Moving and Shaking 03-10-13

I woke up this morning at 5am. The bed was shaking. I looked to see if someone was trying to wake me up. I didn't see anything. No one else in the house was up, so I thought maybe I had a nightmare. I guess not! It was a 4.4 earthquake. I only found out recently that there are earthquakes here. It wasn't a big one, but it is the biggest one I've ever felt.

MAP 4.4 2013/03/10 03:00:18 -4.297 29.137 10.0 LAKE TANGANYIKA REGION
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.html

Girls Hike 03-09-13

Since most of the boys got to go to Bujumbura for the basketball and soccer matches, Hanna organized to take the girls on a hike.  We were going to hike one of the highest mountains/hills in the area called Mount Songa.  So, early Saturday morning, Hanna, Jen, and a driver took the Children's Home bus to the school, and picked me, the girls, and a couple other staff members up.  All the girls went except two.

 Unfortunately, we were running late.  We did not leave before 8am, the starting time of the mandatory community service time in Burundi.  We got stopped by a road block...I think it serves us right for not doing community service, but I'm probably the minority in that opinion.  :)  Most people don't do community service, and it's questionable if it's an excuse for police to block the road.  The police may accept bribes and allow certain people to pass.  Most people stay at home, and avoid traveling.  The house parents at school are wonderful, and often do a community service activity with the kids at the school.  I should help and schedule something for the kids to do outside the school for community service.

Since the road was blocked, a local man that lived close to the mountain directed us to an alternative route.  Many girls and staff were afraid on the bus taking the side road.  The bus tipped a little, and went up a pretty steep slope.  I think it was fine though.  :)  We stopped the bus in a small village.  I haven't been around rural people that much.  The people in the village were pretty poor. 

Hanna and I heading up.

We headed up the mountain.  Hanna took the front, and I took the position of Tailgunner.  Originally it was by choice, but I fell into my normal hiking routine of huffing and puffing up the mountain.  The Academic Dean accompanied us on the trip because the school wanted one man on the trip for security.  The girls gave him a girls name for the day.  I was very thankful when he carried my backpack up the mountain.
Part of the way up, we were on a road.  The mountain is very rocky so trucks often drive up to get rocks for the foundations of buildings and walls.  When we weren't on a road, we were on rocky foot trails.  Some children followed us up the mountain with a herd of goats.  They didn't have shoes and they had dirty and torn clothes.  They did not want me to take their picture, which happens here.  The youngest was probably about two, and the oldest would occasionally carry him.  The youngest boy had a bulging stomach...a sign of malnutrition.  I had two vitamins to give to the kids, and that was it.  One of them had ring worm, and I could see the large, white round bumps on the kids skull.  Several had fungus on their head.  That's very common here.


One of the girls on the way up wearing an Incredible Hulk shirt.

One of the house mothers that stay at the school some nights.

I've learned how to get things at the market, but I still have some work to figure out how to get things from the pharmacy.  Jeremy and Nadia are working on getting wholesale or bulk medications for the clinic, but I think it may still take some time.  It would be nice if I could carry around vitamins, deworming medicine, soap and extra shoes.  But, I have to be careful that if I give something, I don't get swarmed.

Eventually we made it to the top of the mountain.  We rested, then went down to a landing.  We ate oranges and bananas, and prayed for Burundi.  The extra food we gave to the kids that followed us up, although the girls from school were pretty hungry.  The kids collected the plastic water bottles the students tossed away. 

 



 

When we were sitting, I spotted the biggest caterpillar climbing up the back of one of the girls T-shirts.  The caterpillar was brown and fuzzy, and about the size of finger.  At that point, what I should have done is taken a video with my phone of what happened next.  :)  When I drew attention to the caterpillar, the girls screamed and scattered.  The girl with the caterpillar thankfully was calm and let me take it off.  It probably helped that she couldn't see it.  We took pictures of it, and then I put it in a place where no one else could see it, and hopefully it was good.  I was afraid the kids following us would kill it.

 

Jen, pretending to eat the caterpillar.

One of the students was brave enough to hold the caterpillar.

 

We went down the mountain pretty fast.  Between the match and the hike, I think it was a lot more physical exercise than the girls were used to.  I'm guessing we went about 5 miles.  For me...it kinda felt like a field trip to Colorado.  Parts of it felt like home.

Walking down.  You can see a couple of the local kids on the right.

Gathering for prayer on the way down.

Movie Night 03-09-13

On Fridays, I often spend the night at the school so I can show the kids a movie.  The movie goes from about 8pm to 10pm.  10pm is too late to drive home.  The Children's Home has a curfew of 7pm, and the mazungus (white people) are encouraged to be back before dark.  The school has one projector and some speakers, so we can show movies in the Cafeteria.  The movies are in English and help the students with their English.  If subtitles are available, I'll put on subtitles.

