Cibitoke Outing 4/20/13

At the end of my break, I traveled to Cibitoke (pronounced "chib-E-toe-key) to visit the other children's home my organization has, and to visit a friend from Uganda who has been living with the kids.  Cibitoke is in the north western part of Burundi.  It's 3 km from the Congo, and 10 km from Rwanda.  Calvin, Paul and I made the trip, and we were taken to Cibitoke by the assistant director of our organization for Burundi, Forest. 

The road has a ton of giant pot holes, and the trip is slow as vehicles weave around the holes on the road.  There's a government project that hopefully will redo the road in the near future.  We drove by some rice fields, I got to see some beautiful red birds and yellow birds, and we probably passed through a couple eco systems.

The children's home has been open for about three years now, and houses 20 kids.  Along with the Children's home, my organization is also building another primary school and another clinic.

Construction is coming along for the class rooms.

Primary school, across the street from the children's home compound.

The clinic.

The open waiting area in the clinic.  Steel door frames and windows are constructed on site here.

Forest, the assistant director, and my Ugandan friend (left) giving us a tour of the town and clinic.  The land has a beautiful view overlooking Cibitoke.

The project started when Forest and a missionary from Oregon did a Sunday school in the Cibitoke area.  They arranged to do the Sunday School with a local pastor, and they planned to do it for 300 kids.  The pastor asked, "Are you sure you can handle 300 kids?"  They said yes.  So, they started with 300 kids at the beginning of the week...and ended with about 1000.  Seeing the need for education in the children in the area, my organization started these projects.

Cibitoke is flatter than a lot of the other parts of Burundi, and doesn't receive as much rain.  With the extra sunshine, the solar panels are able to power a fridge and power the lights in the compound at night until everyone goes to bed.  But...there isn't running water, and they are working on that.  Rain water is collected in a giant underground container.  It has worms, so water for drinking is boiled over charcoal.  The children's home does have toilets.  You use a bucket of water to flush the toilets.  You take showers by taking a bucket of water, and using a pitcher of water to pour the water over you.  I appreciated that the water was warmer than where I live.