they did pretty good.  Our kids vary in age, but were actually taller than most of the kids they were against playing basketball.  Unfortunately, we lost both the basketball and soccer games by one point! Arg.

Bleachers for the basketball game.



Brand new white uniforms.  JR and Jeremy are on the sideline coaching the boys.

Huddles.  The Math and English teacher are coaches.

For lunch, we had Fantas, cooked bananas in a yellow sauce, rice, and some cubes of meat.  Some of the kids got to see their parents, and it was a good day.

 

I stayed in Buja with Nadia, Jeremy, Hanna, and Jen.  We stayed the night in our organization's guest house.  I went to church the next day with one of or staff from Kenya, and then went to the office. 

We've had problems with computers at school, and JR asked if I could help and get some more computers for the school.  So, part of Saturday and Sunday, I hooked up donated computers our organization had, tested to see if they would work for school, then set them up for the computer lab.  A couple of ladies helped me in the office.  One fell asleep watching me work on a computer.  :)  Next weekend, the computers will hopefully be driven to the school.  I'm not much of a hardware person when it comes to computer, but I did what I could!  We will see what happens with the computers.
 

Sunday morning, I went to a church service.  The church was in Kirundi and English, with at least one Bible verse read in French.  I thought it was funny that during the sermon, the pastor told the English translator that she needed to learn Swahili.  So, I am living in a culture that uses four languages.  I really enjoyed the worship.  The songs I knew were "I Exalt Thee" and "Agus Dei."  The church is hoping to buy the land they are currently on.  They have been renting the land.  When they first were there, the owner charged them 500,000 Burundi Francs in rent, or about $300.  Now, the owner is asking $1,700 a month!  Just like my church back home, the kids came up to the front, were prayed for, and then dismissed for Sunday School.  I loved the church, but do have to say the wine tasted like cough syrup.

To arrive back at home before it was dark, Hanna, Jen and I left Buja at about 4pm.  The head of our organization, Johnnie, was nice enough to personally take us to the taxi station, and negotiated a ride for us.  Since the market fire, the price for taxi rides from Buja to where I live has been going up.  It was 8,000 Burundi Francs for each of us, and we paid an additional 8,000 so four people weren't in the back seat with us.  It used to be 6,000, then it was 7,000 after the market fire, and now 8,000 because of a shortage of gasoline?  I wasn't sure if that was right, or if the taxi driver was just trying to get more money.

A Catholic priest sat next to the driver and was also going home.  All four of us waited in the car for the driver to go, but the driver was still outside the car, and the car wasn't moving.  I got out, and asked Johnnie what was going on.  The driver wanted more money for our bags!  Half of the back of the station wagon taxi was still empty.  I don't know much Kirundi, but I looked at the driver, and with my limited Kirundi vocabulary, I simply said, "No!" (Pronounced "Oh yeah" in Kirundi).  I pulled my suitcase out, and told Hanna and Jen we were getting another taxi.  Sure enough, the driver changed his mind, and we were on our way.  I think I'm getting better at negotiating.  :)

I don't like the drive between Buja and where I live.  The taxi went fast, and drove close to people walking along the road and across the road.  We ran over and killed a chicken, and almost hit an older blind woman crossing the street.  We also stopped and picked up some roasted corn, bananas, and white corn bread wrapped in banana leaves.  Surprisingly, the road is paved the entire way. 

The president often travels to the town I live.  One day, the road was washed out from the rain, and people coming to our town from Buja were delayed.  Since it also delayed the president's travels, the people traveling to our town were lucky because they got the road fixed in an hour and a half.

People selling cornbread in a banana leaf on the way back to Gitega.