So far, here are the movies I've showed them, or someone else has showed them:

• Finding Forrester
• Paycheck
• Holes
• The Incredibles
• Despicable Me
• Narnia
• Iron Man
• Captain America
• Avengers
• Secondhand Lions

I've noticed that the kids see movies differently, and I also see them differently because of my cultural experiences here.  When watching "The Incredibles" the boys whistled at Mrs. Incredible.  Mrs. Incredible has the ability to stretch her body, and the boys whistled as she went flipping from the top of one building to another in a city.  Just yesterday, a kid asked me, "Can we see that movie with the walking and water?"  The kids got a kick out of the son, Dash, running on water.  But, I realized that the whole movie, the family of the Incredibles are yelling and arguing the entire movie.  Is that how Burundians think American families are?  There can be yelling and resistance to authority here, and it actually made me wonder if showing the Incredibles, a family movie in the US, to the school was a good idea.  One day at the internet cafe, I watched a crowd walk by.  The crowd was yelling at a couple of policemen who was escorting a handcuffed man.

In the movie "Holes," a boy gets wrongfully accused of stealing something, and he goes to a juvinile detention camp.  It was funny how many things in the movie related to my current situation, and the kids at school.  The boys living at the camp have to dig holes in the desert.  Ironically, when our kids get in serious trouble, they have to dig a hole with a shovel, then fill it back up again.  In the movie, it shows the boy taking a cold shower, then having the water get shut off in the middle of it.  I'm getting used to cold showers.  Sometimes the water goes off in the Children's Home.  In the camp, it shows the boy getting beans and  spinach for dinner.  I laughed since it reminded me of dinner from the night before.  In Burundi, we eat lot of beans and rice, and cooked pumpkin leaves that are called lenga lenga. The boy also runs away from a scorpion, and almost gets attacked by a dangerous lizard.  We have a lot of harmless geckos at the Children's Home.  I was expecting to see scorpions here, but I haven't seen any yet.  The kids did like the movie, and made a "Yo!" exclamation sound when the boy stole a truck and crashed it in one of the holes that was dug.

Last night, I showed Secondhand Lions.  The language was bad, but I think the kids enjoyed it.  I'll probably show Iron Man 2 and Thor sometime in the future.

Friendship Masterpieces 03-08-13

Friday afternoon I generally teach English club.  I have all the students for about an hour and fifteen minutes, and we do an activity that encourages the student's English skills.  This Friday, for part of the celebration of Women's Day, a girls soccer match was scheduled afterschool at 4pm. 

At about 4pm, a pretty good rain storm hit, delaying the soccer match.  Most of the staff had gone home.  I was locked out of the staff room, but I was lucky...one of the windows was open.  So, in the pouring rain, I managed to climb in through the window in my purple skirt and grab my yarn.  Most of the girls in the school were in the science room, anxiously waiting to make friendship bracelets. 

Once in the room, I had a cluster of girls around me saying, "Me!" as I handed out string.  I've taught the kids at the Children's Home to say, "Please."  But, I've heard there isn't a Kirundi word for "please."  Some of the kids at the Children's Home will say, "Give me."  I think I'm going to start a sign up sheet for cutting yarn in the future.  I used to allow the girls to cut their own, but there was yarn left on the floor, most of them don't know how long to cut the string for the different patterns, and sometimes they don't know how many colors or strings they need.  So, sometimes yarn is wasted, but sometimes the bracelets are too short too!  I think my biggest expenses here are yarn and phone minutes, outside of food, lodging and transportation. 

The girls are surprised when I tell them that the yarn is from a Gitega market booth.  I can't find knitting needles or crochet hooks, but thank goodness there is thin yarn!  I may buy some bamboo skewers for knitting needles.  The girls have learned so many different friendship bracelets that it's getting to the point it's hard to teach them because the patterns are more advanced.  If I find time, I think I'll write and draw up instructions and put them in the science room.  I'm delighted they want to learn, but I also hope it doesn't take away from their studies too much.

Women's Day 03-08-13

At school today we celebrated Women's Day, March 8th.  At lunch time, JR gave a speech.  He gave all the girls in the school lollipops (a very welcome treat for them).  He invited the women staff up to the front, and gave us chocolate cookies.  Chocolate...generally a good choice for a gift to give women.

There are twice as many boys in our school than girls.  The boys dorm is pretty full, and the girls dorm has less than half it's capacity.  The truth is...parents are more willing to pay for education for their sons here, then they are their daughters.

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.

Staff Dinner 3/5/13

For a special treat, the staff went out to dinner together after parent teacher conferences.  We went to a place called the Orange Lounge.  We had the choice of fried fish, broiled fish, or chicken.  I had chicken but might go for fried fish the next time.  I like fish, but the broiled fish comes with scales and the head of the fish.  The chicken was a good treat.  I see a lot of live chickens in the market, but haven't had much chicken since I got here.  I think they are mostly for eggs.  Mostly, if I have meat at school or at the Children's home, it's beef or goat.

We might do a dinner again next month, or in two months. We will have to see.

 

 

 

Michelle, Hanna, Nadia and Jen on the swings:

Ryan and JR on the teeter totter:

Jack, the Kirundi teacher on the Merry Go Round.  I tried it and learned quickly that spinning no longer agrees with me.